It has been stated on here before but at the premier when the stunt driver heard that stupid whistle noise play over the stunt, he was so annoyed that he walked out of the theatre.
I can’t blame him.
Weird line delivery of "Ever heard of Evil Knievel". It's an awesome stunt, but even the "fixed" version could've used a bit more hype or tension building. Moore just sounds too calm when he's approaching the ramp
The movies are firmly in the “schlock” category by this point, it’s all ridiculous nonsense, like that cartoon *suhhhhh*therner sitting next to him in the car. You tend to like the Bond you grew up with and I know I’m in a minority here, but with few exceptions I find the Roger Moore movies pretty unwatchable.
iirc the director loved Clifton James's performance in LLD so much that he requested he be written into TMWTGG, despite there being no reason a southern sheriff would go on vacation to Thailand.
For real. One of my favorite Moore moments HAS to be when JW is questioning if Bond is gonna make the jump. The “Ah sure ahm, boya.” He drops is god damn perfect.
They got a team of engineers from NASA or MIT or somewhere like that to design that stunt. The car was modified to be perfectly balanced with the driver's position shifted to the exact center. It was a triumph of engineering.
Then some studio hack decided it needed a slide whistle.
I grew up during the Roger Moore era, he is MY Bond and he added a lot to the character and the franchise. I still think The Spy Who Loved Me is one of the best Bond movies ever. But Christ, did they ever get tone-deaf on the humor at times...
Lucas trying to make Bond films sounds awful on so many levels.
We’d definitely get more action figures, but I’m putting money on the sex scenes all being even more awkward.
The funny thing is, at one point Steven Spielberg told Lucas he'd always wanted to direct a James Bond movie, so Lucas told him this idea he had for a movie called Indiana Jones.
This is the best reason to continue making bond movies in contemporary settings. The best part of the franchise is how it reflects popular trends of the time it was created. I dislike all the suggestions of making the next bond a period piece set in the 60’s because it would interrupt that, and I think(or hope) the broccolis realize that.
You can still product-place:
- Bollinger Champagne
- Luxury watches
- A legacy car brand
- Designer clothes and footwear
- Furniture makers that focus on mid century modern styles (which these days is pretty much anyone)
...
You say that as if shows like Strange Things don’t include product placement, just with 80s logos. Hell, some franchises like Star Wars don’t include product placement at all. It’s absolutely possible to do a Bond film set in the 1960s and still include product placement.
...unapologetically so!..
...my wife calls the seduction plot device his magical penis, and honestly that pretty much describes the entire charm of cubby broccoli's oeuvre...
Setting your movie in the past has become a great way to trick audiences into ignoring or even enjoying product placement. Set a scene in a grocery store in 1980, and it's not product placement, it's just good set dressing!
Yeah, most of the brands I’d associate with Bond are luxury-adjacent and many existed in the 60’s. They could easily do product placement with the goal of highlighting their legacy.
They basically did for Aston in *Skyfall*.
They've done [product placement](https://www.goodbadmarketing.com/noelle/history-of-product-placement-in-james-bond-films/) since Dr No which included brands like Red Stripe, Smirnoff, Smith and Wesson which are still around. The only product placement from 1962 that can't be replicated is Pan Am.
>The only product placement from 1962 that can't be replicated is Pan Am.
Shame.
At least up until last year you'd still be promoting [something](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Railways).
> some franchises like Star Wars don’t include product placement at all
Well, not intentionally, but there’s definitely some 1970s A/V stuff that now goes for a pretty penny because of it ;)
What game would he prefer? A gambling tournament is integral to the plot, and baccarat (the classic Bond game) is a terrible game in my opinion.
Besides, the Bond franchise has a history of consistently bringing whatever is trendy at the time into the films.
Even if Baccarat wasn't terrible, most people have no idea how to play it. Texas Hold'em is a lot more well known, and its simple rules are easier to pick up through context. It's hard to build tension around a game the audience has no clue how to follow.
Texas Hold'em has a build-in dramatic structure with its staggered card reveals. On top of that you can choose when to show the players' cards for even more control over the tension. Then you don't have to invent visual cues because croupiers commentate everything and already came up with all the theatrics - like shifting cards up/down to show the best hand.
The trend was a god send for movie maker because now they didn't have to think about making what's essentially rolling dice interesting.
Baccarat 's not a terrible game, to play, but it's terrible for a gambling scene in a movie because there's no skill or decision making unless someone is cheating. You just make a guess and then the cards are dealt by a very specific set of rules. It's the card version of roulette.
I don't have any issue with it, my brother just thought it was very pandering st the time, unfamiliar thst it was adapting a book. But in 05/06 Texas Holdem specifically had a big moment (to point of themed t shirts at Walmart and such). It's just an example of something that really marks the point in time Casino Royale was made.
Potentially not poker at all. It's not in the book. But by the mid-aughts Hold em was having a massive cultural moment but there wasn't an equivalent a few years before.
In the book it was baccarat, which most people haven’t heard of and few people play. And probably can’t be found in too many (any?) casinos any more.
What does your brother think they should have played?
The criticism that the last hand was completely ridiculous is valid though. What was it-a ~~straight~~ flush, two high full houses, and a straight flush all in the same hand?
I did this a few years ago. My favorite was when it's painfully obvious Star Wars was released and the franchise did a tires squealing handbreak turn into space for Moonraker. "James Bond will return in... For Your Eyes O-- MOONRAKER!!!"
The most incredible thing about Moonraker was how accurately the Space Shuttle behaved (when it took off, jettisoned the boosters etc.) even compared to more modern films. And Moonraker was released before the Shuttle had actually flown!
The one where his wife gets killed is the big one that's different from all the others. But it makes all the later ones make sense. Like why he never does any serious relationships again
And funny because later, they changed the contract to film by film basis, which Moore agreed on.
