Deathmatch 2024

Special Interest Games
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Form table - Semi-Finals - Women

Name Form % (% shift) / form shift
1 Tracy 89.75 (-3.19) / -
2 Vesper 80.13 (-4.09) / -
3 Tatiana 69.39 (-) / +2
4 Domino 67.31 (-3.82) / -1
5 Tiffany 65.8 (-) / +1
6 Anya 64.99 (-5.93) / -2
7 Honey 63.1
8 Holly 59.3
9 Pussy 58.7
10 Pam 53.47
11 Solitaire 48.22
12 Wai Lin 48.08
13 Madeleine (NTTD) 47.9
14 Natalya 46.14
15 Octopussy 45.18
16 Camille 41.8
17 Melina 38.23
18 Kara 38.15
19 Madeleine (Spectre) 36.78
20 M The Dench 26.45
21 Kissy 25.03
22 Goodnight 14.73
23 Jinx 14.7
24 Stacey 4.68
25 Christmas 3.35

With the top two fighting it out in the Final, it might be fairly obvious what the outcome here is going to be, subject to a massive win there for Vesper. However, the Third Place Death-Off can still result in shifts up and down and in and out and sideways and yon for its participants - and several around them. MY GOD ITS TENSE. Nearly.

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points

Guys! “CHICK FIGHT!”

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Well, quite.

We have a winner for the Deathmatch - Women knockout, and probably none too surprising:

Winner: Tracy
Runner-Up: Vesper
Third: Domino
Fourth: Anya

More to come, later.

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I’m never going to get Domino being in the top 3. Anya, Tracy and Vesper are clear winners by any standards, but Domino?!? She’s just…there.

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Because in many ways Domino is the BondWoman.
She knows who she is, the character doesn’t degenerate to “oh James save me”
She is a young woman who knows fully well what Largo is to her and she makes that material choice, when Bond tells her about her brother that resolve turns to revenge.
She’s cool, collected and clever. A liberated woman a free spirit and Bonds equal.
Just like Tracy and Vesper.
For me Anya degenerates to helpless damsel in distress, so I question Anya.
Funny isn’t it Bond fandom

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OK, so rounding up…

Women category

Final form table 2024 - Women

Name Form % (% shift) / form shift
1 Tracy 88.26 (-1.49) / -
2 Vesper 72.89 (-7.24) / -
3 Tatiana 69.39
4 Tiffany 65.8 (-) / +1
5 Domino 65.51 (-1.8) / -1
6 Honey 63.1 (-) / +1
7 Anya 62.75 (-2.24) / -1
8 Holly 59.3
9 Pussy 58.7
10 Pam 53.47
11 Solitaire 48.22
12 Wai Lin 48.08
13 Madeleine (NTTD) 47.9
14 Natalya 46.14
15 Octopussy 45.18
16 Camille 41.8
17 Melina 38.23
18 Kara 38.15
19 Madeleine (Spectre) 36.78
20 M The Dench 26.45
21 Kissy 25.03
22 Goodnight 14.73
23 Jinx 14.7
24 Stacey 4.68
25 Christmas 3.35

When it came to it, a straightforward win overall for Tracy and in both winning the knockout and the form table, achieves the Grand Slam of 4 points. Shame she’ll never get to enjoy them.

Some final shuffling about in the latter stages makes for an interesting top five, tbh.

