Amph 60+ Years of James Bond 007

well some of them they've had other contributors such as Logan and Haggis, and an actual Fleming novel once again with Casino Royale.

 

well to be fair I'd say barbara broccoli and michael wilson have done a pretty good job . The thing with Bond is that they're very expensive films , so they have to navigate that sea of commercialism vs. being true to the books / the changing expectations of action movies etc.

Die Another Day came off like a greatest hits album , but then Casino Royale was very much an Ian Fleming tribute .

 

It's okay to like Spectre. And the David Niven Casino Royale.

The only way I can watch those movies is if I'm also hitting myself with this:

 

So, little tidbits of Bond 25 news. Nothing related to Craig's status, though.

EON Productions purchase helicopter for Bond 25 filming

Croatia Negotiations

Ender Sai : Unlike with Spectre, this time around I'm thinking we should just keep the stuff for the new film here in this thread.

 

Ender Sai, how does Bond always travel around with such great suits and other clothing? He's always spectacularly well-dressed, but does a 00 agent really travel around with that much luggage? I saw this question come up on Reddit somewhere and wasn't satisfied with any of the answers.

 

EHT - yep.

Coruscant - he does travel with luggage though, and you see it in certain films. What were the reddit answers?

 

Isn't too much luggage, or large luggage to fit tailored suits, kind of unwieldy and not very spy-like, though?

I think the top answer on Reddit was that he usually calls the staff of the hotel he stays at to provide a suit.

 

Which is a stupid idea, you are correct.

But no with a proper shell case suitcase with flaps to keep the suits pressed or a suitbag, you can get most stuff around.

And in the craig films it's all pretty much accounted for.

 

I see. That's much more satisfactory than what I read on Reddit.

90% of people on Reddit are idiots. I'm glad to be in the 1%.

 

Never Say Never Again (1983)

Behind the scenes

One recurring feature of the behind the scenes portion on the Bond films here has been the rights dispute between Fleming/EON and Kevin McClory/his estate. Since I've gone into that before, I'll just summarize to say that Fleming and McClory worked together on a script that failed to sell, before the Bond movies were produced. Fleming turned the script into the novel Thunderball, which was duly part of the film rights sold to EON, and which of course became the film Thunderball. The problem was that McClory sued, arguing that he had come up with many of the elements that the novel introduced, including SPECTRE. There was a complicated lot of legal wrangling, but the end result was that EON licensed the film rights to Thunderball and its elements for ten years and they then reverted to McClory under the terms of a settlement. This ended up putting McClory in the odd position of being legally able to make a film -- one film, a film that had already been made -- with an existing franchise's very famous characters and name recognition, so he immediately started doing that in the seventies once he got the rights.



He made arguably the best possible go of it, considering he was required to remake a film that wasn't that old. He and Jack Schwartzman, coming on as producer, got Sean Connery on board, lending the film instant credibility and traction it probably never would have gotten had it cast some newcomer. Connery also had a lot of pull in how the film was made. Lorenzo Semple, Jr., who'd had a pretty good run doing genre adaptations and thrillers, was brought in to work on the script. The script remained a pretty straight remake of Thunderball, with fairly minor changes like altering Largo's first name and Domino's last name, and changing Fiona Volpe to Fatima Blush, though it does reshuffle and streamline some elements of the plot as well as changing up the setting to make its remake status a little less blatant. Connery wanted Tom Mankiewicz, who had rewritten Diamonds Are Forever, to polish the script, but he refused based on loyalty to EON, for whom he had done continued Bond work throughout the seventies. Peter Hunt, who directed OHMSS, also refused the project out of loyalty. Irvin Kershner, coming off the success of directing The Empire Strikes Back, was hired as director, making him the only American to direct a Bond film. It worked out okay.

Connery had an influence on the casting as well, suggesting Klaus Maria Brandauer as the villain and approving his wife's suggestion of Kim Basinger as the Bond girl. He also backed Bernie Casey as Felix Leiter, with the argument that a black Leiter -- well before Jeffrey Wright became the first "official" black Leiter -- would help make the character more memorable, given he was constantly recast and largely ignored in the official movies. The redoubtable Max von Sydow played Blofeld.

My favorite thing to learn: the fight choreographer for the film was Steven Seagal. It's also the film debut of Rowan Atkinson, in a small role as an obnoxious bureaucrat.

Much was made of the film coming out the same year as Octopussy, featuring an even more geriatric Roger Moore. While the film's opening weekend beat Octopussy's, which had opened earlier, and it made good money, it didn't make as much money as EON releases were accustomed to, and did so on a higher budget. It made less than Octopussy, leading to the declaration that Octopussy had "won" the showdown, somewhat to the surprise of those who were predicting that Connery's return and the promotion around it would outdraw Moore. Never Say Never Again was well reviewed at the time, arguably getting a better critical reception than Octopussy, but it has largely been ignored and dismissed since, perhaps unfairly demeaned for its non-official status.

Ultimately, not only have the official producers recovered the Thunderball rights, but they acquired the rights to Never Say Never Again, too.

