Ironically, that was one of the reasons why he never made another one after that: his sets were great, but they were becoming just too expensive. And he wouldn’t settle for less.
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I can definitely see that - the 80’s was MGM trying to bully EON with the budget.
The 2000’s demonstrated karma is a bitch.
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Which is what made him Ken Adam, and his sets the works of art that they are.
Let’s just take the 1970’s:
Diamonds are Forever
Sleuth
The Last of Sheila
Barry Lyndon
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
Salon Kitty
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
Few others have careers that good, never mind one decade.
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I think I voted YOLT, rather than MR - they’re both fabulous but being of the 60s, YOLT feels stylishly futuristic whereas MR is stylishly realistic (Yes Jim - “Science Fact!”). I’d love to think that MR could inspire NASA, whereas YOLT, no, no-one could ever do something like that.
It’s odd though, you mention “Adam” and my mind always goes straight to the DAF penthouse, rather than volcanos, tankers, various Drax-pads (ooh, that auto-corrected to Drag Pads - yes try it - guess the system knows I’m talking DAF).
Everything about that set - the stairs, the “view”, the safe, the floor homaged so well in DAD, scream Ken Adam, but not in the OTT way that some of the other stuff is, great though they are. And yet, not unlike the film itself, the rest of DAF is all over the place. WW labs look great, but the lava bubble room? And the oil rig? Maybe it’s a dawn of the 70s thing that it’s so uneven. Barry’s score the same, all fitting the slightly schiczo nature of the film, I guess.
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For June 15…
John Barry - favourite 1970s Bond score
- Diamonds are Forever
- The Man with the Golden Gun
- Moonraker
0 voters
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Favorite John Barry 1970s Bond score? For me it’s a clear win for Diamonds Are Forever. It has Shirley Bassey’s best theme song (yes, I think it’s better than Goldfinger), and I love both the Wint and Kidd theme and the action theme with Peter Franks. Additionally, the James Bond Theme when Bond arrives at Whyte’s house in the desert is wonderfully mysterious and stealthy, and the score gets extra points for having the next to last usage of the terrific 007 theme. It’s a great score. 
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All magnificent. But MR has a majestic playfulness which is just pure Barry-genius.
DAF, of course, is a close runner-up.
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DAF’s score is lovely and gets a lot more play than most of my soundtrack albums, but the MR score is just plain epic. As I’ve often said, fans and critics have every right to complain that taking Bond into outer space was a wrong-headed move, but even the harshest critics can’t say it failed on a technical level. Barry’s awe-inspiring score gave Derek Medding’s impressive model work the nudge it needed to suspend our disbelief, and Adam’s sets for the space station interiors sealed the deal. In the hands of a lesser team, this all could have gone so, so wrong.
If the job of a composer is to elevate a film to something greater than it could have been otherwise, MR is Barry’s masterpiece.
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It’s the oddest thing to sit here and have to “pick” Barrys! It’s a testament to him - I’m about to make a point about early Barry compared to later Barry and then my mind yells “but what about…” The reality is I don’t think there’s a bad one in the bunch (maybe TMWTGG, but it has its moments too).
What’s terrific about the MR score is that it followed Hamlisch’s take - Barry was clearly inspired to pay tribute to that and then to try to top it, so MR feels like the start of “later Barry” whereas DAF feels like the natural evolution of that 60s run - GF-TB-YOLT. I intentionally omit OHMSS, that very much feels like it’s own (brilliant) thing.
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If there’s one thing that can make someone appreciate Barry’s contribution to the Bond series, it’s got to be listening to the Doctor No soundtrack. The transition from that to FRWL is like going from a flea market “sad clown” painting to a Van Gogh.
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For June 16…
Favourite of 60s Fleming
- From a View to a Kill
- For Your Eyes Only
- Risico
- Quantum of Solace
- The Hildebrand Rarity
- Thunderball
- The Spy who Loved Me
- OHMSS
- You Only Live Twice
- The Man with the Golden Gun
- Octopussy
- The Property of a Lady
- The Living Daylights
0 voters
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What? No 007 In New York? 
But seriously, My choice goes to Thunderball. It’s got a save the world type of plot so the stakes are the biggest of any Fleming novel, it’s got the best Fleming Bond girl in Domino Vitali, Emilo Largo makes a great villain, and Bond has a nice reunion with his best American friend Felix Leiter. Additionally, the underwater scenes are good, topped by Bond’s very tense final battle versus Largo. So it’s got high stakes, interesting characters, and good drama. It’s a great novel.