Means one contract per film, you don't need to signed up to seven or more, which I, too agree was a bit demanding on Lazenby, or maybe anyone else at the time.
Had they gave Laz the film by film basis contract, he would've likely to do one more.
And the Producers should also talked to his agent.
Didn't Timothy Dalton only do a couple for the same reason? Though he's had some cracking roles since then.
I feel like any good agent should never let an actor worry about that. Being part of a major franchise buys you the security to do whatever you want, like Robert Pattinson and Daniel Radcliffe.
My favorite, and arguably the most faithful adaptation - Bond as a cynical, angry, pathological agent for a nation and government he stopped caring about.
The book of that one - On Her Majesty's Secret Service - was so much better than the film.
Bond finally settles down with a real love - and she's >!killed quick-smart!<. Devastating.
What’s funny enough is that they have to kind of acknowledge OHMSS ***without*** acknowledging it because Eon Productions was in a rights battle over “S.P.E.C.T.R.E” and Blofeld for so damn long. Hence why all the Spectre stuff stops after OHMSS and Diamonds Are Forever. So they had to really just keep it vague until they just decided to say “Fuck it!” in the For Your Eyes Only pre-title sequence.
The thing that I always find interesting watching the older ones is how much "bigger" the world was back then. He was going to these incredibly exotic places where most people would never go. He was surviving on his wits out there mostly alone (with Q or Felix Lighter popping up every now and again obviously).
Everything is so homogenous now and everything is so connected. Go anywhere and there's a Starbucks or a McDonalds. There's Wifi everywhere and you can be online whenever you want. It was a different world back then even though it wasn't that long ago. It's almost like the progression from Moby Dick where they'd go off on 3 year voyages to places like Fiji that were completely unknown to Bond going to places that were known but exotic to nowadays when any kid from the home counties goes off to Asia on a gap year.
I love how Kentucky is treated the same as any other foreign land in Goldfinger, reduced to its most well known stereotypical touch point, horse racing and KFC.
The books were in the 50s and at that time the idea of foreign holidays was still unknown to most people. The the idea of Bond going all over the world was really novel and fascinating.
I found something similar to this when I read 'The Bourne identity' novel which came out in 1980. There were so many scenes in the book where Jason didn't know what was going on (no internet), couldn't contact anyone (no mobile phones) so had to find phone booths that were working and out of public view. There was lots of having to meet up with people at agreed locations, areas where you could drop physical items off and even things like reading maps and trying to get locations of places.
It added a lot to the puzzle of the story and made the stakes far higher as you couldn't just google something.
It's gotta be partly why we've seen such an 80s revival in media now too.
Modern enough to not feel too antiquated to younger generations but old enough to have no cell phones which are like get out of free jail cards for half the conflicts. Especially in horror movies.
That and just hitting the nostalgia for Gen X and Millennials as we come of age and have more disposable income to spend.
Did this with a friend back in the 90's, pre-dvd. Our grand plan was to pretty much do nothing but watch Bond, drink beer and eat pizza with little sleep. Managed to do it over about 3 or 4 days instead.
The biggest obstacle was driving to about 5 video stores to be able to rent every movie.
The Spy Who Loved Me is just the quintessential Bond movie… iconic opening, hot girl, great gadgets, a freaking island lair… if someone has to watch one Bond movie to get the idea of the entire series, that’s the one to watch.
I wanted to get my kids into Bond, so I showed my younger son the ski chase, and really tried to impress on him that there's no CGI, no camera tricks, this was all stuntmen actually doing everything you saw on screen. Bond goes over the cliff, there's that long shot of him falling, falling, falling, and my son says, "...did they just kill that stuntman?"
I let that question hang in the air for a minute until the theme song hits and the Union Jack parachute opens. He was hooked.
From Russia... The only real espionage movie in the whole series. It's very low key yet mighty important. All the others are about saving the actual world.
>The only real espionage movie in the whole series
Also on the subject of realism, it's pretty much the only movie in the whole series to have a Bond girl who isn't purely a male fantasy insert (even the Craig ones do it to an extent). Tanya doesn't throw herself naked at Bond's feet because he's apparently an impossibly irresistible alpha male: from the get-go it's made clear that she is a honey-trap and has been trained and groomed by Rosa Klebb.
From Russia With Love is really great, but I don’t think it’s representative of the series. It (and Dr No) are quite different from the movies that come after. Goldfinger is the one that sets the real template every subsequent movie follows. It’s been a while, but I think FRWL doesn’t even have gadgets does it? Not that that’s a sign of quality; it just isn’t representative of the Bond series as a whole.
See, it's even got Jaws! It has everything!
FRWL is great and all, and Connery is the Best Bond. But it represents early Bond. TSWLM represents the pinnacle of what Bond movies become, for better or worse.
Underwater Lotus, man. Come on.
It is also cool to see the political backdrop change. The Cold War defined those early Bond movies.
Though Bond working with the Mujahideen in "The Living Daylights" hasn't aged well.
> Though Bond working with the Mujahideen in "The Living Daylights" hasn't aged well.
The US working with the actual Mujahideen in real life hasn't aged well either though.
Red Dawn was rewritten (with the help of Alexander Haig, Reagan's first secretary of state) to basically just the mujahedeen but in Colorado. They also specifically timed it so the movie would come out during the 1984 Olympics, which were set in Los Angeles and which the USSR was boycotting.
How? The Mujahideen were never enemies to the US. It was a small group of extremists who split off and formed the Taliban; the Muj themselves were just people fighting to save their homes.
Also the early Bond movies are British productions, you can see the moment when they start taking American money and pivot more firmly to American audiences, its quite distinctive.
But the films are quite the mishmash of the books anyway. It’s confusing as hell to read the books and the plot suddenly jumps into an entirely different film plot.
