Bond 50: The Complete 22 Film Collection [Blu-ray]

Previously, I had only seen the Daniel Craig Bond movies, but I wanted to formally get into the series by starting from the very beginning Yes, I know its not required to watch the films in order. But for that reason, and for the reason that James Bond is one of pop cultures biggest icons and an indelible piece of film history, is why I picked up Bond 50. Chances are, if youre deciding whether or not to pick this set up, you already know what to expect. 22 films, 1 spot reserved for Skyfall, and 1 bonus disc, all housed in fairly attractive Digibook cardboard casing. In addition to the films, you get over 120 hours of supplemntary features to enhance your movie pleasure and James Bond knowledge. Yes, some of the discs have restoration problems, and yes GoldenEye shows signs of heavy DNR, but for the most part all of these films are a significant upgrade to their DVD counterparts. For its asking price, if the asking price is still within the reasonable range of $150.00, its a bargin. In their review of Skyfall, Red Letter Media astutely pointed out that James Bond has been around for almost half of all movie-making history! Thats an incredible feat of longevity. So if youre interested in James Bond, spy movies, or even film history, you owe it to yourself to see why the series has lasted half a century. Im already looking forward to the next 50 years.

Overall, I found this production to be all that I expected it to be. Yes, there are one or two discs that get stuck in a DVD player due to data corporation during its original recording, but I was able to accelerate my player to by-pass the damaged areas. The other difficulty is with the Excellent packaging in the area of the slips the discs are in. They are hard to get a disc to slide out. Just slip a fingernail under the top part opening above the disc and pull it up a bit and slide the disc out with a finger on your other hand. Worked well for me.

Like many Bond aficionados, I have been anxiously awaiting the release of the Bond 50 set since it was originally announced. While I already owned all the movies (first on VHS, then on DVD), the value of the all the included bonus features in addition to the films that had yet to be released on BD was to enticing to ignore. The packaging is roughly what you would expect from an uber-expensive DVD collection: the discs are laid out in two large books that contain a host of artwork and photography from the various films. Pleasantly (and logically) the films are all presented in chronological order. Collectors and fans of Bond films will recognize that this is a change from the past, when the films were rarely bundled in any sort of logical order. The second book even contains a slot for Skyfall so when that film is eventually released on BD, the Bond 50 set wont be instantly outdated. The case and books are both sturdy and should sit on a shelf well, though the pockets the discs are stored in may present difficulties. Some people may prefer to buy a set of blank clamshells to store the discs in so as not to risk scuffing them up when sliding them out of the pockets. Included are all the old bonus features and specials that weve seen on the DVD and earlier BD releases. Fans upgrading from the old DVD sets will be pleased that each film has been condensed into a single disc so no more pesky disc swapping to catch the various featurettes that were included with the DVD releases. Also included is a new bonus disc that boasts a collection of new features that havent been released on disc yet. This includes material from the upcoming Bond film Skyfall and is certainly worth a peak. The asking price for Bond 50 is high, though even at the MSRP of $299.99 there is a lot of value here. Casual fans of the series will probably remain better suited to simply pick up (or rent) the older films though serious fans of Bond will certainly appreciate having this collection on their shelves.

Okay, lets get this part out of the way. Ive always loved the James Bond movies, no matter who plays the lead role! The blu rays I have bought that were available have always been lovingly restored with a plethora of bonus features! If you are truly a 007 fan, and havent bought any Bond on blu ray before, you are going to be very pleased with this box set! I am giving this set 5 stars as a standalone product, however I do have problems with the way its being released! My problem lies with the fact that I already own half of these titles already, and I really dont want to repurchase them again! This is after buying the entire collection on DVD and before that on videotape! I dont mind adapting to newer and superior formats, but this is clearly taking advantage of the true fans! If we didnt purchase the blu ray versions as they dribbled out, there would be no incentive for the studio to release this big box set, so spare me the moronic excuse that we should have just waited on purchasing them until the this set came out! There have always been the leeches that wait it out for others to embrace new technology before making a commitment. Left to these people we would still be riding in horse and buggies! If new technology is not supported than there is no incentive to improve anything! Suffice it to say, Im hoping they will offer the unreleased titles for individual sale or Ill be waiting until Amazon has a one day sale for this set at a remarkable price before committing any more money to it!

