I always found it had too many Moore era hangovers that just felt uncomfortable with Dalton.
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On the other hand - which scene would have been typical for Moore?
Watching the film again I could not find one, it all was pretty much tailored to Dalton already.
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I think its more the humor in it, its always felt like a writer didnt get the note “magic carpet, slidong in a chilletto case…oh , shouldve said, we arnt doing that now”
Im aware they cut the magic carpet, but isnt it blatant they wrote the film before they decided who this Bond would be?
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The Aston driving away with the cabin could’ve been out of the Moore era.
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Well, they probably wrote it when Brosnan was supposed to be Bond.
They also might not have wanted to tamper with the tone too much. And they maybe thought Dalton would just be, um, younger but basically the Bond they knew.
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I’d say the entire Aston sequence is very reminiscent of the Lotus chase - only with even less of an actual threat here. They have to abandon the car towards the end - but comfortably so in a location where they can supposedly tobogganing all the way downwards from the heights of the Czech mountains. There is some suspense in the chase, but it’s nowhere near thrilling territory, merely checking off boxes on the gadget list.
It was the first gadget car after two films without (and FYEO’s didn’t do a lot besides exploding), so there was a huge cheer in the audience when this sequence came. But in terms of action and suspense it’s quite underwhelming and one might have gotten more thrills out of it had Bond and Kara tried to cross the border stealthily on foot - with Necros behind a sniper rifle this time.
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Speaking of that Aston scene - the next time you watch it pay attention to the guy on the left when they are moving the trucks to create a roadblock.
That stuntman was about 1 misstep short of getting crushed against the guardrail. The small ones can be mighty dangerous too…
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I would agree while TLD wasn’t written for Roger per se, it was written as pretty much “business as usual,” continuing the general direction of Roger’s last few. And I think most of us assumed that Brosnan, at this stage, would have continued on as a sort of “Moore 2.0”.
Good call on the Aston sequence: It’s pleasurable and looks good, but there’s never any real suspense. That said, there’s even less suspense to be found in GE, with Brozza rolling around in an utterly invulnerable giant army tank, yet people seem to adore that sequence for some reason. So to each his own.
TLD definitely suffers from weak villains. Koskov is slimy but somehow lovable nonetheless, not at all threatening. Whitaker is such a buffoon he makes J.W. Pepper look like a Mensa member. Just in general the Bond films with multiple “big bads” are the weaker entries (unless you count Grant and Klebb!) but this one seems to lack any real menace at all.
I was okay with Bond and Kara’s relationship in this and thought the leads sold it pretty well, although I think what I like more is the idea that Bond could focus his affections on one partners for a whole movie, as opposed to actually believing that this particular Bond could really develop deep feelings for this particular girl. Pam seems more his type, really.
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GOLDENEYE
Before:
After LTK I thought Bond is over and some folly of my teenage years. Then, when Brosnan was cast (I had pictured and hoped for him since „Remington Steele“) I was excited again to see a new Bond, and I remember the joy it was greeted with by cinema audiences. I loved the film, saw it three times during its run (that’s a lot for me back then), and was turned into a fan again.
Later I grew less fond of the film, because its pacing, for my taste, was off, having a needlessly complicated caper which takes half the film to be set up.
So I rarely went back to it, despite my fondness for Brosnan and the tank chase through St.Petersburg.
After:
From the start GE looks and sounds different from the Glen years, and that is exciting and fresh.
And Brosnan, from the early scenes grinning and enjoying himself is everything audiences wanted to see in Bond and missed from Dalton. The camera just loves Brosnan, and he delivers every beat perfectly: comedy, drama, ruthlessness and charme.
What Kleinman delivers as the first of his many spectacular title sequences is absolutely extraordinary, towering over what came before. And the song and even the much maligned Serra score are very effectively modernizing the sound.
