Casino Royale is the worst of the Craig Bonds.
Goldeneye isnt very good.
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I 100% agree with this, in my bottom 3 Bond official films and potentially dead last…
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I can enjoy every Bond film.
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Thunderball is the best Connery film.
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I’m the same. I don’t dislike any of the films. I just like some more than others.
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This - i enjoyed the bombastic video gane stylings of the Brosnan era, and i equally enjoy the stylised realism of the Craig era. I dont find loving both as a contradiction the same way i dont see it as ludicrous getting as much enjoyment as From Russia With Love as i do Die Another Day (never less than entertained)
Three blind mice to driving off Madeline Swann via cocoa covered rats and a cgi tsunami that only the director wanted, ive adored every moment.
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Dr. No and From Russia with Love use the Bond theme appallingly.
You mean those scenes in which it is played in full? I wouldn’t call that appallingly. It´s rather an attempt at establishing it at all.
No, its more like Bond is walking down the street Bond theme blares. Bond checks into his hotel room Bond theme blares
It is a bit jarring today, now that we know that arrangement of the theme. Back then it was a powerful statement.
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Amazing how much of those first two movies has a different reaction today than they would’ve had upon release - the structure springs to mind with a pre-title sequence followed by a title sequence that speaks to an iconic piece of the film. Dr No having a more typical structure for the time, versus FRWL which shook it up to fix script problems in the edit. Now FRWL is seen as the norm for Bond films, whilst Dr No is jarring to watch as it seems to miss so much that is now defined as Bond.
Dr. No is kind of an oddity in the Bond series to me. I love it a lot, however, it doesn’t really feel like a Bond film. It’s more of a detective thriller and very light on action.
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I didn’t know about this. What kind of script problems?
Watch the bts doc on the DVD, Peter Hunt goes into quite some detail about scenes not making sense because of massive mounts of things being missing. The pre-titles, the spectre briefing and the train sequence being the biggest offenders. Clever editing hid things in the action scenes, but the spectre scenes needed Blofelds voice actor to have LOADS of exposotion to fill gaps and Rosa Klebb to be filmed infront of back projection to fill the rest (these are very noticable once you know it’s there)
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I can’t stay awake through Thunderball.
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That’s not very shocking. Thunderball put me and friends asleep once. Were were doing a Bondathon leading up to Skyfall. My friends had not seen the majority of Bond films and Thunderball killed our marathon dead in it’s tracks.
We never did get the marathon running again.
I find it very shocking. Thunderball is my favorite of the Connery Bonds.
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Dr No is probably the closest representation of the Fleming Bond feel, before things became more of a cinematic extravaganza. The books have fantastical elements, but they do have a slower build, detective type atmosphere. The 1962 film only really lacks the obstacle course being a deliberate endurance of pain, the giant squid (both due to budget limitations) and No being buried alive in guano. In the early 60s with the first film they really did only have the books as their guide - because of that it’s a special moment in time.
My shocking confession: there are years where I don’t watch a single Bond film and/or don’t read a single Fleming.
This is perhaps the most shocking for me personally. When I became a Bond fan forty years ago I dreamt about having all films at my convenience, much like we can today but without back then having the foggiest idea about the technology.
Today, I find myself enjoying the films much more if I don’t overdo them. That may sound odd in times where many fans regularly rewatch the whole series. Or analyse the films nearly down to single frames.
Mind you, plenty of fascinating stuff can be revealed in this manner - see our ‘Maybe no one will notice…’ thread - much like a painting reveals the artist’s technique when we look at the brushstrokes.
But there’s also a certain charm to rediscovering a film I haven’t seen for several years, like Thunderball or Moonraker, or reread after a long hiatus the originals by Fleming.
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