I have, for some time, held the view that “Die Another Day” was the absolute low point of the Bond franchise. The nadir. The pits.
Oh, but then I watched “Moonraker” again tonight. Oh man, does that blow!
So, where do the Bond afficiandos of the list rate the two films vis a vis?
Which really is the lowest of the low points for the Bond franchise?
Is there, perhaps a lower point which I have missed?
I liked Die Another Day – it’s a recap of the old Bond years, with something-from-everything, a grab bag of trivia for you to try and figure out, mixed with (I thought) a very well done Bond flick with great stunts and (I know others disagre sharply with this) well done FX. I’ve never understood the hostility to it. My one complaint is Madonna’s awful title song.
Moonraker, on the other hand, was easily the nadir of the Bond franchise. It was the more puerile of the films by far (Benson’s word, and I agree wholeheartedly), the work of the abominable Christopher Wood, and even worse than his The Spy Who Loved Me. Of course, a screenwriter doesn’t set the course for a series – it’s Broccoli and Saltzman’s choice to go this way. But the writing was appalling, everything having to do with Jaws was cringeworthy, the shilling for ad space overblown, and the plot nonsensical. Lots of things about the production rankle (“The Amazoco” ? Ewwwwwwwww.)
There were a couple of good things about the film. Every Bond film has at least one redeeming value. The opening stunt, with Bond being pushed out of the plane without a parachute, was stunning, and well-filmed. It’s been duplicated so many times by now that it has lost some of its glamour, but it was original at the time. If only they hadn’t ended it with that coyote-from-the-roadrunner fall by Jaws (flapping his arms! Aaaaaagh!) into a circus tent.
And the choice of French actor Michel Lonsdale as Hugo Drax was a great little in-joke. In the book Moonraker, Drax is described as being “a Lonsdale type of character.”
Any Bond film with Roger Moore is a low point. *Moonraker *just set the bar down a couple of extra notches.
Just for the record, besides ** Moonraker**, I think that
**The Spy Who Loved Me
Live and Let Die
A View to a Kill
The Man With the Golden Gun
**
and even the Sean Connery outing
Diamonds are Forever are easily worse than Die Another Day. If it hadn’t been the first Bond film I ever saw, You Only Live Twice might be in there, too.
Of course, the non-Eon Casino Royale from the 1960s, starring everbody in the universe (and written and directed by them, too) far outclasses Moonraker as the worst purportedly James Bond film ever.
So, y’all are saying you liked Octopussy?
Takes all kinds, I guess.
I have to agree with CalMeacham, although I thought the ending of Die Another Day was a let-down.
Bond films should be like Bond himself: sophisticated, surprisingly resourceful and witty. Moonraker was absolutely none of these, which is really too bad because the core story could have been the backbone for a great film. What brought it down were all the obnoxious attempts at cheap laughs that were added on.
I’ve heard that this film was rushed through production to cash in on the popularity of Star Wars, which may explain things. A lot in the film feels like first-draft ideas that were never reconsidered, or last-minute, pre-deadline panic writing.
Damn – forgot that one. Musta just slipped my mind.
Actually, although the bulk of Octopussy was about as bad as any Christopher Wood opus, the beginning of it started out promising, raising me expectations that this would be, like the preceding film For Your Eyes Only (one of the best of the Bond films), a return to classic form. They even managed to work in part of “Property of a Lady”, the Bond story that was part of the collection that Octopussy headed, just as FYEO had worked in “Risico”. But then it headed south, dreadfully, and ended up an embarassing mess. Too bad. Louis Jordan was a great Bond villain.
The World Is Not Enough was worse than Die Another Day, but no one realizes this due to some success at scrubbing the stupid from their brains.
Denise Richards: Well I’m a nuclear physicist, doncha know! chews gum vapidly
In support of that, note that at the end of the previous Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, at the end of the credits the traditional
“James Bond Will Return in…”
was followed by
“For Your Eyes Only”.
