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The worst cinematic Bond moment?
stag
In the thick of it!
Firstly I've done a search and can find no similar topics.
We all love 007, our membership of this site proves it, but even our favourite action hero can sometimes be the cause of mild embarrassment. With that in mind what was the most cringeworthy line, scene, outfit, you have witnessed?
For me it has to be the dance scene in NSNA. When Bond tangos with Domino. Truly toe curling awful. SC was stiffer than a day old corpse. Who the hell thought that would be a good addition to the film?
We all love 007, our membership of this site proves it, but even our favourite action hero can sometimes be the cause of mild embarrassment. With that in mind what was the most cringeworthy line, scene, outfit, you have witnessed?
For me it has to be the dance scene in NSNA. When Bond tangos with Domino. Truly toe curling awful. SC was stiffer than a day old corpse. Who the hell thought that would be a good addition to the film?
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Comments
CR 67 and NSNA both awful films.
Other good contenders though are the fire engine chase scene, Britt Eckland's arse cheek and Jaws falling in love.
I don't mind that one ;)
Honorable mentions...
1. "Yo momma"
2. "Anytime you want to drop by and listen to my Barry Manilow collection"
3. Sherriff J.W Pepper
God knows what audience age it was aimed at and who they thought would actually find it funny. The moment Bond films became nothing but a cheap joke.
AVTAK is actually an ok film in all, but it's a shame the makers couldn't have re-done that scene George Lucas style and omitted the song for DVD and BD releases.
Jaws falling in love is a close second....
Here's my worst for the official Bonds though:
1. Jaws falling in love (almost offensive to the character we knew in TSWLM, although in fairness he was dipping into comedy there as well)
2. TMWTGG's pointless tangent with the karate school, Hip's nieces, Hip randomly driving off without Bond, the god-awful "Mexican screw-off" line, J.W. Pepper's forced return, the 20,000 baht boy being pushed off, and all the rest of the stuff pointlessly added in for cheap laughs. You completely forget that the movie is supposed to be about Bond hunting for Scaramanga at this point.
3. DAD's horrible CGI-fest
4. That pathetic slide-whistle dubbed over the car-flip in TMWTGG. Could've put the Bond theme but instead ruined an unprecedented stunt with that terrible sound-effect.
5. The snowboarding in AVTAK. Another chance to put the Bond theme over it (which was indeed criminally underused in the entire movie) but instead they have that horrific Beach Boys song. Apparently it was funny at the time, so what do I know, but it's pretty cringeworthy today. I'm not as bothered by it now, but it's still very disappointing.
6. Blofeld in drag. Pointlessly demeaning to the character. It's such a short and minor scene so it's not crippling, but by the same token, if it's so minor it could've been omitted.
7. Brosnan's overreacting in that moment where he tries to confront Elektra over her suspected betrayal.
8. Kananga's death: just poorly done, even for its time.
9. "Yo-mamma" — self-explanatory.
10. Moneypenny's VR moment. Cheesy and bad.
As far as I'm concerned he's playing himself in NSNA rather than James Bond.
https://mi6community.com/discussion/2233/what-do-you-consider-the-direst-moment-in-a-bond-film/p1
And it's on the main page even.
'Sit' Good call that is pretty poor
I'd put that bemusing 'truck wheelie' from LTK way before the silly but good natured Cello case scene.
Diamonds Are Forever, where the producers skimped on budget and story and gave us the weak third act; it's likely they knew the audience will come and see Connery, so the money was not up on the screen for the first time in the series.
Turning Jaws into a cartoon did start to creep into TSWL. I've always been partial to the consistent menace of the Red Grants and Oddjobs (and Necros, to come later). I have never liked, not even when I was a child, the fact that Jaws goes from assassinating a man in a phone booth (absolute evil menace), to Wile E. Coyote fighting Bond in the ruins. This, of course, was a bigger problem in MR. Without taking these types of characters seriously, then there's no tension. It becomes a cartoon.
OCTOPUSSY is my favorite Moore Bond-Film (along side TMWTGG). What was an amazing set-up in the jungle hunt was ruined by the Tarazan shout-out... This type of embarrassing, take-you-out-of-the-moment "joke" was again repeated upfront in--
A VIEW TO A KILL, and the ski/surfing sequence. Also, like DAF, the producers skimped on this budget and it appeared cheap. This spotty production value went right down to some poor editing (the fight in the lab where the old geezer guard can be seen laying down on the transport belt).
LTK was stripped down as much in story as it was in production, and, for a third time in the series, the money didn't seem to be on the screen, giving the visuals a made-for-TV look. Robert Davi elevates the entire film for me-- and it shows the importance of the villain. If you have a good villain moving the story along, someone that poses the ultimate challenge to our hero, it builds natural tension as these two forces of nature get closer and closer to colliding (also see: DIE HARD).
