April is the cruellest month: a day-by-day game

Special Interest Games
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April 22: Never Say Never Again demonstrates a considerably higher level of competence by SPECTRE than most of the Eon films depict.

I’m with plankattack on this one: SPECTRE is at its most formidable in TB, where it emerges as a highly organized outfit with a global reach, sufficient funding to mobilize large forces and sophisticated vehicles and hardware, and hugely ambitious plans that come very close to succeeding. Yes, NSNA mirrors all of that (it’s the same plot!), but the overall cheapness of the latter film makes SPECTRE, along with everything else, seem less impressive and epic than in the Eon original.

But if all those fancy trappings don’t necessarily make for “competency,” maybe FRWL is the winner. Between them Kronsteen, Klebb and Grant come as close to punching Bond’s ticket as any foes ever would, and certainly the latter two are on my list of characters I would never want to meet in a dark alley.

I don’t count anything from the Craig films as that’s a different outfit. Spectre, not SPECTRE.

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A stray thought occurred to me about the importance of Sir Roger. His playing Bond for so long, and visibly aging out of the role while still doing it, actually helped pave the way for the next James Bond, as well as subsequent ones.

Moore had acquitted himself with distinction, endearing audiences both to the franchise and the character of Bond, but it was time to retire. People were ready for the next Bond. He established the template whereby every Bond can be understood to have an expiration date, which must be honored. Of course, this does not remedy the creepiness of parts of his last films, but he helped the franchise solidify the concept that Bonds (and other recurring characters) are term-limited.

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April 22 - I’d argue that SPECTRE in NSNA is as competent as it is in TB (shocking as it’s the same story). But the novel TB presents SPECTRE as far scarier and bizarrely ethical. The movie SPECTRE (not that actual movie Spectre, but you know, that one too) has never really had their s*** together and are too full of themselves and their goofiness to ever really be effective. Maximillian Largo spends too much time being jealous of Bond and Domino and playing video games to really be a truly effective villain.

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Interesting point to debate: is an aging man creepy if he still enjoys the attention of beautiful younger women?

Moore Bond does acknowledge his age and reacts with less libido than Connery Bond. He suggests to buy ice-cream rather than take advantage of Bibi, and he lets Stacy rest while baking a quiche…

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If they act on the attention, potentially, if they seek out said attention definitely.

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He does only with Bibi. What was most fascinating about Moonraker for me was that it was squarely as you said aimed for families. FYEO wasn’t really, Octopussy and AVTAK fall between both stools. They did not address his age, but Moore could not but do so in his performance. He couldn’t but address it. If you look at Connery in Highlander he is a much more vital presence than Moore in AVTAK.

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I do not think that fact in and of itself is creepy. Heck, I am 22 years older than my husband, and when we met, he said I was too young for him, but would make an exception and date me. What can be creepy is the execution.

Also creepy is the increased used of stunt doubles. In RIO LOBO, Hawks made Wayne’s aging body and need for a double part of both the movie’s content and its form. Rather than minimizing the issue, late Moore Bond films’ practice of simultaneously acknowledging/denying the age of their star, serves to keep the issue at the front of their audiences’ consciousnesses.

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Individually is different, I believe the romance between MooreBond and Melina ( poorly written as she is ) it fits, she is mature, he is juvenile. It’s when they present Moore as an object of desire is where it falls down.

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It was a dilemma: keep an ageing main actor despite having to suspend disbelief with stuntmen and guarantee an at least solid box office or recast with risk and keep the obligatory action scenes believable.

Question is: couldn’t the ageing moore still be an object of desire? I believe he still was. Only nowadays older men are instantly considered gross by the younger audience.

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I don’t think there’s anything inherently creepy about a younger woman being paired with an older man (said the aging man). What makes something “creepy” is behavior, attitude and power imbalances, not age.

As Roger’s tenure progresses, he becomes increasingly gallant and chivalrous, which is easy to put down to the actor’s personality simply supplanting the character he’s supposed to be playing (by the end, his Bond has nearly turned into Simon Templar). But it does, for me, help to defuse what could have been a lot “creepier”. Roger takes an avuncular attitude to Melina, rejects Bibi as too young and makes Stacey a quiche. Octopussy is treated as an equal to Bond – in ability and agency and a bit more than usual in age – so we don’t have the usual imbalance of power where the helpless damsel is in thrall to her savior. Magda and Bond are both trying to take advantage of each other in the tradition of Miss Taro or Fiona Volpe, so that one gets a pass from me, too.

