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For that reason I love Goldfinger.
Yes, that was before blowing s**t up was Bond's main mission. ;)
It also has this:
..."A clumsy cable, but it will serve for the short period I require your services (It won't, thought Bond, unless you included in the text one of the innocent phrases that would tell M. that the cable was authentic. By now, the Service would know he was working under enemy control. Wheels would be turning very fast indeed)."
From Chapter 16, The Last And The Biggest
Espionage tradecraft technology before technology. :)
Goldeneye was named after an operation in Gibraltar in WW2. I only know this because I have bought a place in Gib, and know the place very well.
I second this. GF is the ultimate Bond movie, that appeals to the cinematic fans and Fleming fans alike. Fleming wrote the movie template with this one. It ticks all the boxes that you expect from a Bond film.
Exciting PTS, Connery at his coolest, hit song, menacing villain and side kick, gadget laden car, brilliant Barry score, Bond playing golf against the villain, ticking time bomb ending, and then the last trick when you think the film is over, on the plane.
And throughout all this, it remains as faithful to the Fleming novel as FRWL or OHMSS.
I would say CR has become the modern day equivalent. This will be the one that all modern day Bond films will be set against. EON hit the jackpot with CR again, but I'll let them into a little secret that they seem unaware of. It's because you went back to the novels. Fleming in his sleep was a far better writer than P&W will ever be.
You don't need to invent Blofeld being Bond's brother, Bond having a daughter in tow, or Bond getting killed to invent drama. Fleming did all of this far better in his books.
Bond blows stuff up quite nicely in the PTS of GF, before Shirley Bassey has even sung a single note. "Heroin-flavored bananas" & so forth...
That was a small explosion in the PTS, and he didn't destroy Fort Knox. ;)
No, he was too busy seeing the reflection of a hood approaching him from behind in the eyes of a beautiful babe. I know I'm always looking for reflections in the eyes of every woman I've ever kissed...
Everything I know I learned by watching James Bond movies!
Don't know why, it just happened.
I think Thunderball's main problem is the speeded up footage at the end- kinda robs it of a visually pleasing climax.
TB was the very first Bond film I ever watched, and I found myself bored through half of it or so. Took years and years of me being a Bond fan for it to significantly rise, and now it's been in my Top 5 for a while.
It's now at number 8 for me, so I was eventually able to get into it. I now find it to have some of the best dialogue of the entire series.
Now if you want to talk about that goofy thing with the little blimp hoisting him and Domino into the sky to catch the plane, I'm there too. Just too much, kinda' like John Travolta and Olivia Newton John flying into the sky at the end of Grease. It's just like, what???
Connery for some reason looks "sharper" in TB.
The speeded up footage is a bit of a bummer.
The underwater scenes really drag the film down for me. Its those moments I tend to skip past when watching TB.
That's odd. Those scenes are an example of state-fo-the-art underwater photography.
I agree, in fact I think I prefer the other underwater scenes from different films in the series like FYEO, LTK, etc
Bonds' mask colour-changing thing distracts me. I didn't know they had those back in the Sixties, actually, do they even have them now? ;)
Okay, seriously, Goldfinger was lightning in a bottle. On almost every level. As young kids we laughingly yelled "fake" at Goldfinger's jet shots, but we enjoyed every single second of it.
As I do now.
On the flip side, I tend to feel sluggish when Bond is prisoner on Goldfinger's stud farm. Except for Sean looking cool in that suit, I just don't get much out of his frequent escape attempts, hiding under models and listening to some of the worst gangster accents and acting out there, and scenes of the series' worst version of Leiter eating KFC and being too bushed to follow up on Bond and crunching a car for no other reason than to crush a car. It just drags till we get to Fort Knox.
In MY day, a film was not judged by its narrative momentum, but by its content.
Yet those first ones still remain at or near the top of most rankings. And I think that’s a testament to their durability, in the end, their continued influence. Had the Brosnan or Craig films been the first films I don’t think we’d still be getting them 50 years hence.
Thanks Jay. You made my case for me eloquently.