I think you’re thinking I was talking about NTTD as the time to introduce a new car. My suggestion was to have introduced it midway through QOS, after Bond had totally destroyed his second government-issued Aston during the opening car chase, and then proceed with new iconography for Craig through the rest of his tenure, which would have worked, I think, since Craig’s first two films certainly show a willingness to go in new directions whereas his later entries were completely closed off to that idea.
The use of the Aston Martins in NTTD was perfect for what that film was. You can’t have a film built entirely upon nostalgia and then introduce a new car during it.
Watches are cool and they should continue selling them. Modern Omegas have Too Much Going On - a modern Fleming Bond would probably be wearing a more modest, affordable and tasteful Tudor - but they’re a nice piece of glitter in Bond’s world.
The thing I like about James Bond movies is not necessarily “James Bond” - it’s his bizarre and glossy world. Watches are a tiny part of that. Little shiny things that click and do stuff. Fleming understood that appeal. It’s boyish. Nothing to be proud of, but it makes our lizard brains happy.
This one I also tend to agree with; her performance is an element of Bond-film-level joy whereas everyone else is taking themselves so very, terribly seriously and are more laughable because of it. The worst thing about The World is Not Enough is that the core central relationship between Bond and Elektra just doesn’t come off. Might be the script, might be the performances, a convergence of the twain, but it’s just not there and the “twist” means very little. Also, it seems to have been filmed without any joi de vivre. There’s no point in living if you can’t feel some of yer actual vivre.
Were the name not so stupid nor so obviously leading to the closing “joke”, might we be kinder on Christmas Jones?
April 5th-
She is not, I agree with the statement wholeheartedly, the script, the po faced direction, the halfhearted Robbie Coleraine cameo, the x-ray specs, GOLDIE, perhaps it’s worst crime is that it’s tedious and for a Bond film that is unforgivable. There are strands of storylines that could have sent the movie off into different more interesting tangents. Have Bond nurse a proper dislocated shoulder throughout the movie instead of forgetting about it until it becomes a plot device at the climax.
Denise Richards is NOT the worst thing about TWINE. That said her character’s name represents the kind of laziness that contributes to the unevenness (I’m always generous to TWINE, but that’s me) that runs through the film.
Sophie Marcel’s wandering accent and stagebound overemoting are of far greater detriment to the film - she’s supposed to be the villain for chrisssake - so her “performance” is far more damaging to the experience than good old Denise, who is gamely Bondgirl window-dressing. (good name for traveling exhibition that - The TWINE Experience!).
There have been a number of worse Bond girls - Ekland, Roberts to name a couple, and Denise is “better” than them. Her job is to look nice and ask Bond questions so he can sound intelligent. She does.
Marceaul (Marcel, too lazy to look it up but she might as well have been a mime ta-dum) on the other hand, has to provide the opportunity for Bond to show emotional depth. Brozza aside, she’s entirely unbelievable - the Broz Bond of TND would have sniffed her out at the start.
I used the word laziness earlier - TWINE’s greatest crime is its entire nature of half-heartedness. P&W’s first effort actually does its best to shoehorn in some “Flemmming” (thank you Jim), but the film won’t commit to anything. M’s abduction (a whole Amis novel) is reduced to an undramatic 2nd-3rd act plot point. Robert Carlyle’s super psychotic terrorist with a heart? Just around to get killed at the end. The aforementioned shoulder? Same there too.
TWINE has a whole list of greater faults than Denise, whose worst line (is the “do I speak spy” one??) is still better than the last line of the whole thing…
For sure it’s not fair to single out Denise Richards herself as the worst thing in TWINE. Even if you think “Christmas Jones” is the worst thing, that’s not down to the actress but the “writers” who decided “we need a nuclear physicist and she’s got to be smokin’ hot!” and then doubled down by giving her a name with a punchline so childishly obvious the entire internet had figured it out a full year before the film’s release.
Richards herself does a fine job with what she’s given, IMO, but the conditions that led to her involvement should never have existed. I can’t even say she was “miscast” because she delivers what the writers “envisioned” (quotes added because I don’t know that pulling a lazy trope from the Bond Formula Writing 101 guidebook qualifies as vision).
