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
So you basically want to change the whole film, then? I assume your ideal version of From Russia with Love would be a film that begins and ends with Bond having sex with Trench in a boat?
I would either lose the helicopter chase or boat chase, saving whatever is left. I don't like that all these SPECTRE goons find Bond as if they have GPS, and that Bond conveniently ends up traveling to the same location Blofeld is hiding out. The movie was far too clever to just cram in action at the end. I feel there was a better, more interesting way to lead to the hotel scene.
That wouldn't really change anything, though. By changing SPECTRE to SMERSH, you change who perpetrates the acts against Bond, but not how they act. Like naming a villain Bob instead of Steve changes nothing, really.
I think EON made a smart move not to call their dangerous organization the same name given to the real world Soviet intelligence arm, instead creating something that could stand on its own as a completely fictional entity. One thing I love about the films is that they never made real nations the big bads.
Unless of course Bob doesn't exist but Steve does. I wanted to see Bond fighting the Evil Empire, which is what he did in the literary version: From Russia, with Love.
It makes far more sense for a fictional series to have fictional adversaries for me. Blofeld being the leader of an nationless, independent organization more resourceful and crafty than any of the overt intelligence powers will always be more appealing than seeing Bond face a group that were only in operation for three years under Stalin.
As @RichardTheBruce rightly pointed out, by avoiding politics the series was able to have more freedom, and avoid stepping on toes. The films always found more clever ways of crafting villains, and making them evil employees of the Russian state is rather boring. I much prefer seeing Bond working with the communists to face a threat, as he did wonderfully with Gogol and Pushkin. Seeing the east and west find similarities between themselves where propaganda said there were only differences is very engaging and a very unique way of portraying the Cold War tensions that Bond was born in. Instead of taking the easy way out and telling the evil Russian stories so many were telling, they did something completely new and, dare I say it, very mature.
Couldn't disagree more. The start of the novel with General G, all the stuff with Kronsteen being scared he'll get sent to Siberia for delaying the order, the stuff about 'in the Soviet Union there are a lot of people who need killing' is fantastic stuff.
The book is a Cold War thriller so why is the film so scared to make it one too? Why are the filmmakers so petrified not to offend the Soviets? It's 1963 when both sides hated each other. Did they think that having a western hero vanquish Soviet agents would have tipped them over the edge and made them press the button? If you take a look at Soviet films from the time I dare say they weren't shy about pumping the party line and denigrating us.
Apart from anything adding in the whole SPECTRE layer makes things a bit more clunky than the simpler plot of the book. But then I suppose once they've already started down the SPECTRE route in DN they are trying to create a series so it makes sense. It's not something that pisses me off massively as the Blofeld scenes here are probably his best of the series (along with TB) but it's a crying shame we've never seen Bond combat SMERSH on film as they were always infinitely more fearsome than SPECTRE.
I wouldn't call it fear, I think they enjoyed the idea of showing true detente. In many ways the Bond films predicted the Glasnost period of Russian society, and the more diplomatic relationship between the world powers in the 80s. As I said, I find that dynamic far more rich and interesting than the usual depiction of the west as the golden heroes and the Soviets as the vile creatures of the east.
Beyond that I wouldn't trade the presence of SPECTRE in the 60s films for anything, considering all they've influenced and spawned in pop culture and beyond while giving Bond an enemy that transcended nation or time.
I also agree that the action scenes (boat/helicopter) feel a bit baggy.
Oh dear - I walked right into that one, didn't I? Fair enough.
I guess I just remember her being described in the novels as statuesque and impossibly beautiful; in the film she's almost a bit girlish and damsel-in-distressy for my liking.
This is probably just a person bias - I prefer the female characters to be more competent and confident. And, obviously, to have mouths that are just the right size.
It was also her function to play a very conflicted and submissive girl. Tatiana was being strung along and put between the Russian state and a top spy, and her mind is constantly caught between helping Bond and doing what is right, or following her orders and risking death if she refuses. I think Daniela plays that dynamic well, of a woman trying to smile through crippling fear.
It's not the greatest sequence, but perhaps that's because boat chases been done better since.
The sequence that I would have liked them to have tightened up a bit is the gypsy camp fight with Krilencu's men. I've always found it a bit awkward, despite it also being the first time we hear the superb 007 theme.
The boat chase feels totally out of place.
Damn, you took mine! End on Fleming's cliffhanger. It could have worked, given how closely the films were released back then.
I like Connery's wave to the film at the end. Fits the character in my opinion.
I might extend Karim Bey. There was a scene filmed but the continuity of the scene was ruined as the Russian agent had already been killed. A shame as it would give us more Karim and he was one of my favourite allies.