The tank chase still mesmerizes because it reverses the roles and makes Bond the one who chases Ouromov to save Natalya. And this just is what Bond is to me: daring to do what others would not, topping one irreverent feat with the next, hijacking a Russian tank in St.Petersburg, even toppling that statue and driving further with it - and the rescore celebrates it with a jubilant Bond theme. Perfect.
The rest if the action here is also great. Tough, nasty fights, with Brosnan convincing in every one of it.
So what’s the problem?
The pacing. It really takes one hour to set up the plot before Bond is sent to Russia and the film finally is off to the races. And instead of showing more Bond in that first hour, the scenes without him setting up the supporting characters are needlessly long.
IMO, that pacing problem resurfaces in CR, and it seems Campbell is less assured with story than with action.
Also, Xenia is an almost disturbingly scary henchwoman - but why dispensing her before the finale? That mistake was made with Hinx in SPECTRE, too.
As for Sean Bean (did BB really want him as Bond?): he is a cardboard villain, not charismatic at all. And this is another film which has a trifecta of unimpressive villains, a surprising weakness EON only remedied in some films.
But GE definitely course-corrected the series with mostly satisfying elements, and Brosnan was its major strength.
One last gripe: the script suffers from too many lines too clearly added to criticize Bond („sexist, misogynist dinosaur“) or psychologize him (the booze to make him forget the failures, the women to make him forget the ones he did not save). Clumsy backstory exposition which sounds as if EON was already scared back then whether Bond could still be relevant.
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TOMORROW NEVER DIES
Before:
I saw this one for the first time in a late night press screening. And I was disappointed. The film seemed to be just a collection of action sequences and… well… on the whole a bit slight.
A few years later I came across it during a tv airing - and I kept watching, feeling surprisingly entertained. In the following years this impression solidified, and I began to enjoy TND.
After:
Nothing changed. I loved rewatching TND completely, even right after GE, thinking I would probably have to stop and resume tomorrow. But no, I remained engaged and enjoyed this breathless and relentless adventure which remedies every problem of GE. The main caper is swiftly set up, it has a great charismatic villain, many impressive action sequences and is paced so quickly that I never even looked at my watch once.
Also, it has Bond being unashamedly Bond. No relevance questioned, just full steam ahead. No time wasted on too many villains and side characters. And Brosnan again looks like he’s having lots of fun. He seems even tougher and built up without looking like a bodybuilder, and he commands every scene.
Did the film still feel a bit slight, just a series of action sequences? Yes. But that actually works in its favor. TND is a Bond movie which only wants to entertain through fun and spectacle, no additional layers. And sometimes that’s just what I want from him.
Besides, the central idea of the villain which was ridiculed back then as outlandish has proven, unfortunately, relevant and prescient. Who would have thought that one day politics would indeed be manipulated by Fat Zorin and Dumb Goldfinger, with ratings and media disinformation being the decisive factors.
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From the start GE looks and sounds different from the Glen years, and that is exciting and fresh.
I never know whether to blame Glen for losing steam over time and getting progressively more “workmanlike” in his direction, or if it was just a question of the producers asking him to make due with progressively smaller budgets, but there was sometimes a “TV” feel to his work that I agree GE put an end to. And again that could be partly down to Campbell’s fresh approach and partly to Eon realizing the stakes were too high this time not to pour the money on by the truckload.
As noted elsewhere, I was disappointed by the failure to make proper use of Brosnan’s comedic chops, but what little he’s given he makes the most of. The dialog is largely unsalvageable and will continue to be throughout his tenure, but the pauses, facial expressions and body language are always well handled.
Overall, though, I came away feeling he was tense and maybe nervous. He seems to be trying too hard to look “tough” and “ruthless”, as if he’s afraid we’ll only remember him from “Steele” and “Mrs Doubtfire.” And every time he sets his jaw or knits his brow, he just looks like a runway model doing the “sullen pout” face. The success of GE seemed to really loosen him up for TND, though, wherein he seems totally at ease and in command.
