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Yes LTK, even my subconcious tries and stop me from typing those letters and occasionaly wins over the concious responses.
this thread is called: Controversial opinions about Bond films ???
That is mine, no rough night necessary. ;)
Sir Roger Moore is a Saint and a gentleman, he is never miscast!!
The movie must be wrong but never Roger. :D
Right. I don't know what you're getting at. At all. But even Moore's biggest fans have often said he wasn't right for Bond as Fleming wrote him.
They are not Moore's biggest fans.
I find Moore's James Bond a great addition and a saviour of the franchise when the franchise was in dire need for one.
The EON franchise is mostly not Ian Flemings James Bond, some are most movies are not and yet I would not have missed them for the world.
Roger Moore did his great job and then moved on, but of all the actors involved in this franchise I easily rate him the highest as human and supporter.
The 70's were a wild & crazy time. 71's DAF set the gently self-mocking tone that would be in place until 81's FYEO (and even then, Rog's last three flirted with silly a bit). In a decade filled with really brutal cop movies, gory war flicks & end-of-humanity sci-fi downers, Bond was fairly fun, family oriented stuff.
That being said, here are my own controversial opinions:
1. Skyfall is not only overrated and overhyped, but is a genuinely bad film. It has a head-scratching plot even by Bond standards (Its plot holes are so large Blofeld could build a lair in them, so i'm not going to get started on those). it criminally underuses Severine, who had the potential to be as cool a character as Anne Hathaway's catwoman in the Dark Knight Rises, which brings me to my next point. Finally, It tries oh-so-hard to be Christopher Nolan-esque, at which it fails. At least it's a nice showcase for Roger Deakins. Sort of like Mary Goodnight. Nice to look at, but don't rely on it for logical cohesiveness.
2. Licence to Kill is the better of TD's movies. This sentiment is motivated mostly by my absolute loathing for Maryam D'Abo's Kara and two lame-o villains in Brad Whitaker and georgi koskov.
3. Goldfinger is not the quintessential Bond adventure (IMO that distinction goes to Thunderball). Still a Top-5er, but I think you can't do quintessential Bond without the exotic, tropical locales (yeah, GF has Miami, but we're not there for very long and, from what i can gather, it doesn't have much relevance to the plot. I mean, Bond meets Felix and Goldfinger there, but that could as easily have happened in some other, cooler place.) GF also has Switzerland, but doesn't utilize it nearly as well as OHMSS does. Thunderball, on the other hand, has a great PTS in France and the Bahamas are amazingly rendered throughout the film.
My main reason, however, is that you can't have quintessential Bond without Blofeld in all his unseen, cat-stroking allure of mystery. While Savalas as Blofeld is my favorite villain of the entire series, I always felt that the faceless ESB at SPECTRE HQ ordering Largo to steal the bombs and hold the world to ransom completely oozed Bond more than any other film has.
Connery's first four, Lazenby's one & Dalton's two are the only truly Flemingesque movies.
And, of course, DAD. That film screams Fleming, perfection, and is highly ranked amongst the biggest of Bond fans. Right? Right, guys?
In fact GF is a perfect example. In the book's opening Bond is reflecting on what happened the day before, him killing the mexican hit man (not unlike the bit in the CR film where Bond is washing the blood off after the stair fight and stares into the mirror, struggling to come to terms with it).
In the film Connery's Bond cracks a one liner about it. There's a sense of vulnerability to Flemings Bond that isn't in most of the films. The Craig films have done a decent job of showing it but he's like the Terminator in the fight scenes. I think OHMSS is the film that showed it the best.
Which leads me to my controversial opinion: Lazenby was by far the most Flemingesqie Bond.
No love for For Your Eyes Only or the Craigs?
You are exceptionally cultivated! Bang on the money about Laz (although perhaps 'by far' is a bit strong as Sean, Tim and Dan also all have their moments).
I would also say the only really truly Flemingesque films are DN, FRWL, OHMSS, TLD and CR.
GF and TB embrace the humour, gadgets and over the topness of the cinematic Bond too much and I find Dalton's portrayal in LTK rather too grim and cold blooded to ring quite true for the book Bond. Although Bond is happy to seek vengeance for Tracy in YOLT he only does do when the opportunity presents itself and he does not calculatingly go after it from the start.
To distil my controversial thought for today further, only DN, FRWL, OHMSS, TLD & LTK are Flemingesque.
I guess I can, after a fashion...
LTK is Flemingesque in some ways but in others it isn't. Fleming showed that Bond wasn't always happy with his job but LTK takes it a step further and actually has him going rogue.
I think it's a fantastic idea and I love how it's handled in LTK (which is my favourite Bond film) but would Fleming be happy with it? Like @Wizard said, even in YOLT he's only after revenge once Tanaka assigns him to kill Blofeld. LTK goes further than Fleming would've gone.
Bond's also at his most cold blooded in LTK, more than he ever was in the books. I don't really understand when people label Flemings Bond as this cold blooded assassin/blunt instrument because if anything he was the opposite.
Fleming's Bond often struggled with killing. There's the GF example that I mentioned but the most obvious one is Scaramanga. Bond has him cornered and wounded, and instead of ending it there and then he allows him to pray.
Film Bond (especially the rogue assassin we see in LTK), wouldn't have even let things get this far. The cinematic Bond probably would've shot Scaramanga earlier in the car, when he had the chance, maybe even throwing in a quip afterwards.
I've gone off on a bit of a rant now but my point was that while LTK is Flemingesque (mainly because it actually uses bits of Fleming), the character we see is pretty different and he is in most of the films.
The Bond of the books hated killing in cold blood, and a general apathy towards killing full stop.
Fleming's Bond was a bit of a "softy" compared to the filmic version, especially Craig's 007.
It's also one of the reasons why I think that Sean Connery could've ruined OHMSS if he'd returned.
Certainly he had more filmic swagger than Fleming's Bond. But if we had Connery circa FRWL, then maybe. But if we'd had Connery circa YOLT, no thanks.
I think that had they gotten Connery a good script in a less chaotic environment in 1967, he still would have turned in a classic performance. They might then have been able to talk him into doing You Only Live Twice and The Man With the Golden Gun according to the novels in 1969 and 1971, which both would have had the potential for being amazing.
The pitfall here is that, having completed all the novels and thoroughly worn out the desire of their leading man (who would have been even bigger at this point) they might have been unwilling to continue the series, which would have denied us all the great Bond movies after that point. It would be a very steep trade-off, to be sure.
I would agree in many ways that Laz is the closest to Fleming...but I suppose that's because the script allows him to be.
I think Laz's performance is a bit hit-and-miss. Sometimes he's quite bad but when he gets it, he's bang on. I suppose the question is not so much "would Sean have made it better" but "would a more experienced actor have made OHMSS better"?
I agree. He wasn't quite a Hedison or Wright, but he also wasn't a Terry.