Number 14b: Watch all of the James Bond movies

Completed 9-11 November 2015.
23 Movies - 3 Days, Duration: 48.25 Hours.

This is the first thing completed off my "Bonus Round" list, a list I decided to create where I could add new things I think of that might be fun or exciting without cluttering up my base list.

So I got the idea for this when looking at another random list online which included "Do A Movie Marathon" and after looking around, there are not many (if any) movie marathons that go longer that the entire 007 James Bond series. 

After far too many hours, I decided to create an infographic with all the current top movie marathons out there, up to date and clear and concise so others would have a much easier time. 

So with that in mind, along with the fact I had never actually watched all the Bond movies, it was decided. So a short time later I booked in the leave from work and decided to commence the marathon on the Monday 11 November, as Spectre (24th Bond movie) was released later that week. So along side that I booked my tickets for that for the Thursday morning.

So up at 5:30am on the Monday, to kick off at about 6am with Dr. No, a coffee and a muffin from the Muffin Break downstairs. .

Let the games begin!

Day one consisted of:

1. Dr. No - 1962
2. From Russia with Love - 1963
3. Goldfinger - 1964
4. Thunderball - 1965
5. You Only Live Twice - 1967
6. On Her Majesty's Secret Service - 1969
7. Diamonds Are Forever - 1973

For a total of 842 Minutes, with the highlights being Goldfinger and On Her Majesty's Secret Service and the weakest being Thunderball.



End of Day 1

Day two consisted of:

1. Live and Let Die - 1973
2. The Man with the Golden Gun - 1974
3. The Spy Who Loved Me - 1977
4. Moonraker - 1979
5. For Your Eyes Only - 1981
6. Octopussy - 1983
7. A View to a Kill - 1985
8. The Living Daylights - 1987

For a total of 1016 Minutes, with the majority being fairly average. Nothing standout good or bad... well apart from what was clearly the worst part of the entire James Bond universe. Making appearances in two movies Day two, Sheriff J.W. Pepper.

During this period of really formulaic and generic movies they were quite often releragted to my second screen while I did something else of the main screen like mine minerals in EVE Online. 



A View to a Kill on the left, mining minerals in EVE on the right

End of Day 2

Day three consisted of:

1. Licence to Kill - 1989
2. GoldenEye - 1995
3. Tomorrow Never Dies - 1997
4. The World Is Not Enough - 1999
5. Die Another Day - 2002
6. Casino Royale - 2006
7. Quantum of Solace - 2008
8. Skyfall - 2012

For a total of 1036 Minutes. In this final batch there was some really good ones with the likes of GoldenEye and Casio Royale and terrible ones like Die Another Day. I also had a new appreciation for the "rebooted" movies with Daniel Craig as they do callback to a lot of the older movies from the 60's and 70's which now having seen them I actually understood some of the references. 

End of Day 3

So overview time, first up breakdown of how long it took and hours watched.

• Day 1: 7 Movies - 842 Minutes / 14.04 Hours
• Day 2: 8 Movies - 1016 Minutes / 16.94 Hours
• Day 3: 8 Movies - 1036 Minutes / 17.27 Hours

• Total: 23 Movies - 2894 Minutes / 48.25 Hours

I then followed all this up with Spectre on the Thursday morning completing all 24 current bond movies. So now having seen all of them, I created a short list of common bond quests people get asked like "Best Bond" etc. 

• Best Movie: Goldfinger, this one just grabbed me and held up surprisingly well considering its 1964 release.
• Worst Movie: Die Another Day, I was surprised that the worst one was such a recent movie, but the phoned in acting, invisible cars, giant space lasers and windsurfing tsunami's... please.
• Underrated Movie: On Her Majesty's Secret Service, really underrated and was a box office flop. But I really enjoyed it, it was a lot deeper and with more character development than all the other bonds of the era. I think it was truly ahead of it's time as when they did a similar thing with Daniel Craig's Bond in Casino Royale some 37 years later, people loved it.
• Favourite Bond: Daniel Craig, I just felt he was a good combination of the classic Bonds and modern Bonds, bringing that sophistication, bit of humour and great action to the screen.
• Least Favourite Bond: Roger Moore, for some reason he just didn't pull me in and his era of movies were a lot of mediocre, generic movies that followed the same structure almost to the minute. He had a few decent movies but as a Bond I felt he was the weakest.  
• Best Gadget: GoldenEye watch, now it may be the case that I picked this because it was my first Bond I ever saw or the Nintendo 64 game which I played a lot of. But I just felt that it was the quintessential 007 accessory.
• Memorable Good Moment: Casino Royale black and white opening scene, very noir, and gave a great initial impression towards the new Bond. Spectre introduction scene was also very very good set during Dia De Meurtos, the masks, the music and great action (if you can ignore the helicopter physics).
• Memorable Bad Moment: Well that would be the aforementioned Sheriff J.W. Pepper series of appearances.

 So with that Number 14 (14b) of the Bonus Round list is completed.

Posted in: Bonus Round, Completed, Entertainment, Movies