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Bond films ripping off Bond films
Simon
Keeping The British End Up...
Ok, this is going to be a bit of a stretch at times, but its stemmed from an off the cuff thought that for some reason lingered in my head after recently watching the Brosnan Bonds.
Is TND just a reworking of GoldenEye?
I know plenty of films, 007 or otherwise, can look (and are) like reworkings of existing films; but two in the same series, released consecutively, just two years apart feels a bit unique.
Just to say up front, none of the below bothers me - it hasn't somehow hindered my enjoyment of either film. Tomorrow Never Dies was the first Bond I saw at the cinema and I loved it, and GoldenEye is certainly my most watched Bond film!
So here is my overthought, maybe paper thin musings. Some of the ordering was maybe changed in TND, and both films obviously have their own unique scenes, style, charm, etc - I'm not saying it's a carbon copy, just an awful lot of similarity.
Is it all a stretch too far? Probably, but be interesting if anyone else has noticed other Bond films that feel like they may have had a lazy writers room, outside the obvious Thunderball/NSNA, Goldfinger/AVTAK, etc - especially if its taken 27 years to notice like it did for me with GE/TND, and even moreso if they were consecutive films!!
Is TND just a reworking of GoldenEye?
I know plenty of films, 007 or otherwise, can look (and are) like reworkings of existing films; but two in the same series, released consecutively, just two years apart feels a bit unique.
Just to say up front, none of the below bothers me - it hasn't somehow hindered my enjoyment of either film. Tomorrow Never Dies was the first Bond I saw at the cinema and I loved it, and GoldenEye is certainly my most watched Bond film!
So here is my overthought, maybe paper thin musings. Some of the ordering was maybe changed in TND, and both films obviously have their own unique scenes, style, charm, etc - I'm not saying it's a carbon copy, just an awful lot of similarity.
- Pre titles sequence: An enemy location (Soviet Dam/Arms Bazaar) is infiltrated by Bond, and instruments of destruction (chemical weapons facility/stolen weapons) are destroyed. Bond makes an escape in a stolen plane, flying off over the mountains, and into the theme song.
- An innocent military target is destroyed (Servanaya/Devonshire).
- The attack is aided by stolen Western technology (Tiger helicopter/GPS encoder), without which the villain couldn't accomplish his wider plans.
- The villain also requires the assistance of a tech savvy accomplice (Boris/Gupta) who will stay by his side to enact the final plays of the villains master plan.
- The attack mentioned above also includes the theft of advanced weapons (GoldenEye/cruise missile) to be utilised by the villain in their ultimate end game.
- A suspected, but not confirmed, villain (Janus/Carver) is the lead for James Bond, who is sent to investigate. Bonds investigation begins by meeting up with someone from his past (Valentin/Paris) who has a reason to dislike him, but gets turned into an ally.
- The result of this leads to Bond being coincidentally located in the same place as his future love interest, and later ally (Natalya, in the Tiger/Wai Lin, breaking into Carver's HQ), and coming face-to-face with the films bad guy (Alec, in the statue park/Carver at the CMGN party) for the first time in the film.
- Jack Wade is called in to assist in gathering intelligence, and provides Bond with a plane to do so, but will lead him into a country not friendly to Western powers (Cuba/Vietnam).
- After infiltrating the villains base of operations (Cradle/Stealth), Bonds ally attempts to disrupt the plan (Natalya, reprogramming GoldenEye for re-entry/Wai Lin destroying the Stealths engines and planting mines), but gets captured and brought before the villain, and Bond.
- The plan is spelled out by the villain in their hidden (Cradle, by water/Stealth Ship, from radar) base of operations.
- The plan ultimately is about money. The villain will use the stolen weapon (GoldenEye/Cruise missile) to attack a capital city (London/Beijing). The fallout of which will lead to great riches (via theft/via Chinese broadcast rights).
- The attempts by Bonds ally to disrupt the plan partially fails (Boris breaks Natalyas codes/Stamper retrieves Wai Lins mines and detonators).
- This prompts Bond to attempt to sabotage the villains lair directly (pipe and chain in the cradle mechanism/explosions on the Stealth to show on radar) that will ultimately lead to its destruction (Cradle mechanism explodes/navy bombards the stealth).
