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The "boring" underwater scenes seem to be the big complaint in most TB criticisms, and one I just will never agree with. Underwater becomes almost a whole different world and a character all its own for me. I don't think it's a case of "Look What We Can Do." There are numerous cases of that throughout the series.
But you can also count GF for those moments as well, most glaringly the pointless, nothing to advance the plot sequence of Solo being crushed in the car. I can point to other parts of the film such as the golf match, the drive across Switzerland and most of the stud farm that just drag.
As far as threatening features go, please tell me one that Goldfinger has that you can just look at and say, yeah, there's an international criminal? Just on appearance he looks like a tubby, non-threatening retiree. That aside, he's a great villain, but at least Largo physically looks like a threat to Bond.
Sorry, but I disagree with that. Felix was already suspicious of Goldfinger, as they had been watching him in Miami earlier in the film. If he didn't see Bond at some point, he'd naturally begin to think that something was wrong. And while there may not have been a full scale assault on the ranch, if the CIA wanted to investigate the place (especially in the 60's) then they would have found a way. At the very least, Felix would have kept spying on Goldfinger and eventually noticed all the activity as they prepared for the attack on Fort Knox. The whole operation would have been blown.
As far as Goldfinger giving Bond too much freedom to roam around, well there's no question that he certainly did and it ended up being his downfall.
Yes, Goldfinger would've been categorically screwed, and that's one of my biggest issues. I'm fine with villainous characters that have hubris, some of the series' best have it, but blind stupidity given to a villain at the service of a weak script hanging by a wire doesn't cut it. There's no drama, tension or sense in any of it for me. It's not like Bond is surrounded by a high wall or fence. He could've literally raced with Pussy to the little fence Felix is crowded around and escaped like that, and Goldfinger wouldn't have been able to do a thing.
I'll lightly concede that Goldfinger has to keep Bond around to avoid suspicion, even though it's a flimsy point, but at least keep the guy in the cell or surrounded by people to make sure he doesn't do anything rash. The argument could be, "Well, he trusts Pussy not to let Bond leave," but that didn't seem to end well for him, did it?
I very much agree, @BT3366. GF is a slog at times, horribly so. I don't mind films that build up to a climax, but GF doesn't have a strong climax to build to. I respect FRWL and TB for using a gradual build-up at times to show us into the villain's lair to see the scheme take form, because they're interesting schemes.
GF however spends so much time focusing on inconsequential things or just repeats whole scenes again and again. Bond meets girl, oops, she's dead. Bond meets another girl, oops she's dead too. Bond gets knocked out after speaking to girl, oh, and there he is out again. Bond gets captured, then escapes, then gets captured again. In another country Bond is captured, escapes, is captured again. And all this recycled material is really just padding for a story that goes nowhere interesting. There's no big dilemma for Bond to face, because Bond seems resigned to his fate here, far happier to just sip a julep why swapping stories with his enemy. He fails at everything but having sex, and he doesn't even think he's succeeded at that. It's horribly unexciting to watch. It's why it has the worst pacing of any Connery film for me, as none of the others ever reach such a deafened crawl, and even when some do, they are at least crawling to something worth waiting for.
I'm also a Largo fan as well, as he has an actual threat and credibility. Goldfinger is a cartoon and that's all well and good, but I'd much rather watch Bond go toe to toe with Largo as they both really don't hold back the entire film in destroying each other's worlds. What makes it exciting is they don't just do this through veiled verbal threats, they storm each other's residences, kill each other's girls, insult each other's associations in public, and just go at it big time. One of my favorite Bond and villain confrontations is when Bond and the bastard he's facing duke it out where everyone can see them, but the public are all ignorant to the conflict they share. That is TB to a tee, and it adds so much.
There's so much great subtext to Largo too. The way he kisses his ring after every sacrifice, like SPECTRE is his God, the unspoken whatever that is going on with him and Domino, the hair-trigger abusive side that explodes from him in major moments (ice torture, anyone?), and how he just feeds all his problems to his pet sharks. I feel his threat because we actually see what he does, instead of being told how bad he is. He's not played as a joke, he's not a cartoon. He's just a cold bastard who wants Bond out, by any means necessary, and I respect him all the more for how involved he is in SPECTRE's plan. He could just hire people to transport the nukes from place to place and to guard the area, but instead he puts his neck out there for his job and is always there with his armed team to fight, even though he's next in line to take over inside SPECTRE if Blofeld died. He's like a general who rides into battle with his cavalry, not above himself to go into hell alongside them.
He's loyal and committed in comparison to a certain man who murders literally all his associates and leaves them to die the minute his shitty plan actually ends up being shitty.
