You do have your orders.
And I thought Tosca isn’t for everyone…
Yep, and according to the article Bond reads on the plane in DAD, Diamonds are forever but life isn’t.
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I actually had to think about that one, but the last Bond movie I saw was Spectre, so there ya go. Let the stoning begin, lol :: runs away to hide::
Came upon an interesting article on Facebook, from Collider, called " ‘Never Say Never Again’ Is An Essential Bond Watch Because It Allows Him To Age".
In comparing Connery’s NSNA to Moore’s Octopussy, Liam Gaughan has this to say:
" Octopussy features Bond duelling with knife wearing assassins, dexterously leaping out of fighter jets, and leading a military raid on a Soviet base. It wasn’t even his last adventure; two years later he fought Grace Jones on top of a giant blimp in A View To A Kill."
And:
“… It’s this expertise that Bond uses in [NSNA]’s climax in order to guide the nuclear warheads to detonate in the ocean.”
I’m always willing to acknowledge the keener observations of another - hence the little treatise I posted here somewhere on How to Write a Professional Bond Review.
This character must have read it and thought I was serious.
I still have so much to learn. Perhaps the reason I never noticed any of these details before is because I’ve only seen these films no more that about forty times each. I remember some of these sequences appearing in other films in the series, but that must be my faulty recall.
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None of that is true, but god forbid Collider would actually watch the film they’re writing an Op-Ed about
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Some crackers in here
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I’d argue FYEO does a better job with “letting Bond age,” though it’s more subtle about it. The visit to Tracy’s grave, ending with the resigned, " Yes, it usually is, " the warnings to Melina that revenge is a dead-end street, turning down Bibi for a roll in the hay, etc, all underscore – for me, anyway – that the years are catching up to Bond. (Plus I like to think one reason he kicks Locque off the cliff is for making him run up all those stairs at his age. :-))
NSNA on the other hand is very overt in its references to time having past, Bond being the last good thing about what’s left of MI6 and 007 needing a trip to Shrublands to get back in shape (even arriving in the old Bentley). But as soon as he’s there he proves he can still beat bigger opponents on a steady diet of champagne and caviar and from that point on no mention of age is ever made again. Indeed the message of the film --if any-- is that Bond and especially Connery Bond are timeless and those wrinkles are immaterial. It may start with aims to address age, but it bails out early. Likewise the film forgets it’s promise (at least in early PR) to be a return to the hard-edged early days of FRWL by devolving into a poor man’s Moore film, with gags that never land and stunts and SFX that seem done on a TV budget.
There are hints of Bond being “older and wiser” in OP but you almost have to will yourself into seeing them, and of course in AVTAK there’s no acknowledgement Bond’s not in his prime (which makes it unmissable that he is not). Between QoS and SF, Bond goes from raw newbie to grizzled old burn-out immediately and off screen, but in short order his engines are rebooted and all is well.
Bond is never “allowed to age” on screen, IMHO, though perhaps in NTTD, we shall see. But certainly not in NSNA.
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Absolutely well observed.
This makes me wonder - will Bond ever be allowed to not have sexist Bond girls? Stories like this have been written by “journalists” for every film in my life time (Goldeneye onwards) and all with the same underlying assumption ONLY THIS NEXT BOND ISNT SEXIST which makes at least 9 “first time she isn’t your typical Bond girl” and I know that Bond 26 will have the same articles written that completely disregards every actress who came before. No matter what the series does, and how much it changes, Bond will always be treated as a sexist misogynist dinosaur, because otherwise the journalists headline would have to change…and where’s the money in that…
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It will depend on how much autonomy Bond girls are allowed within a film’s narrative, and how any sexual intimacy is handled. Is Bond an irresistible force that every woman (eventually) gives in to? Does the woman have agency with regard to her body?
Camille from QUANTUM OF SOLACE?
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My point was more, regardless of what actions EON take, that type of “journalism” will always be writing those kind of articles.
Somewhere on the forum, I posted a rather brilliant article from The Virgin book of Bond Movies (published in 2001 and now virtually impossible to find) It’s main point was whilst there are examples you could easily point to, the Bond movies are nowhere near as guilty of sexism as articles like the one above suggest.
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Lucky enough to have a copy…and IMHO its “greatness” is inverse to its “availability.” An unknown book deserves far greater visibility in the entirety of Bond-film literature that exists. And very funny, too…
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Yes, I have it too and I it’s a great read!
I’ve told this before, but this was the book when reading I discovered that Stromberg had “webbed hands”. Although I saw TSWLM maybe fifty times I never noticed this before I read about it.
Clark Collis in Entertainment Weekly, Sept. 18:
“Bruce Glover portrayed Mr. Wint, who Connery’s spy dispatches at the film’s conclusion by pulling the killer’s arms between Kidd’s legs, depositing a bomb in his hands, and throwing him off a ship into the ocean below.”
Is that a misprint, or an even more bizarre memory on the part of the writer?
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He is trying to make it even gayer than it is.
Kinda kinky if you ask me.
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The most ridiculous one is still Bond bedding Wei Lin at the end. The two had zero sexual chemistry together and their relationship never felt anything more than professional. There was no need for them to sleep together at the end of TND other than to tick off the proto-typical Bond girl checklist.
Could’ve been worse - Paris Carver might have survived and ended up with Bond. Talk about no chemistry.
Paris: “Did I get to close…for comfort?”
Bond (remembering M’s instructions to pump her for information): “Yes.”
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Amazing how “They’re now called Bond women” could be a new thing in 1995 and 2021…26 years and 9 films later
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