Form over the years to determine Pots and Seedings for 2025

Film (2024 seeding) 2022 2023 2024 Average 2025
Dr No (9) 10 9 6 8.33 8th seed
FRWL (5) 6 5 3 4.67 5th seed
Goldfinger (7) 8 7 9 8 7th seed
Thunderball (4) 3 4 5 4 3rd seed
YOLT 15 20 21 18.67 Pot 3
OHMSS (1) 2 1 1 1.33 1st seed
DAF (6) 7 6 4 5.67 6th seed
LALD 14 16 11 13.67 Pot 1
TMwtGG 21 24 22 22.33 Pot 3
TSWLM (3) 4 2 7 4.33 4th seed
Moonraker 11 11 8 10 10th seed
FYEO 16 21 17 18 Pot 2
Octopussy 18 13 15 15.33 Pot 1
AVTAK 25 25 24 24.67 Pot 3
TLD 20 17 18 18.33 Pot 2
LTK (10) 13 8 10 10.33 Pot 1
GoldenEye 9 12 14 11.67 Pot 1
TND (8) 5 10 12 9 9th seed
TWINE 24 23 25 24 Pot 3
DAD 22 22 23 22.33 Pot 3
Casino Royale (2) 1 3 2 2 2nd seed
QoS 12 19 16 15.67 Pot 1
Skyfall 19 15 20 18 Pot 2
Spectre 17 18 19 18 Pot 2
NTTD 23 14 13 16.67 Pot 2

Generally some consistency, although a shuffling of the seeds to relegate Ms Bouvier and to promote Dr Goodhead. There is order in the heavens, after all.

I had forgotten that M The Dench scored relatively highly last year, and I have little doubt that Skyfall Moneypenny would struggle to top that, so M The Dench stays as Skyfall’s representative next year. You do that coping thing that you do so well. Six of the first seven are seeds - that’s pretty fierce. Does tend to play against the usual announcement when a new Bond film hoves into view (sometime in the next twenty years) that this woman is a) a WOMAN not a “Bond girl” and b) not like the regrettable dolly birds of yesteryear. Does that really hold? The 1980s went a bit wrong, didn’t it?

Women category - Deathmatch outcomes to date

2022 2023 2024
Winner Casino Royale OHMSS OHMSS
Runner-Up Goldfinger Casino Royale Casino Royale
Third OHMSS Thunderball Thunderball
Fourth TSWLM Goldfinger TSWLM

Blimey. Not much look-in for anyone else, is there? Anyway, we might all have changed our minds by next June. Although, for this category, I doubt it.

Still, fun to make them fight.

General position - 2024 to date

Deathmatch outcomes for categories to date

Villain Song Bond Women
Winner Goldfinger Live and Let Die From Russia with Love OHMSS
Runner-Up OHMSS Goldfinger The Spy who Loved Me Casino Royale
Third Skyfall Diamonds are Forever Goldfinger Thunderball
Fourth Casino Royale OHMSS Thunderball The Spy who Loved Me

1977-2006: thirty years (near enough) of meh, never stopped me dreaming that they had probably wasted my time.

Most Valuable Player - have to be placed in knockout (Semi-Final or better) to qualify

Placings Wins Top Ten Top Form Points
Goldfinger 3 1 4 1 9
OHMSS 3 1 3 1 8
FRWL 1 1 3 1 6
Thunderball 2 0 4 0 6
TSWLM 2 0 4 0 6
Casino Royale 2 0 4 0 6
LALD 1 1 2 0 4
DAF 1 0 2 1 4
Skyfall 1 0 3 0 4

Goldfinger just achieving the one point in the last category, and OHMSS getting a Grand Slam 4 points - all that renders it impossibly exciting. No new film breaks in and given patterns to date - can one? Thunderball still flapping its flipper, there.

Top Ten of Everything so far

4 visits to Top Ten 3 visits to Top Ten 2 visits to Top Ten 1 Visit to Top Ten Yet to bother the scorers
Goldfinger From Russia with Love Diamonds are Forever Dr No You Only Live Twice
Thunderball OHMSS Live and Let Die The Man with the Golden Gun Octopussy
The Spy who Loved Me Skyfall Licence to Kill For Your Eyes Only GoldenEye
Moonraker A View to a Kill Tomorrow Never Dies
Casino Royale The Living Daylights TWINE
Die Another Day
Quantum of Solace
Spectre
No Time to Die

Skyfall drops back for fairly obvious reasons. You Only Live Twice could have broken its duck with the Songs category but failed to. Hard to see where and when some of the other zero options are going to break out. It’s just not Die Another Day’s century, is it?

