The 25th movie in the storied James Bond franchise is scheduled to come out in late 2019. In the meantime, how about we rank the 24 other films? If we are going to do so, we need to determine what we are looking for in a good James Bond adventure.

Action: James is a man who likes to jump out of airplanes or chase bad guys with a tank in the middle of a busy street. A good movie will have great action sequences.

Fights: A good Bond movie also sees its hero get into a few solid fights.

Espionage: How much spying is James Bond actually doing in this movie? Is the plot sufficiently intriguing?

Over the top: James Bond does everything in extremes. The gadgets need to push just a bit past the realm of reality, just enough to make you wonder if such a thing could really exist one day. The mission needs to push the limits of plausibility, but still make sense. It needs to be crazy without being silly.

Memorable characters: How good is the villain? How about the henchmen, or the sidekicks?

With these criteria established, we can now come up with a good ranking. This list will be ordered from worst to best, so if you don’t see your favourite movie right away, that’s good news! In the end, don’t forget to let us know on Facebook how your own list compares to this one.

24 One Movie Too Many

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It hurts to put a Sean Connery movie at the bottom, but even the classic Bond has a stinker to his name. Diamonds Are Forever marks Connery’s return after George Lazenby’s lone appearance, and he makes the most of every minute he is given on screen. Unfortunately, he is let down by a boring story.

It is one of the few movies where you never feel like Bond is in any danger at all.

James just follows a bunch of smugglers while fighting completely ineffective henchmen. It’s also Blofeld’s last true appearance though he would reappear, nameless, nearly a decade later, in an unnecessary cameo. The only real Bond moment in the entire movie is the car chase in Las Vegas. We can point at this movie when it comes to the start of a long slump for the character.

23 The Master Of Disguise

Even if you disregard the completely absurd title (which is pushing it in terms of obvious puns, even for James Bond), Octopussy is one of the most laughable movies in the series. While you do want Bond to be able to take a joke, this one is nothing but a series of bizarre set pieces which are memorable for all the wrong reasons. In one scene, Bond swings through the trees and yells like Tarzan. In another one, he dons a gorilla suit to hitch a ride with a circus. Finally, he dresses up in the infamous clown suit which would have been the series' jumping-the-shark moment if Roger Moore wasn’t so close to being replaced. It’s ridiculous without actually funny. It’s over the top without being grandiose. Other Roger Moore movies are generally bad, but they at least commit to their mediocrity.

22 A Waste Of A Good Villain

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If we start with the lone positive, Christopher Lee does a terrific job as Scaramanga, the villain of the film. In any other movie, he would be seen as a serious threat, but The Man With The Golden Gun is, unfortunately, a Roger Moore outing, so we can’t even think for a minute that Bond might ever be in trouble.

The story lacks any real punch because of Moore’s inability to bring drama to his performance.

We should feel at least a little bit of nervousness at the fact that Bond is being pursued by this overconfident maniac. It’s one of the few times where Bond’s nemesis can actually measure up to his skills, but scenes are too often played for a laugh. I mean, can you really take anything involving Nick Nack seriously?

21 He's Got A Girlfriend Now

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Oh boy. This is Roger Moore at his campiest, which has always made me hate the movie. Plus, Moonraker takes one of the franchise’s most memorable villain (the almighty Jaws!) and turns him into a doofus. The whole subplot with his girlfriend might have looked cute on paper, but it destroys the character's mystique. Bond going to space could have been cool if they had stuck a proper story onto the action sequences, which are neat enough to almost make the movie enjoyable. Instead, Hugo Drax comes off as an idiot with a plan full of holes, so once you are done gawking at the special effects (which were great for the time), you are left with nothing. Moore’s performance, where he might as well be winking straight into the camera at this point, will make you roll your eyes to the point of straining.

20 Saved By The Bird

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For Your Eyes Only has many problems, the biggest of which is a completely uninteresting villain. It’s hard to care about Kristatos as he goes around doing mundane smuggler stuff. Also, James Bond is especially bad at spying this time around: he seems clueless for most of the movie, stumbling into important info despite himself.

He only figures out Kristatos’ final destination because he hears it from a parrot!

The only reason why the movie isn’t any lower is because of the great stunts, and even that takes a weird turn when Bond has to fight hockey players on a rink, with the scoreboard keeping track of the fight. Finally, I’m not an ageist when it comes to the actor portraying Bond, but they should at least keep in proper shape to look believable. Moore at that point looks like he’d rather be in a rocking chair at home sipping a cup of tea.

