Controversial opinions about Bond films

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  • Samuel001Samuel001 Moderator
    Posts: 13,355
    It's really only the first six films that have only ever given Moneypenny anything worth doing, or scenes that are memorable. I noticed this when rewatching the series last, every other film with her scenes is flat or just comes of as nothing, a mere rehash of what came before. Is that controversial? It really shouldn't be that difficult to get something worthy in the next film if the writing is there.
  • EDDIEVH wrote:
    Here's a few of mine :-

    TLD is not all that great

    The Lotus is cooler than the Aston Martin

    There's nothing wrong with Nick Nack - I still quite like him

    Tanya Roberts really wasn't that bad - there's a few Bond Girls I'd rank below her

    Agree with you there.

    I honestly thought I was alone here, completely agree with you two. The Esprit s1 is still my favourite Bond car.
  • EDDIEVH wrote:
    Here's a few of mine :-

    TLD is not all that great

    The Lotus is cooler than the Aston Martin

    There's nothing wrong with Nick Nack - I still quite like him

    Tanya Roberts really wasn't that bad - there's a few Bond Girls I'd rank below her

    Agree with you there.

    I honestly thought I was alone here, completely agree with you two. The Esprit s1 is still my favourite Bond car.

    It turns into a freakin' submarine. It can't get cooler than that :-)
  • TheWizardOfIceTheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'
    Posts: 9,117
    EDDIEVH wrote:
    Here's a few of mine :-

    TLD is not all that great

    The Lotus is cooler than the Aston Martin

    There's nothing wrong with Nick Nack - I still quite like him

    Tanya Roberts really wasn't that bad - there's a few Bond Girls I'd rank below her

    Agree with you there.

    I honestly thought I was alone here, completely agree with you two. The Esprit s1 is still my favourite Bond car.

    It turns into a freakin' submarine. It can't get cooler than that :-)

    Could you specify which Aston Martin?

    DB5 - yes.

    DBS 69, Volante, DBS 06 - no.
  • edited September 2013 Posts: 2,402
    Yeah, I love all the Astons and the Lotus so it's hard for me to rank them. But I would probably say the Volante is my favourite, I love the sort of muscle car look it had and the ice chase is my favourite car chase in the whole series. Both of those could possibly be controversial.
  • Yes the Volante is also my favourite of the Astons. Still rather have the Lotus though if offered ;-)
  • DarthDimi wrote:
    echo wrote:
    Lois Maxwell had more chemistry with Lazenby than any other Bond.

    That's actually a pretty good observation.

    I wonder if a younger Moore and a younger Lois might have had some more chemistry, say in the 60s. By the time LALD was filmed, I found Lois more of a sweet lady rather than a gorgeous girl.

    Lois changed very rapidly. In the sixties, she was almost Bond girl material, but that period passed quickly, and by the late 70s she was really aging.

  • doubleoego wrote:
    Jack Lord is an overrated Felix Leiter

    I think Lord was terrific, easily the best Leiter of them all. That said, we still have yet to see a faithful realization of Fleming's Leiter on screen, and it's high time we do.

  • Samuel001 wrote:
    It's really only the first six films that have only ever given Moneypenny anything worth doing, or scenes that are memorable. I noticed this when rewatching the series last, every other film with her scenes is flat or just comes of as nothing, a mere rehash of what came before. Is that controversial? It really shouldn't be that difficult to get something worthy in the next film if the writing is there.

    I actually consider the Moneypenny scenes to be real highlights of the series. The Q scenes, on the other hand...

  • Samuel001Samuel001 Moderator
    edited September 2013 Posts: 13,355
    The Q scenes are just as bad in my opinion, so I agree. Plenty of chances to get something that stands up there though in upcoming films. I hope it shouldn't be that hard for the current team to do that. Make them highlights again. They're great characters after all.
  • Posts: 686
    Samuel001 wrote:
    The Q scenes are just as bad in my opinion, so I agree. Plenty of chances to get something that stands up there though in upcoming films. I hope it shouldn't be that hard for the current team to do that. Make them highlights again. They're great characters after all.

    I would be in favor in scraping Q all together.
  • edited September 2013 Posts: 2,483
    Samuel001 wrote:
    The Q scenes are just as bad in my opinion, so I agree. Plenty of chances to get something that stands up there though in upcoming films. I hope it shouldn't be that hard for the current team to do that. Make them highlights again. They're great characters after all.

    The Q scene in SF was excellent. Probably the best since LTK, although Desmond's final scene in TWINE was pretty good.

