Reporting For Duty
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Categories
Campy Bond Movies vs Fleming's Bond Movies
ForYourEyesOnly
In the untained cradle of the heavens
Which style of film do you prefer? Preferably using the best of each, of course.
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
Each are fine cinema!
What was cinematic about the film wasn't in the book.e.g. Vespers death scene.
I can't recall very much camp in LTK personally unless the winking fish at the end counts?
LTK was cinematic? I'll give you that the action was well choreographed, but the film as a whole looks like a television special.
Yes, sadly that seems to be a common criticism of LTK but I'm not sure that I 100% buy it myself.
If only the producers would have said 'buy it' more back in '89, we might have actually gotten some memorable sets.
No doubt it was a combination of John Glen's often unexceptional directing style and the recession of the late 1980s. Added to this there was an Americanisation of James Bond, too.
FRWL, OHMSS and maybe CR being the "Fleming" Bonds?
But what about Skyfall, TLD or TWINE and FYEO? Are they "Fleming", are they camp? I think they have a little of both but are all their own thing.
If I look at my Top Bond movies:
FRWL-GF-OHMSS-FYEO-OP-TLD-GE-TND-CR
where would I belong?
I guess what I'm saying is the terse realistic thrillers often get touted as the 'Fleming' Bond films, but the Bond films with fantastical elements to them are also equally Fleming. The outlandlish Bond villain that they've brought back in Spectre is pure Fleming. I think Dalton's portrayal is brilliant and his Bond is 'Fleming-esque' but his films also lost something of the fantastical and the bizarre about Fleming. This was a man who had JFK and friends in fits of laughter at his suggestion to drop leaflets in Cuba claiming all the men with beards were impotent.
I pretty much enjoy the campier entries from time to time. In less than a week I´ve watched MR, DAF and YOLT. Brings out some childhood memories! Those campy movies are so entertaining!
So anything goes as long as DAD isn´t lurking behind the corner. But the cherries upon this cake are the more serious ones.
If your answer is Goldfinger you prefer campy Bond.
Both are brilliant films but...
In Summary:
From Russia With Love has a superior Bond in the lead, with fascinating themes of the sixties along with the spirits shining into your eyes. I love that. The train setpieces are my personal favourite.
Goldfinger as a story is better somehow, but has an inferior Bond, which isn't to my liking. Bond hardly had a role to perform in there. I loved Ken Adam's production design thoroughly, and the soundtrack was superior.
But, all in all, these two are titles that complete one another. I can't decide between them, because both fill the gaps of one another if joined. I do hope that makes sense.
Me neither. It looked spectacular enough on the big screen at the Vue showing the other month. If anything the immediately following film GE is starting to look a little cheap and hokey.
As far as the question. I do gravitate to the more serious Bonds and their films but still have time for the odd bit of camp OTT adventure. DAF, MR and OP have always been amongst my favourites.
Totally agree with you there!
Yes but Thunderball has a more serious tone and stick closely to Fleming's novel.
DAD had that potential to take that to the max and go from a gritty film with a captured and tortured Bond at the start to a compelling futuristic sci-fi style thriller plot but alas so much was wrong with the execution of it.
That's not exactly a good way to determine it. Goldfinger on the whole wasn't outrageously campy. It was lighter in tone than From Russia With Love before it or Thunderball after it, but the film wasn't outright camp. There were moments of outright camp - the duck on Bond's head at the beginning, for example - but the film itself wasn't. Was Auric Goldfinger an over-the-top villain? Yes. No more so than Dr. No, however, Dr. No was just played by a better actor. Oddjob, I feel, was a far more threatening henchman than Jaws, if for no other reason that the slasher smile that he never seems to turn off.
Had you chosen Diamonds Are Forever as your camp determiner, I'd wholeheartedly agree with you, but Goldfinger is hardly the campiest film, and this is coming from someone who is well-known anti-Goldfinger.