The irony here is the GF forever placed Bond firmly in the zeitgeist, so that was never going to happen.
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.
When the massive armies are brought in at the finish (MOONRAKER, SPY LOVED, LIVE TWICE, SECRET SERVICE), usually Felix is out that day...........THUNDERBALL being a notable exception.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You're not wrong. The eyes and eyebrows look a lot like Christopher Lee. Since in my head canon the gangster in Diamonds is the same one who later visits Scaramanga's island and gets shot dead it is funny that he later dies right next to the mannequin of the man he once drove to the Las Vegas funeral parlor.
I never took those two as the same character. The one in Diamonds is just a general-purpose flunky. The one in TMWTGG seems to be a hitman of reputation to have been worthy practice for Scaramanga.
Marc Lawrence's supporting role highlights run at least from 1950 to 1996....or from THE ASPHALT JUNGLE through FROM DUSK TILL DAWN.
In my head canon the gangster from Diamonds did something really important between 1971 and 1974 to be entrusted with a visit to Francisco Scaramanga to execute a business transaction. No pun intended.
I just don't think that there's much stock in assuming that two characters played by the same actor are the same character, in a franchise so rife with recastings of the same characters, often with completely different types.
I wouldn't even have run with it had other Bond enthusiasts and Internet content providers not hooked onto the same thing and conjectured it's possible. It certainly doesn't help that Marc Lawrence's outfits in both films are practically identical and he plays a Mob thug in both movies. It's a popular theory in some Bond fan circles and one of the few of the common Bond fan theories I entertain.
He's one of four ''double-roler''s I can think of in the BOND series, but the first in which his first character survived......unlike Charles Gray, Maud Adams or Joe Don Baker. Or Anthony Dawson, for that matter.