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
Yes, another great moment.
His suit in the late-90s was disgraceful but it was so ridiculous that it was dismissed by every court that looked at it. I stick to my guns that John Calley and Sony took advantage of a bitter and disillusioned old man.
Also, as a Connery fan, you got an extra Connery film because of him!
The biggest change I've noticed among Bond fans over the past 10 years is that the reputation of GF has sank like a stone. It was generally held up to be the very best (or second behind FRWL) almost unanimously. Now, it's not unusual at all to find comments like this claiming it's among the worst. I wonder why?
(EDIT: Just re-read that and realised "I wonder why?" looks a bit sarcastic. It's not - I genuinely do wonder why)
Well, I'm not a huge fan of it either. I think that it's very overrated and where the film version of Bond really took over from the book version of Bond, in the popular consciousness.
An extra piece-of-garbage Connery film as I understand (I've never seen it). Even so, we have DR, FRWL, GF and TB, who needs another film?
And I don't think he really cooperated with EON, Cubby and Harry gave him space and a piece of the cake in order to avoid legal demands. But that wasn't enough for McClory... I can't really understand how can anyone defend him?
As for GF, I don't think that the fans opinion has change. It seems to me that some of them like it, another "half" don't but this enters in contrast with the general audience that regards it as the best (but as far as they are casual viewers, in my opinion it's because they remember it more or stands as a classic because of the impact).
That is quite a bold statement from someone who has never seen the film. Do you always take the opinions of others at such face value?
I'm not terribly sure what film he's referring to? Is it NSNA?
I'm not a huge fan although I would rate it much higher than a few Eon films (DAD, for example) but it seems a bit odd to hold out against it so strongly without having seen it. I'll bet there's at least one film you love that's considered bad by general consensus.
That's incorrect. He very much co-operated with them. He had the rights to TB and agreed to produce it for Eon rather than as a rival production. I don't really know how his actions could be interpreted any other way? Broccoli and Saltzman didn't work with him "to avoid legal demands." He wasn't making any legal demands. He legitimately held the film rights to Thunderball and wanted to produce it. They all reached an agreement for him to produce it for Eon.
Now that was a commercial decision because, as @Wizard pointed out upthread, a Bond film with Connery was worth vastly more than a Bond film without Connery. But it's not as though his hands were tied. As Charles K Feldman proved just 2 years later there were plenty of people willing to throw time and money at a non-Eon Bond. Particularly TB, which was considered (correctly, as it turns out) to be the Bond novel with the most cinematic potential. (And he could have always just waited a couple of years for Connery and really set the cat among the pigeons. Connery had, after all, agreed to star in Feldman's CR for $1m)
I think you've probably hit upon one of the reasons. I became a Bond fan around the time of GE so, for me, GF was always the Undisputed Classic (or, at least, seemed to be) so it's just a bit of a surprise to find it disparaged far more regularly than it used to be. OHMSS, on the other hand, seems to be widely accepted as one of the very best now whereas - certainly back in the 90s - there seemed to be very mixed feelings about it.
Well actually I haven't seen it from start to finish, only some bits of it. But I acknowledge that my aversion towards the film come a great deal out of McClory.
Even if he deserves credit for the plot of TB, in my opinion he wasn't entitled to used James Bond, M, Q, Moneypenny... to sum up, nothing that was previously created by Ian Fleming!
That I belive was stated in the "Everything or Nothing" documentary.
By the way, I may add to my "hate list" the fact that "Everything or Nothing" hasn't yet been released in the US.
It's only around here that I've seen people disliking Goldfinger. Elsewhere, at least in more casual circles, it's still unstintingly praised. I would imagine that it will reclaim its rightful position atop the list of Bond movies in due time.
Although even if you dislike the movie, you absolutely have to acknowledge that without it, we wouldn't have Bond today. It would be a moderately successful 1960's series, not a cultural juggernaut, and we most certainly wouldn't be here talking about them all.
That's a tad debatable. While GF was a factor in the praise of the Bond franchise and its growing success in the early sixties, I don't think it is the end all be all reason the series continued onward. After all, TB was the film that really started the massive worldwide "Bondmania", with an epic story and scope so impressive that it makes GF look small and weak in comparison.
