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Yes, I see him as influenced by Zorin, too, right down to the hair. Orlov, I hadn't considered, but you are of course right.
Couldn't agree more. Silva was a throwback to a bygone era - the classic Bond villains of the 60's and 70's.
Shame he didn't have a pool filled with sharks with laser beams attached to their frickin' heads ;-)
I agree. One of the reasons I link this Bond film with GF and TSWLM as one of the great larger-than-life pieces.
I think you are right. Craig is not terribly interested in doing a big escapist Bond adventure romp, even though I think he could do a much better job with such material, than either Moore or Broz, because he is a serious Bond, like Connery was, so he would ground the whole thing. No wink-wink. Real danger, even when fighting rubber snakes, going into space, or battling supervillains in volcano strongholds.
IMO, the campier and more outlandish the better, but the camp has to be tempered by real danger and suspense, and this latter part only works if the Bond actor can play the scenes straight ie sell the danger even when facing a bald bastard supervillain stroking a white cat in a hollowed out volcano rocket base with a handy piranaha pit nearby, and a femme fatale accomplice with a "healthy chest," at his beckon.
The epic Bondian awesomeness of YOLT blows me away. Its Bond on steroids which is why I love both TSWLM and MR too as they were both attempts at the same type of film, but Moore IMO can't pull these type of films off, quite the way a more malevolent Bond like Sean could.
Yes, I do agree, Craig made strides in SF, re Bond's flippant and sardonic humour. There were attempts to find that vibe. No doubt there, especially in the Macau casino scenes, which were very well done. And Silva was a good OTTP Bond villain, far more engaging that the quirky little rat, Domenic Greene.
But still alas, I think Craig and Mendes are wedded to the character drama formula. It's like they have to do something different. Sigh.
I don't think we will get another big unabashed Bond romp, until the next actor comes along ie the next era of Bond filmmaking.
Things have a way of coming around again.
To that end, I would suggest hiring a young actor, who is trying to make bones, and would be happy simply doing justice to the Connery persona and the vibe of the older films.
Maybe if the new Uncle film is a smash hit, Bond will copy. The new Uncle's certainly got star power with Cavill, Hammer and Guy Ritchie driving the bus. Maybe Bond will be inspired and try to do something more Uncleish and less Bourneish.
@timmer, we think alike here.
Well that would be most welcome, I'd say.
1. Casino Royale- 4.33
2. Goldfinger- 4.30
3. From Russia With Love- 4.26
4. Skyfall (5/7 reviews)- 4.20
5. The Living Daylights- 4.12
6. Thunderball- 4.09
7. The Spy Who Loved Me- 4.06
8. Licence To Kill- 4.05
9. On Her Majesty's Secret Service- 3.99
10. For Your Eyes Only- 3.91
11. You Only Live Twice- 3.90
12. Live And Let Die- 3.81
13. GoldenEye- 3.75
14. Octopussy- 3.73
15. Tomorrow Never Dies- 3.63
16. Dr. No- 3.57
17. Quantum Of Solace- 3.42
18. A View To A Kill- 3.28
19. The World Is Not Enough- 3.17
20. The Man With The Golden Gun- 3.09
21. Diamonds Are Forever- 2.99
22. Moonraker- 2.97
23. Die Another Day- 2.70
Good afternoon fellow originals and guests! As we see, Spy has displaced LTK at #7, the next LTK review will tell the tale there.
The idea to ask some group questions seems to be working as far as generating interest with our originals review panel as well as everyone else who has wished to comment. I have a literal smorgasbord of thesis ideas ready to go after @Beatles speaks his mind on Moonraker.
Regarding previous questions, it was a clean sweep for fans of the John Barry created musical style. The people have spoken- we want to hear the brass, the lush strings, the theme song variated- in short we don't want another GoldenEye just for the sake of originality. I could not agree more. As far as if Spy is or isn't a top 10 film, the views were much more divided but everyone does seem to feel that whether it is or isn't, it's both a fun entry that manages to survive it's campier elements and an important milestone in the canon, establishing the type of portrayal Moore would mostly go with through the remainder of his tenure and one that provided a clear distinction between his and the Connery era.
That's all for now. Have a great weekend everyone!