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I’ve voted Thunderball.
Thunderball For The Win! 
Thunderball is my favorite novel, it’s in my top 5 along with MR, CR, FRWL and Dr. No.
It’s probably the most cinematic Bond novel, the plot is realistic and threatening.
The most fun Bond adventure, Domino is one of the best Bond Girls along with Tiffany Case, Vesper Lynd and Gala Brand.
I liked that she’s complex and vulnerable but she never clinged to Bond, she’s not the typical damaged woman that Bond needs to cure, she’s independent and one of the fully fleshed out Bond Girls, she’s also tough and I loved that she’s the one who killed the Villain at the end. It’s not hard to imagine Bond settling down with her, she’s almost his equal too.
Largo is very much Bond’s evil reflection, his mirror, his evil version. Almost like Franz Sanchez, threatening, sadistic, menacing, charismatic, sophisticated and a gambler like Bond himself. I liked the similarities where Bond is working for MI6, while Largo on the other hand works for SPECTRE.
MI6 has Bond, SPECTRE has Largo.
MI6 has M, SPECTRE has Blofeld.
Each equivalent, they’re counterpart.
It’s a great Bond Adventure, Fleming’s descriptions are really great and the whole atmosphere is relaxing!
It has the perfect formula, the combination of action, drama, humor and thrill.
Blofeld was really at his best here, shame he went downhill in the subsequent novels, he’s most threatening here.
I liked everything about this novel. It’s the perfect blend of Cinematic and Literary Bond.
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Arg. Sorry to have missed that one off (am I? Still, it was inadvertent). However, still open for folks to say in the thread why they might prefer “Bond goes shopping for socks and razor blades, eats some eggs, shares a recipe” above, say Thunderball or You Only Live Twice. Still therefore open for others then to consider that view utter lunacy.
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Still hoping for the continuation short stories „007 in Liechtenstein“ (eating a bad quiche in a fake brasserie), „007 in Cologne“ (getting drunk on a Kölsch) and „007 in Slough“ (not finding any open restaurant and trying supermarket sushi for the first time with predictable results).
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I think Thunderball is arguably the one that would least confuse or confound new readers coming to the books based on their familiarity with the films. It’s got the exotic locales, sex and violence, a nuclear threat, SPECTRE in full flower, etc.
But I still like YOLT better. And of course there’s always the knowledge that putting TB into print ultimately helped speed Fleming along to an early grave.
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I don’t know why OHMSS is winning.
No personal, but I think it’s the weakest of the Trilogy for me:
The romance between Bond and Tracy was rushed.
Tracy I think is the weakest Bond Girl in the Trilogy, Kissy and Domino are better characters in the way that they’re tough, fleshed out, competent and likeable, Tracy wasn’t likeable, her dialogues and the way she treats Bond, she’s such a heavy character full of burden, she’s weepy, she failed to proved herself to be Bond’s ultimate Love, she’s the literal damaged girl that Bond needs to cure, then would cling to him after that, she became a subservient character in the third act, her presence was even weak in the book, she didn’t do anything, She’s just a damsel in distress.
Blofeld’s plot was also at his weirdest and weakest here: Really? Brainwashing British and Irish Girls? And destroying UK’s agriculture by doing those?
Blofeld’s description was also the weakest in this one, compare it to how he’s described in Thunderball and You Only Live Twice, he’s not that quite menacing here.
There’s so many foreign words that really hard to understand, it has Swiss, French and German languages written all over the book.
There’s also a lot of exclamation points.
I don’t know how could be that Fleming’s best.
I think it’s overrated.
If I would rank the The Blofeld Trilogy, here how it goes:
- Thunderball
- You Only Live Twice
- On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Edit: I liked the film, it’s probably one of my favorites, and yes it’s the same as the book, but I think it improved so many things from the book.
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My vote goes to YOLT, which ends the best one-two punch in literary Bond history.
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For June 17…
Favourite depiction of Bond’s home, wherever it may be (films)
- Dr No
- Live and Let Die
- Spectre
- No Time To Die
0 voters
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LALD’s apartment is excellent, and the kitchen even has black Maurice Binder style dots against a white wall. As an overall property I also really like what we see in NTTD, which is essentially Ian Fleming’s Goldeneye. Those two stand out for me.
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