With a straight face - multiple Bonds are far more interesting than a lethargic, overweight, superstar grumbling about his salary.
You know Orson Welles was in CR67 right?
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September 18
The below all threw more than one Bond film at us. Who directed one too many?
- Terence Young
- Guy Hamilton
- Lewis Gilbert
- John Glen
- Martin Campbell
- Sam Mendes
0 voters
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Just to be fair (when have I ever been, but I have to divert my attention from the difficult real life):
I think SPECTRE has some very good sequences probably only Mendes could have created (the funeral, the assassination).
But waiting for Mendes to return created so many consequences which made the production so difficult, the film not as good as it should have been, and also the following delays of the next film (before COVID added to that).
If Mendes had done SKYFALL and then stopped, it could have been beneficial for everything that followed. Heck, he could have returned for one final Craig Bond later on - or started the next era.
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Guy Hamilton, too many.
Sure, he’d directed Goldfinger, but the other three? DAF, LALD, and TMWTGG, they’re all lacking in quality compared to Goldfinger.
Those three were borderline parodic and cartoonish, cheap looking with drab visuals and cinematography, convoluted, contrived and unnecessary complicated plots that somehow could be clarified better with good and proper execution.
Diamonds Are Forever, sure it had memorable dialogues (thanks to Mankiewicz), but the way Hamilton directed those, it felt comical and too far from what a Bond film should be, the characters that had no depth and only played for laughs, bland and dull cinematography, plot that again too convoluted and messed up (that a shame I wished the film just followed the book better), it’s only good credit was the theme song by Shirley Bassey.
Live And Let Die, this one for me felt overlong and I will boldly say, boring, really, with overlong (almost never ending) chase scenes in different forms like boat, bus and plane runway, and the film was just all about Bond having some hide and seek from the villains and escaping them all the time that it really drags and becoming uninteresting, there’s nothing much happened in this film, then ended it up with that Inflating villain balloon (the only one that’s most memorable in the film, but tragically, more in a bad way), then the visuals are also a bit dull and lacking too, the characters that were mostly played as plot devices rather than actual characters with depth (again, more like one dimensional), and the plot that’s really simple, yet the execution made it looked like very complicated, it’s a shame, like Diamonds Are Forever, the theme song for this film (sung by Paul McCartney and Wings) deserved a better film than what it got.
The Man With The Golden Gun the most offender of them all, sure it’s got a good actor to play a villain in Christopher Lee, but everything else in this film just failed to hit the mark: from Mary Goodnight being useless and dumb, to Sheriff JW Pepper returning for no reason other than to show how he bullied foreigners (Asians), cringe inducing sexual entendres like Bottom’s Up Club (there’s even a close up shot of woman’s butt) and Phuyuck, lacking of quality in dialogues, and even Bond’s most unlikeable portrayal, the cinematography in here was utterly cheap and dirty looking (very brownish), and the plot that’s really convoluted and contrived.
His films also having too many stereotypes that didn’t aged well, the drab and bland visuals, and one dimensional characters.
Guy Hamilton should just only have Goldfinger and let others do the other three instead.
I had to go with Mendes. It’s true Hamilton’s run exemplifies Eon’s tradition of “keep doing what works until it doesn’t work any more,” but Mendes had further to fall, and did.
Despite my lack of enthusiasm for it, SF was a spectacular popular and critical success that brought in tons of money and seemed to confirm that the “retooled for the 21st Century” Bond was as big a deal as the original. Mendes was regarded by many as the best director to touch the series since the early days and depending on whom you asked, maybe ever.
Then came SP, which was considerably less favorably received, made less money and gave us the hated Brofeld and a damp squib of an ending. I guess it has its defenders, but just the fact that it needs “defending” proves it was a comedown. (Most people don’t feel they have to defend SF). Even I would stop short of calling it “awful” but at best it’s mediocre, which knocked Mendes from his toplofty position as some kind of directorial superman and landed him in the “mere mortal” category with the rest of them.
