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Thanks will read it when I have time.
Regarding DAF I am getting baffled. Why go the route of the spoof?
I understand that but didn't have it more to with Lazenby than anything else, as @TheWizardOfIce asked? What if they'd go for a straight vengeance story, in a serious movie, even with Sean Connery on autopilot? I'm not saying something as gloomy and realistic as The French Connection (although Blofeld running away like Charnier would have been interesting), but something more akin in tone to the first two Bond movies with a dash of 70s brutality and violence.
There is certainly a bit more grit (keeping with the times) than the late 70s Gilbert films (which adopted more of the SW fantasy element) but they also still have an element of the whimsical about them. 'Grounded fantasy' (an admitted oxymoron) in a way.
I think that quality was synonymous with Bond until the 80s. At that point, I detect a marked change in texture and method. I'm not sure if that's on account of Glen, budget cuts or the lack of Adam, but from the 80s onwards the films are far more 'ordinary', 'regular', and lose that sense of bizarre even though they are more in tune with the times.
But maybe Bond movies were perceived as self parodies at the time and audiences just wanted this proto Austin Powers.
The final result is almost a light parody with noir elements thrown in. Perhaps they didn't go serious/vengeance because they didn't want that element to overwhelm the narrative going forward, since they knew an inevitable actor changeover was forthcoming shortly with Moore. Cubby/Harry were pretty smart in my view, because they didn't box themselves in, which a revenge angle might have done for a continuing character, even as a one-off. Note that Babs didn't go the revenge route in SP either. Bond spared Blofeld.
I can only imagine it must have been a stressful time for them as they entered a new decade. The last two films hadn't done as well as TB and the culture was changing rapidly. They decided to take this 'quirky' and colourful approach and it worked, at least from a box office perspective.
I think we may actually see a similar thing with B25. Expect the unexpected.
We could have had Sean sign off with a deadly serious revenge thriller which put SPECTRE and Blofeld to bed and then carried on with the Rog era just the same as it is. I'm not saying the 70s should be all be sheer grittiness but just give us a worthy follow up and answer the questions raised by Tracy's death.
But I fear at the time they wanted to reassure the public that OHMSS was a blip and we were back to business as usual so that is why the went in the direction they did. 5 mins of sewing up the Tracy story and then let's bring on the slot machine playing elephants.
Not now it isn't, but for it's time it probably was.
Despite having the whole GF team back together, nothing in DAF really feels remotely like GF.
GF is all about golf, gold and a DB5. DAF has a pretty crass Las Vegas setting and a red Mustang. That’s practically the opposite ;)
I have a very controversial opinion on that and think be careful what you wish for.
Many people here and elsewhere have already mentioned how much they dislike DAF because the Tracy's death was not even mentioned and that Blofeld was not killed in a satisfying way.
I am very happy that we did not get any of such things because of the following reasons:
1) There was no continuity with regard to the actors and hence it would not have worked. It would have been stupid to see Connery's Bond killing Grey's Blofeld by mentioning Tracy's death. Both have never met Tracy.
2) In fact, there are many continuity issues in most of the Bond films. Why should DAF be different and now care a lot about continuity. Mostly, people claim that Bond films should be standalone adventures.
3) I guess a "satisfying" revenge plot could have taken away a special aspect of Bond's character. It is nice to have something unfinished which you can make use it every now and then (e.g. in TSWLM). Bond was harmed by the death of his wife and this harm should remain.
4) People care too much about revenge and that it is the answer to everything. Remember what Bond says in FYEO or how he behaves in the end of QoS.
Not that I can imagine Hunt signing off on what DAF eventualy became, but who's to say the gritty revenge thriller would ever have materialized? We could've gotten a 'light' picture anyway. Cubby/Harry could've mandated it. In fact maybe that was one of the reasons Hunt declined.
I think going in the direction DAF did was actually a really deft move by Cubby/Harry that allowed the franchise to transition to the 70s. It was in danger of coming to an end. Not simply because of Connery leaving or because Lazenby didn't meet expectations, but because Bond had become an establishment figure. That DAF...
...is exactly the thing. DAF is the first time the pretense of seriousness goes away. The 'lightest, silliest' film before it was YOLT, which played things straight. No matter how ridiculous some of it may seem on the other side of Austin Powers.
Asking the audience to laugh at Bond instead of with him was kind of a way to absolve the films. What would it have meant in 1971 to ask the audience to still be laughing with Bond? Critics were appalled by the sex and violence in DN in 1962. By OHMSS Bond was family entertainment. Was that because the violence in the films became more cartoonish, less consequential? Partly. Then too maybe it was just perceived as being because every night after dinner footage of slain soldiers in Vietnam was pouring into living rooms around the world. If people were appalled at Bond killing Dent in cold blood, what was their reaction not long after when protestors were being teargassed and shot in the streets?
To do a gritty, violent film in the early 70s would've meant commenting on the violence happening in the news. Bond could've gone this route. But (a) Bond had always aimed at escapism, and (b) I'm not sure inviting the audience to critique the character was the best way of ensuring his survival.