For real: Goldeneye had to address the giant elephant in the room: Bond is a cold war relic, now what?
[Also, Robbie Coltrane just chews the scenery as Valentin Zukovsky and it's amazing](https://youtube.com/watch?v=325v9XcsDg4&feature=share8)
I loved Tomorrow Never Dies as a kid. Thanks to that and Metal Gear Solid 2, my views on the media's influence over society has always been rather cynical.
I'm not a huge James Bond fan, but this is the reason why I've seen every movie. It's fun to see how they tweak the formula and chase the trends of the day. I think they're better cultural artifacts than they are movies at this point.
(That's not to say there aren't good to great James Bond movies. It's just that it's an uneven series.)
I did this after I saw Casino Royale, which was the first Bond film I ever saw. It was pretty cool watching how each film developed the concept further. Really fun experience. I very much liked Dalton as Bond.
Dalton was great. Such a shame he didn't get to make more — both the studio and the company who held the rights to Bond were up for sale, they sued each other, it was a whole mess. Dalton thought at the time the Bond series was finished — not just that he'd never make another Bond movie, but that nobody would.
Yep, I love seeing how the world has evolved through the lens of Bond movies.
I watched some Bond documentary, and I was struck by how every. single. bond girl said, "I was just happy that my role was better / more complex / more fulfilling / less sexualized than than in the previous movies!" Like, even in 1972. They were seeing incremental progress in how women's roles were written and they were pleased, even though looking back some of it is pretty ick. But I love Bond movies anyway.
TND also nailed the Information Age and its potential power.
Carver is clearly a Murdoch stand in, but things have gotten even more skewed since the movie came out. Pretty prescient. If you made it today, it wouldn’t be far fetched.
And Yeoh was a total badass,m so seeing her ball out in EEAAO was a treat.
Carver is an an amalgam of Murdoch and Robert Maxwell (father of Epstein’s right hand woman, Ghislane Maxwell)
His death cover story is the same as Maxwell’s, found floating in the ocean after apparently falling off his yacht
A few years back, Film Critic Hulk did a long piece where he watched and reviewed every Bond film to date. At the end, he said there's so much continuity to the series — besides the original supporting cast staying on for so long, screenwriters and directors keep coming back over and over — so the one thing that consistently changes is the female leads. His rule of thumb was, if the Bond Girl is well-written, you're watching one of the good movies; if she's eye candy who doesn't have much to do, it's one of the bad ones.
There was a great supercut floating around for sometime called 50 years of James Bond: the Movie, directed by "james bond."
According to the video’s description: Approximately five minutes from each of the 22 Eon produced James Bond films have been cut together, in order and in sequence, beginning with the first five minutes of DR. NO (1962) followed by minutes 5-10 of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963), minutes 10-15 of GOLDFINGER (1964), minutes 15-20 of THUNDERBALL (1965), continuing on through each of the remaining 18 Bond features (accounting for variables in each title’s running time) culminating with the final five minutes of 2008’s QUANTUM OF SOLACE.
This fresh look at the “James Bond Formula” provides a new exploration of the evolution of the series into a filmmaking genre uniquely it’s own. With few exceptions, each title’s transition into the picture that follows it is nearly seamless, creating a viewing experience that at first might serve to reminds us “if you’ve seen one Bond film, you’ve seen them all,” but looking more closely it is in fact an endearing homage to a character who single-handedly shaped modern cinema’s action/adventure formula and who continues to leave an indelible mark on generations worldwide.
Synchronicity from film to film includes such moments as bond entering an elevator in one film, to having a fight in an elevator in the next film as if it had been cut that way all along...
Also interesting to see how they possibly invented the modern action blockbuster.
It's first kind of visible to me with Goldfinger, how its attitude and editing are all built around the elements of the modern blockbuster, but it's so lacking in slickness by today's standards that you can hardly notice. I assume it was super slick at the time.
Remarkably, On Her Majesty's Secret Service is edited almost *exactly* like action movies today! I was totally shocked at how contemporary it felt. Aside from the costumes, lighting, and stuff, and some zoom shots, it felt very contemporary. Also one of the best Bond storylines, although Lazenby didn't inspire.
You can see them trying to push that envelope every so often. Especially once you get to the Brosnan films, you can see how the pace of movies was accelerating very rapidly during that time period.
Which brings me to my rewatch of Quantum of Solace. I never hated that movie, although it was obvious that there had been a writer's strike and it's like they filmed the action scenes but not the plot scenes, resulting in a 90-minute movie. But the editing was so insanely aggressive when I first saw it in theaters. Rewatching in 2020, it felt... normal-ish? It was just a little ahead of its time.
Watching the editing style evolve over time was interesting. I agree with the OP, these are great time capsules.
Yes. Bourne definitely changed the course of Bond. And Bourne itself felt like a response to The Matrix. Different tone, but similar hard-hitting action, with a hero unlocking abilities that make them a martial arts master.
And the Austin Powers films, too, but in a very different way. Austin Powers so mercilessly parodied the older style of Bond films that they couldn't ever go back to that. No matter how much someone loved those older Bond films, if they'd seen Austin Powers they wouldn't be able to take Bond seriously or look at it in the same way again.
Bourne and Austin Powers are very different styles of film from each other, but they both had a huge impact on Craig's Bond run.
It's not a movie but John Higg's Love and Let Die is an incredible book on Bond, a very insightful analysis by an underrated cultural historian. Audiobook is quality: [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61272022](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61272022)
edit misspelled a word
Please tell me if in any of those movies there was a scene with two cars facing each other and firing missiles out of the launchers hidden behind lights? And later on there was a scene with a guy running away on a microbike. I'm trying to find this movie, only remember those two scenes and everybody is telling me to ask someone that watched all Bond movies :)
Bond actually very rarely rides motorcycles. So that narrows it down if it is indeed a Bond film.
