The Worst James Bond Movie, According To IMDb

When the best James Bond movie of all time, "Casino Royale," debuted in 2006, the franchise was immediately reinvigorated with Daniel Craig's 007 representing a truly fresh take on the character. Director Martin Campbell, who a decade prior had kicked off Pierce Brosnan's tenure in the tux in similarly spectacular fashion with "GoldenEye," reintroduced audiences to a modern Bond, taking cues from 2001's "The Bourne Identity" and its 2004 sequel to give England's greatest spy a more grounded and — yes, I'm going to use the word — gritty treatment.

But then, things sort of fell apart. 2008's "Quantum of Solace" was the biggest disaster in Bond history, but not for the reasons you may have heard. The film was decent but didn't fare well with critics and fans, prompting custodians of the Bond franchise, Eon Productions, to change tack. What resulted was the truly dismal "Skyfall," a movie that masquerades as one of the best of the modern Bond films but which was actually a huge capitulation to fan expectations and an empty appeal to our nostalgia-obsessed culture. The films that followed weren't much better and then came the real coup de grâce: "No Time to Die" — the movie in which Bond dies for the first time. How did this grounded, tortured 007 meet his fate? By being buried beneath a torrent of missiles of course, in what remains one of the lowest points in the saga's more than 60-year history.

If you can't tell by now, my personal choice for the worst James Bond movie would be one of these Daniel Craig-era offenses. Not because they match the Roger Moore era's camp or some of Pierce Brosnan's more outlandish outings for sheer absurdity, but because they tarnished the legacy of the greatest Bond movie ever made and never followed through on the promise of that stellar effort. If that appraisal doesn't sit well with you, you're in luck because the IMDb crowd has given us their take on the whole thing, and the argument from consensus is very much opposed to my own. That is to say, the worst James Bond movie of all time has been found (or at least, voted on by people willing to comment on IMDb).

IMDb is a bit uneven when it comes to its rankings of films. Those rankings are, of course, driven by the users themselves, who vote on a movie's quality and the aggregate is displayed as a star rating on the film's page. If you want to use the site to determine the best movies ever made, you'll find that the IMDb top 10 places "The Shawshank Redemption" in the top spot. Then again, in a ranking of the greatest Superman movies, IMDb users got it right by naming 1978's "Superman" as the finest on-screen outing for the Man of Steel.

So, what did the website's users make of James Bond and his 25 movies? Well, they certainly don't share my distaste for "Skyfall," which currently sits in the number two position. But they do share my love for "Casino Royale," which at the time of writing occupies its rightful position at the very top of the Bond rankings. That's all well and good, but we're here to find out the very worst James Bond movie ever made, which according to IMDb is 2002's "Die Another Day."

Yes, Pierce Brosnan's relentlessly-panned swan song as Bond has been dubbed the worst 007 film of all time, with a 6.1 rating out of 10, based on 233,000 votes. By comparison, "Casino Royale" holds an 8.0 rating based on 709,000 votes. Still, 6.1 isn't bad for a film that notoriously almost killed off the James Bond franchise for good with its sky lasers and giant ice palaces. The thing is, "Die Another Day" is a heck of a lot more fun to sit through than "No Time to Die" or several other Daniel Craig-led films. Let me explain.

It's worth noting that while "Die Another Day" does bear the lowest ranking of all the Bond movies, "Moonraker" isn't far behind with its 6.3 rating. Neither is "A View to a Kill," which also managed 6.3 out of 10. Still, the lowest score is the lowest score and honestly, this one isn't all that surprising.

For a movie that begins with Bond being captured by a North Korean army and tortured over more than a year, "Die Another Day" turned out to be a pretty light-hearted affair. This is the film that revolves around a Korean General who has surgery that somehow transforms him into a British toff. It also featured an invisible Aston Martin, a giant space laser, and a scene in which Bond outran said laser by parachuting onto a tsunami and surfing his way to safety. It's all just a bit unhinged but in a sort of fun way that, once the whole North Korean torture prison thing is out of the way, doesn't pretend to be much else.

In that sense, an argument can be made for "Die Another Day" being an underrated Bond movie that deserves more respect — or at least deserves to be shunted up the IMDb rankings a bit. For now, though, it seems the aforementioned absurdities were too much for the IMDb crowd, who have handed down their decree. Hey, at least "Quantum of Solace" isn't in last place.