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Well they shoved it in your face that Bond was an 'old dog',you couldn't miss it.
AVTAK never mentions anything,it was just a suggestion that I thought would work...Bond's last mission and up against a formidable enemy.
It's a different and better way to view the film imo,if you look at it as an ageing,retiring Bond's final hurrah,rather than Roger being to old in the role.
I always got the impression from Bond's disdain for Zorin that he's old enough to have lived through WWII. He understands what Carl Mortner and the Nazis were all about.
Also there's a world weariness to Moore's performance.
I particular like the reaction when Chuck Lee asks "Could Zorin be one of those steroids kids?"
"Well he's definitely the right age and he's certainly psychotic".
That places Zorin around 43, and Bond is clearly older than him.
Couldn't agree more(can't be bothered with the pun) That's how I like to view the film too
The plot never goes anywhere. The microchip pendant subplot doesn't go anywhere. The horse steroids subplot doesn't go anywhere.
Zorin being a former KGB, that subplot doesn't go anywhere. Zorin being a nazi; that's not really fleshed out either. And it doesn't serve a purpose other than to make viewers want to hate Zorin. Though I could never hate him with how much of a lovable goofball Walken is.
AVTAK throws a lot of ideas at the wall to see what will stick but none of them are fully developed.
I fully agree. The writing of the film is awful!
I’m sure Richard Maibaum blamed MGW or somebody else for it fully. As he usually did. He was the one who pushed for Hailey’s Comet to be changed course by Zorin. Controversial opinion: I’ve come to respect RM’s age in the film. He shouldn’t have done so many movies, but he has gained some respect for based on how many older actors are coming back to their famous action roles, (Harrison Ford in particular). Christopher Walken saved the movie, like Christopher Lee in TMWTGG. I’m bias towards both though, they are two of my favorite actors. All in all, a good movie to rip on with friends at times.
Notice how slow and boring this film gets whenever Walken isn't onscreen? Most of that section where Bond arrives in San Francisco, save for the pumping station bit he's in, drags until Zorin and crew show up at City Hall. It gets let down again until his appearances in the mine and into the finale. It's one of the few times I want to see the villain and what he's doing instead of Bond.
Actually, I recall a Maibaum interview around the time of TLD where he blamed himself and said they tried to pack too much into Zorin, the Nazi thing specifically.
Sigh. Human beings are complicated.
Hold on, you say! We need a man of Bond's talents to stop the big, explosive threat of operation Main Strike! True, except that we stumble upon that one by accident. It's blind luck.
Let's rewind.
Russians are snooping around in our defence operations. Cause for concern, we need a 00, I get it. But almost immediately, both Bond and M seem more than convinced that Zorin is the culprit. Okay, take the man (and perhaps his most loyal inner circle) out, shut down the microchip R&D within Zorin Industries as commissioned by the British government, and you're good. A clean kill, and then we move on to the next case, shall we?
No, we're going to talk to a French Magnum P.I. on booze but with "ze proper connexion, no?" about horses. Horses! British Intelligence is going to worry about horses. Hey look, Zorin has the P.I. killed! Enough to kill Zorin now, pretty please?
No, because he's selling stallions. Crime of the century. Let's check it out! Good thing we do because the man cheats at horse racing. So what? The British PM breaks his own Covid rules; we're not impressed, we've seen worse. Coincidentally, Zorin is doing something with microchips, which seems to confirm our initial suspicions. Can we now kill him, please?
No, we're going to make it easy for him to try and kill us instead so we can survive a precarious situation, run off to Frisco and check out some boring stuff about oil and seawater and a bribed official and company shares and blackmail and fired city hall staff. (We're also going to check out said staff, and when she's in her negligé, I'm not complaining, but I digress.) Next thing, Zorin will shoot the official, kill a CIA agent who's somehow working on American soil, and try to burn down city hall. If not because by now we've really established that Zorin needs to be killed, can we at least kill him for the simple reason that he's stupid? I mean, sure, why not, you're mere hours away from your big strike, so naturally you're going to draw attention to yourself by setting the San Francisco city hall ablaze. If anyone had seen him drive away, he'd have the National Guard on his tail.