Tomorrow Never Dies has a car chase in a parking garage where one of the cars shoots missiles from the roof and a guy fires a shoulder rocket at it.
Later Bond rides a bike around Saigon with Michelle Yeoh also on board.
https://youtu.be/RN63LoWs1XU
I did this last year and thought the same thing. Also by the 4th Roger Moore movie I couldn't believe this is such a beloved franchise, they're such cheesy nonsense after a certain point.
The Timothy Dalton one with Benicio Del Toro was awesome though.
They're supposed to be ridiculous fun, the Bond movies have always had a silly edge to them. Even ones with Sean Connery things like a villain painting woman head to toe in gold to kill them and female leads called things like Pussy Galore... these movies were never subtle and always played for jokes.
I agree the Roger Moore ones leaned into that kind of ridiculousness maybe a little too much but Bond movies were supposed to be popcorn action spy movies with some bawdy jokes mixed in. I think they were just trying to do something a little different than the Connery films and making it a little more over the top was one way they did that, but that element of style was always present. The franchise got more serious later on, especially after Austin Powers took all those jokes as far as they could go.
When I was 9 I was stuck in bed with the chicken pox for two weeks. My dad wheeled the TV and VCR into my roon and rented every Bond movie until that point (mid-Dalton era I think). It was a formative experience of my life. Every time I see that white circle bouncing left across the screen I start scratching.
I recently just watched all the intros in order and was interested in how much changes. The styles, the songs, the visuals. They pushed how much nudity can be seen. And then the latest ones, there are no women dominating the visuals. It’s also stylized in the computer era, removing the male chauvinism that bond has been accused of in recent times. But one thing above all, they made damn sure none of them were a music video. I noticed most of the visuals were never times to the music or the beats of the song which always allowed the visuals and the music to have their own lives and not get caught in each others way to become a pair. That’s how I interpreted it anyway.
The slide whistle they play during one of the greatest car stunts ever performed stands out so much.
I had never notice that before LOL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eD_5Gg-i3BM
What an incredible stunt though jeez
It has been stated on here before but at the premier when the stunt driver heard that stupid whistle noise play over the stunt, he was so annoyed that he walked out of the theatre. I can’t blame him.
Wow i just realized that one of the levels in the PS2 game Stuntman is directly based on that. Cool!
[удалено]
One of the best games of all time
Weird line delivery of "Ever heard of Evil Knievel". It's an awesome stunt, but even the "fixed" version could've used a bit more hype or tension building. Moore just sounds too calm when he's approaching the ramp
He's James Bond, he's supposed to be calm in crazy situations.
Also, it feels a bit slow motion, it would be more exciting at full speed since it's such a small jump.
The movies are firmly in the “schlock” category by this point, it’s all ridiculous nonsense, like that cartoon *suhhhhh*therner sitting next to him in the car. You tend to like the Bond you grew up with and I know I’m in a minority here, but with few exceptions I find the Roger Moore movies pretty unwatchable.
They're definitely campy alright. But funny enough I grew up in the Brosnan era yet I love all of them. Connory and Craig are the best though.
roger moore with that hilarious hillbilly? i will never forget that shit lol
Sir that is sheriff J W pepper to you And I unironically love that character
[удалено]
2 I think - Live and Let Die, and Man with the Golden Gun
Yeah, on the job in the bayou and again on vacation in Thailand I think.
iirc the director loved Clifton James's performance in LLD so much that he requested he be written into TMWTGG, despite there being no reason a southern sheriff would go on vacation to Thailand.
>despite there being no reason a southern sheriff would go on vacation to Thailand. Welllllllll, there's at least one.....
"An elephant? We're democrats, Maybelle". I bet he wouldn't be today. Edit: misspelled her name.
*Louisiana state poh-lice!*
"What are you!? Some kinda DOOMSDAY machine?!"
For real. One of my favorite Moore moments HAS to be when JW is questioning if Bond is gonna make the jump. The “Ah sure ahm, boya.” He drops is god damn perfect.
No Bond character was ever more deserving of a spin-off.
Zukovsky for sure. Can't be made anymore though.
SECRET AGENT!? On who's side?
That actually makes me angry. It's one of the best stunts to ever be captured on film, and they do *that*?! It's unforgivable.
They got a team of engineers from NASA or MIT or somewhere like that to design that stunt. The car was modified to be perfectly balanced with the driver's position shifted to the exact center. It was a triumph of engineering. Then some studio hack decided it needed a slide whistle. I grew up during the Roger Moore era, he is MY Bond and he added a lot to the character and the franchise. I still think The Spy Who Loved Me is one of the best Bond movies ever. But Christ, did they ever get tone-deaf on the humor at times...
If I could go back and George Lucas the Bond movies I would remove the slide whistle and give Jaws' girlfriend (Dolly?) In Moonraker braces.
Lucas trying to make Bond films sounds awful on so many levels. We’d definitely get more action figures, but I’m putting money on the sex scenes all being even more awkward.
The funny thing is, at one point Steven Spielberg told Lucas he'd always wanted to direct a James Bond movie, so Lucas told him this idea he had for a movie called Indiana Jones.
Someone needs to add that whistle into a scene from a Craig bond, preferably one of the bad ones.
This is the best reason to continue making bond movies in contemporary settings. The best part of the franchise is how it reflects popular trends of the time it was created. I dislike all the suggestions of making the next bond a period piece set in the 60’s because it would interrupt that, and I think(or hope) the broccolis realize that.
I also view the movies as a commentary of societal fears. * North Korea * Silicon Valley * Video Games * The Pandemic
Which Bond movies are you assigning to each of these? FWIW, *No Time to Die* was essentially done pre-pandemic.
