So I’ve been reading Ian Fleming’s original Bond novels and am up to From Russia with Love (which I’m enjoying immensly, despite Bond not having been introduced yet). Now, I don’t have the strongest memory of all the films, but I got to wondering what people here thought was the best adaptation of his novels, as well as which was the worst. Also, the novels seem so much darker and richer in content… would it even be possible to redo them all being more true to the novels and in their correct time period?
From what I remember, they seem to have done a pretty good job with Live and Let Die, the main parts that I can remember having to do with Mr. Big and the tow through the coral. The worst would be Moonraker, but that’s hard to call an adaptation, since only the name Drax carried over into the nearly entirely original story (written to capitalize on Star Wars’ popularity). But I’m only up to the fifth and have a ways to go.
Your memory has played you false. Live and Let Die wasn’t particularly close to the film, and was, to my mind, one of the worst Bonds. They did use the tow-through-the-coral bit, but they used it in a different movie, For Your Eyes Only (they also took another bit from the book Live and Let Die and put it in another film – Felix Leiter’s being dropped in a tank of alligators showed up in License to Kill, the last Tomothy Dalton Bond film.)
For my money, the best Bond filmds from books were:
From Russia With Love (even though they introduced SPECTRE in the film, not in the book)
Thunderball
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
** For Your Eyes Only**
The Living Daylights
** Die Another Day**
The worst were
Moonraker, as you rightly note
The Spy Who Loved Me
Octopussy
The Man with the Golden Gun
A View to a Kill
Diamonds are Forever
In Moonraker, I found it interesting that Michel Lonsdale played Draw, since the book described Drax as “…a Lonsdale sort of character…” I suspect that’s the reason he got the part. I still don’t understand that line.
Fleming aparently sold the title alone for The Spy Who Loved Me, insiusting they couldn’t use the plot. They wouldn’t have, in any case. By that time they had long since discarded the books, and, in any case, that book was so unlike the others (it’s told from the point of view of the emale character!) that I’m sure they would’ve changed it anyway.
I hated most f Roger Moore’s Bonds. Moonraker is rightly called ‘the most puerile of the movies". Moore actually made one of the best of the Bonds =-- “For Your Eyes Only”, which adapted two of the stories in the collection of that name (“For Your vEyes Only” and “Risico”) and kept the stupid jokes to a minimum, emphasizng Bond’s action scenes and inventiveness. I thought they’d pull it off again with Octopussy, which started off well, and which adapted tw o the short stories in that collectiojn “Octopussy” and “Property of a Lady”), but it soon descended into silliness again with the Island f Women stuff, the Dog-Trainer routine with the tiger hunt, etc. View to a Kill’ was just all-around bad, a cheap remake of “Goldfinger” with a lot of missed potential. Would’ve been better if David Bowie hadn’t stepped out t be replaced by Christopher Walken, but that alone didn’t sink this tired mess. “The Living Daylights” was a good film mainly because it sidestepped the silliness and gave us the resourceful Bond of “For Your Eyes Only” again.
“Diamonds Are Forever” as the worst of the Connery Bonds by far, and had virtually nothing to do with the book (aside from some character names – but not the characters themselves) mob connections, diamonds, and a mud bath.
See Benton’s excellent book The James Bond Bedside Companion for a very good appraisal of both the books and the films, at last up until the book’s most ecent edition.
Not bad, Cal–I agree with most of your points. (Though I would add You Only Live Twice to the worst list, and *Goldfinger *to the best.)
But Die Another Day wasn’t from a book.