Better, Worse or Equal to the sum of its parts ?

DaltonCraig007DaltonCraig007 They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
edited July 2011 in Bond Movies Posts: 15,718
If you had to add a point to every part of each films (Music, cast, locations, cinematography, action scenes, plot, PTS, Main theme song...), which movies would be worse, better or simply equal to the sum of their parts ?

In other words... Which films look great on paper, and you rank low, or look bad on paper, and you rank high ?

Comments

  • royale65royale65 Caustic misanthrope reporting for duty.
    Posts: 4,423
    Nice topic!

    I done this before ranked all the Bonds by their “parts”. I turned out quite similar to my own rankings, expect for a few differences:


    Take You Only Live Twice; all the Bond boxes are ticked:

    Sets: yup
    Locations: yup
    Music: hell yeah!
    Action: yup
    Intrigue: yup
    Suspense: yup
    Romance: yup
    Originality: yup.

    But it is still languishing in 16th place. Ah well…
  • Samuel001Samuel001 Moderator
    edited July 2011 Posts: 13,355
    The World Is Not Eough must've been great on paper and look what happened.
  • PrinceKamalKhanPrinceKamalKhan Monsoon Palace, Udaipur
    edited July 2011 Posts: 3,262
    The World Is Not Eough must've been great on paper and looked what happened.
    Agreed. For me, it's GE. Bond dealing with Cold War and post-Cold War Russia and battling a former double 0. Should've been a top 5 entry for me and probably would've been with a more polished script, John Barry scoring and Timothy Dalton as Bond. As it stands now, I appreciate individual elements of it more than the film as a collective whole. It's number 17 last time I ranked them.

  • edited July 2011 Posts: 1,778
    Probably TMWTGG. James Bond going one on one with the world's greatest assassin should have made for a classic. But it fails on almost every level. Christopher Lee is the film's saving grace.

    On the other hand a film that looked bad on paper but turned out pretty well was Live and Let Die. James Bond dealing with voodoo and the occult sounds like a receipt for disaster. But they handled it pretty well.

    And I agree with guys. Brosnan's films all had potential but all underdelivered.
  • Posts: 4,762
    Die Another Day must have looked very exciting on paper, what with the 40th anniversary element, the plot of Bond being captured, the North/South Korea conflict, all the fun gadgets, but I don't need to go any further. You know how it turned out!

    As for the reverse, For Your Eyes Only must have looked and sounded rather dull after coming off of TSWLM and MR's larger-than-life aspects. However, it worked out really well!
  • Samuel001Samuel001 Moderator
    Posts: 13,355
    Brosnan may have even thought at the start of each film, "this is the one", where at last it'd work out on screen but alas it always seemed to go wrong. In that way, I do feel sorry for him he really got the short end of the stick.
  • Posts: 4,762
    Samuel001 said:
    Brosnan may have even thought at the start of each film, "this is the one", where at last it'd work out on screen but alas it always seemed to go wrong. In that way, I do feel sorry for him he really got the short end of the stick.

    Absolutely correct. He was cut loose after GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies. Too bad his latter two ruined his Bondness.
  • PrinceKamalKhanPrinceKamalKhan Monsoon Palace, Udaipur
    edited July 2011 Posts: 3,262
    Which films look bad on paper, and you rank high ?
    As for the 2nd half of your question, I would say TND didn't look that great on paper. We'd already had this plot twice before in YOLT and TSWLM. While I wouldn't say it's one of my favorites, I do think it turned out to be much more entertaining than I would have expected it to be with Brosnan a lot more comfortable and competent in the role his 2nd time around. Perhaps TND exceeded lowered expectations for me while GE failed to meet the high expectations I had prior to seeing it for the first time.

  • Having recently rewatched TND for the first time since its original release I was surprised at how many of the boxes it ticked off...yet there's still too many problems for it to be a great Bond film IMHO.

    With some of the classic Bond films I find that they have some great elements but that the films themselves are slow and drag in places - YOLT is a good example.
  • echoecho 007 in New York
    Posts: 6,306
    Brosnan may have even thought at the start of each film, "this is the one", where at last it'd work out on screen but alas it always seemed to go wrong. In that way, I do feel sorry for him he really got the short end of the stick.
    Brosnan's first film--and even just the PTS--were his strongest. He had a genuine rapport with Bean, and you can feel the movie gain momentum when Bean comes back. Brosnan had nowhere to go but down, especially with the scripts he was handed.

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