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My four year old's controversial opinion: Brosnan best ever role is the narrator in Thomas the Tank Engine.
Yes, he’s not great. Seemed to have a thing about shooting stuff from really far away too.
I’d probably include the hovercraft chase from DAD in his ‘worst of’ too (although not quite as bad as the parahawk chase)- the hovercraft are slow and it’s just a bit dull on that big expanse of waste ground and looks more like an activity day you’d go to on a stag weekend than a thrilling spy chase. Some really obvious stunt doubles/mannequins too.
Indeed, it’s just rubbish. Even David Arnold’s score sounds bored.
This was likely due to trying to compete with other action films that were popular in the 90s like Schwarzenegger films. By CR, that kind of action had faded out of style.
Interesting thought; yes, now you say it there hasn't been much in the way of machine guns spraying bullets everywhere like they did for Pierce. A bit at the end of Skyfall and not much else really. And I can only think of Craig's Bond using an automatic rifle at the crater base escape in Spectre, and I actually quite like that scene because he uses it in a way I can believe he is a professional rather than just waggling it around from the hip. That bit where he just calmly aims and picks off those guys from far away is exactly how James Bond should do it if you ask me.
is How I imagine a professional would use it. Also his wardrobe of black trousers and white shirt for me at least is very reminiscent of those 60s spy movies.
I love the crater base escape. I'm sure a gun fetishist could point out some issue with what he's doing, but it's nice to see Bond aiming a weapon carefully and skillfully like that.
Yes I know what you mean: I carefully phrased it as 'he uses it in a way I can believe he is a professional' because I expected some gun nerd to appear and tell me he actually puts his little finger in the wrong place or something :D
This isn't my first time on the internet! :)
If Bond left a lair intact, we'd be complaining too.
How often did it happen? Off the bat I can think of FYEO and TWINE. I guess Silva's lair too, as far as we know,but it was already ruins.
FRWL, GF, TB, AVTAK.
Compare the caviar factory to the archives escape in GE. In the latter, you really do feel like Bond is in a real place.
M: Actually, 007, we would prefer if you kindly would kill the evil mastermind, but leave the lair intact. Her Majesty's gov'mint estimates it would cost billions to build something like that, and they would like, verymuchifyoudon'tmind, to enter afterward, dispose of the remains of the villain, and then to use that facility. In fact, if you could avoid killing or injuring the villain's minions, we think we could get them to work for us afterward. Offer them decent wages and health care and they'd be good to have working for us. They already know the facility and have been maintaining it an so on.
Bond: (Silent for a long moment) Bean-counters !
It might be a bit sinister for the UK Government to be running an enormous covert satellite dish in Cuba, for example! :)
Yes but in at least some of them, there's a "big setting" that is destroyed or damaged in lieu of the villains hq: the Disco Volante, the blimp, even the Soviet Embassy.
That's for the question thread, but we do have examples of how it goes in real life. For the James Bond universe, many of these entities are legal with only a fraction of their employees, close to the CEO, is doing anything illegal (and covertly). When said CEO dies (when the circumstances are not made public), what happens to the company is no different than what it would happen if the owner had suddenly died in an accident.
I feel like Austin Powers has kind of done this...
Same applies to the Parahawk ski scene as far as the staginess. Every time Bond skis by you can almost hear production assistant calling for an explosion that isn't even close. There's no spontaneity in it. TWINE definitely has maybe the least creative, interesting action in the series.
For the record, that's a problem I have with most of the action in this film. I'm a "fast" kinda guy, even if it means doing the hard editing like in OHMSS's PTS. The Thames scene is barely "fast", the raid on the Kaviar Factory too. Whatever is going on in the sub is slow and spatially compacted, ... None of these things are negatives as such. It's just not my thing, is all. ;-)
Yes I mentioned that too, I think it's a dreadful piece of music I'm afraid. A Bond action cue shouldn't be boring, and somehow the main melody actually sounds bored itself! It kind of drifts off like it's distracted.. :)
I think it's weird that the film before had two of, what I think are, the very best action scenes in the whole Bond series: the Arms Bazaar pre-titles and the BMW car park chase. They're punchy and well-shaped and have a very neat little story with inventive ideas. But then I guess you have the bike chase which does sow the seeds of the rather drawn-out and shapeless action we get in TWINE: the boat chase in TWINE in particular is really episodic (this thing happens, then they go a bit further and this thing happens etc.) and just sort of long and flat rather than the tight and punchy action of something like the remote control BMW chase.
You can kind of spot it in the music in fact: Backseat Driver is a proper track which builds to a climax; Bike Chase and Come in 007 sort of amble along, trying to keep up the energy with a dance beat which sort of joins up the separate bits of the track.
Criticisms of the scene itself? Yeah, I can understand them.
TWINE really sticks out because there's little to no cohesion between 1st and 2nd units. intense character bit-pause for ACTION scene-character bit-ACTION-character bit-Explosion. That's where you most feel Apted's inexperience with big budget films and effects work but it does predate the modern Marvel scenario where they merely slot in a new to big franchise talent as director into the well oiled machine.
But you may say TND still works well! And you'd be right-but that's because it's edited on a dime and under two hours as a Bond film should be...of course when you hire Peckinpah's former editor as director and really put him under the gun with little to no time and a near nonexistent post schedule that's what happens. TWINE is more relaxed and this also shows off all the flaws baked into the Purvis and Wade (who always seem to come up with cool ideas but cannot develop them) original script which Bruce Feirstein was brought into develop and polish. The scripting process really needed more time but they were locked into a film per two years at MGM's insistence and had to get it out before the millennium.
One more opinion: GE, TND and DAD all have great sound mixes. TWINE sadly does not.