But Bond enjoys toying with his food. That clean kill will still have to wait. We're just having too much fun picking up all of Zorin's criminal breadcrumbs! So by sheer luck, we arrive at the operation site of Main Strike with still more than enough time to uncover the final surprise Zorin has in store: blow up some geological stuff to drown Silicon Valley and monopolize the microchip market. (Smart move, by the way, to also show your name on the blimp that's going to hang over ground zero as a publicity stunt. Hey guys! Need any microchips? Why not buy them from me, the guy who took out the competition by means of terrorism?)
By the way: that thing with the Russians in the British microchip indust--yesterday's news! Got it! Don't think about it anymore. Okay, I won't. Good thing Bond is here. We might as well save the day for the Americans living in San Fransisco. We're here after all, and between sleeping with KGB spies and rescuing young heiresses from big fires, we've got nothing better to do.
*sigh*
AVTAK changes missions faster than Kim Kardashian changes her makeup. Max Zorin is so naughty, there's not a crime he doesn't commit. And Bond is so pedantic that he'll rather investigate every one of Zorin's transgressions, including low-level fraud and horse race cheating, than just kill the man and leave it to the government to clean out the rest of his company. There's also a cartoonish German Nazi doctor with an "evil doctor" monocle and a Frenchman named after an edible fruit.
I mean, come on! Even DAD has a more solid, convincing, and 00-worthy plot to offer than AVTAK. Even TMWTGG has the good sense not to throw such obnoxious stereotypes at us. People complain about Moore's age and Roberts' acting? Trust me, this film has much bigger issues!
Zorin is cheeky with his logo on the airship , also didnt SF city hall have cc cameras in 1985 , pretty sure they did , might not be color footage though but clear enough to ID Zorin . Authorities would track down Zorin investors thru bank accounts (i doubt they paid cash , 100 mill cash lol ?) and send them to jail for terror financing/aiding mass murder or similar
Even a mill US cash would be heavy to carry......
Sums up most of my issues with AVTAK. Although I don't mind an investigation on an apparently trivial matter or routine work leading to more, it's actually a trope I love in crime fiction, it's so inconsequential here it's infuriating. Both Bond and Zorin act way too openly.
OK; but in which Bond film does Bond simply kill the antagonist? AVTAK is criticised for the horse racing subplot but people don't have problems with Bond trying to win over the villain in the casino. Or is there any reason why Bond is not just ordered to kill Le Chiffre in Casino Royale? And to be honest the same can be said for most other Bond films, too.
@BT3366 is onto something. Whenever Walken is onscreen, it doesn't matter what he's doing (karate, setting City Hall on fire, etc.). He's just watchable. And the movie just sinks whenever he's not in it. We wouldn't see that in the series again until Bardem.
AVTAK has one of the most interesting casts trying to make do with one of the worst scripts.
Yeah all the horse stuff is a big cul-de-sac. MI6 believes Zorin is a Soviet spy but for some reason they decide to investigate his horse breeding farm despite have no reason to believe that that's linked to the microchip theft. It's just a coincidence that Zorin is implanting chips into his horses, and even that doesn't directly connect to Project Main Strike.
Worse, the scene with the French detective is only there to have Bond and May Day meet so she recognizes him later. All Aubergine (sp) gives Bond is the date of Zorin's horse sales, which is probably something that Bond could have found out himself by reading a newspaper.
Exactly.
It was pointed out in an earlier post that Bond could have just shot LeChiffre instead of playing cards with him. True. But LeChiffre was sold to me as a guy who, when defeated, could be forced by MI6 or the CIA to share a lot of valuable information about the people he was working for. M made it clear earlier in the film that she wanted Bond to bring the bomber in "for questioning". Evidently, LeChiffre is bigger fish than the bomber. If he talks, who knows what we can learn? Defeating him at poker not only means less money for some terrorists, but also a price on LeChiffre's head, which in turn means that LeChiffre might want to play ball with the good guys.
Zorin is a different matter. We know he did it. The script seeks confirmation for that, but only by having the world's most talented spy stumble upon it by accident. Bond plays the part of a cunning paparazzo who tries to dig up enough dirt on Zorin so that he can sell a big story to a newspaper.
This is also the film in which the world's greatest spy lands on a wedding cake and is being detained by angry French chefs with kitchen knives. This is the film that tries to give the boring henchman with a scar a "clever" Flemingesque name by calling him "Scarpine".
Come on!
I would too. Given Amazon is in charge, who knows? It would certainly be more interesting than that Bond Amazing Race reality thing they have planned.