Given Connery only kills ONE of his main villains, I’m okay with M getting to push Moriarty…C to his death.
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I think the gist of the discussion is admirable, not wanting too much emphasis on the MI6 team where it treads close to other franchises like MI,
Admirable notion, yes, I just don’t think it is.
I agree, it hasn’t gotten there yet. But I do get why it gets under some of these guy’s skin. I was vocal, in the day, of not being a fan of the QoS attempt to mirror Bourne with the shaky camera and short run time.
Conversely, I think Moore kills all but one of his.
I think it depends which villain in Octopussy is the main villain- Khan seems to be main, but the plot is Orlov’s and he’s the one who gains from it.
Good point. I consider them to be co-main villains. Gobinda is the henchman, not Kamal.
So Moore dispatches 5 1/2 of his villains? 
I’d say more like 6 of 8, whilst actually trying to save Kristatos.
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Does anyone know how Michael G. Wilson’s health is? I know he had some heart problems for a while.
Am I right in thinking he kills Dr No and Goldfinger?
I’d say they both cause their own deaths: Dr No is unable to pull himself out of the reactor because of his metal hands, while Goldfinger fires the shot that depressurises the plane and sucks him out. So I guess the only primary villain Connery actually kills is Red Grant… IF you count him as the main villain, rather than a henchman. I’d really put Rosa Klebb as the main bad there which gives Connery Bond a kill rate of 0… what a softie!!!
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Nope, just Dr No. Goldfinger accidentally killed himself, Bond just saved his own skin. Goldfinger shoots the window, but doesn’t get to a handhold so gets sucked out the window.
Though @MrHinx is right, Dr No isn’t killed by Bond so much as was less able to escape than Bond. So, yes, Connery’s Bond killed none of his own main villains. 2 accidents, 2 killed by the respective Bond girl and Blofeld got away twice.
He did kill many a henchman though.
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In the novel Goldfinger’s death is one of the most vivid, hands-on of all Bond’s kills.
He certainly fried my namesake 
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Does anyone know why they gave Goldfinger a version of book Odd Jobs death?
Gotta chime in here, of course 
Yes, it´s always better to write a scene in which the actors can deliver information through their behavior, with minimal dialogue.
But exposition without dialogue i.e telling it verbally?
Impossible. Unless you are doing an art film in which expositional information is strictly centered on character or atmosphere. ERASERHEAD does not need any verbal exposition to set its scene. A Bond film, however, does.
The shower scene in CR actually is only the result, the finale of a whole sequence. The exposition consists of Bond´s task, his relationship with Vesper and the brutal fight on the stairs.
(By the way, that shower scene indeed could have been ruined by Vesper explaining her feelings. Bond sucking her fingers, however, is sending mixed signals, IMO. And Bond sitting down beside her, fully clothed under the falling drops of water, for my taste is even a bit too much of “show don’t tell”. A metaphor used so visibly that it almost becomes a parody. Much better, for my taste, is the simple character moment when Bond admires himself in the mirror wearing the tuxedo Vesper has chosen for him.)
Again, I agree: dialogue in a film always should be pared down to the essentials. But those essentials can be the full magical three pages. And the briefing scene in M´s office always consists of information you cannot give the audience without dialogue.
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Most likely a need of prior events: Bond and Odd Job had the splendid fight in the Fort Knox vault, where it becomes brutally clear Bond is no match for Odd Job. Nonetheless, Bond wins the fight by using his wits and kills his adversary.
The book version has Bond breaking the cabin glass with Odd Job sitting right beside it. The Korean is sucked out while Bond remains largely unharmed. At least he’s still fit enough after regaining consciousness to overpower Goldfinger and kill him in a frenzy with his bare hands.
Well, all that is not just a bit much in terms credibility (Goldfinger is by far the worst book where happenstance, coincidence and fantastic machinations nearly break the tale to pieces - but just nearly…), it’s also a rather bloodthirsty scene that may have given Broccoli and Saltzman trouble with the authorities. FRWL already had a couple of risque scenes - for the times - and GOLDFINGER was supposed to break the market wide open, also in terms of the target audience.
The way the scene was written in the end the final confrontation between Bond and Goldfinger was a toned down version in terms of brutality, which more or less accidentally ended fatal for Goldfinger. And it had the added advantage of keeping that surreal moment Fleming used in his book version.
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You’re right on all counts!
I’m not suggesting plot exposition is done without dialogue; it’s of course not a binary solution of doing it without, or explaining it on the nose. It’s down to the art of the writer et al to making expo a part of the unfolding scenes, rather than ‘this is were we pause to explain things’ moments, which many a movie and many a Bond suffers from.
Bond’s briefings from M are indeed allowed to do this, in fact they’re a rare example in cinema of where we want to see this; much like the obligatory war movie briefing that ramps us up for the coming action.
But where we then see continual updates to M, Tanner, Moneypenny from the field, they usually function as expo and could/should be avoided.
Eg shoving such scenes into the middle of a car chase doesn’t make the car chase more exciting, though that’s what they’d like you to think in SP’s Rome chase. To my mind it sabotages the edit’s pacing and tension. Sure there’s a little tension from Bond doing 2 things at once, but if he can do both then that means the chase isn’t really that difficult and the pursuer not all that intimating.
Find another way to have Bond communicate the Spectre meeting with Moneypenny - perhaps recoding video or audio on his phone and sending it - and you can lose the moneypenny phone call from the chase all together it would make for a grittier, more nerve racking experience (as was the edge of the seat opening car chase in QoS).
Doing 2 things at once is tempting to a writer as it saves time and allows them to ‘show off’, but in a movie where you want to keep the stakes high it’s detrimental to that overall tone and pacing. I think this happens often with Bond movies, but i feel good about CJF doing a better job of avoiding such things.
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Bond directly caused Dr. No’s death by fighting him and then trapping him on the platform that he couldn’t pull himself out of. I guess the other debatable one would be Blofeld in DAF. Granted, a Blofeld-like character appears in FYEO, but we never get confirmation on film that that is Blofeld.