Lazenby’s always painted as foolish for walking away from a dream job, but the other side of that is he has a perfect record when it comes to great Bond films. In the same spirit, Mendes should’ve stepped away after SF. When you’re part of something with a million moving parts and potential pitfalls that somehow miraculously comes together perfectly anyway, sometimes it’s best to just thank your good luck, move on and not ask the universe for an encore.
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I don’t think that’s the case in Hamilton’s other three, sure, Goldfinger went bigger than the previous two (DN & FRWL), but it’s not as comical as the other three (DAF, LALD, and TMWTGG).
It’s not of keeping what it works, in the Producers’ mind, it’s like keeping Guy Hamilton because he’d made Goldfinger, but what Hamilton did with those three other Bond films are different from what he did with Goldfinger, and that’s the problem, he dialed up the outlandishness to 11 moreso than even Goldfinger, which was the result of him experimenting.
Goldfinger could still keep up with the seriousness of the Connery Era, like Thunderball that preceded it.
Unlike the next three which delved down into comic relief, even the tone of those three films aren’t even the same as the one in Goldfinger, it’s like “how could you believe that the man who directed Goldfinger also directed DAF, LALD and TMWTGG?” It’s just far, the quality really dropped and were different.
In Goldfinger, there are some quiet moments with the feel of danger in them, unlike those other three, were the majority of the scenes in those were like straight up came from a Willy E. Coyote shows or something like that, and I don’t have that same feeling or even the same look when watching Goldfinger.
The only similaritity that those three films shared with Goldfinger is the pacing, which is slow, but overall, those three are just different from Goldfinger.
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Well, I didn’t mean to imply the films themselves were all the same, just that the thinking seemed to be “Hamilton brings in the bucks, let’s put him in the chair again.” And it was the same with Mendes.
If we want to talk about making the same movie multiple times, that’s where Lewis Gilbert comes in. But for my money, that’s fine as practice kept getting him closer to perfect.
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I may have made a monster…
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Thank you!
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While I do think Sam Mendes screwed the proverbial pooch with Spectre (I still refuse to accept the brothers angle), John Glen definitely outstayed his welcome and this is despite his final film being arguably his best as we cannot forget that he also had A View to a Kill in there.
Whilst I’d put AVTAK as his worst, I strongly believe LTK was his best. Right there is an argument for staying at least a bit longer.
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All right, you’ve made your point. 
On that note, I’d vote for Marc Forster.
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I think one of the reasons the Bond franchise has thrived is that what “a Bond film should be” is is as much of a contested concept as what the Tibetan homeland is.
Who had “Making $880 million in worldwide gross is a disappointment” on their bingo card today?
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The same person who had “Using the Austin Powers twist for Spectre will be a winner.”
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I was more concerned about the film being an artistic failure, but I figured I’d throw in the part Eon would care about, too.
Did EON or SONY think that SPECTRE could outperform SKYFALL?
Maybe. This is Hollywood, after all.
In that regard 880 millions worldwide is a disappointment. But it was Craig’s second best performing Bond, right? So…
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Hamilton.
I won’t bore you with another knifing of SP, but I’ll spare Mendes as I do think “2” isn’t really a fair sample. As time goes by Glen’s work has aged surprisingly well - the weaknesses in his films attributed as much to the “conveyor belt construction” that was 80s Bond. Only one film in his run is a real dog (AVTAK) and while I don’t “like” OP, it hangs together well, with pace, spectacle, and its own sense of style. And LTK is a rare Bond that gets more exciting the deeper into its runtime it goes.
Gilbert made the same film 3 times so in a strange way, is he even a “multiple director”?
Hamilton, I suppose. I’m awfully fond of LALD for nostalgic reasons, but without those sepia tinted glasses on, it’s fair to say Glen’s (and Campbell twice) introductions of new actors were superior. TMWTGG is a turkey, and DAF is very much style with not a lot of substance. Of course, I’d say the same about GF but that’s me for you…
It comes down to Hamilton and Gilbert for me.
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