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Comments
His 'virgin' line is one that I keep using. Yes, we need more Shady Tree, I agree.
Haha, I must confess, it's a line I like to use from time to time.
I wanted to use the line, "How do you like me so far? People say I have the body of Rock Hudson. If he ever finds out what I'm doin' to it - he'll be madder than hell." during a job interview once. I decided against it.
Lol, I suspect that was a good call.
I'll never understand why people hear "comedic bond" and immediately think that means the weakest, most absurd Moore moments will be resurrected again in the modern day. Yes, when you go for laughs sometimes you overshoot the mark, but that doesn't mean there's no value in that approach. Octopussy is a film where a lot of the humour fits into the whole, and then a couple scenes go too far. Should they just toss the whole thing?
I honestly think if something with as much confident swagger as a modern TSWLM were released today it would have better chance of catching the youth than another "I need to know I can trust you" "we used to look the enemy in the eye" angst ridden bond would. Gen Z are not cynical millennials, they actually know how to enjoy themselves and take something on it's own terms. I think if you found a way to quicken up the pace and remove some of the dated aspects, hitting women etc, Gen Z kids would appreciate the zaniness of the early Moore films.
I hope you are not suggesting other generations don't know how to enjoy themselves.
Something like The man from UNCLE.
And?
Both Craig and Dalton have admitted that thier desire to ground bond in a believable reality was because that's the only way they knew how to approach it. Different actors will take a role and play to their individual strengths, that's nothing that should surprise anyone.
And speaking of not wanting to make things juvenile, it wasn't Cubby Brocolli or Harry Saltzman that came up with the name "Pussy Galore". The Bond books were intended as airport literature that boys of 12 as well as Middle aged men could chuckle along with to pass a long journey, they never had any pretensions towards serious spy literature. Bond has some depth, but he is also prone to frequent flights of fancy where he imagines some bizarre scenario in his head. Some of the ways he gets into bed with women, or out of scraps with the villain approach outright farce, and are way more tonally consistent with Moores Bond than Craigs.
I think you're very wrong there. Lest I'm mistaken, Fleming explicitly said that his books were not meant for boys but for adults. I sincerely doubt he had 12-year olds in mind when he described the erotic belly dancing in The Man With The Golden Gun.
DAF was a Roger Moore movie before Roger Moore.
After YOLT and OHMSS there was no place to go but humor. YOLT was too big and OHMSS was too depressing.
They killed Bond in NTTD. How can they top that?
But he did write the character Pussy Galore, right? Most of OHMSS the film is accurate to the book, he did have Dr No drown in guano?
It wasn't Roger Moore who made Bond juvenile or farfetched. Fleming is responsible for baking that ingredient into the stories when he wrote them, its what they drew inspiration from. So much of how he constructed these stories is outright daft, and he would often resort to a ridiculous contrivance to explain how Bond escapes a bind.
Maybe you're correct to say Fleming didn't intend children to read books, and that just happened anyway, but the series was never considered serious fiction by its creator.
I think we're comparing apples to oranges. Juicy names like Pussy Galore are not the same thing as Moore's Bond throwing a fish from his submarine car. Speaking purely for myself, I can appreciate the names as a grown-up, but the fish... much less so. ;-) I cannot recall ever reading anything in Fleming's books that invites slapstick or farcical comedy. That was added by the filmmakers. Fleming may have allowed his books a bit of comedic fresh air, but not beyond a certain tasteful point, IMO. He didn't do "jokes", yet the films definitely did. Fleming walked a fine line; the films crossed it. Not saying that's a bad thing -- two different media, and all that -- but I don't think Fleming had anything to do with where the comedy went in the films. Just my two cents.
Fleming didn't walk the line, Fleming set the line - he was the creator. He decided what Bond was, and he decided it should have characters named Pussy Galore (which is juvenile, isn't it?) and Goldfinger, he decided that Bond should play the villain at golf, that he should start his spy novel off with his hero in a health spa, that the villain drowns in bird poo, his work was clearly very tongue in cheek. If you were intending to write a serious exploration of post World War 2 espoinage, why would you name the heroin Pussy Galore? Does that make sense? People will accept anything as being "the right side of the line" because it was typed by Flemings hand, but Moore looking strangely at a bottle of Phuyuck champagne is stepping too far into farce? 8-|
Anyway, Fleming's Bond was too serious, as Connery said it.
The books are more pulp than anything.
Maybe not, but saying that the man wrote down "Pussy Galore" of his own free will and thought "yes, let's go will that". He decided to drown his villain in guano. I don't think a tarzan yell is so far apart as some people seem to think. I don't like the revisionist history that fleming treated himself or his works with much seriousness. The man wrote chitty chitty bang bang for heavens sake.
In spirit they’re damn good ‘airport reads’ for their time, but they’re books which contain a lot of their author’s preoccupations, encapsulate (albeit through a very specific view) the history in which they were written, and, dare I say, say interesting things about the human condition, whether it be about good and evil, the idea of killing etc.
The films certainly heighten a lot, but I’d say broadly a lot of the absurdities are adapted from the spirit of the novels. That said a lot of the ideas (particularly character ones) from the Craig land Brosnan eras are too.
Exactly, Craigs films take the serious character elements and run with them, even beyond what fleming wrote. Moores films take the "juvenile", zany elements and run with them, even beyond what fleming wrote. I'm not sure what the problem is?
What bothers me is how its portrayed as Craig sticking closer to the fleming, as if Fleming favoured that side, when his stories featured all aspects of bond, from the grounded to the outright absurd.
That's why Connery is better than Moore and Craig.
;)
Amen.
I really wouldn’t put it like that actually.
If you’re talking about how Bond himself is depicted in the films compared to the Fleming novels, it depends. I think broadly the way it’s gone is Connery played the part more as an anti-hero (I don’t think Bond necessarily is one, but regardless Connery’s Bond would, say, shoot an unarmed man without blinking whereas Fleming’s Bond would likely have been conflicted about this, at least internally). Obviously they tried to do this with the writing of Moore’s Bond in his first two, but by TSWLM we get very Fleming esque ideas in there such as Bond having to confront the ‘dirty’ nature of his work (ie. having to kill Anya’s boyfriend and how it impacts the plot). By Dalton we get a harder edge and the films are more willing to lean into the darker side of the character, and by the later Brosnan and Craig films we get more a Byronic Hero version of the character, who can have his inner conflicts about his job and a sense of personal darkness (albeit one depicted with the character’s brand of humour and the films’ sense of heightened reality/escapism). I think Moore’s interpretation of the character - or at least the writing - did have its basis in Fleming. It’s not just the humour and absurdities. Actually I’d say the humour of some of his films are the least Fleming-esque elements of them.
Well, no film adaptation has ever been a purist vision of Fleming. And Connery said he went into the role making fun of the concept. So I guess agreed… although I’m not sure if I’m 100% sure what you’re trying to say again.
Exactly, but that's how its portrayed - "we're getting back to the roots of the character", but silly, juvenile names literally are the roots of character. If they were getting back to the roots bond would say "you're called steffany broadchest" and Vesper would reply "okay" and then the car journey would continue in silence.
Craigs bond wants to be realistic in ways even fleming didn't, Moore wants to be comedic in ways even fleming wasn't.