19 Jinxed

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It’s a shame that this movie loses most of its steam about a third of the way in, because it has such a cool start. Die Another Day starts with the unexpected plot twist of James Bond actually being captured and held prisoner for over a year. The film then destroys the goodwill accumulated with a bunch of baffling decisions. Let’s start with the villain’s plot, which is so farfetched that you would think it has been imagined by Dr. Evil. Plus, it’s another satellite, except that this time it uses solar power instead of lasers, which I guess changes everything. The diamond-encrusted henchman looks cool but doesn’t do much to earn his paycheck. Finally, let's mention Halle Berry's turn as Jinx. She's usually a good actress, but she's in Catwoman mode this time around. She looks like she just didn't want to be in the movie at all.

18 Great Song, At Least

Live and Let Die is Roger Moore’s first try at portraying James Bond, which means that he is still figuring out his own style. So his Bond still has enough grittiness to be believable in fights, but you can already see hints of what would soon become his trademark cartoonish portrayal. The story feels like it belongs in a different kind of movie, as Bond faces with a run-of-the-mill dealer instead of his usual supervillains. The only memorable thing that happens is that the main bad guy's demise:

He blows up like a balloon and floats to the ceiling, completely defying the laws of physics.

The movie is saved from being ranked near the bottom of the barrel because it has one of the best theme songs in the entire series. Paul McCartney and Wings created a tune which goes past the simple “might get nominated at the Oscars” quality to become a mainstay of rock radio.

17 It's Not Rocket Science

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The World Is Not Enough stars Robert Carlyle as Renard, a good villain with a hook which make him more than a match for Bond: Renard simply cannot feel pain, and will pass away soon enough that he does not care about his life. Unfortunately, he is let down by a confusing story, one which goes so far as to ask viewers to believe that Denise Richards is a nuclear physicist. She is not a good enough actress to be anything else than “Denise Richards in a lab coat”, and we are taken out of the story any time she is on screen. Thankfully, Pierce Brosnan wasn’t bored yet, so he tries as hard as he can to make his part of the film as interesting as the villains. Still, it is not enough to make the movie more than an average Bond outing.

16 The Original

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Though we are not yet halfway through the list, I believe that everything starting here is at the very least “good”. As the first James Bond in the official Eon Productions canon, Dr. No obviously still has some kinks to work out, but it establishes the basis for the rest of the series right away.

Over the years, the movie's legacy seems to have been defined by one thing: the iconic shot of Ursula Andress coming out of the ocean in a bikini.

The rest is standard fare for the series, though everything was still fresh at that point. James Bond is simultaneously charming and intimidating, depending on what the situation calls for. It is significantly slower than most other movies in the series but has enough espionage to keep things interesting. It showed what could be expected from James Bond from this point forward: exotic locations, the Bond girls, a crazy villain, and cool stunts.

15 A Pool Full Of Sharks, But No Laser Beam

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Thunderball is not as inventive as other Sean Connery entries, but that is only if we look at it in a modern light. The atomic bomb plot, which has become almost a Bond trope at this point, was still fresh at the time and appropriately terrifying considering the political climate at the time. Emilio Largo, Number Two at SPECTRE, has the look which makes for a great Bond villain (and he has a pool full of sharks!), but ends up being kind of a pushover at the end. The movie is dragged down by the never-ending underwater scenes, which I am sure were seen as an incredible technical achievement at the time of release, but which just stop the action dead in its track.

14 Going Back To The Roots

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While researching for this article, I realized that Timothy Dalton’s reputation as James Bond was not as good as I would have expected. Sure, he only has two movies to his name, but they are both at the very least above average. The Living Daylights, his first outing as the secret agent, takes the character back to its roots.

Dalton is more dangerous, brutal, and realistic than Roger Moore ever was, and yet, he never takes it too far.

He just looks like a man who’s really good at his job without being a superhero. The story also goes back to basics, with actual spying and the involvement of the Russians, which is always a plus when it comes to an old-school James Bond movie. It’s full of twists and turns, and it’s an effective introduction to a new style of Bond.

13 Time To Call It Quit

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A View To A Kill could have been even better than it ended up being, if it wasn’t for one simple fact: Roger Moore was pushing 60 at this point, and he admitted himself that he should not have been playing Bond anymore. 007 looks permanently tired, but the movie is thankfully saved by two extremely charismatic villains: Grace Jones is May Day, one of the best baddies the series has ever seen. She steals every scene she’s in, and is only overshadowed because her boss is as crazy as she is. That would be Christopher Walken’s Max Zorin, who casually massacres hundreds of people in a display of cruelty rarely seen in Bond movies. The plot also keeps up with the then-burgeoning computer market, centering the story on Silicon Valley. Moore can at least say he went out with a bang.

12 Bond's Revenge

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The weakest of the Daniel Craig movies, Quantum Of Solace is still a solid adventure filled with action and fight scenes. The only problem is the banality of its bad guy. Sure, Dominic Greene is a despicable man, and his plan to control Bolivia’s water supply is sufficiently evil.

However, the world has become such a crazy place that I wouldn’t be surprised if this is something that’s actually happening in real life.

