The Ultimate James Bond Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.5
Overall		4.5

The Ultimate James Bond Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

This scepter'd isle, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Eon

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 19, 2015

As the world prepares to be rescued once again by British superspy James Bond in Spectre, the twenty-fourth film from Eon Productions, MGM is issuing yet another box set of Bond's previous outings, with a spot reserved for the new film on Blu-ray when it arrives, presumably early next year. It's the same strategy with which the studio celebrated Agent 007's fiftieth anniversary by issuing the massive Bond 50 box in 2012. The new set has been dubbed "The Ultimate James Bond Collection", which is something of an overstatement. As long as the franchise continues and new films are made, no collection can ever be deemed "ultimate"—and that's without even considering future formats such as the forthcoming UHD. MGM can no more withhold Bond from a new home video platform than the dashing secret agent can keep his hands off a pretty woman. Bond films have been too reliable a seller on every video format to date.

As for the Ultimate Collection, does it supersede Bond 50? Not really. None of the films have been remastered. Only the cover art has changed. The sole upgrade is to the bonus disc, which is admittedly much improved, compared to the somewhat anemic version in Bond 50. This review will cover only the new bonus disc. For all other materials, please consult our earlier reviews of the individual titles (which are linked below).

Note: As of this writing, the Ultimate Collection is an Amazon exclusive and should not be confused with the non-ultimate "James Bond Collection", which contains the 23 films, a placeholder for Spectre, no digital copies and no bonus disc.

From Casey Broadwater's review of Bond 50 (published on Sept. 26, 2012):

• Dr. No: In his first mission, Sean Connery’s Bond heads to Jamaica to face off against Dr. No, setting up several of the franchises’ staples in the process. Look out for Ursula Andress’ Honey Ryder, the quintessential Bond girl.
• From Russia with Love: Istanbul! A cryptographic device! Jaws’ Robert Shaw as a SPECTRE assassin!
• Goldfinger: Pussy Galore? Yes, please. Plus, Sean Connery really came into his own in this one, which has him protecting Fort Knox and saving the world economy from collapse.
• Thunderball: Bond traipses to Nassau to locate two stolen nuclear warheads. Lots of cool underwater sequences.
• You Only Live Twice: Bond heads to the Land of the Rising Sun to find out what happened to an American spacecraft that disappeared in orbit. Megalomaniacal villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld would be famously parodied in the Austin Powers series.
• On Her Majesty's Secret Service: One-off Bond George Lazenby goes up against Blofeld and his beautiful young “Angels of Death” in the Swiss Alps.
• Diamonds Are Forever: Bribed back to the franchise with a $1.25 million salary, Sean Connery returns to infiltrate a diamond-smuggling ring.
• Live and Let Die: Roger Moore’s inaugural outing is half espionage thriller and half drug-smuggling blaxsploitation film—oddly enough—featuring Gloria Hendry as the first African- American Bond girl.
• The Man with the Golden Gun : The series took a goofy turn under Moore’s tenure, and Golden Gun goes defiantly over-the-top, with kung-fu fighting and a duel inside a neon-colored funhouse. Not a high point for Bond.
• The Spy Who Loved Me: Bond and the sexy Agent XXX—wink, wink—take on a Captain Nemo-style underwater anarchist.
• Moonraker: Yes, Bond in space. One of the more ridiculous and campy franchise entries.
• For Your Eyes Only: After the high camp of Moonraker, the series came back down to earth, so to speak, with the grittier For Your Eyes Only. Still, a middling, forgettable film.
• Octopussy: With a name like that, it’s a pity Octopussy (Maud Adams) isn’t one of the better Bond girls, and Roger Moore’s Tarzan imitation goes down as one of the most cringe-inducing moments in Bond history. Still, a decent adventure film.
• A View to a Kill: This was Roger Moore’s last and least favorite Bond film, but it at least features a loony Christopher Walken as a ruthless Silicon Valley industrialist and one of the series’ best villains.
• The Living Daylights: Timothy Dalton’s debut as Bond brought the series back to a more realistic tone, with a Cold War, sniper-versus-sniper plot that takes 007 from Vienna to Afghanistan.
• License to Kill: Dalton’s second and final turn as Bond goes darker still, and more violent. 007 loses his license to kill, but that certainly doesn’t stop him.
• Goldeneye: Pierce Brosnan’s stint as Bond starts with the ever-popular GoldenEye, which revamped the series for the post-Cold War era. Beware of Xenia Onatopp, the cold-blooded sexual sadist.
• Tomorrow Never Dies: Brosnan’s second turn has him taking on an insane media mogul—think a more deranged Rupert Murdoch—bent on manipulating China and the U.K. into war.
• The World is Not Enough: Here’s where Brosnan’s Bond started to go mediocre, with an emphasis on big dumb action over plot. This one also features Denise Richards as Dr. Christmas Jones, arguably the worst Bond girl.
• Die Another Day: Too many gadgets, too many explosions, too much CGI. It was time for another change, which brings us to:
• Casino Royale: This is how you reboot a flagging franchise. Like Batman Begins, Casino Royale goes rawer, realer, grittier than any of its predecessors. And despite initial wariness on the part of Bond fans worldwide, Daniel Craig proved to be a terrific 007, steely but vulnerable, and ready for action.
• Quantum of Solace: Craig continues to make the role his own in Quantum Solace, a direct sequel to Casino Royale. The film was maybe unfairly maligned by those who miss the comedy of the older entries, but it’s sharp, smart, and exceptionally stylish.

