December 5- I agree with most everyone, Ken Adam is the most overlooked. Ever since Moonraker, the Bond franchise has attempted to channel Ken Adam’s style with minimal success at best. Some of Ken Adam’s sets are the most iconic in all of cinema. I’d also give a nod to Roger Deakins who created the most visually striking Bond film.
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He’s the best. Bond movies are generally five minutes into the future and that’s what Adam’s aesthetic delivers, while also being timeless. It’s perfect.
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Dec. 4:
Diamonds Are Forever and For Your Eyes Only – two totally different films and yet two totally entertaining ones as well.
DAF has many imperfections–the worst special effects of the series (not helped by a technician’s gaffe that led to a premature ignition of explosives for the climax before cameras were rolling). One of the two worst editing jobs of the series vying with Quantum Of Solace. (How did Plenty get to Tiffany’s house where she got killed? The editing decisions inexplicably and infuriatingly do not tell us.) A re-filmed stunt is performed the opposite of what it’s supposed to be. The lack of a revenge angle for Tracy’s death–which is hinted at in the PTS but never brought back when the real Blofeld shows up. All are glaring issues, and yet, despite that, I still love DAF. The dialog is excellent and witty, John Barry delivers another great score, Shirley Bassey performs her best Bond theme song, Ken Adam’s sets are solid, we have one of the series’ best fight scenes with Bond vs. Peter Franks, a terrific car chase, and, of course, THE man, Sean Connery is back. Despite its faults, DAF’s positives are too much to ignore. Every time I pop it in, I sit back and enjoy the ride. It might not always be perfect, but I always arrive at my desired destination.
FYEO in odd way is almost the antithesis of DAF. It is way more serious and down to earth than DAF. It is has bigger stunts and is better made. FYEO does a LOT right. From the opening scene at Tracy’s grave to the utilization of its short story namesake–along with that of Risico. From having Bond demonstrate his driving skills with an underpowered vehicle in one of the best car chases of the series to Bond showing off his skiing skills in another outstanding series chase. From Bill Conti’s stellar score to Rick Sylvester’s falling off a cliff in a jaw-dropping rock climbing stunt that is pound for pound my vote for the least talked about, most underrated stunt of the series. And from Topol’s excellent portrayal of Bond ally Milos Columbo–bettered only by Pedro Armendariz’s Kerim Bey in From Russia With Love–to Roger Moore’s most serious and grounded performance as 007 topped off by his awesome farewell to Emile Leopold Locque. The only negatives of the film for me are the idiotic stainless steel delicatessen line, the ice rink fight (the scoreboard tally kills it for me), and that we don’t get to see the end of Columbo’s fight with one of the St. Cyril’s guards. (One moment he’s fighting the man as Bond goes through the stained glass window with his guard and the next Columbo is chasing after Kristatos. What happened?) But these are minor quibbles. FYEO is enjoyable from start to finish and one of my very favorite Bond films.
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Bumping the questions weekly, just because it makes it easier to find them.
December 6:
Best Craig moment - amid all the many highlights (on the train with Vesper, the opera sequence, the first encounter with Silva, his fight with Mr. Hinx) I have to say: Bond´s last phone conversation with Madeleine, looking at the sky.
Most glaring missed opportunity - more movies between QOS and SF.
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Dec. 5:
I agree with most everyone so far in that I’d go with Ken Adam and John Barry as being the most overlooked in their Bond work awards-wise. Both set the gold standard of what Bond films’ design and sound should be and are both justifiable icons in the 007 world.
But if I had to pick just one, I’d lean toward Adam. As theSpectre pointed out above, there has just been something missing in the Bond world production design-wise since he left, something fantastical. Whether that is because the filmmakers were going for a more realistic look or that the designers are simply not Ken Adam because he is a once in a lifetime talent, I don’t know. Barry is a once in a lifetime talent too, but I find many of the Bond composers who’ve replaced him closer to his talent than the production designers who followed Adam.
Adam had many signature sets from Dr. No’s lair and spider room to Goldfinger’s rumpus room and Fort Knox, from Blofeld’s volcano lair to Stromberg’s Atlantis and Liparus tanker and Drax’s space station. How Adam never won an award for You Only Live Twice or The Spy Who Loved Me or Moonraker is beyond me. They were such huge, iconic sets that Bond would not be Bond without them. The man was simply a visionary and a genius.
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December 6th - his best moment, many to choose from but I’ll go with the one that cemented him as Bond for me. Hanging upside down face bloodied scrambling for his gun, finding balance on a second rope. Bang , full on Bond.
Missed opportunity - script development on QOS would have given us about the best most Fleming in spirit Bond film.
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December 6:
Finest Moment: The first action set piece in Casino Royale (parkour). Craig didn’t do all of the stunts of course, but never before did you believe, and viscerally feel, so much that the actor playing Bond could have been.
Most Glaring Missed Opportunity: At the risk of being a bit basic, never making a film where he is simply the character of James Bond, experienced MI6 agent who accepts and takes on a mission brief. His first three films all end with an implication that he is now, in full, the complete James Bond as we had known him from the previous half-century of films and books, all backtracked to some degree in the following films; Skyfall bizarrely insinuates he is over the hill for most of its runtime before deciding at the end that he is just getting started. The final two movies have Bond with one eye on the exit door. The result is a run that feels a bit like it started winding down just when it was getting started.
