The James Bond Film Discussion Thread (With Bonus Lazenby!)

[cooleddie74]

Oh, I'm not saying it was bad that he killed Blofeld. I'd have done so in a heartbeat. I and others in the fandom have just pointed out what's seen as hypocrisy, legitimate observation or not. Bond's wife was murdered by the man who was about to murder him with a remotely controlled helicopter. Frankly nobody is going to handcuff Blofeld and have him arrested and arraigned if they can dump him down an industrial smokestack.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Meeesta booooooooooonnnnnndd!!!

*Looney Tunes crash sound*

I bet Bond fans watching that in 1981, just a few short years after MOONRAKER, looked at that scene and thought “welp, business as usual I guess”, not knowing they were about to get the first real dose of Fleming making a comeback after so many years.

 

[cooleddie74]

I kinda like the juxtaposition of goofy and dead serious. I wish Bond still did that.

 

[CorporalClegg]

It's the thing I think Brosnan did better than any of the rest. Moore leaned pretty hard one way and Dalton took a big over correction the other but Peirce found the perfect happy medium.

 

[cooleddie74]

Brosnan was a hybrid of Dalton's younger, darker-haired looks with Moore's tongue-in-cheek humor. Shame he didn't get some better movies in the franchise.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I like GoldenEye fine. I think it's among the best of the whole franchise. It's the other Brosnan Bond films that I can do without, not for anything Pierce did or didn't do but because of other reasons.

 

[cooleddie74]

Yep. GoldenEye is in my Top 10 Bond films. I cannot and will not say even remotely the same about the other three Brosnan entries.

 

[CorporalClegg]

I like GoldenEye fine. I think it's among the best of the whole franchise. It's the other Brosnan Bond films that I can do without, not for anything Pierce did or didn't do but because of other reasons.

Well the Chinese woman in TND was pretty awesome.

She should be in Star Trek or something.

 

[cardinal biggles]

I think Tomorrow Never Dies is probably more relevant now, in our world of fake news and easily manipulated social media platforms, than it was back in '97. The Sheryl Crow song sucked, though; "Surrender," the song k.d. lang sings over the end credits, should have been up front.

 

[cooleddie74]

TND is the second-best Brosnan film by a mile. I used to have affection for the other two but, wow, they do not hold up for the most part nor even at all. TWINE has its moments I like but overall the film just feels mediocre and the less said about the flaming sewage heap that is DAD the better.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Surrender is probably the second best Bond song ever after Know My Name. But I think the Crow song gets a bad rap, I'd still rank it closer to the top than the bottom. Though the cynical cloud surrounding its creation/existence (Lang's sexuality) doesn't help its cause.

 

[cardinal biggles]

TND is the second-best Brosnan film by a mile. I used to have affection for the other two but, wow, they do not hold up for the most part nor even at all. TWINE has its moments I like but overall the film just feels mediocre and the less said about the flaming sewage heap that is DAD the better.

TWINE has some good set-pieces, Robbie Coltrane is always fun, and it's nice to finally see a skiing sequence where the closeups don't look like the actors are obviously standing in front of a rear-projection screen. But yeah, the parts are better than the sum of the movie.

 

[CorporalClegg]

I think it's biggest mistake was Renard. It would have been better had they gone all-in on Electra and fully embraced the Bond gal is the baddie aspect. Besides, the way they did it undercut Marceau and Carlyle both.

 

[cooleddie74]

It doesn't help that Sophie Marceau wasn't marketed as the lead villain and Renard is the face of the evil in the film. She's both an effective villain and very ineffective since when I think of TWINE I think of Robert Carlyle, his facial scar and his imperviousness to physical pain.

She's good in the movie but Elektra King isn't the center of attention she should have been all along. And very few Bond films with weak or very uninspiring lead villains succeed. The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only may be the only exceptions.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Marceau wasn't marketed as the villain to preserve the twist...a twist that Gardner beat the films to by nearly two decades, but still...

Stromberg was written as Blofeld. I guess you could call that uninspired, but he was well cast for the part as established in the prior films.

 

[cooleddie74]

Kevin McClory: Bond's greatest villain.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I think it's biggest mistake was Renard. It would have been better had they gone all-in on Electra and fully embraced the Bond gal is the baddie aspect. Besides, the way they did it undercut Marceau and Carlyle both.

For me it was hands down Dr. Jones. But Renard was a half-baked shallow villain, completely throwaway. Of those three, Elektra was certainly the most interesting character.

I'll save my comments on the fake news elements of TND for TNZ.

 

[cooleddie74]

Elliot Carver is easily the second-best villain of the Brosnan Era. Hammy. Sadistic. Grounded in the reality of the 24/7 news media world.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

But I think the Crow song gets a bad rap

I actually like the song...except for that one line.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Also, I agree that Brosnan was a great whole-package Bond, but ill-served by the films that he got. And I don't hold Goldeneye above the others...it dated itself badly by trying too hard to bring Bond into the '90s.

I quite enjoyed TND in the theater, and didn't get where all the hate was coming from.