As the title says, I do not care much for 007 Goldfinger. It’s not awful, better than like Thunderball, but it’s a very strange film. It’s got this weird car crusher scene, James does like nothing in the third act, and he’s a freakin creep. I mean, more than usual. He gets so freaking lucky, again, more than usual. I do like Goldfinger as a villian, and Oddjob is pretty cool. But I just think this movie has a very weird tone and at the same time, is kind of bland.
Bonus opinion: I really like On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The tone and atmosphere are top notch, and I really like George Lazenby as James.
Dalton is my personal favorite. I think he and Daniel Craig were the closest to the character from the novels.
Brosnan was …not the best choice.
Brosnan was a bit of a victim of time. Dalton’s Bond has definitely aged better, but was not popular at the time. They wanted to make it edgier, and less womanizing. Personally, I thought it was a solid take, at the time and now. But Dalton was their second choice. They really wanted Brosnan. The show Remington Steele got everyone talking about him as the next Bond. When the show ended, and the role was available, the fans were excited. Then we learned about his contract with CBS, and that the network wouldn’t let him go be Bond. By the time he was available he could still play young enough for the role, but the franchise was reacting to fallout from Dalton’s edgier iteration. So they retreated to safe ground (sillier, a little more womanizing, but not Connery levels!). I would argue that the first three (Goldeneye, TND, & TWINE) were solid. DAD was a decent idea, but the production was bent on being “bigger and better” than anything else. Instead it was kind of a farce of itself. I guess the only good thing we got was Madonna finally realized that, but for that 1 role where she basically played a non-singing 1940s version of herself, she’s a terrible actress. I think Brosnan was still a solid Bond, despite the goals of the franchise at the time.
They didn’t figure out how to do edgy right until Craig (and the Bourne movies kind of helped with that).