10 Worst Movies That Tried to Be James Bond, Ranked

James Bond is the foundation text for the espionage genre. It set the standard for suave spies, thrilling missions, and luxurious lifestyles, captivating audiences for decades. Naturally, countless films have tried to emulate the Bond formula, offering high-stakes espionage, globe-trotting adventures, and charismatic secret agents. However, not all of these attempts have lived up to the legacy of 007. The most egregious offenders miss the mark with overblown plots, clunky dialogue, and uninspired action.

From clumsy action to miscast leads, the worst James Bond wannabes falter due to weak scripts, shaky direction, poor pacing, or all three. Some are painfully self-serious, while others verge on parody. Here are some of the most notable examples, from The Avengers to Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. They all more than deserve their place in the cinematic Hall of Shame.

10 ‘Mortdecai’ (2015)

Directed by David Koepp

“If you do not oblige me, I will shoot you in the face with this large gun!” Johnny Depp stars here as the title character, a bumbling art dealer who becomes embroiled in a global conspiracy to recover a stolen painting that holds a hidden Nazi treasure. Mortdecai is supposed to be a blend of James Bond’s suave charm and Inspector Clouseau’s comedic blundering, but the result is an unfunny and grating character. As he fumbles through encounters with Russian mobsters, British intelligence, and high society, his antics quickly grow tiresome.

Depp tries his best, but the script is deeply flawed and cluttered with lame jokes. There are several running gags (including mass vomiting, characters getting accidentally shot, and a gag about gagging) but they’re all pretty lame. As a result, Mortdecai was panned by most critics and flopped at the box office, failing to recoup its $60m budget. It ranks near the very bottom of Depp’s 2010s output.

9 ‘Blue Ice’ (1992)

Directed by Russell Mulcahy

“Things get cold in this line of work, but they’ve never been this cold.” This lukewarm crime thriller stars Michael Caine as Harry Anders, a retired MI6 operative who now runs a jazz club in London. When a mysterious woman enters his life, Harry is drawn back into the world of espionage as he uncovers a plot involving international arms dealers and political intrigue. While Caine brings his usual gravitas to the role, the film lacks the suspense and sophistication of a good spy thriller.

While not as bad as director Russell Mulcahy‘s disasterpiece Highlander II: The Quickening, released the preceding year, Blue Ice is still boring and pointless. It’s also weighed down by post-Cold War malaise, without a menacing enemy to lend it tension. There are a few decent if forgettable action scenes, but they’re undermined by awkward love scenes and moments of unintentional comedy. Still, there isn’t enough outright awfulness to make this a so-bad-it’s-good ironic watch, so it’s best skipped entirely.

8 ‘Stormbreaker’ (2006)

Directed by Geoffrey Sax

“If you didn’t want me to look, why’d you leave the door open?” Stormbreaker (the title a not-too-subtle riff on Moonraker) is a dismal adaptation of the first installment in Anthony Horowitz‘s YA book series. Alex Pettyfer leads the cast as Alex Rider, a 14-year-old boy who is recruited by MI6 after his uncle is mysteriously killed. Thrust into the world of espionage, Alex must stop a billionaire’s plot to unleash a deadly virus through high-tech computers distributed to schools.

While the premise sounds promising, and the original books are solid, Stormbreaker suffers from a weak script and uneven pacing, making it feel more childish than chilling. The characters are cartoonish and the plot is littered with espionage clichés. Even veteran supporting actors like Stephen Fry and Bill Nighy are disappointing. They’re not helped by the cringey script, featuring tons of lame one-liners. For a superior take on similar ideas, rather check out the Cherub book series by Robert Muchamore.

7 ‘Modesty Blaise’ (1966)

Directed by Joseph Losey

“Why settle for silver when you can have gold?” Modesty Blaise is a colorful, campy spy film that follows the titular secret agent (Monica Vitti) as she embarks on a mission to stop a diamond heist. The movies leans heavily into the psychedelic style of the 1960s, with wild costumes, surreal sets, and eccentric characters. While it tries to satirize the spy genre, Modesty Blaise never quite lands its punches, coming off as more confusing and disjointed than clever or witty.

The film was adapted from a popular comic strip, though it fails to capture the charm of the source material. Instead of a solid plot, the viewer is left with flashy outfits, vibrant colors, and little substance. It’s a shame, considering that Modesty Blaise had the potential to be entertaining, and was ahead of its time in imagining a female James Bond-like figure. It’s not really worth watching now as anything other than a Swinging Sixties curio.

6 ‘Double Team’ (1997)

Directed by Tsui Hark

“I’m the king of the world, but I forgot my crown.” In Double Team, Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as Jack Quinn, a counter-terrorist agent who teams up with an eccentric arms dealer (Dennis Rodman), to stop a dangerous terrorist. The absurd plot, which includes exploding babies, high-tech prisons, and a showdown in a Roman coliseum with a tiger, quickly spirals into absurdity, even by Van Damme’s standards.

