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Right, and we actually got great films in the franchise that downplayed gadgets. It’s not as essential as other factors that make a Bond film. Heck, the closest Bond has a gadget in DR. NO was a standard Geiger counter.
Guess that was a rather decent example after all.
However that doesn't mean every movie needs to check every box or vice versa. As long as the producers do a good job of giving us all a bit of something we like.
I'm happy we got Spectre because it hit a lot of the notes I wanted. If Craig's entire tenure was like CR and QOS then I'd be a very unhappy fan right now. Balance is everything. Not every entry can please everybody and that is okay.
Just don't expect every one of these films to check all your boxes.
I get turned off when the gadgets are a Deus Ex Machina device (and there's an argument to be had that James Bond's car in Casino Royale is loaded with a heart defibrillator; luckily this saves him from a very sticky situation; I have an argument for that, lol).
It's tough for me to swallow that before each adventure, Q would know exactly what Bond would need at all times, and these gadgets became co-stars.
If Bond has gadgets, I hope it is grounded in the spy-verse. In our world of advancing technology (where someone could build an explosive device from their I-phone), we are not impressed with toys anymore since the average person could buy these toys at the local shopping mall. Bond's gadgets must be grounded, yet something not yet available for us.
+1.
Nail on the head, @peter
I've always enjoyed the gadgets that could have more than one use in any one scenario more than anything else.
One would have thought Lazenby was going to be armed with gadgets, so Connery's absence wouldn't be felt. Although they made attempts to convince audiences that this man is still James Bond. Taking the gunbarrel's opening to the style of DR.NO, showing his sniper rifle from FRWL, The 'This never happened to the other fella' line, playing underneath the mango tree & parts of from FRWL's theme, showing Grant's watch & Ryder's knife, the janitor whistling Goldfinger. Maybe Peter Hunt felt with the presence of all these things, audiences would connect with Lazenby's Bond at the very least.I also like my Bond films with Gadgets, as long as it doesn't ruin the plot. OHMSS's plot was so engaging and the pace was spot on, that I never felt the absence of the Gadgets. Hunt really captured the full Bond formula without Gadgets and presented a Human Bond. I guess that's how to make a Bond movie without the Gadgets.
Admittedly, this era´s gadget policy is a bit inconsistent. "We don´t go in for that anymore". Yeah, but we put machine guns in car fenders. Could of course be because it´s Bond´s private car, and Bond convinced Q that the company policy is boring.
Part of it is that in this era, Bond is in a way treated a bit harsher. There is smart blood, but it´s used to control Bond (there was already something like that in CR). There is a new gadget car, but it´s not for him. On the other hand he has the human gadget Q, whom he can put in the right place to shut down the nine eyes programme. Relations have a bit shifted. I´m not saying I´m ready to dismiss the old times, I´m just detecting kind of a pattern.
I must disagree, or my personal opinion must. I remember clearly when watching QoS I thought, this has nothing to do with Bond as we knew him from Connery to even Brosnan, but Craig owns this role so much he´s able to carry it nonetheless. The following films screwed that up a bit, but the basis still stands. For me that is.
As for Bond being briefed by M in each film, this is essential not for nostalgic reasons, but for giving the film at all a reason to unfold. A secret agent with a license to kill must have a strong connection to the government. Not because the government is good, but because such a man acting completely on his own would be anarchy. Unless he is made into some kind of private investigator.
I love the enthusiasm with which Q tells Bond, "we call it a ghetto blaster" :-)).
I think that´s one of the beautiful things of Bond films: They can work with the silliest gagdets, and they can work with hardly any gagdets at all. The franchise always did breathe. Soemtimes it got more outlandish, then it became more grounded again. Circle of life.
Even Fleming's novels do that pendulum swing between the outlandish and the realistic.
Yeah I like it when he uses it for an unexpected or unplanned use; like the fingerprint scanner in the phone in TND: he’s supposed to scan it and send it to base for an ID (which should have been in the dialogue really) but he just uses the display to open the safe. Or the sonic ring in DAD: it’s kind of nicely unexpected that he’d use that to shatter a floor.
I think my favourite gadget has to be the LALD watch though. The magnet is such a good idea and useful in so many situations and it’s operated in such a cool way with the indices going red. I like it when the gadget use fits the design of the object, and having a rotating watch bezel that turns into a buzzsaw is just such a good, witty development of what’s already there: it’s not just a bomb or a laser stuck on. Best gadget ever! :)
Right, sorry lol.
Or TEH BATMAN DOES NOT COME OUT AT DAY
TEH DENT MUST DIE LIKE IN THE COMICS
I love comic books, but the fans can get a bit... noisy.
And yet most people seem to love the DB5. Nobody that I know who is a casual Bondfan has been complaining about it.
It’s lazy. I can deal with it but much like the aforementioned Falcon it’s essentially a crutch. The AM thing has become silly now and isn’t at all exciting. The joy of growing up on the Sean/Rog/Tim films is that they were always switching up the vehicles. The positive of NTTD is that they’re at least going balls out with it.
Yeah, true....the Bond franchise always had the luxury of not necessarily worrying about it's Box office outcome. It was more concern about it's relevance & how to attain critical success. So it could afford to present the character in any way it wanted....as long as he's still called JAMES BOND, audiences will always want to see what he's up to next. Coz people just can't get enough of James Bond.
And they should sell the wreckages to fans. ;-)
1965-1995.
I’m loving the militaristic Bond in action.
+2
Also, why not reuse old gadgets instead of constantly making new ones? I'm all for an update of the briefcase from FRWL. Still the best gadget of the franchise imo.
Picture in the middle?
The jet pack is my favorite, weird that they didn't use it again...