Again, I agree on many of those. Namely…
As for the horror elements I would add LALD.
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Once again, interesting viewpoints @sharpshooter here’s some of my responses.
I agree about the vehicle gadgets typically being better than field gadgets. They tend to be more realistic.
Jack Wade feels more Texan than the others. That is one of the best reasons.
I fully agree with EON using more things from the continuation material. They own those rights to other continuation novels. They should use it more often now. Some of it has aged better than Fleming’s material that has been used.
I agree about a bit of camp and silliness. Just don’t overdo it as much as the Guy Hamilton/Tom Mankiewicz movies. Not so much a cynical approach.
LALD also uses horror elements as @secretagentfan said. Very well, in my opinion. However, MR does have some truly horror moments. Done well, in my opinion.
QOS is almost too art-house for me, I blame Marc Forster for that. He still did as well as he could, given the circumstances. I think that this was the first and arguably worst time that EON let DC have too much creative control. Marc Forster wasn’t a Bond fan and it shows.
I agree the lighter films help balance of what’s a typically dark character.
DN is often overlooked in this respect. It’s one of the few movies that proves that Bond is truly a spy, not an action hero.
A few of my own.
While I won’t change any Bond film as it is. I do wish I didn’t know that Anthony Hopkins was basically cast as Elliot Carver. He honestly would have been perfect casting.
Judi Dench was spoiled by EON as much as Daniel Craig. Her death in SF was more of a tribute to her career, than M’s itself. It’s hard to be sympathetic with a character like M, when we’ve seen a lot of her bad choices over the years.
If Ralph Fiennes wins the Oscar, EON is going to fight to keep him around. Expect M to continue a bigger role if that happens. Hopefully, he will be written to be more neutral, with less of the trust issues, and not accidentally creating villains.
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I would say Jack Wade is at least more memorable than most Felix Leiters, who tend to run together as one amorphous blob for me.
Whether he’s memorable in positive way is another matter entirely…
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I‘ve got one: Binder‘s main titles quickly ran out of ideas and repeated a grabby old man‘s sex fantasies.
No disrespect, I mean any grabby old man‘s sex fantasies.
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My personal favorite from Binder was TSWLM. Like everyone else involved with the film, he seems to have been suddenly energized and given a second wind. I liked the visual of girls as Russian toy soldiers, and it was cool to see Roger included. MR pretty much kept up the standard and shows fewer technical flaws than some of the others. After that, things got kind of “meh” for me and LTK in particular feels utterly phoned in.
I found GE a mixed bag but the arrival of Kleinman was very, very welcome. Overall, I feel like there’s a lot more imagination that goes into his sequences, whereas sometimes with Binder it just felt like, “Right, time for another one. Take your clothes off, sweetie, and get on the trampoline.”
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Agreed about Binder. Kleinman’s titles each feel distinctive – with motifs crafted to suit the particular film. Most of Binder’s output, especially towards the end, can come across as a bit generic and thereby blend into one another such that you could probably swap them and it wouldn’t really make a difference.
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There’s a project for a YouTube creator.
I saw one where they used the “gunbarrel in the bathroom” opening to CR to transition not into “You Know My Name” but each and all of the other Bond title songs. Some of them worked quite well.
Someone could start a channel where all the songs are matched to the wrong title sequences, and see if it matters…or even helps.
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Binder has created many iconic moments that define what a Bond move feels like and, for that, I will always be grateful. However, it is only fair to acknowledge the lows, of which LALD’s ‘random girl wiping windows in front of a fibre optic lamp’ has to be the nadir. On the other hand, the face turning into a flaming skull in the same song was exquisite.
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Robert Brownjohn and Trevor Bond pioneered what Binder was applauded for.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/1i72rh7/i_find_the_parallel_amusing/#lightbox
Not really shocking, but I do see the comparisons. Also, people are right (I feel) when they say that the Bond equivalent to Kevin Conroy is Toby Stephens. Ironically, Toby Stephens is a Batman alumni now! It’s a shame Kevin Conroy never got to be a Bond alumni.
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I heard recently that Quentin Tarantino might write novelizations of his Reservoir Dogs and True Romance scripts. I would like to see some of the old Bond stories get a similar treatment. As I’ve said before, Everything or Nothing, Bloodstone and Skyfall would be the best candidates for this treatment. If Roald Dahl would have had permission, he could have written his own novelization of YOLT, akin to Christopher Wood and his two novelizations. As I’ve also said before, the entire DC era, (including his two video games) would make for a BIG, but worthwhile novelization. The two main movies that I think could benefit from this format are FYEO and OP. Some great in-depth passages could be done for both! I think it could be a way for IFP and EON to start getting along again.
Also, we know that Raymond Benson tried to adapt the CR novel for the stage. I think someone should try that again. The time period should be the 50’s, but I wouldn’t mind a possible modern day version again. Another set of Bond stories that belong on the stage is the entire novel of Octopussy and the Living Daylights. They could be done realistically (and faithfully) on the stage as well. Honorable mention for the novel Moonraker, as there aren’t a lot of sets and it is fairly realistic. Too bad that the movie kind of destroyed its realistic style reputation.
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I have a Dutch booklet with the story of the Octopussy film, it is written fairly simply with quite a few colour photos of the film. The story was also published in a Dutch newspaper, just as was the story of the movies of FYEO and TLD, unfortunately I have only one or two clippings and as far as I know they were never published as a booklet. AVTA K also excist as a Dutch book with the story of the movie.
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I actually stumbled over OCTOPUSSY’s ‘retelling’ myself; in Germany some bizarre housewives magazine printed this and I happened upon it in a bistro that summer. Of course I thought this would also come as a regular film tie-in, that’s why I didn’t buy the magazine or investigate the author.
Four years previously some Sunday newspaper had a ‘retelling’ of MOONRAKER but I can’t for the life of me remember whether that was Christopher Wood’s novelisation cut to three, or four instalments or in fact another of these efforts.
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Back in the 70s and 80s, German TV guide Gong used to have “photo novels” (as the called it). Those were serials that ran for several weeks and retold the movie as a comic, bur with movie pictures. I remember that they has them for the Star Wars movies, Battlestar Galactica, and one or the other Star Trek, but I don’t remember that they had any of the Bond movies.
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No, it wasn’t Gong. Freizeit Revue or Wochenend, one of these obscure magazines and I don’t think there was more than one or two pics with the article.
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I bought Geman teenage magazine Bravo for the photo stories of Moonraker, FYEO, Octopussy and the later films only had in one magazine two pages of photo’s.
The ones with MR I bought on Ebay, the others when the movies were released in the magazine stores in The Netherlands. I have no idea of those magazine photo stories still excist in those magazines.
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There’s also a Argentinian comic of the Moonraker movie story in a magazine. Ofcourse I can’t read it, but it looks great.
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Was it this one, translated to English over on the “Comics Royale” site?
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Very much agree. I respect Binder and like most of his stuff, but the magic was gone towards the end. Overall I prefer what Kleinman has done.
I’ve always loved the idea of the title sequence - they elevate the films and make them unique against the pack. It’s a convention that should always be retained because it helps make Bond be an event.
Three other opinions:
NTTD will make fans appreciate Bond more, not less
A well made Project 007 can revitalise and grow the brand in a big way
I’m okay with waiting for another adult Bond continuation novel
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