  • RC7RC7
    Posts: 10,512
    Samuel001 wrote:
    The Q scenes are just as bad in my opinion, so I agree. Plenty of chances to get something that stands up there though in upcoming films. I hope it shouldn't be that hard for the current team to do that. Make them highlights again. They're great characters after all.

    The Q scene in SF was excellent. Probably the best since LTK, although Desmond's final scene in TWINE was pretty good.

    Their first meeting is bang on the Money for me. I felt like the latter scenes at MI6 slightly undermined the character too early, but then I know Mendes loves his symbolism and it lended itself to his old vs. new thematics. I just wished they'd stuck with Q's aloofness a little longer, rather than making him appear out of his depth all of a sudden.
  • EDDIEVH wrote:
    Here's a few of mine :-

    TLD is not all that great

    The Lotus is cooler than the Aston Martin

    There's nothing wrong with Nick Nack - I still quite like him

    Tanya Roberts really wasn't that bad - there's a few Bond Girls I'd rank below her

    Agree with you there.

    I honestly thought I was alone here, completely agree with you two. The Esprit s1 is still my favourite Bond car.

    It turns into a freakin' submarine. It can't get cooler than that :-)

    Could you specify which Aston Martin?

    DB5 - yes.

    DBS 69, Volante, DBS 06 - no.


    I was originally referring to the DB5 but ultimately the Lotus is cooler than them ALL cos, yes, it turns into a freakin submarine :-)

  • edited September 2013 Posts: 57
    I honestly thought I was alone here, completely agree with you two. The Esprit s1 is still my favourite Bond car.
    Add me to the list of Lotus lovers (so to speak). It's always been my favourite Bond car, closely followed by the Volante.

    Just as a car I'd rather have the Lotus than anything else Bond has ever driven.
  • Samuel001 wrote:
    The Q scenes are just as bad in my opinion, so I agree. Plenty of chances to get something that stands up there though in upcoming films. I hope it shouldn't be that hard for the current team to do that. Make them highlights again. They're great characters after all.

    The Q scene in SF was excellent. Probably the best since LTK, although Desmond's final scene in TWINE was pretty good.

    Personally I thought the scene with Q wasn't great and computer nerd characters are boring and tired, it's not fresh and interesting at all, it just seems you have to a tech guy these days, I kind of agree that maybe Q should have passed away with Desmond, god bless him.
  • Posts: 38
    I disagree with the opinion that QoS was one of the worst. I just recently watched it again. It is evolutionary with Daniel Craig. In this movie. He really becomes his own "Bond", away from the gadgets and moving into an action thriller. It sets the stage or transitions to "Skyfall". I really do like this movie and put it into the top ten. Don't get me wrong, I still really like and appreciate the classic Bond formula with the gadgets, but to say this is the worse is sadly mistaken. When I saw it in the theatre, I thought it was different and as time has moved on, I began to like it more each time I have seen it. I am at the point where I would like to see Bond and Quantum to go against each other in Bond 24. Tremendous story lines available.
  • Samuel001 wrote:
    The Q scenes are just as bad in my opinion, so I agree. Plenty of chances to get something that stands up there though in upcoming films. I hope it shouldn't be that hard for the current team to do that. Make them highlights again. They're great characters after all.

    The Q scene in SF was excellent. Probably the best since LTK, although Desmond's final scene in TWINE was pretty good.

    Personally I thought the scene with Q wasn't great and computer nerd characters are boring and tired, it's not fresh and interesting at all, it just seems you have to a tech guy these days, I kind of agree that maybe Q should have passed away with Desmond, god bless him.

    Computer geeks are not boring and tired to me. But that's really beside the point. Fact is that Wishaw brings a unique and successful take to the Q character. And his part was well written.
  • RC7RC7
    edited September 2013 Posts: 10,512
    Samuel001 wrote:
    The Q scenes are just as bad in my opinion, so I agree. Plenty of chances to get something that stands up there though in upcoming films. I hope it shouldn't be that hard for the current team to do that. Make them highlights again. They're great characters after all.

    The Q scene in SF was excellent. Probably the best since LTK, although Desmond's final scene in TWINE was pretty good.

    Personally I thought the scene with Q wasn't great and computer nerd characters are boring and tired, it's not fresh and interesting at all, it just seems you have to a tech guy these days, I kind of agree that maybe Q should have passed away with Desmond, god bless him.

    Computer geeks are not boring and tired to me. But that's really beside the point. Fact is that Wishaw brings a unique and successful take to the Q character. And his part was well written.

