My bad - it was a frigate. I could only recall the interior.
I thought it must be something like that. However, it then begs the question, do you find the climax of TWINE boring?
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Even when I was ten, at the cinema, I thought it was dull and anticlimactic. There simply wasn’t enough room in the sub to have a proper fight. At best, it was pretty muted, I think. (Also, Bond telling Renard that Electra was dead - don’t annoy the guy when he already wants to kill you!).
I didn’t used to care for the sub at the beginning of The Spy Who Loved Me either, but looking at it now, it’s quite alarming to see people drown, which makes it somewhat interesting. Thunderball, too, suffers from all it’s underwater scenes, as you know there’s going to be no dialogue and movements will be slow.
Bond telling Renard Elektra is dead is meant to rile him up. It’s Bond telling Renard the only thing he cares about is gone and to agitate him. People who get very emotional can make mistakes. And Renard does make a mistake by leaving Bond alive near the hoses.
I do agree that Thunderball’s finale suffers from too long of an undersea battle. It ruins the pacing at the end. Shave about 3 minutes off the fight and it would be a lot better.
Okay, I’m obviously confusing it with what I would do.
The underwater music in Thunderball stays with me too, and not in the best way. It is a good film, though. I don’t think there’s a bad one in the whole series.
I can’t relate, because as a child I was always fascinated by submarines and underwater work. Assault on a Queen and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea are two of my formative essentials. Likewise Thunderball. A climax where not only are Bond and Christmas trapped aboard a sabotaged submarine, but one which is driving itself nose-first into the seabed was deliciously agonizing for me.
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Let’s not forget what was most impressive about that scene, though: Pierce’s royal blue shirt and beige trousers.
Denise Richards could have replaced Jacqueline Bisset (The Deep) on every fanboy’s wall if the costumer had made a different decision re: sports bras.
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TND and TWINE were the first Bond movies I saw in the cinema. The TWINE finale was more low key but I remember being engrossed by the submarine sequence - particularly the concept of Bond holding his breath. Like Goldeneye 64, the TWINE video game raised my enjoyment of the concepts.
DAF was Roger Moore’s favourite Bond movie, so I think that says it’s a masterpiece from a comedic point of view. Say what you want about DAF and NSNA, but the dialogue is hilarious.
Interesting perspective.
AVTAK wouldn’t be a Bond film I’d show a new fan, particularly one looking to explore the Moore era, as I’d first direct them to the heyday (TSWLM or LALD). But I’m comfortable enough with its place in the canon. If someone came across it I think there’s enough content for them to walk away feeling okay.
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I love AVTAK great titelsong, classic spy adventure, brilliant villain even the henchwoman was formidable (Roger Moore should have gotten an oscar for the love scene he played with her, Tibbet should have been John Steed and both elderly men should have had their adventure.
Tanya Roberts was perhaps miscast even if she was quite a dish but inappropriately young for likes of Moore.
The movie was a decent spy movie that used Moore his strong points even if perhaps OP should have been his swansong and bow out. Perhaps Dalton or Brosnan could have done much better.
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AVTAK Alert
It will be playing in 4k DCP at the Metrograph in NYC on December 5th and 7th.
Christopher Walken’s bottle-blonde Übermensch terrorist Max Zorin is hatching a plan to destroy Silicon Valley—in 1985 this was considered a bad thing—and only 007 stands in his way. Roger Moore, the most camp of James Bonds in perhaps his most camp efforts, singlehandedly invents snowboarding before the end of A View to a Kill’s first reel, then trails Zorin’s Amazonian sidekick, May Day (Grace Jones, who would release her chef-d’œuvre Slave to the Rhythm on Island Records later the same year), on a breakneck pursuit through Paris that includes a parachute jump from the Eiffel Tower and a car chase in one half of a bisected Renault! The only thing more thrilling than that gonzo extended set piece and the Golden Gate Bridge climax? Why, the Duran Duran title song, of course.
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AVTAK is absurd, and its absurdity makes it great.
After yesterday’s discovery that AVTAK was going to be shown in a NYC theater, I wondered if I should have a doctor’s appointment on the afternoon of December 5th, and spend some time with Sir Roger. But did I really want to see the movie again? Maybe I should re-watch it at home, and that could assist me in making up my mind.
Prior to the re-watch, however, I had a theatre engagement, which turned out to be crucial. I went to the Irish Arts Center to see the Druid Theatre Company’s production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, one of my favorite plays. Needless to say, the production was crisp, flawless, and devastating. It completely purged my mind of Bill and Ted’s So-So Adventure with Godot, which I had seen on Broadway last week.
The husband was abed when I got home, and it was early, so I decided to have a taste of AVTAK. I figured I would soon find out whether or not the movie had enough interest to warrant a trip to the cinema. My taste became the entire film (with a few rewinds tossed in), and somehow Beckett had prepared me to appreciate AVTAK in a new way.