Director Tsui Hark (who produced John Woo‘s The Killer) blatantly rips off James Bond while also dumbing it down. Mickey Rourke‘s supporting villain performance is fine, but Van Damme is atrocious, to the point that Rodman (also not good) comes off looking better. The end result is a silly and poorly-written action flick that is way worse than it should have been, given that it had a substantial budget of approximately $30m. The movie rightly won several Razzies, though it managed to make a small profit at the box office.

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5 ‘xXx: State of the Union’ (2005)

Directed by Lee Tamahori

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” xXx: State of the Union features Ice Cube as Darius Stone, the new recruit to the xXx program, after the departure of Vin Diesel‘s character from the first movie. Tasked with stopping a military coup, Stone takes on high-octane missions involving car chases, explosions, and futuristic technology. The first movie was lame, but State of the Union surpasses it with its weak plot and overreliance on mediocre stunts.

The dialogue is as generic as it gets, with Samuel L. Jackson recycling many of his own lines from earlier, better movies. It’s all very implausible, which would have been fine if the action scenes were fun, but they’re mostly not. Indeed, the move attempts to paper over its narrative shortcomings with endless gunfire, but this just isn’t enough. The franchise improved dramatically with Diesel’s return in the third film, proving that he was the glue holding the first movie together.

4 ‘Black Eagle’ (1988)

Directed by Eric Karson

“Sometimes, you fight fire with fire. Sometimes, you just get burned.” Black Eagle is a spy flick about a downed U.S. jet carrying sensitive military equipment, helmed by Shō Kosugi as a CIA operative and Jean-Claude Van Damme as a KGB agent. It’s decidedly slow-moving and predictable, with lackluster fight scenes and a plot stitched together from various other movies. Van Damme’s character is like a dollar store version of James Bond’s Jaws, for example. The chemistry between Kosugi and Van Damme is minimal, and the film lacks the excitement or tension one would expect from a spy-versus-spy narrative. The thick accents of the leads don’t help much with the intelligibility, either.

The movie is also a little confusing in that Van Damme, the ostensible villain, wind sup being cooler and more likable than the hero Kosugi. The only real redeeming feature to Black Eagle comes in the landscape cinematography and backdrops of its filming location, the Mediterranean island of Malta.

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3 ‘The Avengers’ (1998)

Directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik

“A giant teddy bear convention. How quaint.” 1998’s The Avengers (no relation to the Marvel movies) is a big-screen adaptation of a 1960s British TV series, starring Ralph Fiennes as secret agents John Steed and Uma Thurman as Emma Peel. Together, they must stop a diabolical plot involving weather manipulation orchestrated by Sir August De Wynter (Sean Connery). Despite the all-star cast, the film suffers from a convoluted plot, shaky performances, and a tone that can’t decide if it wants to be campy or serious.

Connery, in particular, chews considerable scenery in his antagonist role, though he’s actually one of the better parts of this dismal misfire. Even fans of the original show were unhappy, especially with the film’s deviations from the source material. For example, they lambasted the romance between Steed and Peel, something only hinted in the series, calling it forced and ill-fitting. It’s a pity that the movie is so bad, since the TV version is actually quirky and fun.

2 ‘Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever’ (2002)

Directed by Wych Kaosayananda

“There’s no winning in a war of one.” The legendarily terrible Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is a frenetic action film that pits two government agents (played by Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu) against each other in a convoluted plot involving kidnappings, secret weapons, and corrupt officials. The story is hard to follow and the endless barrage of explosions, gunfights, and car chases quickly becomes numbing. It’s the opposite of fun.

This movie has all the depth of a video game trailer. There’s little rhyme or reason to the characters’ actions and they are essentially cardboard cutouts. Even the title feels horrible on the tongue. Not for nothing, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever was a colossal box office bomb, grossing $20.2m against a $70m budget. Critics eviscerated it, and it currently holds a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Some publications have even gone so far as to name it among the worst films ever made.

1 ‘Secret Agent Super Dragon’ (1966)

Directed by Giorgio Ferroni

“Some dragons breathe fire, this one breathes trouble.” When it comes to the worst James Bond wannabes, it’s hard to top this disastrous Italian spy movie. It’s about an agent named Bryan Cooper (Ray Danton), a.k.a. Super Dragon, on a mission to stop an international criminal organization from using a mind-control drug to take over the world. The film features long stretches of inactivity punctuated by low-budget action sequences and cheesy dialogue. The nonsensical plot that often feels like a parody of the spy genre, but not a good one.

Indeed, Secret Agent Super Dragon is a blatant attempt to hop on the 007 hype train, though it fails spectacularly. Ballistic at least had so-bad-it’s-good entertainment value, but Secret Agent Super Dragon is just a painful slog from start to finish. For this reason, it was featured on the review show Mystery Science Theater 3000 and cut to ribbons. Sadly, there are no actual dragons.

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