AS APPLIED TO THE ADVENTURES OF THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS SECRET AGENT
As World War II was drawing to a close, British Naval Intelligence operative Ian Fleming decided that he was going to become a novelist, declaring to a friend: “I am going to write the spy story to end all spy stories.” If such was indeed his desire, Fleming failed miserably. Rather than “ending” spy stories, his creation of James Bond, Agent 007 gave the genre of espionage fiction a fresh new slant on life, a larger-than-life look on life, if you will. Apres-Bond, spies drank harder, smoked more, and had much more active sex lives than ever before. Their missions affected the course of world history far more profoundly, and more frequently, than ever been envisioned by anyone prior to Fleming. In the real world, espionage did not change, of course, other than in whatever fashion that advances in technology allowed or required it to change. What changed was the creation of a new audience for spy thrillers, and their desires and expectations concerning this new literary sub-genre. Spying was sexy because James Bond MADE it sexy, spies indulged themselves in adult pleasures more intensely than normal people because James Bond told his rapidly-growing audience that this was so.
“Balderdash!” said responsible literary critics, and of course it was indeed balderdash of the very highest grade. A true professional in the field of espionage is likely to lead a life that is more circumspect than that of the average person, not less so, because to behave in a Bondish fashion would be to attract attention and suspicion to one’s self, thereby endangering the agent and his or her mission. Nonetheless, legions of paying customers made James Bond a first-rate contradiction in terms: the World’s Most Famous Secret Agent. Each one of us, paying customers for an increasingly unrealistic new type of fiction, chose to willingly suspend our collective disbelief in the outlandish adventures that were presented to us in novels and in movies. We knew that the storytellers, be they Fleming himself or his licensors at Eon Productions, were presenting us with larger and larger rations of balderdash. We chose to ignore the responsible critics and to willingly suspend our disbelief, because hey: this stuff is fun! And what’s wrong with having a little fun now and again?
Let us pause for a moment to examine this important phrase: the willing suspension of disbelief. The decision to willingly suspend one’s sense of skepticism in what one knows to be a fiction (that is, an untruth told for the sake of entertainment) is essentially an unspoken agreement between a storyteller and his or her audience, and is particularly necessary when the story in question has an element of the fantastic at its core. When the first caveman told the story of an exceptionally mighty hunter in front of a roaring campfire to his astonished tribe, this technique was employed for the very first time; it has been utilized by those telling and enjoying the stories of Gilgamesh and Hercules, Gulliver and Captain Nemo, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, and Batman ever since. When we the audience know that there is something unrealistic about a tale, and we turn off that little nagging part of our brain that says, “Wait a minute, this couldn’t really occur in quite this way…” then we are participating in an age-old and time-honored process. There is an implied level of trust in the use of this process; the storyteller knows that the audience needs to be able to take the outrageous matters set before them with a certain level of seriousness or the entire enterprise will fall apart. Ian Fleming was an especially canny purveyor of this technique; Bond’s exceptional combat skills, unmatchable attractiveness to the opposite sex, uncanny luck in games of chance, and preternatural appetite for stimulants of various sorts would have been laughable in the hands of a less skilled storyteller…and sometimes, when the offerings of a less skillful screenwriter go afoul, laughability is exactly the result achieved. At that point, the story in question devolves from the level of a exceptional or even merely competent suspense thriller, and reaches the form known somewhat derisively as “Camp.”
Which brings us to the question, “What exactly IS Camp?” Wikipedia (surely the ultimate authority on such matters in the online world!) gives us a variety of definitions, among them: “an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing or humorous because of its ridiculousness to the viewer” as well as “an ironic appreciation of that which might otherwise be considered outlandish or corny.” Our own @4EverBonded recently wrote: “When I look up “camp” in the dictionary I see a still from Moonraker…” In my dictionary, that still shows Adam West in the 1966 ABC TV series version of Batman. As a 12 year old encountering that series for the first time during its premiere, I did not know that it was intended as anything other than a straightforward adaptation of the character I had already seen in comic books; I did not find see the irony or humor in that depiction. As a result, I absolutely loved the show; it was a distillation of nearly everything that the 12 year old American male child that was me wanted to see on the TV screen. A few years later, when the suddenly far more sophisticated 14 year old I had become saw Batman and the Joker engage in a surfing competition to determine which one of them would become the king of the beach, I turned off the television in disgust. I finally saw the joke in the camp incarnation of Batman, and I didn’t think it was particularly funny.
This is the problem with “camp:” at its root, the joke is on the viewer. In a very real sense, the storyteller is saying to the audience, “How silly you are to be continuing to follow this drivel!” It’s difficult to effectively bring “camp” to an audience for very long before the joke wears out. There is a constant need for any successful storyteller to give the audience MORE…in a seriously intended storyline, that only means another adventure, new situations, other characters; but in a “camp” storyline, it requires more outrageous situations and an even more heavy-handed form of humor, eventually going beyond the confines of “camp” and becoming … “cartoon.”