Of course, there are 20 or so movies that more or less fit that brief, and perhaps if the next actor or two makes more movies that fit that mould it will seem like a masterstroke and unique selling point to me in retrospect. But here in 2021 it does strike me as a missed opportunity.
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December 6
Finest Moment: The first “Bond, James Bond” from of Casino Royale.
It’s what the whole films had been building up to. One by one the classic tropes were being reintroduced culminating with that line. I don’t think any other Bond has had to work so hard for their “Bond, James Bond” but it was worth it. I left the cinema with such a buzz the first time I heard it and it still gives me chills.
Can’t really argue with that but in the interest of making my own contribution…
Most Glaring Missed Opportunity: Lack of gambling in subsequent films.
Bond has always been a gambler and M evens says that he is the best card player in the service. But after the poker game being such a big Casino Royale we see very little of Bond at the card table. I didn’t need another gambling based plot but a little scene here and there would have been nice. Bond gaming against a cheating villain is one of my favourite tropes of the series and I would still love to see it again in the future.
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December 6: Finest moment - I am rather fond of the opera sequence and associated fights in Quantum of Solace. Unlike anything we had seen in a Bond before. Whether we would want it all to always be quite like that is another matter but it does stand out, for me. Felt new, and worth trying.
Missed opportunity (aside from the opportunity to say “no” to most of Spectre’s cretinous ideas) - as others have observed, the haziness about whether Bond is being treated as a veteran or fairly new to it all or quite where he is, other than wherever they place him being suited to the drama of a given story. If they really wanted an arc, they could have done with a bit more planning it out, rather than bandwagon-hopping. Where it all eventually gets to is fine, but the route to it is a bit of a scribble.
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December 6
Finest moment: I love the eerie atmosphere of anticipation leading up to Silva’s attack on Skyfall. It’s perfectly capped by his helicopter entrance blaring The Monkees which is at once terrifying and hilarious.
Missed opportunity: Watching SPECTRE for the first time in theaters, I was willing Blofeld’s helicopter escape the range of Bond’s popgun. I couldn’t believe they wouldn’t have the arch-villain escape at least once after decades waiting for his return. Not only would this have improved SPECTRE’s ending, it would have opened so many interesting avenues for the next film. Imagine the No Time to Die Cuba sequence with him in person!
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December 6:
For me Craig’s finest moment is the cleaning up after CASINO ROYALE’s stairwell fight when Bond is visibly swallowing the adrenaline with a huge glass of spirits, looking at his own bleeding, harrowed face in the mirror. A shaken Bond as we have rarely seen him on screen; altogether more in line with scenes of internal reflection and desperation Fleming used to great effect, like at the start of Goldfinger or during Moonraker’s escape/hiding in place.
It’s a shame the Craig tenure ends without a version of the assassination attempt on M. They used up a few good ideas over these five films, not all of them to the best effect. A brainwashed Bond returning to kill M, then being deprogrammed and aimed right back at the instigators would have been a fine start for an ‘ordinary’ Bond adventure and a much better basis for the prolonged trust issues the series struggles with for far too long now.
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The brainwashing would’ve been good for Skyfall, there’s very little they’d need to otherwise change after turning up at M’s home
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I beg to differ about brainwashing. It was ‘popular’ in fiction 50 years ago, but would we buy it today? Or more precisely, we could accept that a character has been turned (cf. Homeland), but not that it only takes some electroshocks or whatnot to turn a switch in their mind and bring them back to their old self, no grudges born for whatever happened? IMO a brainwashed-then-‘cured’ Bond could never be the real Bond again (in today’s storytelling).
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The third film feels too early for that, especially since they just spent 2 films establishing him.
GIven the way in which M apparently gets away with everything by the end of No Time to DIe, he deserves Bond taking a pot shot at him. Perhaps that’s an angle for another day/film.
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…you havn’t seen/heard the latest on the British government?
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Which is why it’s perfect timing! The first two demonstrated him as their best, three has Silva turn their best against them with the aid of M’s reckless actions!!
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How about nanobots making Bond susceptible to drive-by-wire remote induced hallucinations or berserk seizures? And fishing them out of his system subsequently by dialysis? Fleming actually seems to use not so much a brainwashed/turned Bond but one acting under deep trance/posthypnotic suggestion.
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Bond had also suffered amnesia due to trauma from a bullet wound and/or fall from a great height into the sea. That would have made him more susceptible to suggestion by nefarious methods as he was not himself at the time.
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Dec. 6:
Best Daniel Craig moment – The parkour chase in Casino Royale. Mollaka’s lithe and athletic finesse vs. Bond’s brute force and determination. Bond is clearly outclassed in this matchup and yet his quick thinking and ingenuity allow him to keep pace with a jackrabbit Houdini. I love how the scene shows Bond making split-second decisions from releasing the metal piping from the crane to quickly rise to its apex to sliding on sawdust to quickly fall to the next floor to keep up with Mollaka. Even crashing through drywall or taking a wrench to break a hydraulic to drop a lift quickly are good examples. It immediately sets his Bond up as something different and yet still totally 007 and, on the heels of the PTS, puts the kibosh on all the CraigNotBond speculation.
Most glaring Daniel Craig missed opportunity – For all of No Time To Die’s taking bits of You Only Live Twice, my vote goes to not ending the film with a mission successful, amnesiac Bond getting captured, setting up his “brainwashing” for the assassination attempt on M to start Bond 26 with a new 007 actor.
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