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Yeah I think he's good at being a star in it, but it's kind of a lap of honour of the supercool James Bond 007, tossing out quips and drinking martinis and doing cool things. Which is fine, it's entertaining, but it would have been interesting to see him sweat a bit, race to diffuse a nuclear bomb in an airbase and get more frustrated as he's laughed at, be appalled at a villain's scheme to blow one up, be subject to a human hunt, be saddened at an ally's death etc. It's all a bit easy for him.
There's bits to NSNA I like; it actually acknowledges Bond's age and it doesn't harm anything- I'd like to have seen Roger's films do that. But Roger is marginally more of a real character in his.
The fact that Moore has to act in a clown costume and make Bond’s panic feel real is a plus for him in my book too!
Yeah, NSNA is a film which could have been so much more interesting than it is. I suppose much of it comes down to the material in regards to Connery (if it’s a lap of honour of a cool Bond that’s what we get with Connery’s performance).
Connery in DAF and NSNA has more things to do than running around like he does in YOLT. If this film had its Oscar moment, maybe Connery would have been happier. I don't know.
That scene too! Great moment - sort of Hitchcockian!
100%. It’s almost like a nightmare in terms of how horrific the scenario is - people laughing at Bond or believe he’s crazy, the bomb seconds away from killing everyone. Definitely has that undercurrent of black comedy (and suspense) that Hitch perfected.
Well, Connery sweats a lot in this movie. I don't think he's been this fallible since Goldfinger.
Yes, Shrublands scenes were great and they were the kind of stuff that EON left out!
It took Craig's Bond for the movies to show this kind of thing.
I really struggle with NSNA. It could be brilliant, but it’s so average (below that even at points). Missed opportunity to do something really interesting with Bond.
Yes it's a good point, they had an opportunity to do things Eon and Cubby wouldn't do at the time, but instead they looked to copy the Eon format as closely as possible. Which is understandable to get people in the door, but as a one-off you kind of think they had the chance to subvert it a bit more- you know, make more of him retiring at the end, suggest he's been missing in action all these years since DAF, maybe he's even been locked up in prison since then or something, who knows.
They had an opportunity to do a NTTD with it and give James Bond a big final adventure but they didn't do much with it. I don't know if killing him off would have been right, but you can imagine a fun big ending where he appears to die, Moneypenny's in tears, but he has actually faked his death and is off to retire into the sunset on the Flying Saucer or something. What do you think they could have done with it?
Give him a better romantic lead of course, one you can actually imagine Bond retiring with. Funnily enough, I was just thinking: I don't think Connery had romantic partner in a film again until Russia House, seven years after this.
It’s funny that McClory and Co had all the cards to blow EON out of the water in 1983 - yet all we got was a badly done remake of one of the most middling Bond films.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I have to agree, in fact I think it's one of the worst performances I've seen from him (in general, not just Bond), and I love him in almost everything. Even in poor films, he's fantastic to watch. But the edge is totally gone from his NSNA performance, and at times, I thought he was trying to impersonate Moore. I guess money and getting one over on your previous employers are the wrong reasons to make a movie. Who'd have thought?
Not to mention, the rug is just hideous, and I recently discovered what happened to it (skip to 37:10):
I suppose there’s an element of hindsight because the Craig and even Brosnan films subsequently did things like an older Bond and themes like old vs new (they did it much better though).
In many ways I can see the impulse to lean into a ‘classic’ Bond rather than trying to deal with these things. Honestly, the film is so dreary looking at times and has a lack of production value and even thrills onscreen (which again isn’t a problem EON had) that maybe it would have all been a bit too depressing.
Haha. Yes, it’s not Connery’s best topee.
Yes that is a good point, it has a dreary feel. Especially Shrublands, which looks like a dingy old school which was shut down years ago.
Sometimes I don't like the obvious sets of the other films, but they do also make it look more opulent and coherent than shooting stuff in location interiors (like most of the hotel rooms, M's office, Q department etc.) of NSNA- you get the feeling here they just settled for what they could find rather than designing stuff for its particular purpose. It is amazing it had a larger budget than Octopussy: it shows what a producer who knows what he's doing can create.