For any storyline with the intention of seriously engaging its audience, “cartoonish” is a dangerous stance to take. While “camp” can and does employ both tension and humor in relatively equal doses, “cartoon” throws tension to the winds and stakes all on humor. There are no physical limits for a cartoon -- the Road Runner can run off a cliff and stand there suspended in the air, smirking at the Coyote. When Bugs Bunny stares down the bore of Elmer Fudd’s rifle, the audience knows that Bugs is in no danger. Even when Daffy Duck is blasted full in the face by that rifle, the worst that will happen is that his little black feathers will get severely frazzled and he will tell his adversary, “You’re dethpicable!” before stalking off-camera, only to be back in his original state for the very next scene. For a James Bond story, this is not a valid position to take; for Bond, the bottom line is this: you can tease the audience somewhat with camp in moderately small doses…but when you descend into the cartoonish, you’re playing with fire and likely to get burned.
When Bond ran across the backs of a small fleet of crocodiles in LALD, he was moving beyond camp into cartoon. When Dr. Kanaga inflated like a balloon and blew up at the climax of LALD, he was also blowing up in the face of Eon Productions. Back to the drawing board, guys! Better stop buying your gadgets from Acme Productions… When a single slide-whistle sound effect ruined one of the best stunts in MWTGG for many audience members, it was a reaction against the cartoonish nature that the film-makers had allowed to creep into a formerly suspenseful series. In TSWLM, the creative staff of the Bond series achieved the nearly-impossible: a perfect blend of camp and serious treatments, descending into cartoon only when the film was nearly over: when Jaws cheated his ironic fate and killed the shark, rather than vice-versa. In Moonraker, the cartoon sensibility that is at the base of Jaws takes over from the PTS, when he survives a fall from an airplane by landing in a circus tent. If Roger Moore’s Bond is Bugs Bunny in a tuxedo -- and he does indeed appear to be wather wabbitish at times -- then Hugo Drax is Yosemite Sam (with his outrageous facial hair he can’t be portrayed by Elmer Fudd, although Fudd would probably make a fine Gowdfingah) and Jaws can only be played by the Tasmanian Devil. Does anybody out there remember the only thing that can render the Tasmanian Devil harmless? Let me remind you: it’s romance. Bugs sends off overseas for a mysterious crate which arrives containing a female Taz; she grasps the male Devil by the ear and drags him off-camera as he mumbles his apologies and protests fruitlessly. The analog to this scene is coming up in Moonraker, friends. It won’t be pretty, but it WILL be instructive to the folks at Eon Productions…
So this small digression should be considered as a humorous featurette in place of the expected review of Moonraker…which WILL occur before long, honest it will. Believe it or not, the least enjoyable of these reviews for me (in the writing of at least) was TMWTGG. I really don’t get much pleasure out of eviscerating a Bond film, and Golden Gun deserved no less in my opinion. You may not be surprised to learn that Moonraker is in for a similar drubbing. So it’s going to take a little while longer than I had intended, but it’ll get done. In the meanwhile: this. Plus our ’70s Real World timeline, coming up in just a few minutes…
The following timeline is intended only to indicate how popular culture and/or political occurrences may have affected the James Bond movie series. It is by no means complete or definitive.
1971 DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER is released. It is the last Eon Production of a James Bond film to star Sean Connery. (Surprisingly, the world does not end, although some wobbling on its axis is observed.)
1971-1980 The period of Détente. During the presidencies of Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, some thawing of relations between the United States and the USSR took place. James Bond will have to look elsewhere for his enemies.
1971-1975 (approx.) Blaxploitation films prove to be an increasingly popular genre. Yes, the genre lasts beyond 1975, but the number of films released in this genre is significantly diminished as of 1976.
1972-1975 David Carradine stars in ABC-TV’s "Kung Fu" series, officially launching a craze for depictions of the martial arts in popular culture.
1973 LIVE AND LET DIE is released, the first film to star Roger Moore as 007. Blaxploitation continues undaunted.
1973 "Enter the Dragon released." Bruce Lee, its star, passes away this same year.
1973-1979 (approx) The energy crisis brings the western world to an awareness of the risks of dependance on fossil fuels. That awareness is quickly forgotten with the election of Ronald Reagan as President of the US in 1980.
1974 THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN is released. The energy crisis continues despite James Bond recovering the Solex Agitator. (Personally, I blame J.W. Pepper.)
1975 "Jaws" (the film) is released, depicting a shark which terrorizes a town on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States.
