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Close to my feelings. Definitely agreed on descending quality - to me, GE’s a classic, TND has some issues but is largely good, TWINE has its moments but is mostly wasted potential, and DAD goes totally off the rails around halfway, with some issues in the first half too.
But I rewatched them in the early months of the pandemic, and I have gained a greater admiration for TWINE. I now think it is his best Bond film.
TND and TWINE were the first films I watched but at the time I saw them as a kid I felt they were too dull and generic to be enjoyable that they didn’t make me want to see any more Bond movies.
Later on, I would play the GE64 which made me want to check out the actual film and to my surprise if felt like breath of fresh air in comparison. THAT was when I actually wanted to seek out more Bond films.
My favourite Bond is Dalton, but Brosnan is next.
You have a point. It may in fact be that the declining quality of Brosnan's films was driven by increasingly unsuccessful experimentation... but maybe I am babbling here ;)
:) :) :)
I’m too easy on TWINE, I admit that hahaha. Just have such a soft spot for that film and what it tries to do.
Love Dalton. Just wish he did more, I always latch onto his performance whenever I watch his films, and even whenever I read the books it’s nearly impossible to shake his image from my mind.
One could certainly make that argument about the decline of the Brosnan era however! It’s an issue I have with the Craig era, but I can also understand that many people prefer those expierments done within the Craig era than the Brosnan era. I just think some people like to call Brosnan’s era the most bland because it’s an incredibly easy thing to do. But everyone’s opinions are different!
Yes his bad girls and Isabella did look like your classic Bond girls from Sean Connery era but Halley Berry, Teri Hatcher and Denise Richards didn’t have that elegance you associate with a Bond girl.
I know Ana is Cuban and American I meant from the continent. Not US sorry for creating confusion here.
Anyway probably I did make a generalization but I do prefer for Bond girls to be European, no time to die is the only exception where I thought the non European girl was better than the European one.
You got me thinking...
I tried to list the Brosnan-era experiments I could recall off the top of my head. I did not list repeated experiments of the same kind (as in, I did not list Wai Lin as occasionally outsmarting Bond as Natalia did it first), and I did not list innovative stunts and gadgets (each film had its share, but so did all Bond films).
(GE, the most innovative as it was doing a "mini-reset" for the 1990s)
- Judi Dench's M, who is shown finding her bearings and initially views Bond as a dinosaur
- Alec Trevelyan as an ex-agent, and the "frenemy" dynamic it creates with Bond
- Natalia as a competent ally who (and here is the experimental part) can out-think Bond on occasion and even rescues him after the climactic fight
- Moneypenny who is not starry-eyed over Bond (that went back to "normal service" in DAD, but still)
- filming in Russia (admittedly, that was pure zeitgeist and would stand no chance today. It was also the first Bond film to get a simultaneous theatrical release in Russia)
- large-scale product placement (I am not saying it was good, but it *was* new)
(TND)
- a plot featuring an international megalomaniac that strives for plausibility (they never even tried to hide the fact that Carver=Murdoch)
- a Bond girl who has a history with Bond
(TWINE; I admit my memory of it is hazy)
- (mixed result) M being shown as fallible to errors of personal judgement (vis-a-vis Elektra)
- (failed) attempt to pair Bond with a Bond girl with a superior IQ (who was not plausible in the role)
(DAD; see "hazy memory" above)
- plot twist of Bond not being trusted by MI6 and having to go rogue (as distinct from LTK, where he chose to go rogue)
- (failed, spectacularly) widespread use of CGI
Where the Brosnan era experiments were discrete and relatively limited in scale, the Craig era experimentation was more profound and comprehensive. It reset Bond to "square one", adopted a uniform gritty-realism tone, linked the films into an overarching story, and deconstructed, subverted and psychoanalysed Bond in a way that had not been imaginable before, showing us all his inner workings. It showed us the immediate origins of Bond's MI6 allies (Mallory's M and Moneypenny), killed off Dench's M onscreen, gave Bond family connections whose effects determined his behaviour, and finally tied up his story to coincide with the actor's exit.