Form - the Road to Best Picture 2024

Villain – form place Song – form place Bond – form place Women – form place
Dr No 12 23 11 6
From Russia with Love 2 16 1 3
Goldfinger 1 5 3 9
Thunderball 8 10 7 5
You Only Live Twice 13 11 22 21
OHMSS 4 8 16 1
Diamonds are Forever 16 1 14 4
Live and Let Die 15 3 10 11
The Man with the Golden Gun 9 19 19 22
The Spy who Loved Me 7 2 6 7
Moonraker 5 4 8 8
For Your Eyes Only 20 14 5 17
Octopussy 19 22 15 15
A View to a Kill 11 9 23 24
The Living Daylights 25 15 9 18
Licence to Kill 10 20 13 10
Goldeneye 14 13 24 14
Tomorrow Never Dies 17 18 17 12
TWINE 18 12 21 25
Die Another Day 24 25 25 23
Casino Royale 6 6 2 2
Quantum of Solace 23 21 18 16
Skyfall 3 7 4 20
Spectre 21 24 20 19
No Time to Die 22 17 12 13

A bit like Ice Hockey, the overall game is split into three; so that’s it for June, with September and December to come.

One could argue the closer the Bond and the Woman are to each other, the better the fit, the better the chemistry? In Die Another Day’s case, Thallium. It might not really apply and I might just be inflicting on this my own reassurance bias, but some of the pairings are interesting. Taking Villain also into account, there’s something confirmatory about (say) Moonraker or From Russia with Love i.e. principal cast Do Acting Good. Although again, everything collapses when one considers Die Another Day, as indeed everything does.

Goldfinger’s relative underperformance in the Women category may open up the field for others. It looks like Casino Royale is leading at the moment but there is a long way to go. Months, in “fact”. In a shocking development, Jinx is the best element of Die Another Day so far. I think we need to ask ourselves some very searching questions. I need to lie down in a darkened room so, until September…

Deathmatch Will Return.

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Interesting how we now find some films amongst the strongest which were long considered to be amongst the series‘ weakest. Few fans from the 70s/80s/90s would likely have dreamed ON HER MAJESTY‘S or DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER would feature in such a survey with respectable results. Classics like MOONRAKER and THE SPY WHO LOVED ME used to be ridiculed for decades as silly hotchpotch, the latter even by Anthony Burgess, who handed in his own script for THE SPY, supposedly one not all that much more serious either.

Seems with the care of time we find love for the silly things in life that aren’t afraid to admit their own silliness.

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Yes, but it’s the kind of “there” that makes you wish you were there, too. Ahem.

I think time brings perspective. In 1979, having two “silly” films in a row (arguably 5) was threatening to some fans, especially when the profits suggested they were what audiences wanted. There was a feeling that the state of Bond circa Moonraker was “the new normal” and things could only keep going in one direction. Decades later we know that era was just a fun excursion down a bit of a side road, one stop on a larger adventure. Today, we’ve wandered so far from “silly” – and arguably “fun” – that this past era seems not only harmless in retrospect but maybe even like “the good old days.”

Anyway I guess my point is that now that we know Bond is eternal, it’s easier to soldier through periods we’re less enamored of, in the certainty that change will come. That wasn’t so certain back in the 70s. And now that we’ve seen so many variations on Bond, it’s easier to appreciate whatever flavor we’re being served at the moment, since we know it’s not the only thing that’ll ever be on the menu.

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Uh, Jim, I’m afraid you only have four ladies in Pot 1 and six in Pot 2, so I think one of the Pot 2 ladies, Camille Montes from Quantum Of Solace, I believe, judging by the average, should move up.

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I remember there was a faction of ultra-dogmatic hardcore Connery fans who refused to watch anything after DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (and who likely resorted to consuming their Bond as a seven-percent solution of the original text minced and dissolved in pure heroin base after watching NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN).

Then there were the many who came onboard like me with THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and couldn’t quite get the love for the older films. At the same time it was also a bit of a stretch to imagine the series moving on after Moore. We read the tabloids about Lewis Collins (or Michael Pread or whoever the yellowpress favoured at the time) but most didn’t believe in the rumours since Moore always returned.

