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I wouldn't go as far to say any Bond director hates the gunbarrel or remotely dislikes it, though. It's such an iconic image and at least IMO, an important part of the Bond film experience.
I think it was simply a bold choice in CR to incorporate the image within the context of the scene for the reboot. It worked beautifully for that film, IMO. Had that decision not been made, I imagine the film probably would have opened with a traditional gunbarrel and the PTS play as as normal. I doubt it anyone would have questioned it.
However, would Arnold still have planned to save the Bond theme for the closing credits, though? Would the PTS still have been in black and white? Who knows?
I do think this opened the doors for future directors to tamper with the gunbarrel sequence and personally I'd have preferred going back to tradition for QoS.
I'm curious what Zimmer is doing with the Bond music for the gunbarrel. I'm really excited to see what he does with it.
I loved the CR gunbarrel but agree with you about QoS / other Craig films, wish it was at the beginning as tradition. My thoughts would be that if CR went the traditional route with the gunbarrel, it would have had the Bond theme, or maybe even have gone the way of GoldenEye, where the music was very subtle leading into the PTS.
Interesting to think about!
Yes. Perhaps the Bond theme would have been subtle? I'd have a hard time visualizing the red blood flowing down and the the image opening to a black and white PTS.
Perhaps when the decision to use black and white for the PTS was finalized that also opened the gates to end the sequence with the gunbarrel?
True, I wonder when in the process they decided to contextualize the gunbarrel as Bond's first kill, and have the PTS leading up to it. I think it's absolutely amazing, and one of my favourite parts of the Craig era.
I love it. Harks back to DR NO with the blood segueing into the titles. I also love the cinematography of the PTS. Great stuff.
Makes sense.
Yes, supposedly. The film ending with the traditional GB sequence demonstrates that Bond has come full circle or something like that. However, I feel that Bond became Bond at the end of CR when he introduces himself in signature style. The GB sequence at the end of QOS is evident of how little thought went into the film, IMO. It has always irritated me that following CR we never got a traditional GB sequence at the beginning of each entry. I do feel that we will get a conventional opening with a GB sequence leading straight into the PTS in NTTD.
I wonder if CJF will use the following as the GB sequence:
I personally don't think he will as this scene appears to be at the end of NTTD.
Fantastic. I love the design and will be incredibly happy if something of a similar nature is what we get in the film. Having the Goldfinger music also reminds me of how much that guitar melody has been sorely missed in the more traditional gun barrels we've had post 1989 (the last time we had the guitar melody accompanying the blood in its full glory). Bring it on Johnny Marr.
In Die Another Day we only get one bar of it (due to the Brosnan gun barrel being shorter in length) and it's mostly muffled in the film mix by that CGI bullet. I guess we sort of get it in Quantum but the whole thing happens so fast since it's just Arnold's Bond theme in general and not a tailored gun barrel cue.
That fan one is really nice by the way!
Correct, although George Martin, Marvin Hamlisch, and Michael Kamen used guitar on their respective gun barrel cues (even though the final result of the Hamlisch cue is a hodgepodge of two other cues).
I used to think that the change to the string arrangement that Barry used for his Moore scores was to mark the character's change to more lighthearted fare. That theory goes away when you consider that he used the same arrangement for The Living Daylights.
That's very good, the only thing which lets it down, is the choice of theme. The early gunbarrels, say.... DN, FRWL and GF sound naff compared to the variations we have heard since.
Yeah it was just a change in his style. If he'd done Bond scores into the 1990s we'd have probably have had the riff played on a harmonica ;)
I kind of agree, although Thunderball sounds absolutely huge and pretty much the most perfect one, I'd say. The guitar playing is pretty amazing.
Heh! That's great. And it's always interesting to see that although we think of the Brosnan gunbarrel as being a bar shorter than the others, it's really not that much shorter.
True. Had the GE iris reverted back to the center before opening that 1995 Barry theme would have been right on the mark.
I miss the iris coming back to the center to open. That probably would have looked amazing on the QoS establishing shot.
Ages ago I believe someone posted that it was often difficult for Binder to line up the iris correctly with the image on the screen. For example the iris following the helicopter before enlarging in AVTAK. Also in LTK it doesn't travel to the corner, just stays centered after swaying.
UIn CR the gunbarrel right before the opening credits made absolute and perfect sense and I like it, with the PTS b/w. To some minor extent it made sense in QOS, indicating, that the "Bond becoming Bond" arc was finished. Which it was before SP. And for SF I believe Deakins did not want the GunBarrel at the beginning and convinced Mendes o leave it out. And in GE there was a gun barrel, not Binder's. but Kleinman's, and even some sort of Bond theme.
It’s too bad Binder wasn’t around for the advent of digital tech. Might have done something interesting with the new tools. He always tried to find novel ways for his titles, like using black light in AVTAK.
Well, as a matter of fact, it does. I tried it once, and QOS improved IMHO. There are other problems with that "direct" sequel. Bond and White wore different suits/clothes (how on earth did they have the time to change them?), M's office moved from Vauxhall mBridge to Barbican in a complete different building (how, if at the end of CR we saw M talking to Bond on the phone in her "old" office, could she move within a few hours?). Oh, and they forget to change the year on all this Sony stuff. In CR it said 2006, in QOS it said 2008. All of this is either sloppy or silly. The QOS Gunbarrel as such was crappy, but what I liked, was, that we saw Craig walk on, after the shot. To me, that was rather cool.
Well, AFAIK Cubby was not too happy with Binder's late works on the opening credits for TLD and LTK, and, I read somewhere, that if a third Dalton Bond had come out in 1991, Cubby wanted to replace Binder for this film (Dany Kleinman had already done the video to Gladys Knight's song). But then Binder died in 1991, and there was no Bond movie for four more years.
Had Binder not passed, I'm almost certain he would have been replaced anyways. In the Some Kind Of Hero book it sounds like Cubby was growing increasingly tired of Binder's last minute title submissions by the end of his run. Then the studio pretty much ordered a cleaning of house (which is why John Glen among others were also let go) when it came to prepping what eventually became GoldenEye.
Nobody said, that it was "uncool". In CR it made perfect sense to place it between the PTS and the opening credits. On a dramaturgic level I can see, why they pushed it to the end in QOS. Yes, they could have put it to the opening, but they did not. And regarding SF nobody, neither Mendes nor Deakins called it "uncool" or "old fashioned". And the viewing habits and expectations of the movie audiences also have changed over the past 58 years. Bond movies are made for everybody, not only for us Bond fans.
Heh! That's great. And it's always interesting to see that although we think of the Brosnan gunbarrel as being a bar shorter than the other
Yeah he was noticeably running out of ideas by the end. A gambling table with three chips spelling out ‘0 0 7’? Seriously?
Yesssss 100% agree.
Yes, I even like “Ladies First”, sue me!