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
Agreed on the bolded items. Pam got it the wrong way round. Lupe's (or rather, Soto's) thespian talents are somewhat overrated to say the least. The bar fight is beyond laughable. The winking fish is a John Glen special.
It's still in my top 10 though - but I could do without the above.
3:-O
The winking fish eye has never bothered me either. I can see why people have an issue with the tone of the ending though. Clearly LTK wants to have its cake and eat it - be all serious but also retain a lot of the Moore era sillyness. I personally don't mind that. It's a defining characteristic of the Glen-era movies. I like the way Q follows Bond out there. I agree that if you wanted a fully hard-boiled Bond movie, then this is a bit incongruous, but I like the Glen movies, and their slightly crazy cocktail of seriousness and light -heartedness. They defined a great era in the Bond seris IMO. Several of Glen's movies are amongst my favourites.
I totally accept that they're not necessarily the 'best made' from a technical or production values perspective, but I just think they're great entertainment.
When people say the Moore films are just campy nonsense with no sense of jepody they are really talking about his early films. FYEO and OP are stripped back thrillers with a few moments of silliness thrown in. Take the scene with the clown running through the woods. Chilling.
I totally agree. That scene in particular is one of my favourites in the entire series. Seeing 002 (or whoever it is) smashing through the ambassador's window made a big impact on me when I saw it as a kid. I thought it was wonderful. The coldwar setting. The brilliant incongruity of the clown outfit and the chase to the death. It totally plays of course on the long tradition of the tragi-comic clown character. It's a really good little piece of film making. And of course I like the way it's echoed at the end, with Bond himself in the clown outfit, desperately trying to stop the Bomb. One of the most genuinely tense and thrilling moments in the entire series. Classic Rog. Classic Bond. Brilliant!
Like you, I have a lot of respect for the Moore films. I also like his early films as well though, particularly, obviously, TSWLM. How can you not love Spy?
Without some of the sillyness and jokes they'd have been just ridiculous movies - po-faced and tedious. The humour is an essential element of Bond. It's right there from the very start, although it of course changed and evolved over the years. How chilling that first scene is in Dr. No with the seemingly harmless blind guys, with a calypso 'Three Blind Mice' playing over the top, only for them to turn out to be cold-blooded assassins. The contrast between light and dark and the use of humour is what makes Bond Bond. Very hard to do well though.
I don' t hate TSWLM but it's definitely on the lower end for me. I just like my bond to have a harder edge. I love comedic elements but you have to get the balance just right. When jaws is ripping apart that van and bond is making quips it just removes the tension from the scene and makes jaws seem a lot less of a threat. I also dislike the music when the van is bumping along in the desert. Feels to much like I'm watching a pastiche. I think Moonraker is the worst for this, that bondola is like a parody of a bond vehicle.
Thankfully Mr Glen stepped in and turned things around . =D>
It is Rio! .
Connery's had serious films with moments of light comedy.
Moore's were light comedies with moments of seriousness.
Although I love them both. ;)
For me LALD works so well because it's so different. It feels the the first entry in it's own franchise, kinda like Dr No was. There's also some great Fleming moments like 'I certainly wouldn't have killed you before', that really communicate bonds shrewd nature.
TMWTGG had the potential to be one of the greats. Scaramanga is the best villain of the series IMO. But the film is bogged down by the pointless solax subplot and further marred by comedy sheriffs, flying cars, slide whistles, karate girls and fake nipples.
3:-O
Rewatched DAF and TMWTGG recently, and as I went into them not expecting much, I was pleasantly surprised by both. I agree that Gun had the potential to have been a lot better, but it still has good elements.
LTK works for me because of the silliness/campiness. LTK was "Tarantino-esque" before Tarantino was even around.
I agree with you. I don't even know where that idea came from.
It's brought up in the documentary, Everything or Nothing. In it, Timothy Dalton criticizes LTK's violence and says, "I can't take my ten year old to see it." Then he recants and says, "But these films were never intended for ten-year-olds."
But kept all the silly stuff, like the Q scene etc.
Now I want to watch LTK again with this in mind and see if my opinion changes. This could be a breakthrough! \:D/
I think this is the key to enjoying LTK. When I first saw it I was thrown by the seeming incongruity of certain elements and what I felt was the overly serious and violent tone. It's only with repeated rewatchings that I've come to appreciate that underneath the veneer of 'seriousness', it's actually a rather traditional Bond movie. It's not flawless, and as much as I like Dalton, I don't think it's ever going to be in my top 5, but it's a good little movie. It needs to be taken a little less seriously in order to be fully enjoyed I think.
LTK was actually as far as they could push it in the 80's given the public was still attached to Sir Rog and his long interpretation of Bond.
So they were stuck between a rock and a hard place.
When I first saw the movie I too thought it was too dark and gritty - I also did not initially realize that all the traditional bits that are still in there - that only came with repeated viewing which is what makes it such a great movie - I still find something new in it each time I view it.
Perhaps they should ideally have transitioned more slowly to LTK and had one more slightly more conventional movie between it and TLD to prepare the public. That way they could have removed some of the Moore cliches from it and gone all out with a more authentic thriller. However, in a way it's good they did not wait one more movie to make it, because with their financial troubles at the time if they had waited we may never have got LTK at all.
Same goes for QoS - if they had not made it when they did, we may never have got that movie either. Can you imagine them making a QoS type stripped down thriller after the commercial success of SF - near impossible.
Very well put, I agree. In LTK Q and Monypenny care about 007 as he has become a friend over the years. Q in DAD is a pathetic, poorly scripted parody.
I have to disagree on that. Kristatos' creepy desire for Bibi makes her presence in the movie far more adult than it could have been. She is basically Kristatos's Lolita. And he is not Humbert Humbert, he is downright Clarence Quilty! yes, she is a carefree, naive, overly enthusiastic and sexually curious teenager, but that is the point.
So yes, I would agree that FYEO is actually very much adult, even in some of its seemingly lighter elements. Same goes with the early Connery movies, especially FRWL, which is maybe the most adult of all Bond movies, more so I dare say than LTK. All three movies are more adult in their depiction and use of violence, all three are far more adult in their treatment of sexuality. But if I had to choose which one is the most adult, I would pick up FRWL.