I agree a high point comes early on with the car chase and that “boys with toys” grin it generates. It was not only fun, it felt true to the character, who thrives on danger and digs adventurous females.
I had the opposite reaction. It didn’t seem particularly “James Bond” to me to mow down soldiers by the dozen with a machine gun, then drive through the crowded streets of St Petersburg in a massive killing machine, impervious to harm and almost certainly killing at the very least the occupants of that police vehicle. There are a lot of innocent people involved in these scenes – including the many soldiers who are just doing their jobs and have no idea Ouromov is crooked, unlike say SPECTREs minions – and I was disturbed by Bond’s willingness to view them all as collateral damage. Maybe it’s just me. Oh, and you’ll never win me over by heaping praise on the score.
It does seem like maybe they got it backwards, having Bond in a prolonged “battle of equals” with Alec when it’s Xenia who’s been the most lethal and formidable foe up to that point. She deserved a less “throwaway” death, while he arguably got a more spectacular end than he’d earned. But at the time it didn’t bother me. Until he died twice; that was a little excessive.
It’s the beginnings of “peeling back the layers.” The only problem being the onion is hollow at the center.
I think the intent of M’s criticisms was not to illicit a “yeah” from the audience or even a “now that you mention it, that’s a good point.” It was more a case of “Just wait, he’ll show YOU!” Kind of like in the Star Trek movies when Kirk and his aging crew are constantly told in one way or other that they’re past their prime; they’re setting it up for us to cheer later when the duffers clean the whippersnappers’ clocks.
Unfortunately in Bond’s case there are things better left unsaid and questions better left unasked. If Dink had spun on Connery after the butt slap and yelled, “That’s sexual harassment, mister!” or if Tracy had said, “No, I won’t marry you. You watched a man get sucked into a snow blower and made a joke about it,” then it would’ve burst the bubble. Trying to hold Bond to real-world standards of behavior or even logic is a fool’s errand.
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An interesting note on the tank chase that I believe was pointed out in a QoS making-of documentary; they were talking about civilians being injured as a consequence of Bond’s actions, particularly referencing the Palio race scene where a spectator was shown to be shot. In contrast, they pointed out the GE tank scene and that it specifically showed all soldiers and police to be ok - climbing out of crumpled cars or swimming in the river. Each time I’ve seen the sequence since it is noticeable that they include these shots.
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Another example of Bond not really caring about civilians is the construction site scene in CR.
He releases all those pipes or whatever they were knowing full well there were construction workers down there.
You can argue there’s a tinge of racism in there too because I just don’t see the scene playing out that way if it were a construction site full of white guys in London.
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With that tank there’s also the fact you cannot really drive a tank through a city in the manner Bond does and be sure these policemen and soldiers are okay - if they are it’s in spite of Bond bulldozing his way across the scene.
Didn’t even Benson’s Zero Minus Ten address the problem of him fighting an army when he’s escaping from that military compound in China by him shooting above soldiers’ heads? Or do I misremember that scene?
THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
Before:
First time: I loved it. Best BrosnanBond! Total success!
Second time: Um… well, it has great scenes in it!
Third time: At least he is superb in it.
Fourth time: Yeah, oh, I don’t know, all these missed opportunities. Peaking before the PTS, that’s for sure.
Even this January I was criticizing this film for everything it is not.
So be afraid. And start to hate me (if you haven´t already done that) because…
After:
… after this re-watch I am back to my first impression. TWINE is really great.
Still here? Okay, here’s my reasoning.
After the wall-to-wall action of TND they apparently wanted the next film to have a more interesting story, making Bond more than an action hero again. Also, they started taking risks. Small ones, for sure. But risks they are: Bond physically hurt (but still very functional, of course), a villain who is evil yet tortured by the same thing which makes him feel no pain, and a twist which turns the central woman into the real villainess - and Bond ruthlessly shoots her.
