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
I think it's perfect as is. He's quietly gloating over Blofeld's horrible death. That sort of line is best underplayed.
Yes, by that point the film has stopped maintaining any connection with OHMSS. DAF's relation to its predecessor was left intentionally ambiguous. Audiences who didn't take to Lazenby or OHMSS could watch this film without being explicitly reminded of them; audiences who did could interpret the opening scenes as referring to them. I wonder if those scenes owed more to Maibaum than Mankiewicz.
I'm fine with the way this is all handled in the film. It seems to be just in the last several years that fans have started the outcry that DAF wasn't the follow-up revenge film it should've been. We can't go back in time to change any of that. The filmmakers could just very well have made absolutely no references to OHMSS.
I'm curious as to if any fans back between the release of OHMSS and DAF were expecting a follow-up similar to the novel of YOLT and if it colored their perception of DAF. My guess is the people were just so relieved to have Connery back it didn't matter a lick.
This is exactly it. Once the PTS was over, the film retained absolutely no connection to it's predecessor.
This is the heart of the continuity problems with the films. They love to dangle a touch of continuity when it feels convenient for them to do so, and then write it off completely, all in the same breath (film). They want to have it both ways: there is interconnectedness, sometimes, and also all the films are complete standalones.
I'm sure there were, but back then of course there was no internet, so large numbers of fans could not share reactions so easily, and the press concerned itself much less with reporting fan reaction, since it served a mass audience and had less conception of niche audiences. Fleming's books were still selling very well back then, and there must have been thousands and thousands of readers wondering what the hell EON was going to do after OHMSS. Occasionally film critics who happened to be Fleming fans, like those at the Sunday Times, would note whether a film used or threw out the source novel. Perhaps further research will turn up more instances of this. "Fandom" is becoming a subject of academic and historical study, and there's a lot that could be discovered from studying how Bond fans in the 60s and early 70s shared news and discussions with each other. Unfortunately a lot of first generation Bond fans are no longer with us to report first-hand on this.
"And when introductions
were over and [Lazenby] retired to
change his shirt and brush his
teeth the room suddenly
seemed empty without his
dominating personality." 😄
"When the phone shrilled
and his father (...) called to George that it
was a television company on
the phone, it was James
Bond who walked into the
room to sprawl languidly in
an armchair to answer it.
And from the tone of his
voice it could have been 007
arranging a coming danger-
ous assignment instead of an
impending appearance as a
guest on a Sydney night show."
Now that's some overacting there...
Someone corrects me if I'm wrong, but from what I understand fan community is a fairly new concept. If you were a Bond fan dissatisfied with the way the movies had been handled, or even say disliked the casting of Connery in 1962, you had nobody to complain to, back then they were just popular movies meant to please a large "generic" audience. If OHMSS didn't work because it was deemed too serious and its ending a downer, then let's make DAF a self parody and ignore as much as possible the previous film. If Lazenby didn't work as Bond, let's bring back Sean Connery.
Yes and no. Comics fandom for example took off in the 1960s. You had fan-produced magazines about Batman and large fan-conducted conventions starting in that decade. But though fan communities existed they weren't truly organized. That had to wait for the internet. If you were a disgruntled Bond fan, you didn't have a platform to share your opinions on, since the mass media wasn't interested. But by the early 70s there were organizations like the James Bond 007 Fan Club, which in 1974 began publishing an official magazine, Bondage. The James Bond International Fan Club followed suit in 1979 with OO7 Magazine. Were it not for the internet, many of us would probably be writing to (and for) such magazines instead of chatting on this board.
Surprised Eon never started one for Bond back then as it would've allowed them a lot of control. No doubt it would've had a huge following. When the JBFC started, the stories go Eon didn't cooperate with them because they dared to do interviews with people like Lazenby and didn't lend much support. When NSNA came out, there were a lot more features about it than OP.
Wonderful stuff and it's nice for me to remember the good old days of little bits of info coming to us in between the movies. It is rather unfathomable why EON never did an official fan club back in the day. Not that it would have had any bearing on the films but I did rather think that they wouldn't miss the chance for money and some control.
Next up lets go more recent. Recently there was a thread where Brosnan admitted in an interview that Mclory and him had talked about doing a remake of a remake! LOL! It was said that it was Pierce's team that had reached out to Kevin during the period between LTK and GE. Obviously before he was cast by Broccoli.
It got me to thinking. What if Brosnan had starred in a version of TB in the period of 90-92? What would that film had looked like? This obviously would have been the kiss of death of Pierce playing Bond in the EON series. So what would have happened to EON's production of GE? Would McClory been finally been able to best Broccoli and get a Bond film out when there was no chance for EON to produce one themselves.
What say you Mi6...what if Pierce Brosnan would have starred in a remake of TB in 1991?
Just no example of it. And I agree it would limit Pierce Brosnan to a single mission. Unless McClory picked him up again ten years later still.
Well it was Brosnan's idea, or someone on his team. I think McClory would perhaps have not been a major player.
Also it was pointed out to me that around this time Cubby actually put Bond up for sale: so who knows- if Brosnan's movie had become a hit maybe that studio would have bought the full rights to the Bond films and Brosnan would have been the official Bond in a series of his own, just not with Eon in the picture anymore.
In theory he could have ended up as the longest running Bond of them all, maybe even then move onto being a producer of the Bond films.
