re: Thunderball

Casino Royale was easily the best bond movie ever but Thunderball is in my top-5 for sure as well.

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Love that movie but I need to put a 'purer' Bond classic on top if that makes sense.

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I definitely understand. I love it because it was Bond in a quintessentially '80s movie and I love '80s movies. The scarface-type villain, young Benicio del Toro and Wayne Newton as bad guys. Tropical setting. It was just spectacular.

While I'm not a big Dalton fan his version of Bond was a purer take in a sense that he played him as darker and more brooding and truer to the character in the books, which was a welcome change from the super-campy approach Moore took (although I appreciated Moore as Bond too). License to Kill was really dark when you compare it to the decade that preceded it. His friends are both killed in the beginning, the wife is raped before getting killed. Bond quits the secret service and goes rogue. It's just awesome.

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I think From Russia With Love is as good as it gets.

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I definitely agree. FRWL is the gold standard as far as the pure classic Bond formula. It's just perfect.