I'd argue that it's Largo who's the cartoon (he literally has an eyepatch and a shark pool, neither of which were in the book iirc). In fact he's sort of a transitional villain: not full on pantomine like Pleasance and Grey (he's much more subdued but this actually works against him imo because all you're left remembering is the gimmicks like the eyepatch and the sharks), but definitely not on the same tier as Grant and Goldfinger (who were actual believeable characters).
The NSNA Largo is further removed from the source material but he's a lot better imo. Slimy, creepy, insecure but very nasty little nerd is a lot more interesting than generic evil SPECTRE agent.
He has to really get close to hurt you? >:)
Goldfinger is a fetishist who literally dresses in gold at all hours, has a plane with gold, has a house with gold, a car with gold. That's a cartoon. There's nothing wrong with that, as I like that aspect of his character and how he's built up, but let's not pretend he's a believable character on any level. The very clear motive, as with everything Hamilton oversaw, was to go with caricature and throw the kitchen sink along with everything else at it.
As for Largo's eye patch, it's an injury or optical defect. That's not cartoonish, nor was it far removed from the day where patches were what people with issues of the eye would wear.
You refer to NSNA Largo as slimy, creepy and insecure, and that's who this Largo is too. Except he's not an annoying nutter, which is a plus for me.
Largo on the other hand seemed far more dangerous in his intro in Paris, including his cool demeanour when Blofeld executed the Spectre operative at the table.
@bondjames, Largo definitely has more menace and authority in that way, yes. Of course, he and Auric were taken at different angles. Part of the underlying motive in the GF script appears to be making Auric feel like an overt loser. He can't win cards on his own without help. He can't get any women to sleep with him, so he has to pay them as eye-candy. He can't win golf, so he's got to cheat and pull bully tactics on the green, etc. All his major character moments are there to underscore just how inferior he is to Bond, who is sexy, lean, confident, able to get the ladies (including all the ones that work for him!), and back up all his bravado with real skill and panache.
I would never call him menacing though, as the above qualities and traits of him purposefully seem to check that true villainy out. I like that the character of Goldfinger is built that way, however, in that like pyrite he masquerades as a golden boy, but everything about him is fake as can be at the core. The script forfeits him being a truly threatening person of any means by doing this, because he's just what you say: a ballooning goof who can't do anything right and the movie plays him up for comedic effect as he embarrasses himself at every turn. I think that's why Oddjob is there, in some effort to say, "That bloating mass can't do a thing to Bond, but maybe this guy here with the hat could."
Largo is a definite threat who has the same personal clashes with Bond, but he's not played for laughs on the whole, not in a cartoonish fashion. There's also not a sense in TB that the film is constantly deconstructing him as a man and showing you how much of a doofus he is like GF does with Auric. But again, this observation isn't a mark on Goldfinger's character, as those characters are nice to have once in a while and one of the things I respect about GF is the way Auric is built up and then immediately destructed over the course of the film by Bond as he proves he's everything the big boy isn't.
I was wrong to spark a comparison of them as villains in any way, shape, or form, as they're too different and represent two very different approaches to writing a Bond villain. Much like one couldn't judge a comedy against a drama, Goldfinger and Largo can't really be contrasted in an effective way.
But had the order been DN-FRWL-TB, there's no guarantee that Bond in the '60s would have exploded as it did.
Our asylums are full of people who think their Napoleon or God, or don't like Thunderball.
Goldfinger's my favourite but I also like Thunderball quite a lot....
But it was fun for the most part to have an impromptu MI6 Community debate between GF and TB for the week, as they are the two films most credited with causing "Bondmania."
yeah I agree.
GF is a fun bit of fluff for me. the others have more substance.
Agreed, great post.
OHMSS, FRWL, CR.
My top three in that order.
I dunno. Considering the two apparently had an affair on set, you'd think there would be more there. I've never been a massive Tiffany fan, as she's shoddily written and from her Amsterdam debut on the promise she represented is thrown away. She should've been a sleek and sexy cat burglar type gal, not an incessant loud-mouth and damsel. There's also not a lot of moments for her and Bond to really know each other, or for them to have anything beyond a roll in the sheets.
I lament the short screen time of Plenty each time I watch DAF, as I got a lot more out of her character in that period and wanted more of her than I did Tiffany. That purple dress also helped.
Don't take it as fact, they're just show business rumblings. People also say Sean and Lana had an affair during DAF's shoot, but as with everything, who can tell.
Yeah bang on.
Lack of class is a good way of saying it. Tiffany grates and though I like Plenty, she is essentially a gold digger, though she's somewhat nice about it.
Bambi and Thumper are just there, but suitably animalistic for their names. I don't mind them, but every time Bond goes to Willard Whyte's home I think, "This would've been a good time for Bond to fight a room full of Blofeld's guards to get to Whytea, instead of a campy fight with two women."