Exactly.
As an aside, I’ve been listening to the Goldeneye soundtrack again. I’m a fan of everything, but these tracks: We Share The Same Passions, That’s What Keeps You Alone, Whispering Statues, and the Severnaya Suite, have a sleek maturity to them that other Bond soundtracks do not possess. They really are introspective and melancholy in a potent way. I’m sure you’d agree @dalton.
I haven’t given the soundtrack a listen in a good long while, but I’ve always been a huge fan of Serra’s work on the film. I rank it very highly among the Bond scores, and it capped off a stretch of three scores where I thought the franchise was in a really good place from a sound perspective, with John Barry going out on what is perhaps his best Bond score with TLD, followed up by Michael Kamen’s strong work on LTK, and then capped off with Serra’s turn with GE. Three great Bond scores, three very different ways of going about it, but great nonetheless.
I find this is the problem with most commentaries. Particularly if a story goes on a long time.
I thought you would like it. ‘The Goldeneye Overture’, ‘Run, Shoot and Jump’ and ‘The Antenna’ are strong action cues, and the other tracks have a unique ambience that have always fasciated me. ‘Fatal Weakness’ might not do much for some but I think it’s a brooding masterpiece.
After watching the film a couple of times recently I again noticed how shadow and light is effectively used. Some shots that stick out to me: 006 emerging from the dark during the PTS, the sauna sequence, Bond sitting in the back seat of Xenia’s car, 006 revealing himself at statue park and Bond and Natalya inside the interrogation room. All very nice, IMO.
How do you rate the film now @dalton?, especially as a fan of Timothy Dalton and Goldeneye being the immediate successor to his era?
I’d have to watch the film again. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it to rally give a good analysis of it. I actually haven’t seen any of the Bond films, aside from a few minutes of DAF on TV the other day, in at least a year or so. A good number of them are up on Amazon Prime, so maybe I’ll give GE and some others a rewatch while there’s nothing else to do.
But, as memory serves, it really did feel as though it was a film that, at least at some point along the way, was conceived with Dalton, or at least some of the traits that Dalton brought to the franchise, in mind. It’s a shame that they didn’t continue with this particular style of Bond, as the films that came after it relied far more on action, despite having some truly great ideas behind them that could have greatly benefited from the treatment the franchise is currently getting in the Craig era. I can only imagine how great TND could have been, with the idea of the media manipulating world events in order to start a war for ratings, had it been given the serious, Craig-era treatment as opposed to having it glossed in that 90s-era action-movie sheen that didn’t really do it any favors.
I think GE was, in the very early part of the development process, designed for Dalton, was it not?
Back in the days when Alec’s character was Bond’s middle-aged mentor Denholm Crisp.
I watched it later in a couple of sittings as I was busy when it first aired. First of all I would agree that Brosnan didn’t have to do this and he gave a lot of attention to the questions. I doubt any of the other surviving Bonds could be cajoled into the same (though if Connery sat down for Thunderball I would enjoy watching him fall asleep during some of the underwater sequences). So we should appreciate that during this time he agreed to do so and seemed to congenial throughout.
During the first half of the film he seemed excited and had lots of interesting stories. During the second half he remarked repeatedly that he was just trying to get through it and didn’t say much about the film itself. He would mostly just answer questions. When someone asked him about the Die Another Day surfing Brosnan told an anecdote about the opening sequence but I think the question was about the infamous “cartoon” sequence.
It’s interesting how he continually confuses Tomorrow Never Dies with The World is Not Enough. Perhaps to him it is all one big experience.
Yes, he remarked in the 2012 documentary that he only really remembered GE. Probably because his films were made so close together. I doubt Craig would confuse QofS for SP, for example.
Something else I’ve recently observed:
Bond and Natalya sliding down the dish and coming to a lucky stop.
Bond and Wai Lin using the banner to slide down Carver’s building.
Don’t want to start a new thread for this, so I thought I’d put it here.
The radio dish from the GE finale:
I would be interested to know how you came across this! No mention of Bond anywhere…
German magazine SPIEGEL mentions GOLDENEYE towards the end of its report:
Many fans will probably also remember Arecibo was the location of the GOLDENEYE finale.
I had read that and thought it was the GE telescope but they never mentioned it so I moved on.
Sorry, didn’t notice that the English article didn’t contain the GE information. As Dustin correctly guessed, I’ve read the German article and just did a quick search for something in English language.
Here’s one that mentions it:
James Bond reinvented twice on November 17th–once in 1995 and again in 2006.
Very 2020-ish.
That’s a real shame, but out of our control and safety comes first. Such an iconic visual of the modern Bond universe, and it’ll always live on via the film.