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Comments
The elevator fight is the best in the entire franchise in my opinion.I even think it tops the stairwell fight in CR.I especially like the humour before and after '' Who is your floor? ''
The moon buggy chase is incredibly daft and i love it! John Barry scores it perfectly like its a cartoon!
The las vegas chase i actually think is awesome.Some great stunt driving there.
The oil rig finale is weak though i agree.But i think on the whole,its one of the wittiest Bond films and i find it a guilty pleasure.
Fair enough. I like the elevator scene. It's well staged and by far the best action scene of the movie for me. But far away from the fight in CR. That fight is much more intense! And Eva Green is there, too;)
Good for you that you like the daftness of the moonbuggy action. I don't hate but it's so slow that "chase" is wrong to describe it.
The Las Vegas action has it's moment (the parking lot part is nice).
Good to read another appreciation. Would you even rank it in your top 5? What is the thing you like most? The humour?
As there was no social media and no official fan clubs (or unofficial ones even) to share those thoughts, it's hard to judge, save for what some of the fans around at the time who are on this site could share.
DAF was my first new Bond film in the cinema. I was all of 5 and I can tell you there was a lot of enthusiasm. My parents were in there 20s the time and saw it multiple times. They liked the humor and I've never forgotten it. A lot of critics also gave it enthusiastic reviews too. It did have a lot to do with Connery, no question and that would dog Moore and about anybody else who played the role from there.
So you don't like these films for that? Interesting take. I still think fans need to let it go that DAF wasn't the revenge-driven film they think they were entitled to. I wonder if anybody at all was clamoring for that back in the early '70s.
It would've been more dire to have had the version of DAF that had Goldfinger's twin brother as the villain.
I've always wondered in the duality of the characters, we get two Bonds, When Connery
kills in the elevator fight. Two Blofelds, two sets of double act killers. One male the other
female. Even the sets, Bonds Hotel room is over two floors, WW's office 2nd Blofeld appears walking down the stairs to the main part ( two floors ) and even the control room on the oil rig is on two floors.
Exactly how I feel.
I totally agree that the adaptions closer to the novels are generally the better films.
Mostly, this is the case. The exception's are TSWLM and TMWTGG.
Obviously, TSWLM novel would not have worked, except as a pre-credits scene, perhaps.
TMWTGG film is far from perfect, but I actually prefer it to Fleming's novel, which is his worst, by far.
Wasn't the novel unfinished? Fleming didn't have time to edit anything before he passed if I'm not mistaken.
wonderful descriptive passages. Allow I do enjoy it.
I didn't know that. Still we have to take it as is, and it wasn't good.
Interesting sidebar, does anyone thing there is any Fleming material left that hasn't been used? The only bit I can think of is aspects of From A View To A Kill and a couple of characters, like Gala Brand and Here Von Hammerstein.
Agreed.
I didn't know that about Fleming and TSWLM. I agree though, it had to be made into a different story either way, and they did a great job with it. An exception to the rule.
Great game.Very underrated and yes Brosnan is great in it.I indeed think of it as his Bond swan song and consider it canon.
Definitely going to have to check it out. This will sound silly but I can't remember if I have this game or not. Either way, I haven't played it yet.
Fleming did finish and edit it (the final lines were added by hand to the typescript), but by then he was a seriously ill man and had halved his daily writing routine. He was unhappy with the book and proposed holding it back for a year to further revise it.
For what it's worth, TMWTGG has a terrific opening section and closing chapter. What's in between can be patchy. I still prefer it to the film.
I enjoy the real/fake dichotomy that runs through the film as well.
Real and fake Blofelds (real and fake white cats too, by definition)
Real and fake diamonds
Real and fake Peter Franks
Real and fake Willard Whyte
that’s all just off the top of my head too. A lot of people truly despise DAF but I find it quite thought-provoking. The moon set is particularly perplexing, it’s where the fake and the real seem to blend into something impossible. Bond treats the moon as just a big set and he runs through it. But the astronauts still move slowly, like they actually are on the moon. OK it’s just a joke, but it’s visually interesting, I don’t think I have ever seen anything like it in another film.
The film ends by saying that reality is out of reach (“how do we get the real diamonds back down?”).
I really like DAF and get a lot out of each viewing, but am very much in a minority
Really interesting take on it, and I can see why you appreciate it! Might have to give it another go.
There's a lot of material from the novels that haven't been used, not only characters. A lot of background elements, settings (Spectreville for instance), dialogues, plot points, etc.
Since neither worked out that way, making a film with the return of Sean Connery by hearkening back to the tone of GF made 100% sense in 1971. The only people that would have wanted it to be a proper sequel to OHMSS were Bond fans, and to be brutally honest we're just not as important as general audiences.
This is exactly what I have long thought about audience reaction to DAF at the time. People found it fun, especially in light of all the turmoil of the times. Those looking at it these days view it colored by it not being the OHMSS sequel and the humor. It was Connery, Connery, Connery.
There is a sloppiness to this film that no other Bond film has.
One can make a case about DAD's CGI use of course, but the difference is that at the time they thought they were doing a great job. For DAF though I think they knew some things didn't look all that great and they were still left in.
Don't forget the editing of Thunderball. Scenes are apparently out of sequence, and the finale cuts between three shots of the Disco Volante.
I think TB is the sloppiest, but it's grand and expensive looking enough to not stand out as such.
I think it's important to remember that pre-the late 70s, movies weren't made to be raked over at home endlessly, looking for errors and mistakes and inconsistencies. It doesn't excuse sloppiness, but many of these mistakes would have gone unnoticed in the cinema.
Anyway - surely everyone must have known the parasurfing in DAD looked shit while they were making it. Surely? I can imagine they though they could deliver, but after the first tests they must have seen they had made Bond a laughing stock. I can only imagine Wilson's and Broccoli's reaction in their test screening (assuming that was the first time they saw the sequence in its entirety).