Bizarrely, our generation bred hardcore fans - thankfully few - who rejected Dalton and seriously called for Moore‘s return. And we’ve seen that phenomenon happen again and again since. After a while one tends to recognise the pattern and not be overly concerned, also with the general tone of the films.

It’s practically a sociodemographic fever curve of the human condition in our day and age - at any given point in time. Bond always aims for the central mass of our conscious and subconscious tribulations.

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As a young fan, I considered the TWSLM/MR era the culmination of a long evolution, and to my young mind things had evolved in a totally acceptable direction. The early films were still enjoyable, but partly from the perspective of “isn’t that quaint, they were still figuring it out at that stage”, the same way I viewed Golden Age Superman comics where he wore a primordial version of the “S” emblem, or early episodes of Star Trek that referred to the “United Earth Space Probe Agency” instead of “Starfleet.” Bless their hearts, they were making it up as they went along and doing the best they could. Surely if FRWL had had the budget and know-how, it would’ve featured a spectacular villain hideout and a climactic battle between opposing armies, right? To older fans, the series had gone off the rails and was careering off on a swath of destruction, but for me things were just getting bigger and better, as successful things do.

Needless to say, I view things a bit differently these days, but at the very least I’m grateful to have been in the 70s generation of Bond fans, when the replacement of Connery was a fait accompli and Bond was from Day One a character who had already been successfully played by more than one person. I always felt kind of sorry for the older fans who took a “cold, dead fingers” approach to letting go of Sean, and figured they missed out on a lot of good times.

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Sunday 1 September - Deathmatch returns.

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Back to the salt mines…

Group stage for Henchingtons now complete, fallout descends as…

Group A Played W D L F A GD % Pts
Jaws 4 4 0 0 58 2 56 96.65 12
Tee-Hee 4 3 0 1 34 26 8 56.68 9
Locque 4 2 0 2 22 38 -16 36.68 6
Gobinda 4 1 0 3 21 39 -18 35 3
Primo 4 0 0 4 15 45 -30 25 0

Jaws starts as pretty terrifying in The Spy who Loved Me and no less terrifying here. Gobinda drops away in comparison to last year’s performance and a trend develops with Primo and his Odd Haircut of Doom with more recent henchpersons being massive hippo crap. Tee-Hee as a seed does get through, but that’s some gulf between first and second place…

Locque commits to the For Your Eyes Only norm and squeezes through in an unremarkable fashion. Curious how often For Your Eyes Only does that. Just sorta “there”.

Group B Played W D L F A GD % Pts
Oddjob 4 4 0 0 56 8 48 87.5 12
May Day 4 2 1 1 39 25 14 60.94 7
Chang 4 2 1 1 35 29 6 54.69 7
Dent 4 1 0 3 17 47 -30 26.56 3
Renard 4 0 0 4 13 51 -38 20.31 0

Jaws (Moonraker) having been retired off for senility or some such, last minute on-the-Moonraker-ticket candidate Chang/Charrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr does OK, and to be fair, that fight in the glass museum/factory is one of many spiffingsome parts of Moonraker. The top two here were probably a given, but interesting (and gratifying) to see Professor Dent outdo “massively dangerous terrorist threat” Renard and his Wonky Eye of EeeeeeVil.

Group C Played W D L F A GD % Pts
Wint & Kidd 4 4 0 0 52 8 44 86.65 12
Necros 4 3 0 1 41 19 22 68.33 9
Kronsteen 4 2 0 2 27 32 -5 46.18 6
Patrice 4 1 0 3 15 45 -30 25.03 3
Zao 4 0 0 4 14 45 -31 23.83 0

Wint ‘n’ Kidd administering a licking to Zao and Necros and Patrice and…Kronsteen. That massively crude observation made, remains interesting how Kronsteen holds his own (fnarr) in such a melee, and has done for some years now. Patrice and Zao - into the hippo poo-poo with you-you.