Plot

The film opens with Bond on a training mission, though we don't know that. He gets upbraided for his performance by a new M, one who doesn't have much use for the old-fashioned 00 section. He's sentenced to the Shrublands health resort, to shape up, fight off his advancing age, and eliminate his free radicals. This happens to be the same place SPECTRE is sending Jack Petachi, an Air Force pilot they've gotten hooked on heroin and convinced to undergo a surgery to make his right retina a match for the president's retinal print. Bond comes across this and comes in for retaliation, but M doesn't credit him. Petachi is able to use his access to swap real warheads for dummies on missiles that are test-fired. Their guidance systems are hijacked by SPECTRE, while Petachi is assassinated by Fatima Blush. Blofeld releases a ransom video starring his cat, and Bond is reactivated, on the case of locating the warhead said to threaten Mideast oil production.

Bond goes to the Bahamas to investigate Largo, whose symbol he came across in Petachi's possessions. He comes across Fatima Blush, who offers to take him out diving; they both seem to recognize the other from Shrublands and hope the other doesn't recognize them. While diving, Fatima places some kind of shark beacon on Bond and abandons him. She tries to blow him up when he gets back to the hotel, but he's in another woman's room. That's it for the Bahamas, as his local contact tips him off that Largo is leaving for France. There's really not much reason for the Bahamas visit other than that it was the primary location of Thunderball before they moved the setting for this edition.



In Nice, Bond connects with a French MI6 contact and Felix Leiter. He starts by making contact with Domino Petachi, Largo's girlfriend and Jack Petachi's sister, and attending Largo's charity ball, where Largo challenges Bond to, of all things, an elaborate video game, making it very clear that it's 1983. Bond also tells Domino that Largo had her brother killed. He returns to his place to find Fatima's killed Nicole, his contact, and chases her down on his tricked-out Q Branch motorcycle, killing her. He heads out to Largo's yacht, where he digs up information while Largo takes him to his home in North Africa, where he drops the pretense of treating Bond as a guest. He's about to have Domino, who he knows has betrayed him, sold to Berbers, when Bond escapes and rescues her, being further rescued by Leiter and a submarine. Bond got the location of one bomb, in Washington, out of Largo, and calls it in.

They pursue Largo's yacht to the Persian Gulf, where Largo is deploying the bomb in an underwater cavern. In one of Bond's most ludicrous visuals, he and Leiter deploy from the sub in cruise missiles that turn into ridiculous little hover rocket things, and then just swim into the cavern anyway. They fight Largo's men, while Largo escapes with the warhead. Bond chases him, fights him underwater, and disarms the bomb, and is saved from Largo's harpoon by Domino, who appears out of nowhere for no reason to kill him. The film then ends with Bond and Domino together, with Bond suggesting he's retired.

Bond himself

The unique situation allowed the film to deal with an idea we've rarely seen touched; only Skyfall has really attempted to do much with it. It's the idea of Bond aging. There's a great scene of him commiserating with a bitter Q over how far they've fallen from the glory days, with budget-conscious superiors slashing their funding and looking down on the old, dirty-handed work of espionage. Its focus on an aging Bond proving his worth, and that of his bloody, hands-on traditional way, in the face of condescending, disconnected bureaucrats mirrors that of Skyfall, thirty years before it. It doesn't go crazy with it and turn itself into an "old Bond" movie, but it gets some mileage out of the idea of Fleming's Bond finding himself in the eighties, surrounded by yuppies and bloodless bureaucrats for whom World War II and the Cold War are old history.

It's also nice to see Connery returning to the role. The time off has done him good, as he appears to care about the role again. It's not his greatest performance, but there's an energy to it, and with distance from the grind, Connery appears to appreciate his signature role again.

How it fits into the series

It doesn't! It's a non-official Bond movie. It does let Connery finally go out on a high note, though.

Review

This is so much better than Moore it's not even funny. It's striking how much more credible even a visually aging Connery (younger than Moore, but with his aging acknowledged) immediately is as Bond than Moore. When he's garroting a soldier, by god, you buy it. He's a killer. The Pat Roach fight alone is better than pretty much any action sequence the Moore films have to offer, even if it does end with a piss gag. There's actual physicality to it. It's also a better film than anything Moore was making except maybe FYEO. The writing is not genius, but it's got some depth to it, and it only rarely goes in for silliness. Also, the quips are frankly much funnier and much better integrated than anything Moore ever attempted. They seem like fairly organic cracks, rather than blatantly inserted laugh lines. The plot is actually cleaned up a bit from Thunderball's muddle, while allowing the inclusion of more globetrotting locations, and the underwater scenes are cut down, though having the final fight be underwater is a mistake. The cast is better, too. It's sort of amazing how, as a remake of the same script, it's such a better-constructed, more memorable, more enjoyable film than Thunderball.