So I'd say the Craig era wins the experimentation race, but as you say, the foundations that made the Craig-era experiments possible were built by the Brosnan films that took their share of risks. Had DAD not overdosed on CGI, there would have been no CR. Without Trevelyan, there might have been no Silva. Without the intro part of DAD, we might not have had the "AWOL Bond" twist in Skyfall. Dench was so good that they just "borrowed" her.
Very true. And yes, quite sad.
To continue the parallel, without Dalton there might have been no Craig... it is ironic that back in the late 1980s, Dalton caught a good deal of flak for what became Craig's forte, being more realistic, dispensing with the campy elements, and bringing serious, theatrical-quality acting ability to a role that does not overtly require it.
To me, I find the experimentation within the Craig era to be a bit hit and miss, perhaps even more so than Brosnan, because of the connected nature of his entire era. Casino Royale is the exception to this rule, as it essentially had to do such a hard reset on the series that they could get away with it. But Quantum of Solace’s attempts to craft a story criticizing imperialism, and the nature of those who we do international business falls completely flat on its face for me, as does its attempt to update the plot of “Chinatown” to fit Bolivia. Skyfall’s meta commentary on the fading relevance of the franchise/character of Bond makes even less since now then it did back in 2012. I mean, Casino Royale was the film the successfully brought the character into the post 911 world, and it was a huge phenomenon, so I don’t get the point of that entire plot line. Was it because of QOS’s shortcomings? Because it’s not like a bad Bond film has ever stirred EON enough to where they question the relevance of the series within the next film. SPECTRE’s flaws are something that I’ve got into over and over again, and it mainly goes back to the forced retroactive connection of the previous films, as well as the distracting Easter eggs. I’ll reserve NTTD for when I see it again, but as of right now, I find the experimentation in NTTD is perfectly executed. Not sure why, but I enjoyed it more than Craig’s other films (minus CR)
I would still debate the point on Teri Hatcher... to me she looked good and played her part quite well. I thought they had decided to mix their metaphors and have her channel Jane Fonda to Carver's Murdoch instead of Ted Turner ;) ...but in the end it is a matter of preference.
I think you're really stretching here to try to find a correlation to the supposed experimentation and risks of the Brosnan era.
While the CGI was a major complaint against DAD, it wasn't the catalyst that set up the Craig era. It was during that time that Eon actually got the rights to CR and that launched a new Bond and that era.
All Trevelyan and Silva had in common was they were former Mi6 operatives presumed dead and out for revenge. Trevelyan wanted revenge on the British government for betraying his parents. Silva exclusively had a vendetta against M and wanted to embarrass her by harming the organization and eventually killing her. Traitors in the organization have been a spy trope since there have been spies. GE and Trevelyan didn't invent that.
AWOL Bond goes back to LTK, not DAD. You could even go as far back as OHMSS when Bond goes with Draco to rescue Tracy and destroy Piz Gloria or DAF when Bond goes after Blofeld in the PTS.
I'll grant you the Dench thing. Not sure that's experimental, though. Desmond Llewelyn played Q through numerous Bond actor tenures. David Hedison played Felix Leiter for two different Bonds.
...well, I did not say I liked the purpose or direction of Craig-era experimentation ;)
...but who knows, if the Bond evolutionary arc works across actor tenures as it did between Brosnan and Craig, the next films just might build on the Craig-era films to come up with ideas that would pleasantly surprise us. One can hope.
On first viewing, I enjoyed it so much that I just went along for the ride without analysing the subtext. It became more obvious later, but I took it as being more ironic than serious. it helps that second to Spectre (of which I am not a fan, either), Skyfall has the most upbeat ending among the Craig films, despite M's death.
I can’t say he is, everything he listed about the Brosnan era was at least some sort of attempt to subvert the formula/expectations. And that’s the point that he and I are making. Again, it’s debatable whether or not it all works, but Brosnan’s tenure was not without its share of risk taking.
Films like OHMSS and LTK were playing around with the formula long before the Brosnan era was, and those experiments led to two of the highest regarded film’s in the franchise. But the difference is that OHMSS and LTK took decades to get the respect they receive now. Hence the box office takings on those films were lower than some of the other films in the franchise, and audiences were turned off. What made the Brosnan era different was that EON incorporated those risk taking elements, and were able to keep audiences coming back for more. It’s so easy to say the Brosnan era was a failure on a critical level, but damn near impossible to make that argument on a financial level. And yes, money talks. It’s easy to say “Box Office doesn’t determine quality”, which is a true statement, but Brosnan’s Bond was a Pop Cultural Phenomenon, the 2nd biggest the franchise had seen after Connery. It’s hard to argue against that.
