It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ 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
Pierce Brosnan is awful in it.
Yes, I prefer him in The Undiscovered Country, which is the second worst Bond film, Bardem totally ruins it.
I'd give the lower-tier films a 6 at the very least.
The World Is Not Enough
Die Another Day
MR
the absolute worst Bond film ever produced. It had the good PTS but after that it is just so much of an insult to watch this two hour piece of monkey shit.
AVTAK and DAD always lands on most people's "hate lists" but at least DAD the first act was decent and AVTAK had a great villain and its always fun watching Zorin and his gallery of rogues.
I find nothing outside the PTS to recommend MR
The only Bond film that is just, well, forgettable I guess. Neither good nor bad, totally, utterly and continuously mediocre.
@bondjames, EON amazes me how they screwed up DAD. The producers approved the script and story. And the pattern continues with the bloated SP.
As for SF, it's mutton dressed as lamb. It fooled me the first time. And it tries to mix uber realistic feel with fantasy elements of the past.
The pacing of SF is more American Bond, I mean American Beauty.
You can't construct the legend of past Bond in a new film. The story arc fails, because SF should have had the director of QOS. But they threw it out and pretended QOS never happened.
Both DAD and SP follow in parts he myth of the Bond formula. Both promise the ultimate Bond and fall on their swords. And fail. But reading John Glen's autobiography For My Eyes Only, he says it does not exist and you have to create each Bond story from new.
And it was never easy. OP is nothing like TSWLM. If you watch Bond from the beginning, each film created new ideas. Bond stood out from the herd of what the film industry offered.
I agree with this. While beautifully filmed both SF and SP try to be 'meaningful Bond' but both fail because of their pretentiousness. OHMSS, LTK and QOS weren't very successful but they showed how to do 'meaningful Bond' right: subtlety without self-indulgence, without losing what the character was about in the first place, without losing the essence of the gentleman spy as he was written by Ian Fleming.
Unfortunately some people need someone to tell them: "This is meaningful." Therefore it works better with a larger portion of the audience.
@goldengun LTK, OHMSS, and QOS are superb explorations of the character of Bond. And LTK and OHMSS present the villain compellingly. It took critics 40 years to warm to OHMSS. And it was a brave departure.
LTK, is in the spirit of the novels by Fleming - LALD and CR- with modern issues such as the rise of the Latin American drug barons, with a subtle reference to General Noriega of Panama. LTK flopped because of studio politics and the worst management in the studios history.
In SP, Bond is in parts an in love with himself wanker. Craig is no Connery in SP, though he wants to be. Connery never tried to flaunt he is cool and dangerous, but, you knew he was. And putting Craig in the white GF tuxedo, made me think how much better Harrison Ford wore it in Temple Of Doom.
Bottom line. The more Craig tries to steal from Connery, the more he proves he is a one legged man in an arse kicking competition!
He had a compelling story to tell about M's past in SF (he is the one who insisted on dispatching Dench as a prerequisite for taking on the director's chair). I thought his sleight of hand worked better with this earlier film, primarily because of more compelling characterizations and outstanding (almost Hitchcock level) visuals (courtesy of the incredible Roger Deakins). Those elements served as distractions to what was essentially a retread of TWINE's plot.
With SP, his mistake was to malign a famous character from the novels in order to further his artistic ambitions. A case of hubris perhaps? Moreover, I found his creative vision far less captivating the second time around because his pretense was so outrageous to me. I could have bought it if he had executed better with the elements he aced in SF, but sadly Deakins was sorely missed this time around & the cast & dialogue failed to connect with me in the same way (the worst crime in a way, given this is Mendes' speciality).
I sincerely think it's time to dump these auteurs and get back to a journeyman or workmanlike director along the likes of Glen or Campbell. We may lose something in the style, but I'm sure we'll gain it in the essential Bond'ishness of the whole thing.
Dull as hell, which is the worst crime a Bond film can commit.