    I agree his intro was great, but I was a little disappointed to see him fall victim to Silva so suddenly and the line 'He hacked us', is the epitome of lacklustre writing. In fact, the whole of that scene bugs me, Bond spotting 'Granborough Rd' etc is deus ex machina at its most potent. I'd like to see him be more hands on in 24 and less of a GCHQ worker, with a nice cardigan. That said, I'm nit-picking and I preferred his progression to the MP arc.
  • TheWizardOfIceTheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'
    Posts: 9,117
    RC7 wrote:
    Samuel001 wrote:
    The Q scenes are just as bad in my opinion, so I agree. Plenty of chances to get something that stands up there though in upcoming films. I hope it shouldn't be that hard for the current team to do that. Make them highlights again. They're great characters after all.

    The Q scene in SF was excellent. Probably the best since LTK, although Desmond's final scene in TWINE was pretty good.

    Personally I thought the scene with Q wasn't great and computer nerd characters are boring and tired, it's not fresh and interesting at all, it just seems you have to a tech guy these days, I kind of agree that maybe Q should have passed away with Desmond, god bless him.

    Computer geeks are not boring and tired to me. But that's really beside the point. Fact is that Wishaw brings a unique and successful take to the Q character. And his part was well written.

    I agree his intro was great, but I was a little disappointed to see him fall victim to Silva so suddenly and the line 'He hacked us', is the epitome of lacklustre writing. In fact, the whole of that scene bugs me, Bond spotting 'Granborough Rd' etc is deus ex machina at its most potent. I'd like to see him be more hands on in 24 and less of a GCHQ worker, with a nice cardigan. That said, I'm nit-picking and I preferred his progression to the MP arc.

    Very valid points. The 'Granborough' moment is one thing that really winds me up about that scene. The whole thing looks like an unintelligible jumble to me and Q is spouting all this computer jargon which is difficult to understand and - you would presume, given that he is one of only a few people in the world who can program it - at a level way above Bond. Yet out of seemingly nothing Bond spots some random word which he then instructs Q to use as a password.

    I know he's Bond and brilliant but it just seems ridiculously contrived to me that Bond just plucks the key that unlocks this amazingly secure software out of thin air when Silva and Q must be working at a level he can't possibly comprehend.
  • Posts: 15,124
    Samuel001 wrote:
    The Q scenes are just as bad in my opinion, so I agree. Plenty of chances to get something that stands up there though in upcoming films. I hope it shouldn't be that hard for the current team to do that. Make them highlights again. They're great characters after all.

    The Q scene in SF was excellent. Probably the best since LTK, although Desmond's final scene in TWINE was pretty good.

    Personally I thought the scene with Q wasn't great and computer nerd characters are boring and tired, it's not fresh and interesting at all, it just seems you have to a tech guy these days, I kind of agree that maybe Q should have passed away with Desmond, god bless him.

    I was skeptical at first for the same reasons than you, yet I ended up liking Q in SF way more than expected. Partially because they did not try to go with a Llewellyn imitation.
  • Posts: 15,124
    I find TSWLM ridiculously overrated. It is at the core a lazy remake of YOLT, almost a clone.
  • doubleoegodoubleoego #LightWork
    Posts: 11,139
    Solange is the best looking Bond girl in over 30 years.
  • edited September 2013 Posts: 686
    Ludovico wrote:
    I find TSWLM ridiculously overrated. It is at the core a lazy remake of YOLT, almost a clone.

    I am not really sure it is "ridiculously overrated" by anyone. I agree with the point about being a YOLT clone, in fact Benson points this out in detail in TBC. As I have said before I thought Moore performance and over all feel of movie, despite the outlandish plot, made it a good Bond film for the 1970s.
  • RC7 wrote:
    Samuel001 wrote:
    The Q scenes are just as bad in my opinion, so I agree. Plenty of chances to get something that stands up there though in upcoming films. I hope it shouldn't be that hard for the current team to do that. Make them highlights again. They're great characters after all.

    The Q scene in SF was excellent. Probably the best since LTK, although Desmond's final scene in TWINE was pretty good.

    Personally I thought the scene with Q wasn't great and computer nerd characters are boring and tired, it's not fresh and interesting at all, it just seems you have to a tech guy these days, I kind of agree that maybe Q should have passed away with Desmond, god bless him.

    Computer geeks are not boring and tired to me. But that's really beside the point. Fact is that Wishaw brings a unique and successful take to the Q character. And his part was well written.

    I agree his intro was great, but I was a little disappointed to see him fall victim to Silva so suddenly and the line 'He hacked us', is the epitome of lacklustre writing. In fact, the whole of that scene bugs me, Bond spotting 'Granborough Rd' etc is deus ex machina at its most potent. I'd like to see him be more hands on in 24 and less of a GCHQ worker, with a nice cardigan. That said, I'm nit-picking and I preferred his progression to the MP arc.