I don’t know that I could single out anything in TWINE as the worst, but there are plenty of candidates, from Brosnan’s overacting (though he did contribute to Bond history the immortal quote: “Huuuh?”) to the second heavy in a row who can’t feel pain (albeit this time a physical pipsqueak) to Cleese’s “Mr Bean” impersonation as R (which I would say feels like it’s in the wrong movie if TWINE could ever decide what kind of movie it wants to be) to the Roadrunner/Coyote final battle that has Bond and Renard juggling reactor rods with their bare hands.
Which is to say, dumping on Christmas Jones is probably fair (less so Richards), but the tendency to heap scorn on the “hot chick scientist” issue as THE big problem gives this film a free pass it doesn’t deserve.
Many peers already pointed it out, there’s something decidedly unimaginative, stale and even boring about that old same-same 007 ‘iconography’ that’s turned the films into commercials for absurdly priced ‘luxury’ vulgarities. There is a difference between creating an atmosphere of exotic lushness and shooting several hours of animated The Charles ad campaign for Oh-Mee-Gah!
A glance at the roots of the series shows convincingly these films used to be much less concerned with aesthetics of commercials and more progressive in their art director styles than compulsory rehashing of more or less absurd clichés the average person nurses about what supposedly constitutes ‘prestige’ and the trophies that come with it.
Sure, the Bond world - usually - doesn’t touch that terra firma we ordinary people live in, Fitbits and Toyotas included. But is hanging on to a single article of fantasy from ages ago really our idea of what Bond would pursue? What the films ought to depict? And at the other end of the scale, can Bond not just wear an unobtrusive watch that doesn’t do whatever? And perhaps keep that watch (because it’s not actually a use-and-throw thing) for more than one film?
I guess what really irks me is that watch-for-the-film approach that would better suit a Swatch (well, in a way it is) and is shoved at us from every conceivable magazine around the time these flicks kick off. Would Bond really go for such? I’m not so sure. Like with clothes I think he’d probably pick his stuff carefully and then completely forget about it. For years. And just replace what needs replacing.
I’m aware this is not how film business works, absolutely. There’s a need for deals and the money they provide is put to good use as we see from the results. But I for one would miss nothing if I never again see another Oh-Mee-Gah in this or my next six lives. Pretty pretty please tone it down.
I don’t actually remember Richards as particularly bad. I think I’ve only seen her in this and STARSHIP TROOPERS and I had no reason to complain about either. The Christmas Jones part is a bit Lara Croft and very much in the spirit of that era, character in ballistic terms.
The worst about her, in my view, is indeed that very flimsy pun even teenagers would groan about. As Bond women go she’s somewhere lower middle of the pack, through no fault of her own, I suppose. And there’s a fair chance she wouldn’t have gotten half as much flak had they dropped that cheap gag.
Less for a narrative reason than as another element contributing to the film’s poetics of fluidity/impermanence/angst.
Multiple Blofelds; a returning Bond whose performance departs from his prior five; Plenty in Tiffany’s wig; Tiffany’s wig changes in her first scene; Blofeld in a wig; Bond as Franks; Frank’s corpse as Bond’s corpse; Franks’ corpse as Bond’s corpse being used by Bond (as Franks) as his (Franks’) brother’s corpse; phony/real diamonds; voice-changing machines; a car starting a stunt on one pair of wheels, and ending it on the opposite set; Connery’s shifting toupee; no M office; Moneypenny in the field; a theme song about the uselessness of men; a title sequence where women are armed.
Macro-scale changes in culture regarding: women; Blacks; queers; Great Britain’s importance in global affairs; corporate infiltration of/union with government operations.
I went back and watched Denise Richards’ scenes from TWINE earlier. There’s not really anything that she does wrong in the film that deserves the scorn that is often brought down upon her. She’s fine in the role. She’s not setting the world on fire with an Oscar caliber performance or anything, but nobody was expecting that anyway, probably even including Richards herself.
