James Bond Credit Sequences may be Better Than Bond Movies....

I've never been a big Bond guy but, every year around Thanksgiving, I end up watching part of the Bond marathon on the SyFy channel and find my interest in the series piqued.  I haven't seen many Bond films at all all the way through; honestly, I think I can count the ones that I have seen on one hand.  This year, as I watched Thunderball, a thought occurred to me: my favorite part of most Bond movies is the title sequence.

That's not to say that I don't enjoy the films that follow.  I thought Skyfall was fantastic; its credit sequence, however, was breathtaking and may, in fact, be the finest of the bunch.

My friend thinks that I like the stylized summary; it's like an abstract short of the film that follows.

This sort of sequence was actually quite common in the late 50's and early 60's, when the Bond films debuted, however, it has become more of a novelty in recent years.  One of the more notable examples was Catch Me If You Can which, of course, was set in the early 1960's and was intentionally meant to be evocative of the era.

Not to mention the fact that it is always scored to a song that is often equal parts awesome and awful. Usually, it is performed by a current hit-maker.  The current hit-maker chosen for the earliest Bond film I can remember? Duran Duran with View to a Kill, widely considered to be one of the worst of the franchise.  Maybe that's why I could never really get into the series.  Still, the credit sequence is pretty awesome (I'm particularly fond of the part where the woman's cleavage unfolds to reveal the '007' logo). It may not be true of all of them but, for this one, it truly was the greater work of art than the film that followed.