Well, it appears that the intent of this is that James Bond is over. It's been 60 years since Dr. No so it's probably for the best. The franchise has been quite a rollercoaster of quality. Unexpectedly, the very best movies-as-movies happened in the final incarnation (Skyfall, Casino Royale) although the best portrayal and aesthetic remains The Connery. Their cultural relevance dwindled long, long ago, and the attempt to rejigger the films as standard actioners never really panned out until the Daniel Craig ones I mentioned as the best. The symbolism of Bond has been reviled and worshiped, often simultaneously. And it all leads up to No Time to Die it seems.
Bluntly put, No Time to Die is not a good movie. Craig doesn't seem to know if he wants to play Bond or some sort of Chris Pratt character. The entire movie is a pastiche of Bond tropes. The daffy, skin-showing, bond-girl who turns out to be an effective agent, the Q-armored Aston Martin, Bond as a rogue agent, a villainous madman bent on world domination from an island lair. Even the core personal story follows the plot of On Her Majesty's Secret Service right down to the "All the Time in the World" meme.
So, yeah, it's just as well that it ends. There really is no purpose to this franchise anymore. Mission Impossible does everything better in this specific sub-genre and as for action films in general, Mad Max: Fury Road, any Avengers film, or even the Fast and Furious franchise, will put it to shame.
Personally, I would love to see them reboot Bond stories set back in the '60s. Same aesthetic, same morality (or amorality); done seriously, like Mad Men was. To quote Never Say Never Again, "I hope were in for some gratuitous sex and violence."
Since everyone else is going to do it, here are my thoughts on essential Bond films:
Casino Royale and Skyfall are the best quality movies. They are top notch action films that stand up well. Many will also offer Pierce Brosnan's Goldeneye for quality and I will not gainsay them.
Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and Goldfinger constitute the core of when The Connery burned bright and the cultural icon was made.
Roger Moore had a couple of decent outings with Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun, but camp had long overtaken the franchise by then.
The only campy one I really enjoyed was You Only Live Twice, which mashes up Bond and chopsocky and cranks the blatant sexism to 11. Lousy as a movie, but it makes me grin.
Timothy Dalton I barely remember.
Pierce Brosnan got to do some great sequences but to my mind none of his were strong end-to-end.
The most beautiful bond girls are not in the main canon, to be honest. For that you must go to a Casino Royale parody from the '60s, which starred David Niven as Bond, Peter Sellers as Fake Bond, and Woody Allen as his little brother Jimmy Bond. The movie was inane and incoherent, but the girls -- and there were many -- were ridiculously beautiful in that way women were in the 60s and are not today.
