which spy series is better?

what spy movie series is better? james bond or mission impossible?

personally i like bond just because they have better story lines and the whole charactor trait is better than MI.

Bond, for sure. The MI films are terrible.

I would choose the Bourne stuff over MI, actually...

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Bond incorporates a small handful great flicks, a whole bunch of average to mediocre, and then some real stinkeroos. The Mission: Impossible flicks with Tom Cruise were pretty bad, the third being the most entertaining of the bunch for me and the only one with any replay value. But the Bourne series with Matt Damon ran circles around both Jimmy Bond (as a whole) and definitely the big screen escapdes of Ethan Hunt. And while the Bourne series works extremely well as smart action movies, on balance I'll take the first three Harry Palmer movies of the 1960s starring Michael Caine (The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, Billion Dollar Brain) over the Bournes of the 21st century. Not really much in them for celluloid adrenaline junkies who want a fix of pyrotechnics or chase scenes, but damn fine spy flicks.

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Damn, Holden just cracked 14K posts...crazy.

Did you like the latest Bond flick, Holden? I think that compares well with the Bourne stuff.

I agree wholeheartedly with HP's post, though I have a real soft spot for all the bond films, especially Diamonds are Forever.

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Yeah, Casino Royale and Daniel Craig definitely put 007 on the right track again. We'll see how this second entry fares.

Sure. Man, some of the more recent Bond flicks before Casino were so incredibly bad, I had given up on 'ol 007 for good. Glad I gave Casino Royale a shot!

I guess I have a special [nostalgic] place in my heart for stuff like For Your Eyes Only, which, when viewing today, seem super goofy to me. I still love em, though! From that era [Moore], I guess I would have to pick The Spy Who Loved Me as the best of the bunch. I caught part of Moonraker recently, and WOW, what a turd that thing is... I remember loving it when I saw it in the theater as part of a bond double feature back when it came out. I can't see anyone over the age of 9 taking that thing seriously.

Definitely the Bonds. The Mission Impossibles were mediocre. Bourne isn't really spy films but the Harry Palmer films are good. I even liked both the Flint films (Our Man Flint and In Like Flint).

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How are the Bourne films not spy films?

I hate the Mission Impossible films. I mean, they weren't awful, but compared to James Bond and Bourne they're nothing. I really like the Bourne films better than the James Bond films too... though I'll admit I haven't seen too many of the old Bond films.

I agree, Pike--Spy movie series don't get any better than Caine as Palmer, the thinking man's spy. Not much in the way of car chases or exploding devices, but then a spy's primary defense is not to attract attention to himself.

However, the very best two spy series I ever saw were on television, not in the movies. Best of all was Alec Guinness's spot-on low-key interpretation of George Smiley in a British TV serialization of two of John le Carre's novels, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People in the 1970s. (George Smiley was the complete opposite of James Bond--middle-aged and dowdy, and his wife cheats on him. He hadn't the physical strength to chase down enemy spies--he lets younger agents do that--but he could outsmart them!)

The other great spy series was another British TV product in the 1960s, Secret Agent, which made a star of Patrick McGoohan in the US prior to The Prisoner, another good spy film of a strange sort that became a cult favorite.

Isn't Bourne a paid assassin? So are the Bourne films really "spy" films? I'm not really sure since they are about government hiring people to do their dirty work which kinda fits.

I agree with Holden about MI. The only one I would ever even consider watching again is the third one. And I loved the TV show. LOVED it. I was so excited when I heard they were making a film but instead of following the formula, all we got was Tom Cruise being a spy. It was like any other thriller out there. Why take the name "Mission: Impossible"!!! GRRRR... I still get pissed about it.

Sneakers was a better example of a true MI story.

I love early Connery Bond and later Craig Bond. Can't wait to see this second one. I'm excited about Bond again.

rufnek, I see the words "Secret Agent Man" and I start singing that damn theme song.

Secret, aaaaaaagent maaaaan!

I won't watch Tom Cruise, and the MTV quick cuts in Bourne tire me out. The first Bourne film years before the current series was better because it relied on suspense rather than car chases and special effects.

I liked the Bond films back in the beginning with Connery and hung on a little way into the Roger Moore treatments until they became just too silly. Strangely enough, Ian Fleming, author of the Bond books, once said that Moore was closer to his original concept of James Bond while Connery was too fit.

To me, the James Bond books and movie series were strictly products of the 1960s and haven't aged well at all, especially when the UK is not as forceful a world power as she was in the first half of the 20th century. I look at James Bond books and films as odd symbols of the '60s just like films of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer books were odd reflections of the 1950s culture. Besides, Woody Allen's spoof of Casino Royale with him as the latest in a long family line of James Bonds sort of capped that series for me.

The best spy movies I've ever seen have been 1-film affairs, like Richard Burton in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and especially James Mason as Ulysses Diello, code name "Cicero," in Otto Lang's 1952 film Five Fingers, based on a real life person--Hungarian-born Elvesa Bazna, valet to the British ambassador to Turkey in 1943-1944 who photographed British secret papers for the Nazis. Bazna was one of the most famous spies of World War II and lived by his wits. The film about him has no fist-fights or shoot-outs or car chases, just a well-written script filled with suspense.

You're right--Mission: Impossible was a great TV series, starring Peter Graves, James Arness' "little" brother and Martin Landau and his wife (whose name escapes me now), but a silly film.

Yeah, Flint was a hoot in his time. Did you ever see James Coburn's other spy send-up in the '60s, The President's Analyst? Had a couple of great comics in the cast, one being Severn Darden (sp?) as the Russian spy.

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I adored the original series. It was very cool how they'd get the bad guys to do their dirty work for them.

From the moment they made Mr. Phelps the bad guy in the first movie I was done. That angered me and turned me off completely.

Oh for the good old days of Rollin Hand, and Cinnamon Carter played by Barbra Bain! My favorite female on the show however was the lovely Linda Day George. I adored Greg Morris too. They did bad, impossible things and they did them well.

Bond has been fun from time to time. I remember several of them fondly.

This new series is, so far, missing several classic bond elements, dancing naked girls, incredible sound tracks, indiscriminate sleeping around, and endless gadgets among other things, but surprisingly, I found I enjoyed it. I'll see the next one at some point.

The Bourne Trilogy was fun in spite of the fact I don't much care for the lead. My son was way into them and made me watch them. LOL.

The Flint movies were great parodies back when parodies were actually put together with some class and intelligence.

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Best spy series? Whats the name of that old lady that looks like a chicken?.......oh, "Murder She Wrote".