Group D Played W D L F A GD % Pts
Fiona 4 4 0 0 53 7 46 88.33 12
Helga 4 3 0 1 35 25 10 58.35 9
Hinx 4 2 0 2 30 30 0 49.98 6
Nick Nack 4 1 0 3 28 32 -4 46.65 3
Elvis 4 0 0 4 4 56 -52 6.7 0

Is Elvis really that much of a henchman, as opposed to “someone else in the cast”? That said, even that woeful score is 478% better than his average last year, so we can call it a win. Nick Nack tends to be overlooked, or looked over, and this year’s surprise package Helga Brandt (finished 18th overall last time out) out-henches the curiously overpopular Hinx, who cannot avoid the approaching hippo. Fiona Volpe pleases on so many levels.

Group E Played W D L F A GD % Pts
Xenia 4 4 0 0 56 8 48 87.5 12
Dario 4 3 0 1 38 22 16 64.35 9
Bunt 4 2 0 2 35 25 10 58.01 6
Stamper 4 1 0 3 13 47 -34 21.9 3
Dimitrios 4 0 0 4 11 50 -39 18.24 0

Are you a recent-ish henchbod? Do you bother the back end of hippos? Oh yes you do. Always been a bit of a surprise that Irma Bunt doesn’t do better in these things given that she murders Bond’s wife but I suppose the prospect of being crushed between Xenia’s thighs is more pleasing. Or between Dario’s; your call and who am I to judge? (I am me, and I am judging).

Form table - Henchpersons - Group Stage

Henchperson (seed) Form % Group Stage outcome
1 Jaws (TSWLM) (1) 96.65 Winner A
2 Fiona Volpe (4) 88.33 Winner D
3 Xenia (5) 87.5 Winner E
4 Oddjob (2) 87.5 Winner B
5 Wint & Kidd (3) 86.65 Winner C
6 Necros (8) 68.33 Runner-Up C
7 Dario 64.35 Runner-Up E
8 May Day (9) 60.94 Runner-Up B
9 Helga Brandt 58.35 Runner-Up D
10 Irma Bunt (6) 58.01 Lucky Loser 1
11 Tee-Hee (10) 56.68 Runner-Up A
12 Chang 54.69 Lucky Loser 2
13 Hinx (7) 49.98 Lucky Loser 3
14 Nick Nack 46.65 Lucky Loser 4
15 Kronsteen 46.18 Lucky Loser 5
16 Locque 36.68 Lucky Loser 6
17 Gobinda 35
18 Professor Dent 26.56
19 Patrice 25.03
20 Primo 25
21 Zao 23.83
22 Stamper 21.9
23 Renard 20.31
24 Dimitrios 18.24
25 Elvis 6.7

True enough to form, but I’d wager the Second Round’ll sort yer. The perkiness of Helga Brandt compared to last year is most diverting.

Replacing Jaws with Chang as the nominee for the Moonraker par-teh seems to be paying off; at this point last year, Jaws had finished 15th and was Lucky Loser 5 with an average around 49 so it seems to be working so far. However, it remains to be seen whether he can Charrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrge on to greater things.

Serious soapbox time: look at the woeful recent henchery. All this bodge about getting the new Bond in and whether it’s eldery British actor A or elderly British actor B or a tennis ball nailed to a broomhandle with Sean Connery’s face CGI’d onto it, and yet there’s a massive issue with both recent Villainy and recent Henchery. Concentrating too much on Bond, who isn’t really all that interesting, and the potential for diverting and creative and outlandish villainy has dwindled. Silva is an exception, but one can’t keep repeating that. SORT IT OUT. The problem is not Bond, it is having him fight his “demons” or his (oh dear me, no) “family” rather than fighting people with three eyes or perspex testicles or made of ferrets. I have spake.

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That is the problem indeed.

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True, and also inevitable. In the role of imperial assassin who saves the world with regularity, Bond did not have to be interesting. All he had to be was heroic and resourceful (or well-resourced by Q). He was an archetype, not a character. Sir Roger was unsurpassed in this arena.

But once the archetype began to fray, and came under critique, the series had to shift to

Bond required psychology and backstory to replace the archetypal heft that used to be his ground.

Having now exhausted Psychological Bond, the interesting question is: what will Bond’s new grounding be?

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