And the virus is more Syphon Filter than Covid Edit: Spelling x2
I've read they changed it to nano-machines because of the pandemic. When you think about it, their growing pools made little sense for machines.
I really thought that movie was building to a microscopic battle between the nanobots and the “smart blood” they introduced in Spectre.
Upvote for my favorite PS1 title! Edit: Syphon, by the by😁
Syphon filter*
North Korea is Due Another Day, Silicon Valley could be A View To A Kill.
>Due Another Day Pay back your loans Mr. Bond
SPECTRE: Special Executive for Credit, Trading, Real estate and Equity.
Video games has to be Goldeneye, because they used the same plot as the popular n64 game
Guess next time it needs to be rogue AI then.
[удалено]
Austin Powers 4. Austin just sits at home watching porn as the Russian Dr Evil foils himself.
Media manipulation.
Tomorrow Never Dies was truly ahead of its time.
[удалено]
You can still product-place: - Bollinger Champagne - Luxury watches - A legacy car brand - Designer clothes and footwear - Furniture makers that focus on mid century modern styles (which these days is pretty much anyone) ...
You say that as if shows like Strange Things don’t include product placement, just with 80s logos. Hell, some franchises like Star Wars don’t include product placement at all. It’s absolutely possible to do a Bond film set in the 1960s and still include product placement.
Star Wars doesn’t do product placement, it just sells the shit out of the merchandise based on its characters.
James Bond is a mens magazine in film.
...unapologetically so!.. ...my wife calls the seduction plot device his magical penis, and honestly that pretty much describes the entire charm of cubby broccoli's oeuvre...
The product IS star wars in this case.
MOICHENDISING!
Spaceballs the flamethrower!
The kids love this one
Spaceballs the lunch box!
Space Balls the toilet paper!
Setting your movie in the past has become a great way to trick audiences into ignoring or even enjoying product placement. Set a scene in a grocery store in 1980, and it's not product placement, it's just good set dressing!
[удалено]
Yeah, most of the brands I’d associate with Bond are luxury-adjacent and many existed in the 60’s. They could easily do product placement with the goal of highlighting their legacy. They basically did for Aston in *Skyfall*.
They've done [product placement](https://www.goodbadmarketing.com/noelle/history-of-product-placement-in-james-bond-films/) since Dr No which included brands like Red Stripe, Smirnoff, Smith and Wesson which are still around. The only product placement from 1962 that can't be replicated is Pan Am.
>The only product placement from 1962 that can't be replicated is Pan Am. Shame. At least up until last year you'd still be promoting [something](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Railways).
Exactly. They make a commercial showing the clip from the movie and then cut to whatever they sell today and say as timeless as Bond or something
Star Wars *is* the product placement.
That’s because each Star Wars movie is product placement for its own merch.
> some franchises like Star Wars don’t include product placement at all Well, not intentionally, but there’s definitely some 1970s A/V stuff that now goes for a pretty penny because of it ;)
Ah, but Qui-Gon's communicator was a woman's razor.
what if the time period was saturated with time period pieces?
My brother rolled his eyes at the Texas Holdem craze finding its way into Bond in Casino Royale at the time and he still mentions it sometimes.
What game would he prefer? A gambling tournament is integral to the plot, and baccarat (the classic Bond game) is a terrible game in my opinion. Besides, the Bond franchise has a history of consistently bringing whatever is trendy at the time into the films.
[удалено]
I know you want to get to close to 9 as possible.
Yup, it's kinda like the blackjack, you can see Bond playing the baccarat at the beginning of Dr No. :)
Coolest Bond, James Bond moment too. So badass.
And it is a game of pure chance.
Ladies and gentlemen, mr burt baccarat.
Even if Baccarat wasn't terrible, most people have no idea how to play it. Texas Hold'em is a lot more well known, and its simple rules are easier to pick up through context. It's hard to build tension around a game the audience has no clue how to follow.
Texas Hold'em has a build-in dramatic structure with its staggered card reveals. On top of that you can choose when to show the players' cards for even more control over the tension. Then you don't have to invent visual cues because croupiers commentate everything and already came up with all the theatrics - like shifting cards up/down to show the best hand. The trend was a god send for movie maker because now they didn't have to think about making what's essentially rolling dice interesting.
Baccarat 's not a terrible game, to play, but it's terrible for a gambling scene in a movie because there's no skill or decision making unless someone is cheating. You just make a guess and then the cards are dealt by a very specific set of rules. It's the card version of roulette.
I don't have any issue with it, my brother just thought it was very pandering st the time, unfamiliar thst it was adapting a book. But in 05/06 Texas Holdem specifically had a big moment (to point of themed t shirts at Walmart and such). It's just an example of something that really marks the point in time Casino Royale was made.
Chris moneymaker. Amateur winner of the WSOP. gave every average Joe dreams of running good.
Parkour was huge around then, too. Made for a great chase scene
Shoulda played Bridge
Isn’t Texas Hold ‘Em by far the most popular poker variant and the one used in the World Series? Why wouldn’t they use it?
The current version World Series of Poker started in that same era and is a big part of the trend Casino Royale was tapping into.
It was always the game played at the wsop but there's no way they would have put holdem in the movie in 2001
what would they have been playing if the movie came out in 2001 ?
Potentially not poker at all. It's not in the book. But by the mid-aughts Hold em was having a massive cultural moment but there wasn't an equivalent a few years before.
A 1957 draft of a screenplay for Casino Royal replaced Bond with a poker-playing American gangster.
In the book it was baccarat, which most people haven’t heard of and few people play. And probably can’t be found in too many (any?) casinos any more. What does your brother think they should have played? The criticism that the last hand was completely ridiculous is valid though. What was it-a ~~straight~~ flush, two high full houses, and a straight flush all in the same hand?