If anything, Roger’s Bond is more of a creep the younger he is, and even then not much worse than the other Bonds. His seduction of the childishly naive Solitaire in LALD is one of the creepiest moment in the series, but the other comes in TB, when a younger Connery threatens Pat Fearing’s job if she doesn’t put out. In TMWTGG, Roger-Bond’s exploitation of Andrea, a victimized sex slave desperate to escape her “owner,” is reprehensible, but no less so when a younger Craig does it again to Severine in SF. If Roger’s version comes off looking worse than others, it’s largely due to the sheer volume of dalliances during his tenure. The 1970s of the Bond films were one wall-to-wall orgy. Sometimes the women seem into it, like Manuela in MR (“How do you kill 5 hours in Rio…”) but then we get weird stuff like that…what, slave? Hooker?..in the tent of Bond’s Egyptian contact (“When in Egypt…”) and Felicca in the same film (“I had lunch but I seem to have missed dessert”), where the women seem to have no agency at all.

Roger doesn’t escape criticism on the “creep” charge, entirely, but for me it’s nothing to do with his age, and to the extent he’s predatory or caddish, it’s because the character was written that way, without regard to age. Other Bonds, appearing at earlier stages of their lives, are every bit as creepy.

As far as Roger being portrayed as “the object of desire,” there aren’t many examples of women in his films just falling at his feet because he’s such a hunk. There’s the hotel receptionist in TSWLM, but nothing comes of that. And there’s Bibi, but she admits she’s already put the make on Eric Kriegler and it’s hinted she’s going after Columbo next: it’s not that Bond’s a super-hunk, more that Bibi’s just a nymphomaniac. Otherwise, women either have an adversarial relationship with Roger-Bond (Anya, Holly, Octopussy), are won over only after sharing many dangers together (Melina, Stacy), think they are seducing him to get the better of him (the Russian agent in the “Spy” PTS, Magda, Rosie, Paola Ivanova) or succumb to his charm and charisma (Corrine, Manuela, Lisl and maybe Miss Caruso) which I suppose is equally “unbelievable” if you’re not a Roger fan, but anyway there’s nothing like the scenes we get in the Connery films, where women follow Sean with their eyes and practically lick their lips.

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April 23 -

Because James Bond is wish fulfilment fantasy of a deeeeeeply flawed man, who was so flawed he couldn’t help but sabotage his own fantasy, we are left with a cypher who can be imbued with whatever parts the reader ( or the actor ) wishes to go to. So one person can see sexist mysogonist dinosaur and another can see a self loathing hired killer who expecting to die young, fills his life with surface treats, some can see him as a lampoon of perceived British superiority, whilst others see him as St. George ( happy St. Georges Day ) the ’ good’ heroes of literature have all been consigned to history, flaws = longevity. That lane has been a long and fruitful one.

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True.

I was that schoolboy. And despite maturing, marrying and being deeply in love with my wife after all those years, I still am a Bond fan. Which proves I have not matured that much at all. Or that I don’t want to.

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As a frustrated public schoolboy (on the genorosity of other but no, not bright enough for Eton…) terrified of women, I am now of indeterminate middle aged but still (probably like most of us… :slight_smile: ) an adolescent refusing to grow up so…

Fleming Bond and celluloid Bond can at times be completely different characters. But I do think Maibaum and others were key to the longetivy of the character by dropping some of the Bond’s “sharper” traits. SC Bond was almost classless in an era when class was still a publically determining trait for British society. His DN Bond is clearly different from the chaps out in Jamaica (who seem cut from the same Niven/Grant/Mason cloth that Fleming envisioned for film Bond) and even in FRWL, the primary differentiator between Red Grant and himself is one of personal style and how he holds himself. Grant is clearly a thug in a suit, putting on a “sophisticated accent” to fool Bond into thinking he’s one of them. But the giveaway is Grant’s lack of taste, rather than class.

“Public schoolboy” can still be thrown around as an insult. Just look at how I try to fend off any “stigma.”

DavidM’s post of Rog Bond’s treatment of women in his earlier films is another example of how movie Bond has had to flow with the times. And even with the our discussion of the continuation novels, I can seen the challenge for someone like Gardner to “modernize” Bond without losing some of the edgier traits of a 1950s creation.

Book Bond is a product of his time. Celluloid Bond a reflector of his continuing times.