Endgame, like Godot, is about repetition, with some changes rung. The play begins with Hamm announcing “Me to play,” and over the course of 85 minutes, stories are told and re-told, and actions taken and re-taken. There are some variations, and the play does not deny that time passes, and that the characters age. For example, this is the day that Nell will die, and when Clov looks out the window, he will see a boy in the landscape. But still Hamm will wipe his glasses, and ask if it is time for his painkiller. Clov will remove the sheets and open the curtains, and tell Hamm what the weather is like. At the end of the play, when Clov appears with his raincoat and bags (but does not move), does this mean he will finally leave Hamm? Is their endgame finished at last?
So too with AVTAK, which is Moore’s endgame. Eon dumps out its/Dustin’s toolkit, and rummages around for elements. Diabolical villain. Check. Bizarre plan for world domination of some sort. Check. Live action stunts in iconic settings. Check. John Barry score. Check. Peter Lamont set design. Check. Bond girls and henchpeople. Check. M, Q, and Moneypenny. Check. Nazi eugenicist turned Russian asset turned freelance mad scientist. Check. Colonel Gogol and Russian involvement. Check.
These toolkit elements are then combined with a star who has aged-out of the role, a fact known to him, the filmmakers, and the audience. Those involved in producing the film seem to be following Beckett’s injunction: “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
So when I watch AVTAK, I discover old tropes and routines repeated, and, occasionally, updated. John Glen does a masterful job of filming action sequences with a star no longer capable of them, and Moore gamely goes along. (The only other film which so highlights the age of its star is Howard Hawks’ RIO LOBO [1970], where Wayne’s aging body is one of the film’s subjects. The film is also an example of a story being re-told by artists who have told it before–in this case twice.)
And then there are the variations, which nod to both the passage of time and changed circumstances. The shortened romantic interludes–blink and you miss them. Bond making a quiche, and tucking Stacy into bed. May Day performing the act of strength needed to thwart the villain’s plot, with Bond as observer/encourager. The entire MI6 gang at Ascot–why for heaven’s sake? (But isn’t it lovely.)
Most intriguing of all–the villain initiates/executes the destruction of his own secret base (with the machine-gunning of underlings thrown in for spice). The added darkness in plot and score render Moore Bond’s finale not only autumnal, but, occasionally, funereal. Yet at the end, Bond has survived (as Q informs Grandfather), even as he sinks below the top edge of the shower curtain.
So AVTAK is absurd, not on the puny scale of unbelievability (many works of art cross this low threshold), but on the the cosmic scale explored by Beckett and others. Things happen because they have happened before, with the same care being taken, even if time has robbed the actions of some vigor. The film will move from continent to continent with ease, and a firetruck will go undetected for hours–long enough for the hero to use it to get to the villain’s secret site.
Upon opening a secret cabinet, Bond will give an instant discourse on how Zorin drugs his horses. Later, Stacy, in similar style, will uncover a map, and explain what Zorin’s nefarious plan is, and how calamitous it will be. She is even able to get the map’s lights and animation to work. All this and more occurs, because this is what happens in a James Bond film–the repetitions and variations testifying to both absurdity and continuity. It can’t go on. It must go on.
CLOV: This is what we call making an exit.
HAMM: I’m obliged to you, Clov. For your services.
CLOV (turning sharply): Ah pardon, it’s I am obliged to you.
HAMM: It’s we are obliged to each other.
007’s alive.
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Henceforth A VIEW TO A KILL shall be known as the Beckett homage of the canon:
HAMM: We’re not beginning to… to… mean something?
CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something!
(Brief laugh.) Ah that’s a good one!
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That scene always gets me. The “animation” seems to respond to her narration, coming right on cue. So does she know the map is programmed to illustrate water filling up the sunken real estate, and which button to push to make the animation play? Is the map programmed to show the animation when someone in the room says the right words? Did Zorin pay someone to create the animation so he could remind himself of what the plan is? If so, did he have to kill that guy? Is Zorin incapable of just imagining what the devastation would look like? Does he slip into that shack and play the animation every now and then just to get excited? It’s a weird scene. But maybe no weirder than in Goldfinger (from which AVTAK lifst so much) when Auric has a scale model of Ft Knox built to explain a scheme to people he’s just going to kill after the presentation anyway.
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Alexa avant la lettre.
”Alexa, show villain’s master plan.”
Zorin knows he is in a Bond movie, and that at some point he will have to explain his master plan. So instead of monologuing as so many villain’s do, he built the map for that moment in the film–a gift to Bond and us. Part of Zorin’s genius.
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He’s also got a bit of map fetish. When the model of Silicon Valley rises up from the table in the blimp meeting, he raises his hands like he’s conjuring it up from the ether. For all I know, he has elaborate dioramas and interactive maps made up for all his activities. He may value “intuitive improvisation” but it’s no match for thinking far enough ahead to have a diorama made.
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Just embrace the ridiculousness of it all 
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The maps and models are for us, and I appreciate the villains‘ efforts to put up a show.
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