The Ultimate Edition includes:

• Skyfall : Bond's quest to recover a hard drive containing the names of MI6's covert agents leads him to Silva, a cyber-terrorist with a grudge against British intelligence and an elaborate plan to get even.

The Ultimate James Bond Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Video evaluations of each disc are included with their respective reviews listed above.

The Ultimate James Bond Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Audio evaluations of each disc are included with their respective reviews listed above.

Note: The new bonus disc contains an English Dolby Digital audio track.

The Ultimate James Bond Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Extras for each film are discussed in their separate reviews. In his review of Bond 50, Casey Broadwater noted these additional points:

Missing in action is some of the "Mission Control" DVD material—which, honestly, didn't amount to much anyway—and the Inside: Die Another Day documentary by Charles de Lauzirika. Additionally, the Casino Royale disc included here mixes material from the original Blu-ray and the 2008 re-release. Included are Deleted Scenes, The Road to Casino Royale, Ian Fleming's Incredible Creation, James Bond in the Bahamas, Ian Fleming: Secret Road to Paradise, Death in Venice, Becoming Bond, James Bond for Real, and Chris Cornell Music Video. Unfortunately, we lose the forty-minute Bond Girls Are Forever and four featurettes—Chasing A Plane: From Storyboard to Screen, The Art of the Freerun, Storyboard Sequence: Freerun Chase, and Filmmaker Profiles.

The Ultimate Collection's bonus Blu-ray disc carries over most, but not all, of the bonus disc contents from Bond 50. Omitted are the promotional pieces dubbed Skyfall Videoblogs: Skyfall: Behind the Scenes, Sam Mendes, Naomie Harris, Berenice Marlohe, Production Update from Shanghai, Dennis Gassner Takes Us Inside the Look of Skyfall, and Jany Temime on Dressing 007 for Action. In their place are several new items designed to "prime" the audience for Spectre.

Following is a list of the items carried over from Bond 50. The descriptions are from Casey's review. These extras have only English SDH subtitles.

• World of Bond: Title Sequences (1080p, 1:06:13): Yes, if you care to, you can watch the title sequences of all twenty-two films in a row, observing the changes in graphic design across five decades. (Expanded here to include Skyfall.)
• World of Bond: Gadgets (1080p, 3:03): A montage of Bond's most memorable gadgetry.
• World of Bond: Villains (1080p, 2:22): A quick introduction to all of Bond's antagonists.
• World of Bond: Bond Girls (1080p, 1:24): The sexiest montage of them all.
• World of Bond: Locations (1080p, 1:40): A quick tour through the exotic locales featured in the Bond franchise.
• World of Bond: Bond in Motion (1080p, 1:43): All of Bond's vehicles through the years.
• Designing 007: Fifty Years of Bond Style (1080p, 4:01): Curator Bronwyn Cosgrave guides us through a retrospective exhibition looking at all 23 Bond films from a all-around design perspective, from architecture to costumes and props. Here you'll see models, set sketches, and an up- close look at the famous golden gun.
• Being Bond (1080p, 3:08): Each of the six Bond actors say a few words about playing the iconic role. Sourced from vintage interviews.