The revenge motif, both for Bond and Camille Montes, works incredibly well as it gives the good guys an edge and a mean streak. The little homages to past movies also work well, most notably the demise of Bond’s love interest Strawberry Fields. There’s enough going on in the movie to make you forget about the weaker parts.

11 Roger Moore's Best

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The Spy Who Loved Me is arguably Roger Moore’s finest hour. Why? First of all, there are Russians! Sure, they are working hand in hand with Bond this time around, but it’s an uneasy alliance the whole way; Agent Amasova vows to get revenge on Bond by the end because he caused her lover’s untimely demise. Second, this is the movie which introduces Jaws, who is so memorable that he is probably in the top five when anyone thinks about James Bond baddies. I mean, the guy fights sharks and wins! The submarine Lotus car is so cool that it has become one of the most iconic cars in the whole series. The ending drags a little bit, especially the final confrontation with Stromberg, but that’s really the only negative. We are truly starting to enter the upper echelon of the rankings here.

10 Welcome To My Volcano Lair

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The biggest mark that You Only Live Twice has left on the series is the proper introduction of Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The movie itself is ridiculous enough that it has its share of detractors, but I think of it as the prototypical James Bond movie:

Blofeld and is crazy volcano base are so cool and crazy that they would become the model for all Bond parodies to follow.

The man is so over the top that he sends his own employees into a tank filled with piranhas at the smallest perceived failure. Otherwise, we have a ninja fight, which is a first for the series, and an explosive ending for the ages. It was originally going to be Sean Connery’s last movie, and had he stayed retired, it would have been the perfect send-off.

9 Headline News

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Pierce Brosnan managed to revive the James Bond franchise with Goldeneye, so his second outing, Tomorrow Never Dies, went all out with the modern blockbuster sensibilities. The action sequences are crazy and plentiful, but my favorite is still the motorcycle chase with Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh being handcuffed to each other. Jonathan Pryce is surprisingly effective as a bad guy: he could have been mundane, playing a generically evil rich guy, but he instead turns up the megalomania to transcend his role. As far as I can recall, he is the first villain to use the internet and the increasingly ever-present news media to his advantage. Finally, though Judi Dench was introduced in the previous movie, she really gets a meatier part here, and she gives a fantastic performance.

8 Gone Rogue

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I have noticed that revenge works really well for James Bond. The movies where he has a personal vendetta against the antagonist usually have a sense of urgency which other entries don’t. Licence To Kill is no exception.

Becoming a rogue agent, James Bond is on a mission to avenge his friend Felix Leiter and his deceased wife.

The action is intense and the drama feels real for a change. The story is captivating because it is more than just an excuse to string a bunch of crazy stunts together. Timothy Dalton makes you wish that he had played James Bond at least one more time. His portrayal is like an early look into the future Daniel Craig movies, and could have been a good direction for a few more films.

7 Putting It All Together

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I really appreciate what Spectre is trying to do by reintroducing a villain who was well known before the reboot. I also like that it ties up all the previous Daniel Craig movies together neatly. It retroactively gives the previous few movies a sense of epic by broadening their scope. Dave Batista is a perfect henchman, silent and strong, without being completely invulnerable. Christopher Waltz is great at playing creepy characters and brings his “A” game here. The plot manages to be both realistic (there’s surveillance everywhere) and farfetched (the bad guy puts explosives all over MI6’s old headquarter without anyone noticing) at the same time. It could be a flaw, but the movie has enough action and charismatic characters to make up for it. Even the secondary characters are memorable: Naomie Harris and Andrew Scott, in particular, don’t get much screen time but make you wish they did.

6 One-Hit Wonder

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Let’s address the elephant in the room first: George Lazenby is quite frankly the worst James Bond of them all, despite my general dislike for Roger Moore. However, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he is carried to greatness by a script which is a hundred times better than him. It’s not just a good James Bond story; It is a legitimately good film without the legendary character attached to it.

The action sequences are a lot of fun, sure, but the ending is a real punch in the gut.

For a while, James Bond getting married and the immediate loss of his wife makes you think that we might finally see the character change and mature somewhat. The rehiring of Sean Connery for the next film basically undid everything. This was literally Lazenby’s first film role. Had he improved for the next one, who knows how good it could have been?

5 Never Heard Of Sophomore Slump

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As the second movie in the series, From Russia With Love fully establishes the Bond formula: it is faster paced than its predecessor, and it sees the spy slowly making his way through the SPECTRE organization which would be a pain in his neck for the foreseeable future. Also, there are Russians, and I think that I have made my opinion on Russia and James Bond well known at this point. The real thing that shows just how influential this movie was is that it is the only classic Bond movie to be adapted into its own, standalone video game forty years after the facts. The game even convinced Sean Connery to come out of retirement to do some voice acting. That is how good From Russia With Love is.