The problems with Dr. Christmas Jones are things that are entirely outside of Richards’ hands. The character’s name, wardrobe, and dialogue are all things that are completely outside of her control, but she makes the best of the situation. It wasn’t her decision, I’m fairly confident, to put herself in a white t-shirt for a finale that would be occurring in a flood submarine. Just saying.
Given how much of a joke that character was meant to be, things could have gone considerably worse had they gotten someone less talented than Richards to perform the part. I’ve been on record for years now as respecting the job she did in the film. She’s at least trying, which is not something that I think can be said for everyone in the film. I’m not even sure she turns in the worst performance by someone who actually appears on the film’s poster. The criticism that she gets is just people reaching for the lowest of low-hanging fruit and it gets old after a while. As far as secondary Bond girls go, although I guess she could be considered the lead Bond girl in TWINE since Elektra is the villain, EON has done far worse than Richards.
Well said. I was contemplating this afternoon and came to the conclusion that there was absolutely nothing wrong with casting her for the role, or what Richards herself did with it.
A nuclear scientist that happens to look gorgeous, so what? What’s most awkward is the fact that a person like that character certainly would not have dressed the way she did, while working in an environment like she did in the movie. Remember all those thugs around her, she certainly didn’t sleep with a gun under her pillow, but with a shotgun. She would have been much more believable, had she been introduced clothed in a sack, only to later reveal her true beauty, much to Bond’s surprise (but then again, you didn’t have Denise Richards in a movie and introduce her that way, not in the 90s.). Wasn’t her fault at all.
The notorious pun? Again, it was the 90s…
What annoys me most about TWINE is Renard*. A terrorist? What’s he fighting for or against? A little more background would have helped, just to flesh out the character. The way he’s presented, he’s weaker than Thomas Drach (look him up on the interweb). The most evil of the terrorists of his time, and he has himself so easily manipulated by that little girl Electra? Utter rubbish.
And Elektra herself? ConneryBond would have known about her immediately (just like DaltonBond), LazBond would have shagged the truth out of her, MooreBond would have laughed her away, and CraigBond would never have trusted her. The Elektra/Renard couple only could have worked with the emotional, “peeling back the layers” BrosnanBond. Not his fault. Just like Richards, he had to work with the script he was given, he never had the creative power Caig had during his tenure (but the question remains wether that would have changed anything).
In brief: if there’s one Bond movie I truly loathe, it’s TWINE. And Christmas Jones is far from being the main reason for that.
*(not exactly true. My biggest annoyance is German actor Claude Oliver Rudolph, who managed to have himself labelled and marketed as “Bond villain” for years, just because he had a minor, rather neutral, throwaway two-line-role as Colonel Akakievich. Maybe a compensation of his failure to - unlike other German actors - create enough fame out of his role in “Das Boot” (he played the radio guy). But then again maybe it’s just personal, because he’s one of the most arrogant pricks I’ve ever encountered…)
April 6th- Raymond Benson’s novels are dreadful, I managed only two all the way through. As a creator of storylines I can’t see him doing anything much different from what was given to the world of 90s BrosBond.
Some of Benson’s ideas would have been solid ideas for novels/films in the hands of more capable writers. There are good plot ideas in Doubleshot and Never Dream of Dying and, in the hands of someone more capable, they could have been made into potentially classic Bond tales. As they’re currently constituted, though, they’re on about the same level as the films that were being made at the same time. I remember enjoying the novels at the time they were published, but that was at a time when I was fairly young and at a maturity level low enough to find them entertaining (although I’m sure some will argue that nothing’s changed on that front). Looking back at them, though, they’re not up to the level of quality that one should come to expect from a franchise like Bond (or then again, maybe they are).
Benson’s novels are just a part of a larger problem for Bond. There’s no real vision for where things are going with the franchise, be it the cinematic or the literary franchises. Outside of 2006-2008, when there was some semblance of a vision for where things were headed, and then again in 2012 when they caught lightning in a bottle with all of the confluence of all the various factors that led to the box office juggernaut that SF turned out to be, the rest of the time spent under the current EON regime as well as what has gone on with the literary franchise leaves much to be desired. Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day are the cinematic equivalents of Benson’s novels. They contain solid ideas that would have been absolutely terrific in the hands of filmmakers who could execute those ideas, but as actually constructed, they’re nothing to write home about and at times border on embarrassing. Flash forward to the more recent outputs by both the cinematic and literary franchises, and I think that one finds two franchises that have completely lost their way. The less said about Spectre and No Time to Die, and then on the flipside Devil May Care, Carte Blanche, and Solo, the better. Horrowitz’s novels come off better by comparison, but I think the praise they get are largely equivalent to someone who has been wandering the desert for days on end giving rave reviews to a glass of lukewarm tapwater.