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James Bond is never going to be a dedicated long term lover or a family man. If he evolves to that point the appeal is over. As fans we grow older, but the character does not. The power of Bond rests with him being an individual, living in a perpetual bubble of detached lonerism. He definitely has an ego, but I don’t think he’s terrified of women. His behaviour shows he loves women. The issue is commitment and having meaningful connections. It’s a double edged sword as those encounters are pleasurable but ultimately hollow. Which to me is the beauty of the character - he can easily be depicted both as a fantasy figure and cautionary tale.

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That’s how Fleming wrote him, because to me (in my opinion) Bond was the reflection of him.

Fleming created Bond because of his nervousness to his marriage with Ann, thus he created the character as a reflection of his own.

He created Bond as a wish fulfilment, his fantasy.
Bond’s life mirrored that of Fleming, a tragic love life, his Bond girls were all inspired by Fleming’s former lovers and one of them was Muriel Wright.

  • Gala Brand in my view mirrored that of Peggy Barnard, Fleming’s college paramour.

You can’t change Bond the way he is because that’s how Fleming created him, in my opinion.

We should view the way he was created, Bond is not like those comic book superheroes like those of Marvel, DC, or Ethan Hunt that you can change their character.

You can’t even do the same thing with Jason Bourne, because that’s how Ludlum wrote him, like Bond, a tragic figure, a man who suffered from Amnesia and lost his loved one.

In the case of Bond, he’s already here for 60 years.
He’s created as a loner, cold hearted assassin who can’t commit to a woman because of his job. That’s who he is, like that of in Skyfall, a British bulldog, a brave man prepared to protect England against the invaders and the bad guys.

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Ha! That is one of my pet peeves. While I would not say the best of all he definitely was the most consistent one. And being brought up within the EON assembly line he knew what he had to deliver - and he did that.

I consider all of his Bond films good Bond movies, often better than the later ones directed by auteurs. Because even if those brought better qualities in directing actors or demanding A-list directors of photography, in the end nobody could escape the basic fact that a Bond film is mainstream entertainment, following a fixed set of rules.

I enjoy attempts at stretching the formula. But I enjoy films which know what they really are more.

So, FYEO, OP, AVTAK (yes, despite inherent flaws it is well directed), TLD and LTK - which director made more good Bond films in a row?

Future Bond films need someone like Glen.

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An argument can certainly be made for Glen as the best of the Bond directors. He’s easily the most consistent, Terence Young perhaps has a greater claim to the title, with that great 1-2 punch of Dr. No and From Russia With Love coming directly out of the gate and with the added bonus of setting the template for what would follow. But then Glen didn’t have the luxury of having a ton of Fleming material to work with, with the exception of the bits and pieces of Live and Let Die that they use in Licence to Kill, yet still managed to turn in three films that are worthy companions, and a return to form of sorts to the early days of the franchise with For Your Eyes Only, The Living Daylights, and Licence to Kill.

I’d certainly take him over any of the auteurs that we’ve gotten, although there’s a part of me that would have liked to have seen more from Marc Forster, who is, as far as I’m concerned, the only auteur director we had that didn’t do significant damage to the franchise with his output. Quantum of Solace remains a criminally underappreciated entry in the franchise, much like Licence to Kill used to be.

In the grand scheme of things, I would say that John Glen is certainly among the three best, and most important, directors the franchise has had to date. On that front, I’d say that the three Bond directors that stand above the rest of the pack are Glen, Terence Young, and Martin Campbell. While Young and Campbell presided over more “successful” eras of Bond filmmaking, Glen had a remarkable run of consistency coming off the heels of a time in the franchise where consistency was extremely hard to come by, and also made perhaps the most important pivot in terms of style and tone for the franchise when he showed that the franchise could successfully move away from the Moore template, which had been in place since Diamonds are Forever, and into a more grounded and realistic direction. Without his guidance there, it’s entirely likely that the Craig era never would have happened.

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I don’t dislike Glen, and like the fact he steered the series for a considerable time - but I wouldn’t call him the best director. Terence Young and Lewis Gilbert are the kings for me in their respective approaches. Terence played a role in establishing the franchise, moulding Connery and giving a cool ambience, and Gilbert made epic cinematic spectacles better than anyone else.

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John Glen the best. nnnn…No

The best? Has to be Young, who along with a team launched the cinematic franchise, not a, but the, cinematic franchise. And yes, as SAF pointed out, while AVTAK is well directed, even the most flawed of Young’s (which one depends on your own view of course) is still a classic.

Campbell, the most “important” - introducing a new Bond twice, and both at high pressure times for the franchise is an incredible feat. And while both films share many traits, I wouldn’t ever say one is a copy of the other.