    Very valid points. The 'Granborough' moment is one thing that really winds me up about that scene. The whole thing looks like an unintelligible jumble to me and Q is spouting all this computer jargon which is difficult to understand and - you would presume, given that he is one of only a few people in the world who can program it - at a level way above Bond. Yet out of seemingly nothing Bond spots some random word which he then instructs Q to use as a password.

    I know he's Bond and brilliant but it just seems ridiculously contrived to me that Bond just plucks the key that unlocks this amazingly secure software out of thin air when Silva and Q must be working at a level he can't possibly comprehend.

    I have no problem with this. It is an example of Bond's outrageous almost preposterous omnicompetence, which we have seen in cinematic Bond almost from the get-go. Bond simply is not like other people, or even other heroes. Bond knows things he shouldn't be able to know. I roll with it and I love it.

  • Posts: 15,124
    Perdogg wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    I find TSWLM ridiculously overrated. It is at the core a lazy remake of YOLT, almost a clone.

    I am not really sure it is "ridiculously overrated" by anyone. I agree with the point about being a YOLT clone, in fact Benson points this out in detail in TBC. As I have said before I thought Moore performance and over all feel of movie, despite the outlandish plot, made it a good Bond film for the 1970s.

    Oh Moore was good in it. It's just that the movie, with all its high quality production value, wasn't very good. Or at least not nearly as good as it is rated.
  • doubleoego wrote:
    Solange is the best looking Bond girl in over 30 years.

    So, the best looking since Melina Havelock? That is indeed a controversial opinion.

  • TheWizardOfIceTheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'
    Posts: 9,117
    doubleoego wrote:
    Solange is the best looking Bond girl in over 30 years.

    So, the best looking since Melina Havelock? That is indeed a controversial opinion.

    Surely 'over 30 years' would mean best looking since TSWLM at the very least?

    She is damn fine but I prefer Eva - although technically she came afterwards so you could perhaps say Solange held the title of 'best looking Bond girl in over 30 years' for about 15 mins.

    Personally though I would certainly have Bouquet, D'Abo, Scorupco, Marceau and the Pikelet all above her but after that she's up there.
  • RC7RC7
    Posts: 10,512
    RC7 wrote:
    Samuel001 wrote:
    The Q scenes are just as bad in my opinion, so I agree. Plenty of chances to get something that stands up there though in upcoming films. I hope it shouldn't be that hard for the current team to do that. Make them highlights again. They're great characters after all.

    The Q scene in SF was excellent. Probably the best since LTK, although Desmond's final scene in TWINE was pretty good.

    Personally I thought the scene with Q wasn't great and computer nerd characters are boring and tired, it's not fresh and interesting at all, it just seems you have to a tech guy these days, I kind of agree that maybe Q should have passed away with Desmond, god bless him.

    Computer geeks are not boring and tired to me. But that's really beside the point. Fact is that Wishaw brings a unique and successful take to the Q character. And his part was well written.

    I agree his intro was great, but I was a little disappointed to see him fall victim to Silva so suddenly and the line 'He hacked us', is the epitome of lacklustre writing. In fact, the whole of that scene bugs me, Bond spotting 'Granborough Rd' etc is deus ex machina at its most potent. I'd like to see him be more hands on in 24 and less of a GCHQ worker, with a nice cardigan. That said, I'm nit-picking and I preferred his progression to the MP arc.

    Very valid points. The 'Granborough' moment is one thing that really winds me up about that scene. The whole thing looks like an unintelligible jumble to me and Q is spouting all this computer jargon which is difficult to understand and - you would presume, given that he is one of only a few people in the world who can program it - at a level way above Bond. Yet out of seemingly nothing Bond spots some random word which he then instructs Q to use as a password.

    I know he's Bond and brilliant but it just seems ridiculously contrived to me that Bond just plucks the key that unlocks this amazingly secure software out of thin air when Silva and Q must be working at a level he can't possibly comprehend.

    I have no problem with this. It is an example of Bond's outrageous almost preposterous omnicompetence, which we have seen in cinematic Bond almost from the get-go. Bond simply is not like other people, or even other heroes. Bond knows things he shouldn't be able to know. I roll with it and I love it.

    It would work in a Roger film, but in the middle of a Craig it just feels very out of place to me. In the same way slapping Eve's arse and saying 'Man talk' would be. Good use of the word omnicompetence though. Not seen that in a while.
  • Posts: 15,124
    I don't like when Bond is too skilled. He should have flaws and limits, not be some kind of walking deus ex machina. That said, we had seen him weak and sloppy before, so I guess they wanted to show him in full form, physically and intellectually. Maybe a bit too much, I don't know.
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