Right. Oddly enough, however, TB is largely forgotten, except by hardcore Bondheads.
Is it really? I'd say it is one of the most famous ones. Not as much as GF, TSWLM or even YOLT, but still.
Not from where I sit. Among the general movie-going public I'd argue that DN, FRWL, GF, LALD, Spy, MR, GE, DAD, CR and SF all are more famous. Of course the temporal proximity factor helps GE, DAD, CR and SF.
I'd go as far as to say that the majority of the general movie-going public do not necessarily remember the films as such, but rather specific elements, such as titles, villains, girls, stunts, gadgets and hollowed out volcanoes etc. They would be hard pressed to match the scenes with the corresponding films. It's just the reality of such a long and productive franchise.
This.
The only reason TB was so big was because people saw GF and expected more of the same.
Agree entirely. In the publics eyes TB would come bottom half comfortably for the fact that its a very run of the mill entry. Might have been big at the time but then so were Transformers and The Blair Witch Project but will anyone remember them in 50 years?
It's absurd that McClory was allowed to participate in the production of TB, when EON had already made three great pictures without his help. His help on TB, I'm sure was not desired.
But from a fan's pov, McClory's machinations, jobbed us of another Blofeld picture with TSWLM, and robbed us of any future Eon produced fun-with-the-man-with-the-cat.
I think GF's rep is solid. It remains the most iconic of all Bond films. I've seen it in cinema, at least 5x in the last 5 years, because it's the Bond film that rep theatres and misc movie festivals keep bringing back.
And it is one of the great Bond epics. It oozes '60's Bondmania and Bond style. It's the film, that launched Bondmania.
For Fleming fans, it was also a fun and exciting treatment of the novel.
You may well be right.
FWIW, DN, FRWL and GF are the only Bond films in the Criterion Collection series.
I would agree with this too. The average moviegoers probably remember the Connery era as a whole, don't know where Grant was, when Blofeld showed up with the scar, but do remember the one with the scar and the cat, the guy with an eyepatch, etc.
Except for Goldfinger, probably. I think people's memories are a bit more specific with the golden girl, Oddjob, the laser table, Pussy Galore, and Goldfinger. But you never know.
Although, this has given me an idea to start a thread about general public perceptions of Bond. Be right back.
Well, Fleming plagiarised the story that McClory and Wittingham worked on alongside him without payment or credit. I know that if I worked on a film script with JK Rowling and she then took our work and turned it into her next bestseller, I'd want more than just a line of credit in the novel!
Either way - and in defence of the legal system we were criticising - it seems that Fleming settled with McClory out of court and sold him the film rights. So it was really no different to him selling the CR rights to Gregory Ratoff in '55 or the film rights to the rest to Broccoli and Saltzman in '61.
As for him being "allowed to participate in the production of TB", he owned the rights so it was the other way around - he allowed Eon to participate on his film (it was Broccoli and Saltzman approached him.) Incidentally, the research he had done and his work on the film were apparently very useful and much valued by Eon and Terence Young, according to Raymond Benson at least. Would be very interested to know more about how that relationship worked if anyone knows...?
My understanding about his injunction in 1976 was that McClory objected to the use of SPECTRE rather than Blofeld (Eon had the rights to use Blofeld as he appeared in Fleming's OHMSS and YOLT whereas SPECTRE only appeared in TB.) Maibuam's original treatment for TSWLM, as I understand it, had Blofeld kicked out of SPECTRE very early on and the organisation taken over by a new anarchist villain.
For what it's worth I had a conversation with someone recently who swore blind Roger Moore starred in You Only Live Twice. Their reasoning, for themself, was that it's a "Roger Moore type film" and it is.
Kevin McClory. (Greedy producer who wanted James Bond for himself, instead bored everyone with his crappy Thunderball Remake.)
Purvis and Wade. (for Die Another Day only though, I don't mind there other Bond writing works as they had help from other writers with them.)
Lee Tamahori. (Bad director who almost ruined the franchise, believer of the stupid 007 Code Name farce.)