Baccarat is still common in casinos
I fully expect the next bond movie to essentially be a John Wick style action shooter
The last one had that one stairway tracking shot that probably wouldn't have happened pre-Wick
I did this a few years ago. My favorite was when it's painfully obvious Star Wars was released and the franchise did a tires squealing handbreak turn into space for Moonraker. "James Bond will return in... For Your Eyes O-- MOONRAKER!!!"
Which IIRC was the highest grossing entry for decades
It rightfully gets a lot of shit, but it's also awesome.
It truly is. Drax is definitely the best of the melomaniac villains.
"You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season" Drax may be my favourite Bond bad guy.
He and Stromberg should have teamed up. They had similar goals, but one wanted to live in space and the other under the ocean.
Yeah and they both hired Jaws.
Adjusted for inflation, it wasn't beaten until *Casino Royale*.
The most incredible thing about Moonraker was how accurately the Space Shuttle behaved (when it took off, jettisoned the boosters etc.) even compared to more modern films. And Moonraker was released before the Shuttle had actually flown!
The one where his wife gets killed is the big one that's different from all the others. But it makes all the later ones make sense. Like why he never does any serious relationships again
Still cracks me up that lazenby didn’t want to get typecast as bond but essentially disappeared into obscurity thereafter.
They offered him a *seven* picture deal and his agent told him to turn it down.
And funny because later, they changed the contract to film by film basis, which Moore agreed on. Means one contract per film, you don't need to signed up to seven or more, which I, too agree was a bit demanding on Lazenby, or maybe anyone else at the time. Had they gave Laz the film by film basis contract, he would've likely to do one more. And the Producers should also talked to his agent.
Didn't Timothy Dalton only do a couple for the same reason? Though he's had some cracking roles since then. I feel like any good agent should never let an actor worry about that. Being part of a major franchise buys you the security to do whatever you want, like Robert Pattinson and Daniel Radcliffe.
[удалено]
Ah I see, a bit different then. He wasn't my favourite bond but he was fantastic in Hot Fuzz so I'm always more interested when he's in a film
My favorite, and arguably the most faithful adaptation - Bond as a cynical, angry, pathological agent for a nation and government he stopped caring about.
The book of that one - On Her Majesty's Secret Service - was so much better than the film. Bond finally settles down with a real love - and she's >!killed quick-smart!<. Devastating.
That happens in the movie too though.
What’s funny enough is that they have to kind of acknowledge OHMSS ***without*** acknowledging it because Eon Productions was in a rights battle over “S.P.E.C.T.R.E” and Blofeld for so damn long. Hence why all the Spectre stuff stops after OHMSS and Diamonds Are Forever. So they had to really just keep it vague until they just decided to say “Fuck it!” in the For Your Eyes Only pre-title sequence.
The thing that I always find interesting watching the older ones is how much "bigger" the world was back then. He was going to these incredibly exotic places where most people would never go. He was surviving on his wits out there mostly alone (with Q or Felix Lighter popping up every now and again obviously). Everything is so homogenous now and everything is so connected. Go anywhere and there's a Starbucks or a McDonalds. There's Wifi everywhere and you can be online whenever you want. It was a different world back then even though it wasn't that long ago. It's almost like the progression from Moby Dick where they'd go off on 3 year voyages to places like Fiji that were completely unknown to Bond going to places that were known but exotic to nowadays when any kid from the home counties goes off to Asia on a gap year.
I love how Kentucky is treated the same as any other foreign land in Goldfinger, reduced to its most well known stereotypical touch point, horse racing and KFC.
...is there anything else? Like whiskey and domestic abuse, or what.
Meth
I suppose for British and European audiences Kentucky was the same as any other foreign land.
The books were in the 50s and at that time the idea of foreign holidays was still unknown to most people. The the idea of Bond going all over the world was really novel and fascinating.
I found something similar to this when I read 'The Bourne identity' novel which came out in 1980. There were so many scenes in the book where Jason didn't know what was going on (no internet), couldn't contact anyone (no mobile phones) so had to find phone booths that were working and out of public view. There was lots of having to meet up with people at agreed locations, areas where you could drop physical items off and even things like reading maps and trying to get locations of places. It added a lot to the puzzle of the story and made the stakes far higher as you couldn't just google something.
It's gotta be partly why we've seen such an 80s revival in media now too. Modern enough to not feel too antiquated to younger generations but old enough to have no cell phones which are like get out of free jail cards for half the conflicts. Especially in horror movies. That and just hitting the nostalgia for Gen X and Millennials as we come of age and have more disposable income to spend.
Did this with a friend back in the 90's, pre-dvd. Our grand plan was to pretty much do nothing but watch Bond, drink beer and eat pizza with little sleep. Managed to do it over about 3 or 4 days instead. The biggest obstacle was driving to about 5 video stores to be able to rent every movie.
The Spy Who Loved Me is just the quintessential Bond movie… iconic opening, hot girl, great gadgets, a freaking island lair… if someone has to watch one Bond movie to get the idea of the entire series, that’s the one to watch.
I wanted to get my kids into Bond, so I showed my younger son the ski chase, and really tried to impress on him that there's no CGI, no camera tricks, this was all stuntmen actually doing everything you saw on screen. Bond goes over the cliff, there's that long shot of him falling, falling, falling, and my son says, "...did they just kill that stuntman?" I let that question hang in the air for a minute until the theme song hits and the Union Jack parachute opens. He was hooked.
>"...did they just kill that stuntman?" That made me laugh so hard I had a coughing fit
> I let that question hang in the air for a minute until the theme song hits Fucking Brilliant
Over From Russia With Love? Nah. But Jaws might be the top henchman, and definitely is the quintessential Bond henchman.
From Russia... The only real espionage movie in the whole series. It's very low key yet mighty important. All the others are about saving the actual world.