1977 (July 7) THE SPY WHO LOVED ME is released, featuring a character named Jaws. He survives this film by biting a shark.
1977 (September 20) Fonzie jumps the shark. ( But Jaws did it first. If I have to explain this entry I will, but I‘d like to believe I won‘t have to…)
1977 The first STAR WARS film is released. I don’t want to call it Episode IV, please don’t force me to do so…
1977 SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (the film, the sound track, the phenomenon) is released. It is not the first disco music ever recorded, but it brings the genre to its greatest measure of popularity until such time as the Apocalypse occurs…
1979 MOONRAKER is released. (My review is still forthcoming.)
1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She (or an uncanny likeness) will be appearing in a future Bond film.
1979 Just to end on a serious note: the Iranian revolution occurs. Hostages taken at US Embassy. Fun time is over…
That was the ‘70s, kids. We don’t make these things up, we just critique them…
That recrap of the 70's just sent me through a time machine
Ahh Puberty ;))
I have to agree with your assessment regarding the gator stunt. It is within the laws of physics unlike virtually everything associated with Jaws. But it's also a bit contrived considering they had to anchor the gators in place to do it- damned uncooperative and cantankerous reptiles!
Otherwise, I very much enjoyed what @Beatles took time to write before he obviously gives Moonraker the same sort of mauling that Ms. Dufour endured. The 1970's Bond films were a radical departure from the glorious espionage classics of the 1960's, YOLT being a brief blot on that at times, but to that point refreshingly original to the point that it was often imitated then and well into the reign of Moore, Brosnan, and Austin Powers, not to mention the later Matt Helm films and a host of other imitators. A steady dose of camp and cartoon starts off in earnest with DAF and carries on, although mostly with less of a focus in the 1980's, into the end of the Moore era. The one thing he mentions regarding the "balderdash" of literary critics that he appears to agree with, is the contrary existence of a Serbian WW2 spy and playboy working for MI6 as a double agent who had infiltrated the German Abwehr named Dusan "Dusko" Popov. The similarities of Popov's real life behavior to the cinematic Bond of DR/FRWL are quite similar and no surprise to anyone familiar with his legend- Ian Fleming knew him and saw his antics first hand at the casinos of Lisbon as well as with the ladies. A man like this is completely antithetical to the balderdash theory and skews it, therefore making the type of Bond we see in those wonderful debut and sophomore efforts on the silver screen entirely plausible and believable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dušan_Popov
And here is another article that points out similar characters, some of whom were also known to Fleming- the great man became that way by being a visionary!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspirations_for_James_Bond
http://thebondologistblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/kingsley-amis-draxs-gambit-and-reform.html
@SirHenry, thanks for the info on Dusan Popov & the other proto-Bonds. While I was previously familar with the exploits of Sidney Reilly, Popov's name is new to me. I shall endeavor to learn more about him at my earliest opportunity!
That stated, I'd like to assure one & all that I am not actually in agreement with the "balderdash" argument -- at least, no more so than Fleming himself, who was once quoted as saying, “James Bond is just a piece of nonsense I dreamed up. He’s not a Sidney Reilly, you know.” I found this quote in the one book on Reilly that I have read, "Ace of Spies," which was adapted for television several decades ago. As soon as I've finished my Bond reviews I intend to hunt that one down as well. As far as I'm concerned, the "balderdash" critics have either forgotten or ignored the three basic rules of criticism: to ascertain (A) what was the author's intent, to determine (B) how well did the author achieve that aim, and finally to conclude (C) was that a worthwhile goal? I believe these critics either miscalculate Fleming's intent, or have mistakenly concluded that his intent was not a worthwhile one in the first place. To cut the issue short here, I'll simply say that the long-term success of Fleming's work reveals those critics to be terribly mistaken. I had thought my characterization of his work as "balderdash of the very highest grade" had given sufficient indication of where my sympathies rest on this issue...but I suppose the "B word" has sufficiently negative weight to it that I should have been a bit less facetious.
As far as the physics of crocodile crossing are concerned: I could point out that my precise words, "he was moving beyond camp into cartoon" do not state that Bond had actually ARRIVED at cartoon yet, just that he was in the process of leaving the relatively "safe" territory of camp behind...or I could argue that the film-makers' act of anchoring the crocodiles into place makes the issue of the comparative reality of this scene fairly well moot. But my actual reasoning on this topic is far more subjective than either of these arguments: watching the crocodile crossing scene for the first time, I found myself thinking (also for the first time): "That's not a James Bond move -- that's a Bugs Bunny move!" Your mileage may vary, of course; but for me, this was the first time the "spectre" of cartoonism raised its toothy head into the Bond film series.
