I like most of the OO7 movies, including the Roger Moore one which I didn't like very much when I was younger. From Russia With Love is my fav while Goldfinger is second, and then Thunderball, Dr. No. I loved On Her Majesty's Secret Service and I agree I would like to see some stand alone OO7 flick where its just a mission without all of the baggage from the previous movie. I don't know Madeleine's fate but I think it could be a huge blunder and repetitive if the movie winds up taking her life.
Teresa's killing was jaw dropping because of her mental state in the movie and with all that had happened I was rooting for her to be okay. In Craig's run, Bond for some reason loved that two bit liar Vesper and had some moment with her but as the novel before it she was killed, he had a redundant sequel concerning her and the movie and its result was not satisfying. I hope Madeleine doesn't get killed because I feel OO7 should have some happiness, and I pray this is not some sick joke where its implied Madeleine and Vesper were related. For some reason "The Dark Knight Returns" comes to mind where Batman took a nuclear bomb off the coast of New York City (Gotham) and ignited, and by the end of the movie he's spotted with a sociopathic woman drinking champagne in Paris. I just don't want a similar ending.
Yeah, I'm hoping Madeleine will be ok in No Time to Die as well. This is definitely Craig's last 007 film and I think the producers have indicated this will be end of this story arc, so there's no reason to kill her off. To kill her off would almost seem cynical. Before Madeline, Bond only had two women he truly loved in the Bond films and both were murdered. Maybe the 3rd time will be a charm and they'll live happily ever after
. I also hope she is not tied to Vesper in any way. After trying to shoehorn Silva into Spectre to link all the Craig films together, that would just be too much already. I liked Craig mostly and I just wish we got to see him do a typical 007 mission without a lot of baggage. Sigh. At least he finally got his gun barrel sequence at the beginning of the film where it belongs, we only had to wait until his 4th film.
I loved On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and perhaps it's sacrilegious to say but I'm glad Sean Connery didn't do that film. If he had it would have been a much different film. I'd have a hard time seeing Connery's Bond getting tearful over anything. Having a new actor in the role allowed them to do some different things that just wouldn't fit the way Connery played the role. I'm glad to see that movie gets more favoring reviews these days. At the time it came out it wasn't very favorably received. I believe that was because the public had a hard time accepting another actor as Bond after Connery, fairly or not. In a way that probably opened the door for people to accept Roger Moore, since people already saw someone else play Bond it was no longer such a shock. But I'm just guessing. I might be just a tad older
but I'm not old enough to have been around when those movies came out
.
I also liked Telly Savalas as Blofeld. He brought a bit of a toughness to the role, as well as a certain amount of charisma. He was probably my favorite Blofeld.
And Tracy's death was one of the few things that was brought up in future Bond films from time to time. Of course in Diamonds Are Forever, 007 wants revenge on Blofeld. Then in For Your Eyes Only we have 007 laying flowers at her grave (I liked the little touch of having "We Have All the Time In the World" on her headstone). In License to Kill his marriage is mentioned once more by Felix to his new wife when Bond seems a bit down when he left, and after she's murdered I always thought that was one of the reasons Bond went rogue there (it always bothered me in that film at the end how Felix seems back to his old, jovial self--dude, your new bride was just murdered, WTF). And finally in one of the Brosnan films a character brings up that he was married once and Bond quickly says "That's enough" (I think it was The World Is Not Enough though it might be Tomorrow Never Dies).
I loved all the Connery films though. Goldfinger was probably my favorite, and was the only one of the Connery films not to involve SPECTRE. Though I liked SPECTRE as the criminal organization in the early films. Then there was a lot of legal issues with using SPECTRE and Blofeld for years and when it was finally resolved and they could do another film about SPECTRE I was excited. But I didn't care for it as much in Spectre. They were still a massive criminal organization but I wasn't fond of Blofeld having family ties to Bond. I liked the organization better when it was just a criminal organization that didn't really have anything to do with Bond, and didn't have a personal beef with him until he kept foiling their evil plans.
I can't even really say who my favorite Bond was. I can say Timothy Dalton was probably my least favorite. Just way too serious for my tastes, to the point when he drops a funny line it just seemed to fall flat. I didn't hate him or anything, but I was glad he didn't do more than 2 films. I liked The Living Daylights better as a film, but liked Dalton as Bond better in License to Kill. He seemed just a bit looser in that film, not so high strung. Sadly we only got to see Lazenby do it once, so I'm not sure what impact over the long term he would have had on the role. But Connery, Moore, Brosnan and Craig each brought unique things to the role and made it their own to some extent. My father was a huge Connery fan. His favorite Bond film was the non-EON film Never Say Never Again (I honestly don't know what he saw in the movie, it was ok, but I have a hard time seeing that as the
best, but my father sometimes had weird tastes). On the other hand my stepmother has a bit of a fan crush on Roger Moore. Definitely her favorite. Then I already noted my ex-wife really liked Brosnan. Those were one of the few films I never had to 'convince' her to see with me. Otherwise our film tastes were never really in sync, I suppose one of the reasons, though not the
only reason, she's my 'ex'-wife now, LOL
.
But for me, I more or less take it film by film, as opposed to Bond by Bond.
If Lazenby hadn't decided to walk away from Bond, Tracy's death would have been the opening scene of Diamonds Are Forever.
Sadly for Lazenby he got some bad advice from his agent. And worse for him, he ended up getting blacklisted and couldn't get a real acting gig for years. I think both sides reconciled years ago, but for a while there was no love lost between the two sides. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Lazenby stayed on. There might never have been a Roger Moore era and the movies probably would have been much different. Though I have to admit, I can't really say I'd prefer that to have happened. As I noted I loved OHMSS, yet, I also liked a lot of the Moore films and I'm not sure I would have changed any of that. So things ended up working out for 007 I think.
I had read the same thing about her death opening DAF. But, while Tracy isn't actually named, I think it can be assumed the reason he's knocking people around at the start of the film to get to Blofeld is revenge over her murder. Of the pre-Craig films, You Only Live Twice-OHMSS-DAF are probably the closest we get to any sort of Bond trilogy. Each film is still largely standalone, of course, but that's one of the few times in the original films that something carries forward from one film to the next.