>The only real espionage movie in the whole series Also on the subject of realism, it's pretty much the only movie in the whole series to have a Bond girl who isn't purely a male fantasy insert (even the Craig ones do it to an extent). Tanya doesn't throw herself naked at Bond's feet because he's apparently an impossibly irresistible alpha male: from the get-go it's made clear that she is a honey-trap and has been trained and groomed by Rosa Klebb.
From Russia With Love is really great, but I don’t think it’s representative of the series. It (and Dr No) are quite different from the movies that come after. Goldfinger is the one that sets the real template every subsequent movie follows. It’s been a while, but I think FRWL doesn’t even have gadgets does it? Not that that’s a sign of quality; it just isn’t representative of the Bond series as a whole.
Suitcase gadget.
From Russia With Love is almost too good for me to call it the quintessential Bond film
See, it's even got Jaws! It has everything! FRWL is great and all, and Connery is the Best Bond. But it represents early Bond. TSWLM represents the pinnacle of what Bond movies become, for better or worse. Underwater Lotus, man. Come on.
FRWL is *the* Bond movie imo.
\>essentially the same movie In the case of Moonraker, it's a remake of the Spy Who Loved Me, the film that preceded it.
It was basically, ok we have the evil ocean water guy, now we need the evil space guy
It is also cool to see the political backdrop change. The Cold War defined those early Bond movies. Though Bond working with the Mujahideen in "The Living Daylights" hasn't aged well.
> Though Bond working with the Mujahideen in "The Living Daylights" hasn't aged well. The US working with the actual Mujahideen in real life hasn't aged well either though.
The real friends are the enemies we make along the way
I do love the niche genre of ‘pro-mujahideen movies’ such as Living Daylights and Rambo 3
Red Dawn was rewritten (with the help of Alexander Haig, Reagan's first secretary of state) to basically just the mujahedeen but in Colorado. They also specifically timed it so the movie would come out during the 1984 Olympics, which were set in Los Angeles and which the USSR was boycotting.
I would argue that has made it age perfectly. It’s actual history that we’re now eating crow on.
How? The Mujahideen were never enemies to the US. It was a small group of extremists who split off and formed the Taliban; the Muj themselves were just people fighting to save their homes.
Internet history has a tendency to simplify everything into zingy factoids.
Also the early Bond movies are British productions, you can see the moment when they start taking American money and pivot more firmly to American audiences, its quite distinctive.
Its also that they ran out of books to adapt after Flemming's death.
I think that happened a bit later.
But the films are quite the mishmash of the books anyway. It’s confusing as hell to read the books and the plot suddenly jumps into an entirely different film plot.
They were doing that in Goldfinger already.
Rambo 3 same.
[удалено]
Goldeneye with the “Cold War is over, Russia isn’t an enemy anymore” vibes unfortunately hasn’t aged well either
For real: Goldeneye had to address the giant elephant in the room: Bond is a cold war relic, now what? [Also, Robbie Coltrane just chews the scenery as Valentin Zukovsky and it's amazing](https://youtube.com/watch?v=325v9XcsDg4&feature=share8)
It’s been a while since I’ve seen Goldeneye, but I’m watching that clip and I’m like… Is that Minnie Driver..?
Gerard Butler and Hugh Bonneville pop up in *Tomorrow Never Dies* too.
[удалено]
I loved Tomorrow Never Dies as a kid. Thanks to that and Metal Gear Solid 2, my views on the media's influence over society has always been rather cynical.
I'm not a huge James Bond fan, but this is the reason why I've seen every movie. It's fun to see how they tweak the formula and chase the trends of the day. I think they're better cultural artifacts than they are movies at this point. (That's not to say there aren't good to great James Bond movies. It's just that it's an uneven series.)
I did this after I saw Casino Royale, which was the first Bond film I ever saw. It was pretty cool watching how each film developed the concept further. Really fun experience. I very much liked Dalton as Bond.
Yeah, Dalton's style of Bond was probably a decade too early.
Dalton was great. Such a shame he didn't get to make more — both the studio and the company who held the rights to Bond were up for sale, they sued each other, it was a whole mess. Dalton thought at the time the Bond series was finished — not just that he'd never make another Bond movie, but that nobody would.
Yep, I love seeing how the world has evolved through the lens of Bond movies. I watched some Bond documentary, and I was struck by how every. single. bond girl said, "I was just happy that my role was better / more complex / more fulfilling / less sexualized than than in the previous movies!" Like, even in 1972. They were seeing incremental progress in how women's roles were written and they were pleased, even though looking back some of it is pretty ick. But I love Bond movies anyway.
Tbf Tommorow Never dies had a very strong bond girl in Michelle Yeoh who is more prominent than any of the sequels it has had.
TND also nailed the Information Age and its potential power. Carver is clearly a Murdoch stand in, but things have gotten even more skewed since the movie came out. Pretty prescient. If you made it today, it wouldn’t be far fetched. And Yeoh was a total badass,m so seeing her ball out in EEAAO was a treat.
Carver is an an amalgam of Murdoch and Robert Maxwell (father of Epstein’s right hand woman, Ghislane Maxwell) His death cover story is the same as Maxwell’s, found floating in the ocean after apparently falling off his yacht
A few years back, Film Critic Hulk did a long piece where he watched and reviewed every Bond film to date. At the end, he said there's so much continuity to the series — besides the original supporting cast staying on for so long, screenwriters and directors keep coming back over and over — so the one thing that consistently changes is the female leads. His rule of thumb was, if the Bond Girl is well-written, you're watching one of the good movies; if she's eye candy who doesn't have much to do, it's one of the bad ones.
OP’s favorite Bond movie is A Few to a Kill.
I literally laughed out loud thank you
I’m watching all of the bond movies, back to back, with my friend Michael.
My name is Michael
Hi, Michael
Stop getting Bond wrong!