I don’t think the novels are worth much as elegant prose, but have always thought he was capable of thinking up ideas, if not necessarily executing them tremendously well. Which fits the profile.
I suppose the backhanded compliment is “couldn’t do worse than what we got”. Even later, given the Craig bubble’s fondness for callbacks to the series, Benson’s books are full of these so wouldn’t necessarily have hampered his approach, other than to rein in an evident predeliction for obscure ones being more than a reference but significant to the plot (e.g. the resolution of The Facts of Death relying enormously on the intervention of Kerim Bey’s son, once based in Belgrade, who gets about three lines over three paragraphs in From Russia with Love. Cheating / showing off).
They might have approached him, we just don’t know, but given his all-round knowledge and enthusiasm for the character, if they never did I do find that a bit odd. Eon are notoriously thin-skinned and they might not have appreciated the constructive criticism of The Bedside Companion, despite that being the best Bond thing he ever wrote.
Benson’s books suggest he would have done a better job of being a Purvis & Wade-esque ideas man than the real Purvis & Wade. There’s enough in each book to hang a decent movie on.
Gardner was similar - he could be relied on to come up with bizarre Bond ideas and moments, but his books truly come across as being written by a space alien.
Start with Benson’s concepts (Bond has to climb the world’s third tallest mountain with an obnoxious school bully!), sprinkle in some Gardner weirdness (there’s a vampire bat in his shower and spiders in his sandwich!), and bring someone funny in to write some decent dialogue, and you’d have a killer Bond movie.
From the Bond author whose works have sold…oh, probably hundreds of copies…comes an adventure that will have you joining the legions of Bond fans world-wide saying, “Meh…”
I’m going to qualify my opinion with the caveat that I do not regard myself as a literary-Bond expert. And I’m not a huge purveyor of any of it post-Colonel Sun. I’d rather re-read an “original” than try a Gardner I haven’t read. But that said, I don’t re-read because it’s Fleming and his prose, per se, only because, well, it is the original.
And so here’s the rub with Benson. “Knowing” Bond, and “Recreating” Bond (worthy of Fleming), are two very different things, in the way that a novel and a script are very much independent constructions. And perhaps, book Bond and celluloid Bond. Shoot, I think all of us collectively “know” Bond, but while I love you all, a collaborative literary effort might be a disaster - (A Mad, Mad, Mad Bond, if you will).
I think Benson could have brought something to EON, no better or worse than P&W. But I think the reality of this whole kit and caboodle is that film Bond is now the dominant character - and by extension the dominant influence. Can any continuation author ever shake the conscious (or subconscious) influence of 60 years of Bond on-screen?
Early EON brought the literary creation to the screen. As much as I enjoy some of Gardners efforts, IMHO there was always the sense (as with them all apart from Amis), that it’s film-Bond wedged onto the page, in character and in plot.
I think Benson would have been better served working for EON - a case I could make for any continuation author, such is now the existence of the character in the minds of the masses.
It’s not possible anymore, I don’t think. Fleming’s Bond is a character that only now exists within the pages of his original novels as well as, to a certain degree, in the first handful of films. Outside of that, so probably from the early 1970s on, the cinematic James Bond character has become its own unique character and the dominant influence over everything Bond-related in the decades since. I very seriously doubt that anyone at this point in time would even be capable of creating something, be it a film or a novel, in which the influence of the cinematic character wasn’t able to creep its way in to at least some degree. Most likely, the cinematic Bond would wield an extraordinary influence over any work that is created.
Another question to ask would be whether or not the Bond of the novels and the early films would even be possible to portray in a modern context without turning off a massive percentage of the viewing public.