Fair enough but I fear that this could lead to an opening of a certain can of worms. If you are going on feeling alone then one could make a number of arguments about what "feels cartoonish". From Oddjob's hat and the ejector seat in GF to the jet pack in TB to the giant space capsule, Little Nellie and exploding cigarette in YOLT. Perhaps the biggest offender being in DAF where Bond's "mousetrap" in his pocket seems rather like an ACME hand buzzer.
"Bond may go wildly beyond the probable but not beyond the possible." If I may quote Lee Pfeiffer's great book, The Incredible World of 007 ( It's a priceless adolescent treasure, what can I say? ), on which the filmmakers claimed that they maintained Fleming's original philosophy during the making of Goldfinger. I find that the crocodile scene does just that. Mileage does indeed vary, as you have said.
And this wonderful statement was completely disregarded when applied to Jaws. He was "The Terminator" before there really was one! But then, with the exception of Goldfinger, I've always enjoyed and preferred the more realistic Bond movies, which I'm sure is part of the reason I've enjoyed the Craig era thus far. There's nothing wrong with using a bit of cutting edge technology to spice things up, just keep it real and I don't mind at all.
Exactly. Eon should have hired Lee Pfeiffer as a consultant for the Moore era!
I guess it is fair to say that this philosophy has never been more betrayed,than in the PTS of GE.
Simply embarrassing!
I couldn't agree more with this, it was even worse than the MR PTS for me and until this date, I didn't think it was possible.
Between that and our new Bond hanging upside down in the crapper, the Brosnan era definitely didn't get off on the right foot with me.
I would really like to see these "proofs" visually documented. I once saw a physicist deliver a discourse before an audience what was needed to make this "Stunt" happen in Reality and while I have forgotten most of the details it involved a highly specialized Overall, a very exact Air temperature and a timing of Bond in the vicinity of 1/100 of a second. Sorry but I will never ever believe it. To me one of the main differences from present to vintage Bond (= pre GE) is that whatever we see improbable in the Old ones has actually been done. Take MRs PTS for instance. What a ridiculous idea, BUT there were two Guys jumping Out of a plane REALLY exchanging their parachutes in the air. This to me is at least a tiny kind of Proof this Thing could happen, while most stunts of the current films don't qualify in that Département.
And BTW, I am not at all a Brosnan disliker. Not at all,really!
There are more...
How about pulling the plane out of that steep nosedive then? I'd buy that one even less. Some people who are here in this Forum and claim to know say at that angle and depth it couldn't physically be done.
It's funny how sometimes the PTS in Bond films can be either worse than the film as a whole (FYEO) or better than the film as a whole (DAD).
What a pity to borrow an idea from a limp imitation of Bond to use in an actual Bond film! Maybe that's Bond beating Matt Helm at their own game but what a sorry game to play...
No, we are now talking impossible in the same way the same people say that the QOS sinkhole parachute jump was to survive. Although since we've seen this backdraft sort of transfer done in MR, somehow it doesn't seem to be very original. But then, a lot of the Brosnan era could be classified that way. Zing! Sorry. All things considered, I really do seem to know how to hurrrrrrt you :P. Seriously though, I will always appreciate GE and TND, they are still fun and enjoyable entries for me.
@Dr_Yes- thanks for coming aboard, I always appreciate intelligent posters whether original fans or not. Did you become a fan between 1962-1972 by any chance? If so we'd all love to hear your story. FYEO? That PTS didn't bother me, as it was believable and they were sticking it to McGlory in a legal way that he could do nothing about. Now you're talking my all time favorite of the Moore films :)
Well, I watched it and saw some key differences in what we saw in GE, such as the distance from the plane to the ground and a space to land after the stuntman got on the plane. I would have bought into that a lot easier and I still have a huge problem with bringing the plane back up and out of the gorge in it's dimensions, which I don't feel is even in the realm of possible. It makes the SF PTS even more probable in comparison, as it's fact that people have survived going over Niagara Falls with no protection nor training how to take a fall.
It's interesting to hear the stuntman state early on that the Bond people couldn't pull it off for real. So while obviously possible to do in the right situation, which improves and betters my view of the MR stunt (except for Jaws which I will save for upcoming MR commentary), my view is still that it's not believable at all in GE and has absolutely nothing to do with why I don't care for Brosnan as much as the other Bond actors (with the exception of Lazenby). Interesting and very enlightening regardless, thanks for being a valued original as well as posting it!