Of course now Bond tossing Hans into a piranha pool and making a quip after a guy's guts come flying out of snowblower is just a bit of fun. But those were tumultuous times. It'd be no surprise Cubby/Harry would anticipate people questioning the relevancy of a character originally drawn up in the 1950s. We're still doing it now! But DAF was when it started. A film like DAF, where the seriousness was undermined and the franchise pointed and laughed at itself, was just the thing needed to disarm any potential tide rising against it.
It's also quite clever of Mankiewicz to incorporate and play with a bunch of topical items in alignment with the targeted younger audience's views—i.e. the villain is a well known but invisible corporatist, Bond ruins a fake moon landing, Bond destroys an oil rig in the finale, etc. I believe there was even a scene cut where Tiffany says she's on the pill.
Anyway, I'm attaching this for relevancy/interest. Found it trying to satisfy my own curiosity on the matter. From the 1 February 1970 New York Times, two months after OHMSS was released:
https://www.nytimes.com/1970/02/01/archives/movies-what-sex-what-violence-so-what-else-is-new.html
Possibly not indicative of common views on Bond at the time, but evidence nevertheless that, maybe for the first time, the question of whether Bond was a man out of his time were being asked.
As to why UA felt they needed to go down this particular route, they clearly thought it needed to be steered in a new direction for bigger BO receipts. Again, I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe they had one eye on the previous success of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as a barometer? As others have pointed out, the landscape of 70s cinema was to change dramatically with the release of The French Connection, probably the most influential movie of that decade. But very much like Midnight Cowboy before it, the studios didn't think it was going to be the huge success it turned out being. The popularity of Dirty Harry that very same year would also cement the grittier and more violent trend of movies that some felt started with Bonnie and Clyde in a 1967 and would continue onward, due the more relaxed censorship rules. It does seem odd that during the Sixties, the Bond producers were fighting tooth and nail with the censors over getting a lower classification for their movies, but when things eventually became more relaxed, they decided to go the more campy route and lose their well-fought edginess. Just as a reminder, at one stage TB was in danger of actually receiving an X certificate unless the producers made certain cuts to their movie!!
Another thing to consider is that movie attendances had been dropping off dramatically by the late 1940s and were in dire straits by the early 1970s. It was only the occasional "event movie" that were drawing the big crowds and keeping some of the major studios afloat. In America, there had already been a huge decline in people going to the movies due to the advent of TV which happened to coincide with the United States Supreme Court antitrust making all the studios give up their own Movie Theatres which they used to use for the purposes of showing their own movies in. With little incentive to feed the new independently owned theatres with new movies they had made, the decline was quick and severe. It was a slump that would not be reversed until 1972, with the release of The Godfather. So part of me understands the need for reinvention during this turbulent period. It's just a shame that the reinvention didn't go a little more grittier, is all.
In this interview Hunt says...
Not knowing what they were going to do potentially refers to Maibaum's failed revenge draft, which was written before Lazenby quit — but maybe even more importantly before OHMSS was received. From Variety:
"Unfortunately, Lazenby’s sudden departure required a complete rewrite." — was it his departure though? Because a few paragraphs later we get, "“But Maibaum’s treatments about a revenge-obsessed Bond didn’t impress Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.”
I can't find anything as to why it didn't impress them, or why they didn't want to go that direction. I suppose the assumption is that if Laz had stayed they might have been more willing to rework that idea until they liked it? The outside forces I mentioned in a previous post seem to have been at work, though, too.
So it's interesting to speculate that perhaps Cubby would've wanted Bond to 'get younger' and have hired Mankiewicz anyway, resulting in a Hunt/Laz DAF that still shied away from the original OHMSS post-production plan. Of course I can't see Hunt signing off on the stuff Hamilton did, but I don't think that would have precluded a lighter direction being taken in general.
Thanks for this. I had no idea.
I think in many ways Sean Connery sold the Moore era with DAF.
It was my favourite back when I first started with the films. Stayed first a couple of years, I think. Still a top ten!
Quite controversial for me. I see OP definitely in the lowest quarter of them all and keep wondering if I don't prefer even AVTAK and DAF in the meantime.
Just need to lose the Tarzan roar and the gorilla suit and it's a luscious slice of Roger romp smothered in a indulgently tense Cold War thriller sauce and with an incredible stuntwork cherry on top.
If you lover Roger in the role you simply have to love OP.
Spot on!
I even love the gorilla suit and looking at the time thing. My main complaint is why didn't 009 ditch the balloons before running into the forest?
While I wouldn't say I love Roger in the role, he made it his and was Bond for the duration of my school years and OP is the best showcase of his Bond. It hits all the marks - best fights, humor, seriousness, suave, lover, etc. Maybe not physical peak, but everything else more than overcomes that.
I thought this 35 years ago when I first saw OP and it holds true in 2018.
Controversially, I love it's 1983 rival, NSNA just as much.