I guess I never really gave a second thought to either scenario. I’ve always been more hung up on Bond randomly being in Monaco at the same time that the Tyger helicopter was being stolen and playing Baccarat against the thief in Goldeneye.
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That’s what I always thought too. He even admits it once Bond confronts him saying: “I was beginning to think you’d never guess.” And, “But there have been compensations, like watching you flail around in your ignorance, granting you life day by day just to see if you’d get wise. It’s been fun.”
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Yes, absolutely correct!
He also triumphantly tells Zao that he was standing very close to Bond and that Bond did not recognize him at all.
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September 10.
- Something to explain why Elektra isn’t treated as a figure of considerable suspicion very much sooner.
- Something to explain why Lt Hip and his neices turn up to rescue Bond then drive off without him.
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Elektra it is for me. Hip appearing with his underage nieces, then disappearing again is just the spirit of the Keystone Cops that subtly pervades Bond’s world of that era.
Elektra on the other hand is a character invented long after the Stockholm syndrome and Patty Hearst became facts of modern life. A character immediately profiting from the death of her father, heavily invested in a politically charged region and not on the best of terms with the old man. One would indeed start asking questions about her motivations and contacts right after King is blown to pieces. Like for example, who could have known King would pick up the money himself - and bizarrely touch it! - when the natural thing for somebody in that income bracket would be to send a gopher.
The circumstances of King‘s death strongly suggest foul play on the inside. Yet Bond is sent to watch over the prime suspect and keep her safe. Small wonder she manages to kidnap M…
EDIT: Forgot about the tasteless lapel badge King wears. So he doesn’t touch the money but gloats over it while his questionable taste seals his fate. Who could have arranged that if not his loving daughter? Once again, solid police work could have saved lots of lives.
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Yes, she is so obviously the villain that it would have been more of a shock if she hadn’t been. With Bond still shooting her under a misapprehension that’s she’s naughty, it could all have gone very gratifyingly dark.
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Bond touches the money, it is dipped in urea (urr) and then he picks out ice cubes with his unwashed fingers. Poo-ee.
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That would have been significantly more interesting, Bond killing somebody he’s every right to believe is guilty - but then turns out to be not.
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Elektra, definitely, is another missed opportunity (and therefore totally in character for the BB era). I always thought it was too touchy-feely already to introduce Dench-M having a bond (sorry) with Elektra. That poor girl, full of grief… (ALARM!)
And while I always will fondly (and fondlingly) remember Sophie Marceau as "La Boum"´s Vic (“Dreams are my reality, a wondrous world where I like to be…”)… I don’t think she became a great actress. Neither is she here.
As for the nieces… I always enjoyed them suddenly appearing and then withdrawing their help (I mean, the army of fighters just was too much, who wouldn’t have fled?). More of that amusing lunacy would have improved the following eras. In contrast to the uninspired lunacy or the sourpuss lunacy we got.
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Logic tells me that we need to learn more about Elektra. But we might just learn that she went unnoticed because everyone else in the cast, including Bond himself, acts like a complete donut at entirely the wrong moment, thereby allowing her to move “stealthily” through proceedings.
So, yes I want to learn more about Hip and nieces. I want to learn more about the dudes in the garden; more about Sheriff JW’s holiday; did his wife have a good time? Where else did they go? What did the little boy do with his elephant and his twenty bucks? What did that guy who worked on Scaramanga’s island do all day? What was Goodnight’s career path once the junk docked?
Are there as many unanswered questions in TWINE? Yes. I’m just unconvinced the answers will be as “interesting” as the ones posed by TMWTGG…
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Good idea for a thread: career paths for side characters before and after Bond…
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Beautifully put, and definitely true.
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But this was the main premise of the movie. It certainly can’t be that this lovely vulnerable young woman who just lost her father and has known M since childhood can do anything evil. This can only be found out by our genius hero James Bond 007 – and every 12 year old in the audience (well, at least back in the day – today, 70 percent of the 25 year old would fall for it).
“The Big Reveal” has never been their strong side…
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I remember at the time our feuilleton made some fuss about Marceau being a ‘serious’ actress* and that supposedly being a sign of THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH’s higher aspirations. In reality I don’t think it payed off. While technically the first female main villain (if we don’t consider Klebb) she’s not all that interesting, nor is there chemistry between her and Bond that would make us care about her being a baddie. She just is and that’s that.
And while she’s supposedly been engineering all kinds of murderous activities I find myself not particularly bothered. Had the authorities been a bit less naïve and a bit more professional about their job she could have been stopped much sooner.