Clearly, Moonraker wasn’t their original choice. But that’s still no excuse for it being so bad. And I maintain that, Casino Ryale aside, it’s by far the worst Bond.
When your 14 years old and coming off a Star Wars high Moonraker looks pretty good. One effective scene and perhaps the most grisly death portrayed in the series was Corrine’s demise, I can’t imagine any thing more horrible.
Eww. No. But I think my brain deleted the recall of it as a self-defense measure.
Moonraker was by far worse. It put Bond in a setting where he absolutely didn’t belong. For one thing, even though he has sci-fi-esque gadgets that are not genuinely achievable with modern technology, he at least operates in a plausible facsimile of the real world. But the ending of the movie, in which Bond and Holly Goodhead call in the “US Space Force” or something of the sort to fight Drax’s guys using personal rocket-packs and laser weapons - sorry, doesn’t work for me. It was an obvious attempt to shoe-horn Bond into a Star Wars rip-off, and it sucked.
Die Another Day isn’t my favorite Bond, but it was head and shoulders above Moonraker. I will say, though, to all you Denise Williams haters, that she made a more convincing nuclear physicist than Halle Berry did a secret agent. And she had (IMHO, of course) much better chemistry with Pierce Brosnan than Berry did too.
And BTW, I liked Octopussy, too. The tone was much lighter than the “badass” Bond that everyone here seems crazy about, but I LIKE that Bond has a twinkle in his eye.
I certainly did, but I’m a fan of that kind of cold war fiction, and Maud Adams… aroooooo.
And Louis Jordan once said Canada sparkles, so I have to kinda like him.
Plus there was that moment when Khan and Gobinda try to drive away but for a few seconds their car won’t start. Kills me every time.
Anyway, I personally put Diamonds are Forever at the bottom, closely followed by View to a Kill, with a small gap before The Man With the Golden Gun (I figure movies in which the female lead is an idiot get on my nerves). Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me are essentially the same movie, and the rest of them range from mediocre to okay. If I had to pick a favourite… hmmmm, I’ll have to get back to you. None of them jump out of the series the way, say, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan did.
Moonraker was ridiculously awful, and I’ll have to echo Sublight here.
On the other hand, Diamonds Are Forever is great to me, but only for the nostalgia factor (true, the film is really crap, but it’s fun crap). It was one of the first Bonds I paid attention to, and it’s got a great exchange: when the mobster throws the girl out the window, Bond says, “Exceptionally fine shot.” Mobster: “I didn’t know there was a pool down there.” Well, I like that line anyway.
DAD is worthy, IMO, because I do like Brosnan in the role.
Mine is a minority viewpoint, I’m sure, but IMHO the worst bond film is The Man with the Golden Gun. Cheesy, chock full of unfunny jokes, and BORING above all else.
A view to a kill is easily the worst of them all. Moore was about 57 when it was shot and looks that age. Throwing in Grace Jones to try to appeal to a younger audience didn’t work at all. Love interest Stacey Sutton was 29 and it really shows that Moore is twice her age.
Zorin setting of a nuclear asplosion to cause an earthquake, making Silicon Valley tumble into the Pacific was already dumb when Alistair Maclean wrote Goodbye California in '78.
BTW, few people realize that Moore is three years older than Connery.
I liked Moonraker…but I liked it because it WAS campy, yet still Bondish .
I guess if they were shooting for something else and it ENDED up with campy, then there is some splainin to do…
But it does have the finest car stunt in cinema history. Thats got to be worth something.
Nah, that scene just gives slide whistles a bad name.
Die Another Day is by far the worse. You think space battles are far fetched? How about:
An invisible car
A Korean man turned into an Englishman
A cargo plane flying into a giant laser beam emitted by a satellite
Madonna
Also, when a movie has ice wiggling like the flimsy plastic it really is you know your franchise is totally over.