Imagine if Elektra was the only leading woman in TWINE. So when Bond kills her, there’s no Christmas Jones for him to quip with at the end. THAT would have been a bold way to end a Bond film for Brosnan and I would have commended the filmmakers for going there, especially given how the film is reverent of OHMSS.
Now, at the end of all things with NTTD (and not thrilled with it), I’m pretty mixed on the Craig era. I find myself appreciating the tone and fun of the Brosnan films more now than I did at the time (including TWINE, which I’ve really come to like).
Not to be too negative though - the first hour of NTTD was a blast, and an improvement over the strangely tepid Spectre. Hopefully for Bond 26 BB and MGW take note of all the positive press Ana De Armas’s scene has been getting and take their cues from that.
Yes I think that's a fair point. Before TWINE was released and the information came out that Bond would actually be seriously injured it was actually quite a big 'oh wow' moment as a Bond fan - that actually felt quite a bold step. Of course nowadays we don't even think of it as 'the one where Bond gets injured' but any step outside the formula was a big step at the time. Exactly the same with DAD's plot of Bond being captured and held prisoner for an extended time: that was a massive new narrative thing for Bond fans at the time and felt very striking. But nowadays it's not really something anyone comments on.
Which is why I tend to feel that a lot of reactions to more recent films like NTTD where people say 'But Bond can't do X !!!?' are more shock of the new rather than actually there actually being anything wrong with the films, and the sort of objections which fade in time just like those Brosnan experiments did.
I think you could perhaps say that Dalton's perceived failure made Craig's job tougher. But he made it work by remembering that arrogance and swagger which audiences respond to in Bond and which Dalton missed.
Craig's version didn't require Dalton's to have existed prior to that.
Of course they did not, but Trevelyan was the first such character prominently featured in a Bond film plot. And of course they would not recycle his motivation for Silva, but seeing how Trevelyan worked well, the idea of Bond fighting a traitor agent with a personal agenda might have had more traction when writing Skyfall. Maybe not. If anyone has the Making of Skyfall book, they might have a more conclusive answer.
The difference between LTK and DAD is that in LTK, Bond goes AWOL by choice, as a gesture of protest against being stopped from investigating Sanchez to avenge Felix (OHMSS falls into the same category). In DAD, he is more or less forced to do a runner, as he is considered a risk / potential traitor by MI6, so going after Moon and Zao is his way of proving his innocence. Which, IMO, is a new take.
Admittedly, Bond's AWOL stint in Skyfall to protect M is not the best parallel to either. The part I should have referenced instead was the echoes between Craig!Bond's condition upon "coming back from the dead" in SF and Brosnan!Bond's condition when released from North Korea: when it comes to Bond's performance suffering from "wear and tear", Brosnan did it first. (OK, Connery did it first in NSNA, but the conclusion was just the reverse: until the girl stabbed him, he looked set to pass the test with flying colours).
The experiment with Dench was in giving Bond a female boss who had just taken up the job and had an ex-ante critical view of Bond. They could have just recast M pretending he was the same man, as they had done before with Lee and Brown IIRC. The fact that Dench stayed on for CR et al was proof of its success.
Absolutely! (though it also has a good deal to do with how implausible and annoying Jones turned out to be)
I think that scene is just about the only thing about NTTD that all viewers agree on! Well, that and liking the cinematography ;)
And 26 years later we're still yet to have a Bond film she doesn't make an appearance of some kind in! :)
I discovered Bond in early 1995, I didn't suffer through six years of waiting for a new Bond film. A large part of GoldenEye's appeal for me, was the post-Cold War angle. The soldiers with their pilotkas and AKs, the missile train, statue park etc. A great character in General Ourumov. The best Bond films tend to feature some exotic island adventure and/or Bond against the Russians, and I'd like to see that Soviet flavour return every now and then.
I do remember seeing GE for the very first time and after anticipating it hugely for months and months I do remember having an ever-so slight deflated feel as it was so much like a standard Bond film with Roger in or whatever, but I still loved it.