After GE and it's promising start, it seems as if the producers and their team took the path of least resistance. These films were making bank, so they re-cycled a formula, very rarely stepping outside of this "comfort zone". I call this the Cynical Period that, thankfully, ended with the blockbuster (but story-wise and visual embarrassment), DAD.
I have mainly enjoyed the first three Craig efforts. The money's been on the screen, DC's been a strong Bond, and second only to SC. However, concern ebbed into my consciousness at the end of SF... The first two films were fresh and exciting. No need for gimmicky gadgets, or Q or Moneypenny... We were grounded in hyper-real sets and locations (I did love M's office space in QoS as a modern HQ where she ran the service with constant "live" feeds coming in at all hours of the day). No need for Q here, although we got a Q-like character in these scenes. Certainly nothing ridiculous.
We were so far away from these tropes, and then SF makes a sharp 1-80 and brings us back to the old characters and office and, from this decision, I think, comes the Handcuffed Period; bringing us back to these people and places, now there's also going to be expectation... (MP at her desk, Q in his lab creating stupid toy gadgets like exploding watches... )... SP was a boring disaster, and certainly not Bond at his cinematic best--
These characters, and their "familiar" settings, led to some unnatural interplay that the Craig era was never designed to experience (or at least according to what was established in his first two films); and then of course, they expand on this familiarity to also bring back an old foe: Blofeld.
Earlier I said a great villain creates natural tension since he's the giant obstacle in our hero's way. Yeah, well... I don't think there was anything threatening or menacing about this Blofeld. And this failure to create a great character sunk the story. It also tried to force us to believe, just because the script told us so, that Blofeld is such a genius, he's been behind all of Bond's tragedy.
Perhaps if they showed him messing up Bond in the present (with higher and higher stakes being set), we could believe this shoe-horn of an idea. This is DAD-level laziness where, once again, the producers felt like they gave a collective shrug, hoped that the audience wouldn't notice the piss-poor attempt at making a Bond film, fingers crossed that they would make bank, and come away injury-free.
The silver-lining: historically, EoN always seem to learn from their big missteps.
Saying that, it is strange they brought Craig back;. Usually this type of misstep or laissez-faire attitude concludes with the introduction of a new actor to give the series a fresh feel again. It does give one pause to think they're not doing this this time. That they're double-downing on DC
Even more strange, is that Craig has accepted. As @bondjames and I were saying the other night: he doesn't need the money. He's well respected in the industry to build a fruitful "character-actor" type resume with a mixture of stage, films and TV, and... if B25 is a failure in any way, it could taint his entire era. So why is he coming back?
Filmmaking is a risky business on the best of days. No one can say a film will be amazing until the final cut's delivered.
Craig and Co returning gives me hope that this time, after the sub-par SP, they are going into production knowing what the stakes are: screw this one up, the Craig era will look like a failure and an experiment that got out of hand. BUT, get it right, make an amazing film that will have legs, with a strong conclusion, then SP will look like a hiccup in an otherwise Second Golden Era of the series... The stakes are high for this one, indeed.
(my apologies, I didn't mean to make this post so long; thoughts kept popping up; excuse this rare stream of conscious moment!)
I agree that in MR, the issue became worse. After his introduction at the airport, I don't recall him being threatening or frightening even once. It was all jokes there.
Just see how this has all come out over the past few months. It's been a bit strange.
Doing B25 has to be more than a rehabilitation tour for him; in fact, just by doing good work in these non-Bond films, and being friendly with the media, as he has been doing, is all he really needs to do.
I'd be so bold in saying that, at this point in his career, DC doesn't need another Bond film (and the risks it brings; what if it's as terrible as SP?). What does he have to gain from doing another Bond picture?
Other than he wants to solidify and conclude this project the way he started it, I can't think of why??
Certainly the creepy murders of Fekkesh and Kalba in TSWLM serve to heighten his threat. There's none of that in MR.
I've said it before, but I really think the entire team (which was essentially the same group who did the earlier film) decided to take a deliberately different tonal approach with MR in comparison with TSWLM. I think retrospectively it was an excellent move, because despite having essentially the same premise, they are quite distinct films when viewed back to back because of the tonal differentiation. MR is almost the kid friendly version. TSWLM by way of Star Wars (and I don't mean the space component, but rather the more accessible to the masses approach).
Great post! I really enjoyed reading it.
It's a gadget introduced in a comic scene, by a comic character, but when utilized, it's a vehicle for Brosnan melodrama. "LOOK IN MY EYES!" Appalling and embarrassing.
Some of this other stuff (JW Pepper for example) may have been stupid, but at least it knew what it was doing, and didn't screw up the tone. Had Pepper been a character in the Brosnan era, he probably would have been shot in the face, and Pierce would have sniffed his corpse and held back tears. Those 90s movies were all over the place.
It felt so off in a Bond movie.