The following content is new to the Ultimate Edition. The new content features the following subtitle options: English SDH, French, Spanish (Latin and Castillian), Danish, Dutch, Finish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Swedith, Mandarin (trad.), Cantonese, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Korean, Polish, Thai and hidden Japanese.

• The Story So Far (1080p; 1.78:1; 10:22): Screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, co-writers of every Bond film since The World Is Not Enough, summarize Bond's story since the "reboot" in Casino Royale.



• The Shadow of Spectre (1080p; 1.78:1; 8:41): Purvis and Wade review the history of the infamous criminal organization (sometimes written in all caps as "SPECTRE"). In Ian Fleming's novels, the organization first appeared in Thunderball, which was intended to be the first film but became entangled in legal disputes (described at length in the documentary Everything or Nothing). The screenwriters of Dr. No and From Russia with Love added Spectre to the plots of those novels for the film versions. Spectre is not mentioned in Goldfinger, but Purvis and Wade suggest that there may be an as-yet-undisclosed connection between that film's arch- villain and the secretive criminal organization.



• Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007 (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:37:59): Directed and co-written by Stevan Riley (Listen to Me Marlon), this 2012 documentary was made as part of the promotional campaign for Skyfall. It played briefly in U.K. theaters and was shown on U.S. TV. Although there is an element of "official" history with which some viewers might take issue, Riley appears to have enjoyed unprecedented access to the families of Ian Fleming, Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and original Bond co-producer Harry Saltzman. As a result, Everything or Nothing contains a wealth of both archival and contemporary material.
  
  Much of Everything or Nothing is devoted to Bond's creators. First and foremost is British author Ian Fleming, seen in archival photos and film clips, who created Bond as a kind of fantasy alter ego from his own experiences in British intelligence in World War II (which Fleming was prone to exaggerate). Accounts of Fleming as an individual are supplied by various individuals, including his niece, Lucy Fleming, and Christopher Lee, who knew Fleming as a distant relation long before he played Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun.
  
  Next are the two producers who first brought Bond to the screen (not counting the 1954 CBS TV adaptation of Casino Royale, of which a short clip is included): Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, who first formed Eon Productions, although Saltzman would eventually sell his share to Broccoli. Extensive interviews with both family members and principal cast from the films relate the ups and downs of these colorful characters, including their long-running dispute with producer Kevin McClory, who claimed the rights to Thunderball (and would eventually remake it as Never Say Never Again).
  
  Riley doesn't skirt such sensitive topics as Sean Connery's falling out with Broccoli, a development that Broccoli himself claimed never to understand, or the decision by Broccoli's daughter, Barbara, and stepson, Michael Wilson, to fire Pierce Brosnan after his fourth Bond film. One-shot Bond George Lazenby gives a frank account of his rapid rise and fall. Roger Moore's assessment of his contribution to the franchise is insightful and astute.
  
  In a style reflecting a fan's appreciation for Bond-style quips, Riley has punctuated Everything or Nothing with numerous moments from the films, often providing a humorous or ironic comment on the history being recounted.



• James Bond: 50 Years of Movie Posters (Book): This 52-page "excerpted edition" is an abridged version of the 304-page hardcover released by DK in 2012.

The Ultimate James Bond Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

For anyone who already owns the Bond 50 set, or most of the films in single editions, the Ultimate Collection does not offer enough new material to be worth the expenditure. For new purchasers, however, this is the obvious choice among currently available Bond collections in terms of features alone. Smart shoppers may want to check the prices on Bond 50 (including the subsequent edition that includes Skyfall), which will no doubt drop now that the Ultimate Collection is the latest and greatest.