Hamilton and Mendes I shelve together - both delivering a crowd-pleasing blockbuster that are touchpoints for those outside of fandom, but things dropping off considerably after that. I don’t give Hamilton much credit for Sir Rog’s introductory film - if anything it’s the other way round, the star’s ability to own the role making the director look good. Hamilton, like Mendes, proving that they gave all they had in their first effort (unlike Young and Campbell).

Gilbert? The same film three times.

And so Glen? I have been hard on him on these here pages, but with distance he was constrained by the nature of the production of his time. 80s Bond, like 90s Bond, was an assembly-line product to be delivered. And so it was hard for any director to leave much stylistic hallmark on the product. And if you do, everyone cries foul, even now as the harsh (and unfair) criticism directed at Forster has proved.

Glen delivered the action well, did a nice job of introducing TD - on the pivot perhaps, as the company had spent months thinking it was Brozza. And as for LTK (yes, an over-criticized entry), it’s one of the few films that pick up steam as they go along - too many others suffer from 2nd-3rd act lulls (TLD one of those for me).

But no, not the best director. Harsh, what I’m about to say - but Glen did across five films what Spottiswoode did in one. Deliver a solid piece of entertainment with moments that you enjoy but ultimately fade from the memory. Is that what Bonds are? Maybe. So then, “best” isn’t the adjective that is the benchmark anyway.

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Best director? It has to be Young

Young brought the character of James Bond to life, he turned a working class Sean Connery into a sophisticated, tough and suave spy.
It’s him who gave life to Fleming’s stories such as Dr. No, From Russia with Love and Thunderball (which was a box office success). All of the films he made were classics.

Guy Hamilton turned Bond into a movie icon, a star. He introduced such iconic Bond elements and tropes.
But then he faded once he the 70’s began. We have DAF, LALD and TMWTGG, (probably the lowest performed Bond Film in the box office). And his films didn’t aged well too.

I liked Glen, but aside from the fact that he didn’t worked with any Fleming material like @dalton said, with picking some elements from the novels, he didn’t made any Bond movie that turned into a Star or iconic status like Young and Hamilton did, his movies were fine but not on par with Young’s films and Goldfinger. He has good films under his belt FYEO, TLD and LTK, and it’s also helped that he had a great actor to work with in Timothy Dalton. But on the other hand, A View To A Kill was a flawed film, a guilty pleasure one and Octopussy was average.
He’s great, I still prefer him over the likes of Tamahori, Forster, Kershner, and maybe Spottiswoode.

The other Bond directors?

Campbell was also an important one in that he revived the franchise twice, he did two of the films that fans described as the best, Goldeneye and Casino Royale, he gave those movies a right balance of grit, humor, drama and thrill. It all worked in these two films, the majority of people looked at him as the Best Director because he directed two fan favorite films, the films that he made was now looked upon as sacred. But I cannot put him above Young.

Peter Hunt, despite of him doing just one movie, that movie was now looked upon as one of the best too, directors like Christopher Nolan and Steven Soderbergh, admired the beauty of OHMSS, the cinematography of OHMSS has became an inspiration for some of the films outside the franchise, Inception for example.

Sam Mendes also has the potential to be one of the best directors, if he just continue his streak after Skyfall, but he dropped the ball in SPECTRE.
That none of us really believed that the man who made Skyfall was the man who made SPECTRE, a disappointment and also a missed opportunity.

Gilbert? I have no problem with the guy, he’s just okay but like @plankattack said, his films all felt the same, his films are just like a rehash of his previous films. TSWLM being similar to YOLT.

Michael Apted - has also the potential to be a great Bond director but he failed to deliver the balance of drama, action and suspense, TWINE is a pretty good Bond Film, but the execution was weak, he didn’t developed the Elektra arc, adding Christmas Jones, the plot was muddled and the cinematography was just okay, it’s average. If delivered and executed well, it could have been one of the best Bond films, it’s all there, the potential was there, but it fell short.

Fukunaga, like Apted, has the potential to be great but his delivery fell short. Maybe because he needs to follow the SPECTRE storyline, but I found some flaws in the film, the Norway chase for example of how easily the cars got stumbled by Bond’s little car, are the bad guys in this film really that fool to drive a vehicle? And how come that the villains can’t able to shoot him but Bond can easily shoot them, Bond easily dodged all of the bullets except from the one came from Safin, also in Matera where again the bad guys failed to shoot him, and also the video game style of action and shooting.

Glen was great but he’s not the best in my opinion, that honour goes to Young, Terrence Young.

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