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

[Starkers]

John Terry will probably always be my least favorite Leiter. He is THE weakest part of The Living Daylights and that's saying a lot when Joe Don Baker's Brad Whitaker is one of the two main villains.

Moneypenny?

Then you have Joe Don Baker in Goldeneye and Michael Madsen in Die Another Day as Leiter-substitutes. I always assumed that they didn’t want to either have a crippled Leiter or to ignore the events of LTK & so it was simpler just to have new American spies for Bond to deal with. I think I remember Madsen in particular saying that he hoped to have a recurring role, but once Brosnan was recast & the series was rebooted, that was that.

God I hated Madsen in DAD, he just felt wrong. In contrast much as Joe Don Baker isn't a great villain in the Bond pantheon, I always really liked Jack Wade and thought he and Brosnan had great chemistry. It's a shame he didn't come back for DAD but I guess they needed a higher ranking CIA guy.

 

[Starkers]

Presumably there's no reason we can't now reboot Felix again along with the new 007?

 

[Captaindemotion]

Presumably there's no reason we can't now reboot Felix again along with the new 007?

I don’t see why not; although he’s never been as regular a fixture as M, Moneypenny or Q, I would still expect to see him at some stage in a new setup. They brought him into the Craigverse after being mutilated in LTK, after all.

 

[cooleddie74]

Even the new Moneypenny in The Living Daylights left more of an impression than that movie's Felix Leiter. And that's saying something.

And she was THE worst MI-6 regular in the entire EON franchise.

 

[cooleddie74]

Again I think the constant recasting of Felix Leiter was to avoid him becoming a rival to James Bond in popularity and hogging too much attention in the movies. Jack Lord could quickly have become half the reason audiences wanted to see a Bond film and Broccoli and Saltzman couldn't have that.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Again I think the constant recasting of Felix Leiter was to avoid him becoming a rival to James Bond in popularity and hogging too much attention in the movies. Jack Lord could quickly have become half the reason audiences wanted to see a Bond film and Broccoli and Saltzman couldn't have that.

I don’t have a link to hand but I think I read somewhere that the recasting of Hedison in LTK (rather than just bringing back Terry from the immediately previous film) was simply down to Cubby bumping into him one day & inviting him to appear in the film.

 

[cooleddie74]

Yeah, by 1988 they were cool with bringing another actor back and by then it was just Cubby left from the original two-man production team. And I'm glad because it was nice to get at least one Felix in the original EON continuity who looked the same in at least two films.

 

[Starkers]

I thought they'd wanted Hedison because he was a more famous Felix? He certainly plays more of a part in LALD than Terry does in TLD.

 

[cooleddie74]

I've heard both explanations. That Cubby asked him for the favor and also that he wanted to bring back a previous Felix Leiter so that Bond would have more of a connection with the character than just showing up as the best man at his wedding.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Again I think the constant recasting of Felix Leiter was to avoid him becoming a rival to James Bond in popularity and hogging too much attention in the movies. Jack Lord could quickly have become half the reason audiences wanted to see a Bond film and Broccoli and Saltzman couldn't have that.

The irony here is the GF forever placed Bond firmly in the zeitgeist, so that was never going to happen.

 

[cooleddie74]

Had there never been a blockbuster Connery film Leiter could have risen in prominence and become a popular sidekick but yeah, once Goldfinger happened it proved Felix Leiter at best was going to be a supporting character with not too many lines and just a way to insert an American spy into the franchise for flavor.

Bond didn't need Felix and for the most part never did even through the Craig Era.

 

[cooleddie74]

50 Years Ago Yesterday(December 17, 1971).

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[The Old Mixer]

Topol gets his spotlight here.

I'll be getting around to Diamonds next.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Diamonds review here.

 

[cooleddie74]

For what it's worth the Moon Landing Scene is only weird because one of the astronauts is still in slow motion as if in zero- or reduced gravity when he reaches out to try to stop Bond from jumping into the cockpit of the buggy. Unless his suit is filled with water or some other substance to weigh him down and simulate the gravity on the Moon's surface then that part makes no sense. And if he's moving that slowly and there's nothing designed into his spacesuit to make him that sluggish then Guy Hamilton gave some ridiculous direction to that actor and thought it would look funny.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Well, this film doesn't get lots of points for realism or common sense. In either scenario, it's also questionable what they were going to do with a fully functioning (if silly) moon buggy on such a small moon set.

 

[cooleddie74]

Yeah, the movie is a mess. Even if it weren't an "apology" for OHMSS it'd still be the odd man out in the six EON Connery films and the worst of the first movies.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Offhand, I'd say that TMWTGG will be displacing it as weakest Bond film to date, but we'll see if that assessment holds in about three years.

 

[cooleddie74]

That is the prime example of a mediocre Bond film with an incredible villain. I don't know how such a subpar story got such a mesmerizing bad guy who outshone even Roger Moore.

But Christopher Lee could make even bad films watchable and make you love his character.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Which brings up my question in the review--who's the guy in the mud bath in the Diamonds teaser? I always thought he looked like Christopher Lee, but if it was, surely I would have read about it somewhere.

Lee would have made a fantastic Blofeld.