It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
I would also nominate TMWTGG--great beginning and end scenes, but the rest is unusually thin, in a way GF and DAF are not. Part of the problem also was that Fleming was ill even at the time he wrote the book and had trimmed his usual daily writing schedule. Very much a "troubled production."
Perhaps, but I find the backstory to Scaramanga fascinating, and the tension is high from the moment the two titans meet. The writing may not be perfect but the story is highly original and in that way better than MR.
I think Drax has a considerably more interesting backstory, and certainly more villainous stature, than a coarse hitman like Scaramanga. As for the story, I much prefer a conspiracy to nuke London over a conspiracy to manipulate sugar futures.
Perhaps I've been reading too many Biggles stories as a kid, but I find the nazi angle a bit boring, done a million times, even back then. Scaramanga isn't just about the Sugar cane, he's the KGB operative in the area. And as it happens those sort of contracts were part of world politics back then.
But what I find interesting is the circus story. Drax is just another mad nazi hellbent on destroying Britain.
Scaramanga's being a KGB operative isn't particularly interesting in itself, especially since he's up to nothing bigger than manipulating sugar futures. That has to be the most boring villain's scheme in any Bond novel. It doesn't motivate the reader to want Bond to stop Scaramanga. The folks who adapted the novel into a comic strip understood this and instead played up the revenge angle of Scaramanga maiming Bond's colleague.
The circus backstory is neat, but it's disconnected from the adult character of Scaramanga, who has no feeling toward animals as an adult and is little more than a coarse, unfeeling thug. Drax's backstory by contrast helps us understand his motivation--being half English, his motives for destroying London are not just Nazism but a deep-seated loathing of England forged by his education there and experiences with its people. His later experience as Werewolf ties into his self-loathing for his English side and is made possible by his upbringing. His backstory explains his actions more so than with any other Bond villain.
Agreed. And all the exciting claims made in his dossier--pistol fetishism, repressed homosexuality, etc.--are forgotten about in the rest of the book. Scaramanga has a wonderful build-up, perhaps the best of any Bond villain, but his actual character is a big let-down.
I think that's because Fleming didn't get the chance to properly write him as a better villain. Christopher Lee's performance is much better written (and that's from Tom Mackiewicz)!
While some of you are bored of the golf game in GF (the book has some lengths but I love the golf part) I'm bored of some chapters in TB.
Great point.
Don't forget Le Chiffre who was a henchman for SMERSH and because he failed was eliminated , for me Scaramanga was the same.
The bit about Scaramanga was alright for me TMWTGG was more about the resurrection of 007 after the Blofeld trilogy, and M used him as the blunt tool she needed to remove a player from the board so 007 could prove his worth or die trying.
I agree that Fleming didn't have the time to write the novel, but I don't think the movie is better written, only that the character is given something more to do. TMWTGG had lots of potential, both movie and film. You have a henchman as the main villain, a simple motivation, a great settings, it's just that Scaramanga is given little to do. He needed more, not necessarily a large plan with a doomsday device, but something that would give us a feel of urgency.
An excellent post, thank you.
I understand your point, but even there TMWTGG is a failure. Bond finding his back to the world is ridiculously easy--in between chapters he gets electro-shock therapy and presto! is magically better again. Instead of having to live with and overcome trauma, Bond is returned to blank slate mode, with barely any memories of the recent past. Even his impossible mission of taking down Scaramanga turns out to be easier than expected, since Pistols doesn't live up to his dossier and his establishment has already been infiltrated by CIA agents. There are many promising elements and ideas in TMWTGG, but Fleming was simply too exhausted and ill to do them justice.
I understand what you are saying but it still is by no means his worst novel even if it is a rough draft instead of refined novel. I find his last novel easily better to read than most continuation novels, simply because it is still written by Ian Fleming and that makes a 007 novel easily better.
I agree. It's a mess, but it has lots of good things, however anarchic the whole novel (novella?) is.