We have argued about this in a separate thread, and I also, basing my opinion on my memories of this film, suggested that the film could have / should have so much better if it had just been more courageous.
But that line of criticism, walked by myself I admit too many times, is a slippery slope. Soon one only criticizes what isn’t there, and it´s mostly one´s own ideas which were supposedly better. It´s armchair warrior thinking. True, just for the sake of the argument, it´s fun to speculate what could have been done. But to judge a movie one should probably stay with the movie and what it achieves.
No argument about this: TWINE, like every film, just might not work for you due to your own preferences.
But for me, TWINE this time absolutely worked again. I think the pacing is great, the story is interesting and engaging, and it makes Bond the center of it, giving Brosnan the chance to bring yet another shading of the character to light, and the whole film is absolutely entertaining. The action beats might play on familiar tropes but develop variations previously not seen. And the darker look of the whole film actually fits with the theme of betrayal and creates a different, appropriate mood.
Also, Brosnan is absolutely magnificent in this one. Which after re-watching his other three films definitely make me love his portrayal so much that I now equate him with Connery and Moore.
Take a deep breath, it´s alright, it´s just this guy’s opinion.
So, do I have one last gripe?
How about Denise Richards?
She’s good. Totally nails her first scene, the cold detachment, the hint of maliciousness (is she part of Renard´s gang?). If you think that Ursula Andress or Daniela Bianchi were better actresses than I have to disagree.
Yeah, but… Renard. Carlyle. Total miscast, isn’t he?
No. I actually love the thinking behind this. Instead of giving us another Götz Otto giant, oblivious to pain, turning him into a kind of Jaws 2, they cast a short actor, unimposing in stature. Why is that interesting? Because Carlyle is great at subtle menace mixed with deeply felt pain. Renard is not supposed to be the invincible hunk of flesh, he is the evil weasel who has been victimized by his victim, and the only way he can make sense of it is by doing her bidding, even if or because of this leading to his death. That makes Renard an interesting opponent, threatening Bond not in any physical way but giving Bond no real chance at hurting him.
Until he tells him that he killed Elektra, during the final confrontation on the sub. The only reason Renard is the way he has become and the only reason Renard thought his existence still carries a meaning is taken away by Bond.
And Brosnan delivers this gut punch with such a cruel smile and nod. Absolutely fantastic.
But… but… those one-liners?!
Yeah, they are there. As they are in every Bond film before and even after (you know they continue to be there, even in the Craig era). And either one likes them or one doesn’t. I do.
So, TWINE, huh? My memory of it was clouding my judgment. I apologize, Eon. I apologize, Mr. Apted.
And you, Sir, Mr. Brosnan, you really delivered a perfect Bond every time.
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CASINO ROYALE
Before:
Of course, I was super excited when a new Bond era began. I loved Pierce Brosnan as Bond and did not understand why they let him go. And I wasn’t sold on Craig just because he looked so different from what I thought Bond should look like. But I was willing to give him a chance. So I bought a ticket for a late night preview, and at the end I thought: that was a good Bond film with a pretty good Bond actor.
I saw it again with my nephews, and I still liked the film - but I noticed that when they got restless the film did wobble in its narrative, mainly during the card game, then Bond´s reconvalescence. When Bond said to Vesper at the beach that he would quit the service, my nephews even thought that is the ending of the film, reminding them of the usual Bond trope of frolicking with a woman leading to the end titles.
Now, my nephews, teenagers at that time, did not know the novel, nor did they really care for the film or Craig - they got introduced to Bond via Brosnan and never really warmed to the Craig era. And my nephews´ understanding of storytelling is not based on any authorial knowledge, so I wouldn’t use their opinion as an argument against CR´s structure.
But it did enforce my own problems with it, since on rewatches with my wife and also alone I often felt that CR - while praised by tons of critics and audiences - is a good Bond film but not flawless at all.
