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Comments
There's repetitions and there's variations. I think TB and the best Bond films use the latter more. SPECTRE gets nukes, but through theft, not with the help of China and Russia. The whole plot is completely different from the previous movie, like GF was from FRWL and FRWL from DN. And if the Aston Martin is there Bond barely uses it. The gadgets he uses in the PTS are not the ones he used in GF and when Count Lippe tries to kill him he has no time to use them that Fiona Volpe murders him. I suspect there was a conscious attempt not to repeat the previous movie, while acknowledging its existence.
I think that, rather than making a conscious attempt not to repeat the previous movie, they learned all the wrong lessons from it, but finally got there for YOLT. GF had interesting and larger-than-life villains like Oddjob which people loved; TB gave us Vargas. What does he do? GF gave Bond cool and interesting gadgets which he uses in interesting and amusing ways; TB gave the cool gadgets (the rocket bike, the transforming yacht) to the baddies, whilst Bond gets a silly backpack, a pill and a tape in a book. Yes he has the jetpack, but he uses that where he could have used a ladder much easier. GF has a laser beam and an atom bomb right there; TB has a few guns and some bombs we don't see. Everything is somehow less, rather than more, as it should have been. And no, that's not a matter of not repeating itself; it's failing to learn from the successful film before. And the series did indeed go back to many of those points after TB, when it finally worked out they were the good bits.
Connery is at his peak though, and the music is as gorgeous as ever.
Regarding the gadgets in TB I am glad they didn't just reuse the Aston in the same way they did in GF AND gave gadgets to the villains too. We knew SPECTRE has gadgets from FRWL. Does only MI6 have resources and engineers? That's actually something I'd like to see more in Bond movies.
It was poorly executed in a terrible movie, but it was a good idea. I loved how in the early films, the villains' gadgets were kind of nastier: a shoe with poisoned blade, a garrot hidden in a watch, etc. And, even if I'm not a fan of TMWTGG, the golden gun disguised as everyday objects
Sneaky stuff meant to murder, not merely kill. Bond had lethal gadgets too, but not exclusively.
(And I know it's off topic, so I might start a new thread about it.)
Whereas GF embraced the outlandish, TB dials it back. Sure the jet pack is OTT, the gadgets in TB are really pushing the limits of reality. A pill that will trigger Bond to appear on the radar would have to be a fatal dose of radiation. The re-breather was at most a few seconds of air, and yet someone from the US military reached out to find out more about it. ;)
I like the balance that TB strikes. My challenge with it is the run time, and the sense of urgency which never really comes through. Why hijack bombs and then give the free world lots of time to track them down?
I think the outlandish gadgets were a remnant of GF. Not sure Young was too keen on them. Wasn't he unsatisfied with TB?
You are right, of course. There are some villainous gadgets that are straight out macabre and that work very well in some of the films.
Wow, how cool. Do you have any photos?
I didn't make this one, it had passed through at least two collectors' hands before I was lucky enough to acquire it. Not sure if any more of these were produced, I believe it was a one-off.
Wow, thanks! Very cool.
Looks great. And I think @Univex is right, it is one of the few benigns villainous gadgets. Heck even in TLD we have explosive milk bottles! Milk bottles! Is there anything more devious?
It’s just so fantastical and Connery was so smooth… His face-off with Fiona has always been , and will continue to be, one of the best confrontations in the Bond series.
Maybe it's meant to open many different doors in SPECTRE meeting places? Each one with a different code?
That film was always butchered for network TV. I recall the who Fiona and Bond in bed with the caged animal was chopped by ABC. Also the death of Colonel was cut so you didn't see the final pull back by Bond. The mink glove scene was chopped as well. I remember my first viewing of TB on VHS it was almost like discovering a deleted scene.
I would only learn what I was missing later in the decade via a Bond fanzine out of Minnesota that would review, always indignantly, each of these TV screenings ....
Nevertheless, they were always a big event in my household, where I would invariably tape-record the soundtrack (audio only, pre-VHS) then later play back the cassettes while doing homework.
Absolutely, I remember all the cut scenes as well. The 80s and home video was like rediscovering most of the Bond films… TV edits were never kind.
Thankfully I didn’t see OHMSS on TV; from what our original fans say, they really took to slicing and dicing that one on TV.
Ohhhh, yeah ... perversely enough, while I had seen my first Bond films in 1975, it was that infamous 1976 OHMSS screening that I have a very clear memory of watching, perhaps in part because it was played over two weeks.
Fiona should have been the main villain. The scenes with her and Connery have such spark and she lights up the screen, whereas Largo is really a dead weight in the film. He’s just a sort of glowering hunk of meat. Shame, because Celi is good value in other films I’ve seen.