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Comments
Wanted to watch a Craig Bond since he's announced his return and this was the only one I had left to watch this Bondathon. Love a lot of the moments - Bond getting his martini without actually having to say the line, toasting to Severine's bodyguards, the DB5's reveal, Kincade, the assault on Skyfall Lodge, the ending in that office.
A lot of the characters and their interactions are genuinely funny, and Silva is a great villain. This viewing made it even more apparent that Silva shouldn't have been retroactively made a SPECTRE agent. It would literally be if they decided to make Goldfinger a SPECTRE agent in Thunderball.
1. From Russia With Love
2. Casino Royale '06
3. Skyfall
4. Dr. No
5. GoldenEye
6. Octopussy
7. The Spy Who Loved Me
8. Quantum of Solace
9. For Your Eyes Only
10. Live And Let Die
11. You Only Live Twice
12. SPECTRE
13. The World Is Not Enough
14. The Man With The Golden Gun
15. A View To A Kill
16. Moonraker
17. Die Another Day
18. Tomorrow Never Dies
19. Never Say Never Again
When he waits for Patrice's plane to come into Shanghai, Bond sits up at the bar, no drink-- like the ex-alcoholic testing his triggers (and, at the time, he was trying to get back in shape (from the bunker back in London, to the swim in Shanghai)... This always stood out to me, from the first time I saw it. I can't but help but think that this was a subtle subtext of where Bond was at psychologically...
sheer perfection
Among the greatest of all Bonds. I remain flabbergasted by how the many don't see it as such. But then, we live in a world that simply doesn't make sense at times.
Brosnan definitely looks his best here though.
The endless bad jokes/puns/dialogues are definitely a big hamper on the enjoyment for me. Roger's films often approached self-parody, but they never felt like amateur pastiches, and I think that's what too much of the Brosnan era amounted to. The constant harping about Bond's shoulder becomes a hilarious gag, as does whatever Bond is supposed to have with Elektra. I can see what they intended, but the execution is so off.
"Oh I'm sure they're perfectly rounded"
"Err...he was buried with work"
(From DAD) "now...you said something about...going down together?"
Moore didn't really do that - even if he did go into slimy territory too much sometimes.
Yeah, I get that. Like he's waiting for the BOOM tss from the drums that never comes.
Not parody, pastiche. I'd take parody if I had to, but it's all too fan fictiony and that's down to how the lines are delivered where the characters seem self-aware that they're in a goofy film. The one-liners feel like they are out of a five year old's idea of a Bond movie, and the trend continued in DAD. That's the point when Bond films stop being Bond films and instead pretend/try to be them, only exaggerated to the max such that it's all too much. They can at times be embarrassing for me to watch.
Only in those movies could we actually get set ups and one-liners like...
[Bond fights a group of men as he races down a bowling alley, and throws a man into a line of pins, knocking them all over]
Bond: "That's what I call a strike out."
[Bond pulls a lever that releases tons of tied paper bills on top of the villain, crushing him]
Bond: "I'm green with envy."
[Bond fires a torpedo from his Aston while parked on a dock, penetrating the hull of a villain's ship as it begins taking water]
Bond: "Talk about a sinking feeling."
None of the above would be complete without a cheeky tie-straightening or wink to the camera, though.
Thats why I don't blame him for being pissed at the fact that he was never given a good script to work with besides GoldenEye. He was probably like, " If you can't beat them, join them."
DAF, ( last night on itv 4 )
Yeah that's true. "Saved by the bell" comes instantly to mind.
I think Brosnan actually used that "sinking feeling" one in the Everything or Nothing video game.
I still have my recordings from 2000 from the 15 days of 007 on TBS. Sometimes nice to flashback on that since I was 12 when I recorded them.
Brosnan delivers the jokes "for the audience", acknowledging the fact they are jokes. You can see the same logic being applied when he puts on the x-ray glasses and walks around the casino looking at the women. His facial expression conveys the enjoyment Bond derives from the situation, but also reads as him saying to the viewer that "yes, I'm damn lucky to be wearing these!" Roger Moore does the same, but Brosnan is perhaps generally more "showy" about it. Still, nothing wrong with that, in my opinion, as long as it doesn't break the tone of the scene. And it doesn't. Furthermore, for comparison's sake, Brosnan never exceeds the level of smartassery Moore reaches in Moonraker.
I think the issue some, including myself, take is that it all comes off as very unnatural because it is so overplayed. There's no sense of nuance, subtlety or anything of the sort, just very sloppy and overt lines and dialogues to go along with the overt performance. Roger's films were over the top and were slavish to audience too, but there was an attempt to be smart and witty under the surface, and the lines had a lot more thought and craft in how they were written and delivered such that you didn't expect a laugh reel to be playing after everything Bond said; there was nuance and subtlety to the comedy. The Brosnan era often amounts to a C-level tribute band of the Moore films, on account of the lack of talent on board to pull it off, but also because of the era's miscalculation that what worked in the 70s (and 60s for that matter) could still work. It couldn't work, and wouldn't have even if the feel of the 70s was effectively and skillfully realized.
"Showiness" is the exact word I've thought before of in terms of Brosnan's Bond. Sometimes it works in a cutesy sort of way and raises a smile from me ("lets...toast to your evaluation shall we" and the later tie straightening in the tank), but other times I do find myself cringing a little...especially as I've got a little older.
I agree that Moore did the same in a slightly more "letchy" sort of way at times (Moonraker's "seems to have an eye for a good investment" line to Corrine again comes to mind in that it's very knowing in a ho-ho-ho aren't I funny kind of way). It's one reason I think MR is one of his weaker Bond portrayals However, Moore (and the scriptwriters) knew when to dial it back.