Dalton's Bond was still four years away. Let alone Craig's. It doesn't matter too much how different it might have been because Eon could always copy it in the future.
Well, in fairness it’s not exactly an earth shatteringly original idea to lean into your star’s age (NSNA just pushed the concept a little bit further than EON wanted to in the later Moore films, but ultimately as we were saying it’s all a bit thin).
I mean, I’m not against films using broad ideas from other ones anyway, especially if they improve on weak films and go their own direction. If EON did ‘copy’ NSNA (and of course that’s probably not fully the case and gets into a whole tit for tat about what that film uses from the EON Bond films) I think they improved on a weak film.
I always find that fact mad. It wasn’t as though it was made by untalented people either (the DOP shot the Indiana Jones trilogy and the director of course the second Star Wars). It looks like a tv movie at points (more so than those late 80s Bond films, and certainly the score has that feel at times).
Nah, It's not just old Bond, everything can be copied.
It's easy to criticize Dalton's films after 30 years and with Craig taking a more extreme approach.
People don't like NTTD that much now, imagine if they had made it 30 years ago!
Ok… I’m not quite getting what you’re trying to say with the first point, but like I said I really don’t mind Bond films (or any film) using ideas from other ones. Not sure I’d enjoy any Bond or genre film in general if I didn’t think that was fine!
I think a lot of people liked NTTD. On here and the more vocal parts of the internet we pick it apart, but that’s the case with all the films. I don’t think it would have been made 40 years ago but that’s the case with any contemporary film…
Yeah I do tend to think Eon fairly blatantly copied Max Largo Zorin.
Yes, although I think though the producer was a first-time producer, which seems mad.
Not sure I ever got that sense with Zorin personally. I guess maybe it’s there with the idea of Bond going up against a younger villain, but Zorin’s backstory is very distinct (as well as how Walken plays him) and there’s a lot of general ‘Bond villain tropes’ that overlap with the characters anyway that it’s not something I’ve ever picked up on. But honestly, if they did take a bit of Largo and use it to create Zorin, that’s fine.
Do you mean Jack Schwartzman? He hadn’t produced much before NSNA but apparently he was an executive producer of Being There, the Peter Sellers film. Before that he was an entertainment attorney and then an executive. Apparently related in some way to the Coppolas if IMDB is to be believed (he’s the father of Jason Schwartzman).
This thread has really veered off topic, hasn’t it?
I don't know if a Bond villain had been crazy giggly psychotic in quite that way before, generally they were quite urbane and outwardly sophisticated. Zorin is maybe a bit more in the old school vein, but it's in there. Plus then there's just their outward similarities.
Heh!
I think I mean him, I watched a little Making Of a while ago and it mentioned how inexperienced the producer was.
What if we had a movie that embraced an aging Bond?
One of the many things that has been floated out there with Amazon taking the creative reigns is a Bond actor returning and portraying an older Bond. Dalton and Brosnan have both been mentioned with Brosnan being asked during a press junket point blank.
The aging Bond has been played with lightly in SF, though I was never sure why Bond had suddenly aged so much between QOS and SF. It was played with a heavier touch in NSNA. With M concerned about Bond's free radicals, Bond being a teacher and not out in the field. Bond drives a Bentley which is clearly a nod to Fleming and to the age of his character. He gets beat at a video game at one point in the film. EON for years always seemed to keep Bond the same age even though the actor portraying him aged. I think to Moore in AVTAK and clearly showing all of his 57 years on the screen.
So I thought since the thread drifted there, lets talk about the age old question, what if we get an older Bond movie?
Agreed. I think it is a script issue.
Shrublands allows for Bond to lose a step and I think they could have gone further with this whole notion of Bond at the end of his career. Imagine if the final Connery winking moment followed a "Moneypenny thinks he's dead" moment a la AVTAK.
I actually really like the version of NSNA playing in the final scene.