When I got this set, I thought I was going to win Wife of the Year. My husband and I are huge Bond fans. These do NOT disappoint from the quality of the DVDs to the art. Every movie has its own disc as well. I even got it for a third of the usual price in pristine, unused condition because someone else bought it for the digital version. They kept the codes and resold it, so I purchased it secondhand at a DEEP discount. It is worth full price though. This is an investment in your entertainment library that is sure to please for decades to come. It is extremely giftable as well! ** If you like my review, please hit Helpful to motivate me to write more. **

This is a great collection of films for lovers of James Bond. Having them all on Blu-Ray is wonderful. I was lucky enough to purchase the collection when it was specially priced at $99. It is now $299 for the same item. I would definitely would have to think a bit harder about shelling out $300 vs $100 for the same item. But if you really love Bond this is a great opportunity to get them all together in one collection. The packaging is really great. It is in two separate books and the DVDs each have a sort of envelope in the book that makes them easy to take out and easy to put away. It is unique to most DVD sets I have purchased. It makes it much easier to just put them neatly away when you have watched them. And they have a blank spot in the second book for Skyfall. Which is kind of ingenious because it kind of encourages you to go ahead and pre-order it so you will have the entire collection (which I did, especially after seeing the movie in the theater). Like another reviewer said... if you are even thinking about ordering this, you know what you are getting more or less - but the quality is terrific and it is a perfect collection for the 50th year!

The shipment was fast , Arrived in good shape. I originally ordered the wrong version standard dvd instead of blue-ray ordered the blue-ray afterward returned the regular version unopened promptly got my refund great doing bussines with amzone.The 50 aniversary set is great. the packaging is good. Have read some reviews about difficulty getting tne dvds out of the set really not an issue. You just have to very slightly bend the pocket ever so slightly and lift the disc out. Would rather have it that way than risk having the disc fall out,so its no issue for me. The quality of the movies are excellant even the earlier movies. I have watched four so far. I like having a space for the latest bond movie Skyfall. Have read some reviews saying all of the films not included.The two mentioned are the Original Casino Royal with Peter Sellers and Never Say Never again with Sean Connery. They should not be included because neither are Broccli Films nor MGM. Have to be bought separtly.

NB: As is their wont, Amazon have bundled the reviews for the Blu-ray and DVD boxed sets together. This review refers to the Blu-ray edition. Please bear in mind that the DVD version only includes the one-disc versions of the films, losing nearly all the extras apart from the audio commentaries. With the release of Skyfall imminent, EON and MGM/UA have finally got around to releasing the remaining Bond films that werent on Blu-ray (with the exception of non-EON entries Never Say Never Again and the 1967 Casino Royale), releasing them in a lavish boxed set thats surprisingly sturdily constructed but offers virtually nothing new for those who have already faithfully collected the Ultimate Edition DVDs. The plentiful extras have been carried over pretty much wholesale from those two-disc releases, with one exception - Casino Royale is a strange hybrid of the two-disc special edition and first single-disc release, containing most of the special editions extras but losing Martin Campbells picture-in-picture commentary, two featurettes (The Art of the Freerun, Catching a Plane - From Storyboard to Screen), the revised documentary Bond Girls Are Forever, storyboard sequence and filmmaker profile featurettes (Martin Campbell, Chris Corbauld, Phil Méheux, Gary Powell, Alexander Witt and David Arnold). The version of Die Another Day only features the extras from the Ultimate Edition, with the much better extras from the original DVD release, including the 76-minute making of documentary, still AWOL. The picture quality is for the most part very good, though its not always as convincing as you feel it should be, with the suspicion that some scenes have been scrubbed up a little too brightly compared to the way they looked on the big screen. GoldenEye thankfully corrects the overcropping of the Ultimate Edition DVD release that was particularly noticeable when cutting off letters and numbers on video displays and is now in the proper framing but it has some noticeable DNR work done on it, though its not as dramatic as some reports claim. More worrying is that the UK set doesnt offer the original mono soundtracks on the early Bond films that were previously released on Blu-ray, such as Dr No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and Thunderball, instead offering remixed stereo tracks that often favour the sound effects a little too much. The new to BD titles do contain the original mixes, but if you want them on the earlier films youll have to buy the US set - which will cause a problem for those without multi-region Blu-ray capability since the set is a mixture of Region A-locked titles (Dr No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Licence to Kill, The World is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace) and Region-free ones (You Only Live Twice, OHMSS - thankfully the uncut version - Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, The Living Daylights, GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies). As for the exclusive extras disc - well, its a huge disappointment. Rather than include any new extras from Quantum of Solace such as the deleted The names Bond. James Bond ending or any of the slew of other promos or documentaries about the series its just a brief selection of soundbites, very brief featurettes, a few video diaries for Skyfall and a collection of title sequences from the films. Theres no booklet either, but at least the book-style packaging for the films is especially strong, has a space reserved for Skyfall and is designed for repeated use - which plenty of these films will be getting