*I seem to remember one article making a lot of Marceau playing Claude Brasseur’s wife in DESCENTE AUX ENFERS only six years after LA BOUM - but then again she already was cast as Belmondo’s almost conquest years before in JOYEUSES PÂQUES - it just was that kind of genre casting in the 1980s.
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September 11.
As revealed unto you last week, you are Barbara Broccoli. Cope.
You remain convinced that the path for Bond 26 onwards is to treat all the Bond films previously as one continuous story. Ignore the Bond being dead thing (by the time you get round to Bond 26 people who saw that will be very, very old and forgetting far more important things, like where they left their bottom).
Your attention now turns to the enormity (word used correctly, for once) of the opportunity this presents to bring characters back.
Whilst this can only be on the basis they were actually alive at the end of their original film (do still keep ignoring the Bond being atomised into femtocrumbs matter and everyone else will / must), it’s an economic means of character development and absolutely not massively lazy.
You have drawn up a shortlist from each film from each decade and today’s choices are - Non-hostiles from the 1960s. Yes, it will mean re-casting due to the original actors probably wanting too much money / being too old / being too dead.
You can only bring one back, and it doesn’t include Sylvia Trench as that would obviously be absurd. Obviously.
Whose race is not yet run?
- Pleydell-Smith
- Vavra the gypsy*
- Hawker the caddy
- Pinder
- Tiger Tanaka**
- Ruby Bartlett
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*probably can’t be called that “these days”.
**yes, I know he’s a more major character than these others, but other than The Woman With No Name, he’s one of very few named characters (save for the usual MI6 tat) left alive at the end of You Only Live Twice. This is a trend with the Lewis Gilbert-a-thons; they are total slaughterhouses disguised as loopy daftness.
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Hawker it is. My first impulse would have been Tanaka as a strong ally - but ultimately he’s just another bureaucrat example of the secret priesthood, likely still conceiving deadly training drills for kamikaze ninjas and visiting karaoke bars with his male underlings until the wee small hours. Not interesting.
Hawker on the other hand is not affiliated with the service and lives in his own subculture of cheats, pompous fraudsters and similar riffraff from the upper echelons of society. A colourful backdrop and a useful contact in his own right. And for once one who nurses no illusions - he knows Bond isn’t quite a gentleman because it takes one to know one.
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I am such a huge Bond fan that I had to google a few names on that list.
Great list, I know now.
But while Pinder and Pleydell-Smith would be obvious candidates for re-use (or better: use since they weren’t really of any before) I am afraid that as BB I would cast lots of Oscar winners and then excuse their overuse by letting step bro (not Oberhauser) explain: you don’t cast those and then not give them more and more interesting scenes than your supposedly major character.
So my vote goes to Tiger Tanaka (racist alliteration these days, let’s rename him Lion Tanaka or better Lion Friend… naw, that comes out dubiously… um… how about Fred Tannerka… or…)
Really, though, he would be a great Asian Kerim Bey.
Of course, he cannot be associated with Ninjas, Sake, accents and Sushi.
But I would love him to approve Bond getting a great wig.
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Close between Tiger and the caddy …but I have casting in mind for both
Hawk - Gabriel Byrne nuff said
Tiger - Haruka Igawa, a female Tiger ! She’s phenomenal and it would make for an interesting dynamic in a Japan set intro to NewBond
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Gotta go with Ruby Bartlett here.
In the years since her stay at Piz Gloria, she’s come to embody the Peter Principle by rising to the office of Prime Minister. Learning that the dishy “Sir Hilary Bray” is actually an agent on the payroll of what is now her government, she makes sure Bond is assigned as her personal bodyguard when an assassination plot comes to light. Bond must fend off Ruby’s amorous advances even as he tracks down her would-be killers, a cabal of super-patriot generals and KBEs who see as an existential threat PM Bartlett’s plans to officially add the image of a chicken to the Union Jack.
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Is there a way to combine Pleydell-Smith and Hawker? Create an old 60s-70s TV show where the “contrasting duo” investigate mischief in middle-England. A sort of Avengers-Persuaders-Randall & Hopkirk riff. Suspicious goings-on at cocktail hour or in the bag room at the clubhouse, what-have-you. “Alias Smith & Hawker” or "Pleydell & the Putter’?
And if you can’t decide who to omit, well, there’s room for everyone. A guest appearance from Tiger or Ruby. Actually take that back - there’s no room for Pinder, a less than one-dimensional character if there ever was one…
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