- The initial failure of Bonds ally does still come good however, as now the stolen weapons themselves are destroyed (GoldenEye disintegrates/Wai Lins mines detonated by the cruise, blowing it all up).
- Ultimately, the main villain (Alec/Carver) is bested by Bond after having a gun pointed at his head while disarmed, but chose to chat instead of shoot.
- The villains method of death is to be killed by one of their own instruments of their master plan (Alec crushed by the cradle/Alec minced in his drill).
- One of the villains accomplices (Boris/Stamper) outlive their boss, only to be killed (liquid nitrogen/explosion) alone on screen before cutting to the final scene of Bond and his ally kissing and cutting to the credits.
Is it all a stretch too far? Probably, but be interesting if anyone else has noticed other Bond films that feel like they may have had a lazy writers room, outside the obvious Thunderball/NSNA, Goldfinger/AVTAK, etc - especially if its taken 27 years to notice like it did for me with GE/TND, and even moreso if they were consecutive films!!
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Comments
However long the hiatus are one of the 'originals' still posting is always a welcome sight.
I suppose the most obvious one for me is The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.
Not just because they're directed by Lewis Gilbert, but MR is basically a rehash of TSWLM. One's an underwater plot, and the other's in space.
YOLT. TND.
1. A villain planning on hijacking or attacking a Tanker that would trigger a War between two countries (Stromberg and The Liparus Tanker, and Carver and The Devonshire Tanker).
2. The countries involved: In TND, it's China and England, in TSWLM, it's Russia and England.
3. An agent whose a rival of Bond: Wai Lin in TND, Anya in TSWLM.
4. Bond working as Commander, dressed in Naval Battle Uniform
5. Both have important devices that are taken from the enemy: The Microfilm and The Encoder.
In other films, the recent obvious one is NTTD and OHMSS, of course.
And YOLT was Thunderball meets Dr.NO.
It was more the immediacy of TND ripping GE that stood out. Skyfall had some generous helpings of GoldenEye (a betrayed former MI6 agent hell bent on revenge, with understandable reason, etc, etc) but it was many years and many films down the line. EoN would still have been counting the VHS sales figures, sat at the same desk the TND first draft was on!
GE has the satelite and the surprise villain too.
And the bad guys stealing a weapon is Thunderball.
True. As was said above though I think it speaks to just how effective TND was (and how original the media mogul concept for the villain/premise was) that their similarities don’t stand out immediately. I think the writing process was quite rushed too and they went into production without a finished script so may well have fallen back on some broad ideas.
SF’s another interesting film in terms of what it readapted from the Brosnan era. There’s definitely a bit of GE in there (including callbacks to Bond’s childhood/past). I always say it’s a film which tried to do TWINE but better (ie. Bond getting injured at the begining and struggling throughout the film, MI6 being blown up, an anarchist villain with a death wish hell bent on his goal, M getting involved in the story and even the climax). Severine is kind of an Andrea Anders character from TMWTGG who uses Bond to escape from the villain too.
Moving away from the films, I only realized recently that the Solstice comic seems like a reworking of 007 In New York, with Bond traveling overseas to protect an MI6 employee/MI6 relative from a KGB/FSB agent lover and remove them 'from the equation'.
A View To A Kill and Goldfinger, this is the first ever case of a Bond film ripping off another Bond film, Zorin and Goldfinger's plot to destroy a part of America's resources to propagate the income of their businesses, both involving America, Bond going to Europe only to complete the mission in America, both villains have fascinations of horses, both villains persuaded a group of mobsters and businessmen, even the Goldfinger and Zorin presenting a miniature or a model of their plans towards those businessmen, both involved a Bond Girl who wants a revenge against villain (Tilly Masterson and Stacey Sutton).
Yes, I once said that LTK had a bit of a Thunderball flavor and I almost didn't survive
;)
I think that might fit into tribute/homage territory. Whole plotlines (Moonraker being TSWLM - IN SPAAAACE!) or multiple reused movie-critical elements (see original post) is where I would start putting things into rip-off territory.
Yeah, LTK was/is Bondian enough IMO.
Sure, the fashion was very 80's but that is something that happens very often.