Brandauer is great as a sleazy Euro-yuppie villain, a real businessman villain. A fresh-faced, soft-looking, amoral little scoundrel who blends the stock market and the black market. A psychopath who acts like a lovestruck little kid around his girlfriend, genuinely fond of her, even as he contemplates having her killed. It's just a really great villain performance. Fatima's a fun villainess too, a sexy psycho who appears constantly thrilled to be killing people -- the whole thing is a big, fun adrenaline rush to her as she floats around, dancing to music and giggling. And it's impossible to argue with von Sydow as Blofeld. He's not given much to do, but he ranks with Telly Savalas as the only good Blofelds. He easily could have carried a movie as the main villain.

It's not one of the best Bond films. There aren't really any highlight sequences. But it is a very good, very underrated one. Mostly what it has going for it is a good cast and a refreshing, simple competence. It's a film that's well-constructed, well-shot, and basically free of Moorean ridiculousness, at a time when that seemed almost impossible. It's an enjoyable film on its own merits, but in contrast to its era, it truly stands out as quality. It gives you a good idea of how good For Your Eyes Only could have been if Moore hadn't been involved. I'm surprised to realize, thinking about my ratings, that I'd call this the third-best Connery film.

Rankings

1. Casino Royale
2. From Russia with Love
3. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
4. Skyfall
5. Licence to Kill
6. Dr. No
7. Quantum of Solace
8. Never Say Never Again
9. For Your Eyes Only
10. GoldenEye
11. The Living Daylights
12. The Spy Who Loved Me
13. Goldfinger
14. Thunderball
15. Spectre
16. You Only Live Twice
17. The Man with the Golden Gun
18. The World Is Not Enough
19. Tomorrow Never Dies
20. A View to a Kill
21. Diamonds Are Forever
22. Octopussy
23. Live and Let Die
24. Die Another Day
25. Moonraker

Questions for discussion

1. This is a movie with a lot of different opinions on it, or in a lot of cases no opinion at all. What's your take?
2. What do you think of Connery's decision to come back to the role?
3. How does the film hold up compared to Thunderball? Does the remake plot hurt it?
4. McClory kept trying to reproduce the same movie, wanting to film a version with Dalton in the nineties. That option is gone now thanks to EON and MGM reabsorbing the rights, but the existence of licensed, legal, but "unofficial" films is relatively unique for a major franchise. Did it offer a real benefit?
5. What do you think of the idea of Bond aging? Do you think the official films could ever benefit from bringing an actor back for a film? Sign a new Bond, let him do his run, and then come back for a new film with a refreshed Craig that lets him wrap up his take on Bond, say?

 

Indeed they do. I'm currently reading through Casino Royale. If the Producers wanted Le Chiffre to be closer to the book, he would have been a pimp who was going broke due to owning too many brothels. That's a film I could see Tarantino making.

 

Honestly I don't tend to agree with the idea that Moore represented a shift to a more cartoonish style. To me shift to that style goes back to Goldfinger, maybe Thunderball scaled it back a bit but everything after that was I think clearly over the top and I absolutely did not buy Connery or Lazenby as "cold killers" in that era. Really its only with For Your Eyes Only that Bond came a little down to earth.

Don't nesserally take that as a criticism though as I felt the cartoonish Bonds were generally camp classics similar to say Flash Gordon, to try and judge those films as serious spy fare just seems to be missing the point. I actually found the Brosnan films after Goldeneye to be the worst Bond got, I spose The World is Not Enough does have its moments with some interesting villians but generally these films were just bland action pieces for me either neither a harder edge to them or camp personality.

 

Another fun fact: Seagal broke Connery's wrist during training for the film!

Starts at about 2:30







I haven't seen it in years, just like most Bond movies, so I don't have much to say other than I've always like Never Say Never Again.

 

This, right here, summarizes my situation when deciding what I think about this movie. I don't like the fact that this unofficial Bond movie even got made, especially with the drama surrounding it and even moreso with the really cheesy, smartass title (all based on the fact that Connery had earlier said in an interview that he would "never again" play Bond). But on the other hand, Moore was a worse Bond than Connery, with generally sillier Bond movies. And when it comes down to NSNE vs. Octopussy, just as movies in and of themselves, I don't really like either one of them that much anyway.

 

The original Casino Royale has one more Oscar nomination than the 2006 version does. Yeah. Let that sink in. Let it fester.

 

I do love that score tho .

 

They could put out a Bond movie every year and it still wouldn't be enough for me.

 

Purvis and Wade back on Bond 25 writing duties

Long-time series writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade are back for a seventh James Bond film.

According to reliable Bond tipster Baz Bamigboye‏, Purvis and Wade have been hired to write a treatment for Bond 25.

Writers #nealpurvis & #robertwade hired to write story for #Bond25. #DanielCraig still deciding whether he will do it pic.twitter.com/AyF0JlFUV6
— Baz Bamigboye (@BazBam) March 9, 2017

Last month, the duo expressed how difficult it would be to follow on from 'SPECTRE' given today's political climate where fact is overtaking fiction.

MI6 understand that Daniel Craig is on a 'wait and see' with the screenplay and choice of director before committing to a fifth outing as 007.

Meanwhile, MGM still lacks a distribution partner for the film after their attempts to sell to Chinese investors failed late last year.