This review is for the product; it is NOT a critical review of the James Bond series of movies, which everyone on the planet should have seen at least once by now. First, the box is heavyweight and contains 2 books which have sleeves into which the BDs tightly slide, one disc per double cardboard page. As the discs are supposed to be much more scratch resistant than DVDs, I wasnt overly concerned about that risk. However, its nearly impossible to get the damned discs out of the sleeves. Each sleeve has a slit opening with a slightly larger crescent opening to retrieve the disc, however, the center hole of the BD is completely covered by the sleeve, leaving owners having to grasp the disc on both sides (thumb and forefinger opposed) to yank it free of the tight sleeve, leaving finger prints on the readable side of the BD, while bending (flexing) the disc each time it is removed. I think most rational owners would object to this. And it doesnt improve with age (except for the one sleeve which tore as I fought to get the disc out. Second, the damned discs wont play. Please forgive me for the following rant, but Im so GD sick and tired of movie factories corrupting the discs we pay for with special security encoding so that no one can possibly in any way humanly possible steal their precious property (the movie); even the federal government threatens us every, single time we watch the movie WE PAID FOR, with the FBI WARNING. Every time! And we cant even skip ahead (except on some Universal series like Murder, She Wrote, and Northern Exposure, as examples -- thank you Universal)! Now, with high-tech BDs, we get high-tech security coding; its so goddamned effective, I cant even watch the discs I paid through the nose for! All was well for the first couple of viewings, but then Goldfinger wouldnt play...just sit blankly on a black screen at 0/81. Then For Your Eyes Only did the same thing, even though I watched it the previous night with no problem! BTW, my equipment is a 2-year-old Samsung 3-D BD player matched to a Samsung Smart TV. After spending about 2 hours on the Internet trying to track down the problem, the Net proclaimed the problem to be the security encoding on the disc, and the only glimmer of hope was the suggestion to unplug the BD player and let it reset itself. It worked! But why in hell should I have to maneuver my furniture out from the wall to access the electrical plug to reset the BD player to get it to work with the security coding on the disc whose content Ive paid for the right to watch??! When in hell is our government going to start protecting the working class citizens of this country from the greed of the Hollywood machine? Why is their right to protection from pirating so much more important than my right to view the product for which Ive paid? Damn, Im angry. Absolutely enraged...! So, that said (thanks for your patience while I got that off my chest), I can NOT recommend this expensive 22- or 23- disc set until the government steps in to protect us from the security coding of the studios. Noteworthy, I have had absolutely NO trouble with nearly 2500 DVDs which have been played on this and other players, and virtually no trouble with other BDs. No, I do not think there is a problem with the discs, other than the security encoding the studios are allowed to insert to protect themselves at the expense of the legitimate buyers of their product. DISCLAIMER: For all those who think Amazon movie reviews should be Siskel and Ebert-esque, sorry. As I said earlier, in a product review, I want to know the good and the bad about the product. The movies are great, and the discs (when playable) are very good quality; however, even after the e-reset, they continue to fail to play whenever they feel like it, so they get a ONE-STAR rating. And I caution movie lovers to be careful about going full-tilt buying BDs to replace your beloved DVDs until someone starts insisting that consumers have rights, too. ADDED 4/14/14: Take a look at the 1-star reviews for

Picked this up when it was $129.99. Even though itll most likely go down to $99.99, like it did once before and I foolishly missed it, I just had to pick this up and Im so glad I did. I never got a chance to see most of these movies in the theater, being 24 and all, but now Ive had a chanced to see the remastered versions on blu-ray. I had heard most of these movies were remastered very well, a couple were not, I really didnt have anything to compare it to, so to me they all looked superb. Ive seen movies on blu-ray that were bad upconverts and were quite grainy, these werent even close. All 22 films together, plus the one slot for Skyfall (which I have as well) means I can watch all 6 reincarnations of 007 anytime in glorious HD! The only problem is that it leaves me wanting for more.