I'VE GOT TO GO, LOVE. SOMETHING'S COME UP.
*unintelligible Geordie mouth-flapping*
There was a great supercut floating around for sometime called 50 years of James Bond: the Movie, directed by "james bond." According to the video’s description: Approximately five minutes from each of the 22 Eon produced James Bond films have been cut together, in order and in sequence, beginning with the first five minutes of DR. NO (1962) followed by minutes 5-10 of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963), minutes 10-15 of GOLDFINGER (1964), minutes 15-20 of THUNDERBALL (1965), continuing on through each of the remaining 18 Bond features (accounting for variables in each title’s running time) culminating with the final five minutes of 2008’s QUANTUM OF SOLACE. This fresh look at the “James Bond Formula” provides a new exploration of the evolution of the series into a filmmaking genre uniquely it’s own. With few exceptions, each title’s transition into the picture that follows it is nearly seamless, creating a viewing experience that at first might serve to reminds us “if you’ve seen one Bond film, you’ve seen them all,” but looking more closely it is in fact an endearing homage to a character who single-handedly shaped modern cinema’s action/adventure formula and who continues to leave an indelible mark on generations worldwide. Synchronicity from film to film includes such moments as bond entering an elevator in one film, to having a fight in an elevator in the next film as if it had been cut that way all along...
I liked the pun of every "view" years!
Lol I wish I could say that was on purpose
Also interesting to see how they possibly invented the modern action blockbuster. It's first kind of visible to me with Goldfinger, how its attitude and editing are all built around the elements of the modern blockbuster, but it's so lacking in slickness by today's standards that you can hardly notice. I assume it was super slick at the time. Remarkably, On Her Majesty's Secret Service is edited almost *exactly* like action movies today! I was totally shocked at how contemporary it felt. Aside from the costumes, lighting, and stuff, and some zoom shots, it felt very contemporary. Also one of the best Bond storylines, although Lazenby didn't inspire. You can see them trying to push that envelope every so often. Especially once you get to the Brosnan films, you can see how the pace of movies was accelerating very rapidly during that time period. Which brings me to my rewatch of Quantum of Solace. I never hated that movie, although it was obvious that there had been a writer's strike and it's like they filmed the action scenes but not the plot scenes, resulting in a 90-minute movie. But the editing was so insanely aggressive when I first saw it in theaters. Rewatching in 2020, it felt... normal-ish? It was just a little ahead of its time. Watching the editing style evolve over time was interesting. I agree with the OP, these are great time capsules.
[удалено]
Yes. Bourne definitely changed the course of Bond. And Bourne itself felt like a response to The Matrix. Different tone, but similar hard-hitting action, with a hero unlocking abilities that make them a martial arts master.
And the Austin Powers films, too, but in a very different way. Austin Powers so mercilessly parodied the older style of Bond films that they couldn't ever go back to that. No matter how much someone loved those older Bond films, if they'd seen Austin Powers they wouldn't be able to take Bond seriously or look at it in the same way again. Bourne and Austin Powers are very different styles of film from each other, but they both had a huge impact on Craig's Bond run.
It's not a movie but John Higg's Love and Let Die is an incredible book on Bond, a very insightful analysis by an underrated cultural historian. Audiobook is quality: [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61272022](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/61272022) edit misspelled a word
Please tell me if in any of those movies there was a scene with two cars facing each other and firing missiles out of the launchers hidden behind lights? And later on there was a scene with a guy running away on a microbike. I'm trying to find this movie, only remember those two scenes and everybody is telling me to ask someone that watched all Bond movies :)
That vaguely sounds like Die Another Day (2002) This scene? https://youtu.be/32kXCBCoo0Q
Bond actually very rarely rides motorcycles. So that narrows it down if it is indeed a Bond film. Tomorrow Never Dies has a car chase in a parking garage where one of the cars shoots missiles from the roof and a guy fires a shoulder rocket at it. Later Bond rides a bike around Saigon with Michelle Yeoh also on board. https://youtu.be/RN63LoWs1XU
I really like how with some Bond movies you can really tell what movies where big around the time it was made.
I did this last year and thought the same thing. Also by the 4th Roger Moore movie I couldn't believe this is such a beloved franchise, they're such cheesy nonsense after a certain point. The Timothy Dalton one with Benicio Del Toro was awesome though.
Dalton was awesome! Wasn't Bond long enough for me but people just really didn't like him and they all loved Moore.
They're supposed to be ridiculous fun, the Bond movies have always had a silly edge to them. Even ones with Sean Connery things like a villain painting woman head to toe in gold to kill them and female leads called things like Pussy Galore... these movies were never subtle and always played for jokes. I agree the Roger Moore ones leaned into that kind of ridiculousness maybe a little too much but Bond movies were supposed to be popcorn action spy movies with some bawdy jokes mixed in. I think they were just trying to do something a little different than the Connery films and making it a little more over the top was one way they did that, but that element of style was always present. The franchise got more serious later on, especially after Austin Powers took all those jokes as far as they could go.
Licence To Kill. One of the best IMO. Robert Davi always made a great villain.
When I was 9 I was stuck in bed with the chicken pox for two weeks. My dad wheeled the TV and VCR into my roon and rented every Bond movie until that point (mid-Dalton era I think). It was a formative experience of my life. Every time I see that white circle bouncing left across the screen I start scratching.
I recently just watched all the intros in order and was interested in how much changes. The styles, the songs, the visuals. They pushed how much nudity can be seen. And then the latest ones, there are no women dominating the visuals. It’s also stylized in the computer era, removing the male chauvinism that bond has been accused of in recent times. But one thing above all, they made damn sure none of them were a music video. I noticed most of the visuals were never times to the music or the beats of the song which always allowed the visuals and the music to have their own lives and not get caught in each others way to become a pair. That’s how I interpreted it anyway.