So in my memory I began to feel that I liked parts of it a lot but was bored by others. In consequence I was hesitant to rewatch it.
After:
However, rewatching it with close attention to the pacing, I was not bored at all but thoroughly entertained. Craig immediately won me over (now quicker than ever), even if it is clear that he is set up to be a Bond who always disregards orders. Going rogue is not something that happens after CR, it is part of his character in this era. He is the guy who can’t be tamed, always doing what he wants. In that regard, he is not the Bond of the previous eras at all.
Despite not being too much bothered by the pacing this time, I still think that CR falls into four parts. The first hour is driven by action sequences and really frenetically moves the story forward with every new scene. This is the part I love best in this film. And the Parcours sequence is one of the best directed sequences in the entire series.
Then the second part with the poker game begins, and while I recognize the difficulty of making that visually interesting, I don’t think the solution was to interrupt it with two suspense sequences. The first one, the fight on the stairs, works very well because it also leads to Bond facing the consequences physically and mentally with Vesper collapsing under the shower.
But to interrupt the poker game again with Bond being poisoned and then defilibrated back to life, for my taste, is quite useless because this one does not have any consequence - it just prolongs that whole section of the film. A shorter poker game would have helped with the tension here which feels more constructed than organically developed.
Then Bond in the hospital, nursed back to stud-ly health, and deciding to quit the service, is the third part of the film. Again, this could have been shortened or even combined with the fourth part, the finale in Venice - which actually picks up the pace again and leads to the famous line from the book.
This stop-and-go rhythm, for my taste, hurts the film a bit and reveals rather than hides the problem of dramatizing the poker sequence and its aftermath. But on this rewatch at least I did not mind it too much.
In the end, CR is mainly a showcase for Craig, and he delivers big time. Also, by the way, for David Arnold because the film really is also leaning on his powerful and lyrical score.
One last gripe: I will never understand why they felt that Bond sucking the (imaginary) blood from Vesper´s fingers is consoling. It just feels weird to me and unnecessary. Sitting with her under the shower, taking her into his arms would have been enough.
Also: when Gettler threatens to kill Vesper, Bond says “Allow me”, obviously ready to do it. And it is Bond who fires at the water tanks holding up the house, so the flooding really is his idea. But then he has a change of heart and wants to save Vesper? Well, one can argue that in that moment he just is conflicted about his feelings. But it remains problematic that Vesper shuts him off and really decides to drown. Something which people just would not do because self-preservation sets in. Haggis who reportedly added the whole last act went for a big drama here, but I would have preferred another solution for Vesper´s suicide.
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One more thing:
- During the torture sequence there is a really interesting beat when Bond seems to pride himself at least in showing that he will not yield - and then LeChiffre shrugs it off with his chance at being welcomed by Mi6 with open arms if he tells them what they want to know from him, no matter what he will have done to Bond or Vesper.
The look on Bond´s face, perfectly delivered by Craig, is fear and resignation. It´s the ultimate realization that he is expendable, and that his sacrifice might mean nothing at all.
In that regard, it´s no wonder that he remains a loose canon, going rogue whenever he wants to.
Again, in most of the previous films, even the Brosnan era, M warns Bond against turning something into a personal vendetta, and Brosnan Bond (in “Goldeneye”) even answers: Never.
Only in DAD, when Bond has been given up by M he says he will go after Graves.
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And they obviously felt it was weird and unnecessary too when they tried to fix it with that rather brilliant CGI aided edit.
Re: the torture sequence - I really felt while in the theater that it was during this scene that the audience accepted Craig as the new Bond. His defiant attitude really won people over.
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They did?
Yep - originally he licked all the fingers but they felt it came across as too sexual. They did an edit, aided by CGI, mid-shot to have it stop after the 2nd finger.
Right after Bond licks the 2nd finger, look closely at the top of that finger. You can see this weird glitch-like thing happen. That’s the only giveaway something had been done.
They talked about it on the commentary I believe.
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