- To rival EON, McClory would have gotten the support of a powerful Hollywood mogul or VIP as a producer and/or director. I'm thinking the likes of Francis Ford Coppola (who AFAIK was actively involved on NSNA along with his sister Talia), Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Michael Eisner, Sid Sheinberg, Dino DeLaurentis, Kassar & Vajna... Who knows, maybe even some support from Lew Grade or the Scott brothers in the UK. It would have created a big hit & miss situation.
- Cubby and Wilson would have greenlighted Property of a Lady with a hyper-motivated Dalton after the failure of Rocketeer.
- The new Warhead story would have distanced itself from TB, just like EON did from TSWLM onwards, and would have followed a continuity similar to Daniel Craig's, just with lots of comedy added.
- I'm positive that Connery and even Lazenby would have appeared. Sean as Blofeld or M and Lazenby in a cameo.
- McClory or the director would have approached John Barry for a score, but he would refuse. The likes of John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Alan Silvestri, Lalo Schifrin, Elmer Bernstein would have been approached then. The song would have been a huge Oscar/Grammy/MTV bait with a pop superstar of the era like Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Prince, George Michael, Kyle Minogue, Madonna (who also would have been a Bond girl, with an important part unlike her DAD cameo), The Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, INXS, Chris Isaak, Bon Jovi, The Bangles... It would have depended on the style they wanted for the song.
- Note the abundance of American names. I think the Warhead series would have been more "American" than the EON series.
Well, that's about it.
That's more or less what I feel may have happened. Also, considering the head of MGM began selling TV rights to Bond, thus resulting in Cubby's lawsuit with MGM, we'd still have had a lengthy gap for EON regardless.
Meanwhile, Pierce could have been living it up as Bond with his new buddy Kevin McClory.
I can see the Brosnan/McClory series having it's own Bondian traditions: the zooming 007's replacing the gunbarrel, a sappy theme song over an opening action sequence, and Brosnan flaunting his physique in a pair of dungarees. What could have been.
I have this hunch had Joel SIlver actually got the rights to Bond and put Mel in the role, we'd have an R rated Bond series akin to the Lethal Weapon films.
However, I saw an interview where Gibson said he wasn't interested in playing Bond. I believe he thought the role was too silly or something to that effect.
I would have been quite disappointed had this scenario occurred back then. I was loyally awaiting Cubby and Dalton's return. Franz Sanchez would have been proud.
https://www.mi6community.com/discussion/19824/pierce-brosnan-attempted-to-make-a-rival-bond-film/p1
I think Brosnan would've received nearly as good a reception as he got 4 years later. People still wanted him as Bond.
It'd be interesting to see how much a writer could twist it and still claim it to be an adaptation of TB. You'd certainly imagine there'd be a way to not have it sea-based again.
If this film was actually made, I easily assume that the production of Bond 17 would have been fast-tracked and Dalton would have returned, whether it was a one-off or not, Brocolli would have seen no objection to it in this context.
Example: SPECTRE has developed an economical warhead and wants to sell to the highest bidder, including the States, the crumbling USSR or CIS, the UK, Japan, China, North Korea, India, France... There's even a NATO representative. During a tense auction in the most awesome underground lair ever, the warhead in display blows up, killing everyone there.
Bond is called to action and meets Blofeld early on. Blofeld swears by the honor of SPECTRE he's also a victim of this conspiracy, and points Bond in the direction of the hottest Hollywood mogul: Alexis Largo, a yuppie with lots of connections... And from then on the action follows suit.
@Revelator What a name for a magazine! I can just imagine myself going to my local newsagent in the late 80s/early 90s and ask: "Do you have Bondage magazine?" And the guy at the till telling me: "Hey! All the porn we sell is legal and you're too young for it anyway!"
@thedove This is a very difficult "what if" as I always think Brosnan had his eyes on the big price, the role of Bond in the franchise itself, not a competing product. He'd never have dared angering EON. I'd honestly think McClory would have had to for somebody else, maybe whoever was hot at the time, regardless of suitability? Hugh Grant, Mel Gibson, maybe even an American like Kevin Costner?
That's fun! :)
@Ludovico What makes you say that? He did. He has said so himself, it's on video and everything on that link above. He and a team of producers approached McClory (not the other way around note: he went to McClory) with a view to making a rival Bond film starring Brosnan himself: it was his idea, not McClory's. Presumably from his point of view at that point he'd already lost the gig in '86.
This is all based on this interview for when he was promoting TND. He talks about it towards the end. Starts at 12:56
Trailer narrator: Largo... Largo... Largo... these are just some of the formidable adversaries 007 has faced over the years, but now comes the most dangerous villain of them all!
M: 007, you will be investigating Donovan Largo, a shady businessman with connections to SPECTRE.
Bond: SPECTRE? How many employees do they have, anyway? And all of them are named Largo?
M: Never mind that. You will make contact with Largo aboard his yacht, the Flying Volante, currently off the coast of Acapulco.
(cut)
Bond: Moneypenny, I'm not enjoying 00 work as much as I used to. It feels somewhat... repetitive.
Moneypenny: Have you got an assignment, James?
Bond: Yes, I'm to eliminate all free Largos.
Trailer narrator: This summer, Kevin McClory's Largo Productions presents Pierce Brosnan as James Bond 007 in... Never Say Largo Again.
And that was the problem with McClory's idea. Because he was limited to do versions of TB, didn’t he?