I'm going to watch all of the James Bond Films [Please avoid Spoilers for Goldeneye or later Bond movies]

[Robot_Arm]

@terentii

He’s a smuggler, which his how he was assigned to Bond in the first place. It was only by accident that 007 learned about Operation Grand Slam while surveilling him. I doubt he’d have any trouble acquiring more gold illicitly.

Yes, but I don’t get the feeling Goldfinger is acquiring his gold illegally; it’s only the way he’s transporting it. When Bond is getting his briefing from Colonel Smithers (the brilliant Richard Vernon), he’s told:

Colonel Smithers: Gentlemen, Mr. Goldfiinger has gold bullion on deposit in Zurich, Amsterdam, Caracas, Hong Kong… worth 20 million pounds. Most of it came from this country.

James Bond: Why move it?

Colonel Smithers: Because the price of gold varies from country to country. If you buy it here at 30 dollars an ounce, you can sell it in, say, Pakistan for 110 dollars and triple your money… provided, of course, you have the facilities for melting it down.

After blowing up Fort Knox, the price of gold will go up to 1,100 an ounce in Pakistan, but if it goes up to 300[sup]*[/sup] in England that doesn’t do him much good. If Goldfinger’s desire is to get more gold, he’s making it harder on himself.

• I don’t know exactly how the price of gold was established at the time of the movie. If it was artificially set by certain governments (like the UK) it’s possible that the ratio of the Pakistani price to the British price would go up, and then Goldfinger’s plan makes sense.

[Bryan_Ekers]

The movie mentions a secondary goal is “economic chaos in the west” or something. Seems to me that detonating a nuke pretty much anywhere in the U.S. would have that effect, and that New York City would probably be a much easier target what with there not being a literal fucking army base just down the road. Just put the bomb in a big truck and park it somewhere near Wall Street on a weekend, set to detonate on a Monday morning.

But, y’know… gold.

[Shodan]

@Jet_Jaguar

Actually the plan in the original book was to steal all of the gold. The movie fixes that plot hole which is, as Bond notes in the film, logistically impossible.

Yes. Which is why the plot is slightly less preposterous in the movie as compared to the book. Especially in the movie where they use the crotch-cutting laser to open the door to the vault, and plant the nuclear bomb inside instead of using it to break into the vault, like in the book. However - IT’S A NUCLEAR BOMB! “Let’s run away really fast when it goes off” ISN"T GOING TO HELP.:pant pant:

Still, it leads to the fight scene between Oddjob and Bond, where gold bars (which must have weighed fifty pounds but Bond can still throw it like a baseball) bounce off Oddjob’s chest and he can karate chop thru steel beams, but he is afraid of his killer Frisbee bowler hat.

On a similar note, Oddjob shoots one of the bad guys who doesn’t want to be part of Operation Grand Slam in a car. Then he drives the car to a junkyard, where it is crushed and dropped into the back of a pick up truck. Oddjob drives the pickup truck back so Goldfinger can retrieve the gold he paid off the bad guy with. Why? If they wanted to get rid of the body, Oddjob should shoot the bad guy, then get the gold out of the trunk, then drive the car to the junkyard and have it crushed.

Like I said above, no idea why some utterly preposterous plot devices don’t bother me when it comes to Bond.

Regards,
Shodan

[Skywatcher]

@ekedolphin

Are you also going to do the unofficial Never Say Never Again and the original Casino Royale?

@Wheelz

I do plan to watch Never Say Never Again, probably in release date order. I saw it on the big screen when it was new and I recall enjoying it. A re-watch will be interesting. Chances are I’ll skip the made-for-TV Casino Royale. I saw the 1967 spoof version some years ago, and feel no desire to ever see it again.

There’s another spoof, released in the UK in the summer of '64. Carry On Spying, the ninth title in the Carry On… series, parodies Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and The Thin Man. EON Productions reportedly made producer Peter Rogers to change the James Bond character from Charlie Bond 006½ to Charlie Bind 00-OH!

[Wheelz]

@Robot_Arm

On watching it several times over the years, I did notice a couple problems. For one, James is not very good at his job. He gets Jill and Tilly both killed, crashes his Aston Martin, and he’s taken prisoner. He tries to get a message to the CIA, but that doesn’t work, either. Basically, all he does right is seduce Pussy Galore.

Yeah, I’ve noticed this too. Bond clearly has skills, but just as often he’s wildly ineffective. You’d expect “James Bond” to calmly disarm the bomb, then pull a martini shaker from his jacket and enjoy a cocktail. Instead, he clumsily fumbles at the wiring until the guy who actually knows what he’s doing shows up in the nick of time. I’m beginning to think his semi-competence is something of a tongue-in-cheek dig at the genre: Of course Bond will survive and succeed, because he’s the main character.

I also had a small nitpick with the whole convention of mobsters at Goldfinger’s Kentucky compound. Clearly he didn’t want or need their help with the Fort Knox job and planned to kill them all from the start. Apparently his motive was simply to avoid paying the gold bullion he owed them. So why give them the whole dog-and-pony show? I know it was all exposition for our (and Bond’s) benefit, but still. He could have just excused himself from the room and released the gas.
Though it did allow the mobsters to deliver the most stupidly comic lines in the film:
“What’s with that trick pool table?”
“What’s that map doin’ there?”
“Say, what is this, a merry-go-round?”
“Hey, they closed off the fireplace!”

Anyhow, still loved this film. It’s becoming clear that I know less about James Bond than I thought. This little project of mine will be quite an education!

[terentii]

@Wheelz

Though it did allow the mobsters to deliver the most stupidly comic lines in the film:
“What’s with that trick pool table?”
“What’s that map doin’ there?”
“Say, what is this, a merry-go-round?”
“Hey, they closed off the fireplace!”

You left out “Hey, what’s goin’ on?”

[dalej42]

@Wheelz

Goldfinger (1964)

Wow, this was quite a treat. I’m pretty sure Goldfinger was the first Bond film I ever saw. IMDb says it was first shown on ABC in 1972 to a whopping 49% of the viewing public. I’m certain my family and I were among that percentage. Still, I was 9 years old, so most of what I retained were visuals, namely the murder-by-spray-paint victim, the decapitation of the statue by Oddjob’s hat, some of the aerial stunts, and Oddjob’s demise. Though the plot wasn’t too hard to follow, I surely didn’t quite grasp the subtleties of the global gold market, and definitely missed out on much of the adult-oriented dialogue and sexual double-entendres.

So now, 48 years later, I was able to appreciate this film from a whole new perspective. And I loved it! As much as I enjoyed From Russia With Love, Bond 3 took the franchise to the next level. It’s bigger, brighter, more colorful; overall the biggest spectacle of a Bond film yet.

After James blows up… some building or another, and electrocutes a guy in a bathtub, we’re treated to the first – and arguably the best – of the great James Bond opening theme songs. Shirley Bassey’s bold vocals and the audacity to rhyme “Midas” with “spider’s” are enough to make this a classic. Great Stuff.

Then we get to right into it. The big bad guy makes his appearance almost immediately: Auric Goldfinger, gin rummy cheater. In what I find to be a fairly brilliant choice by actor Gert Frobe, Goldfinger comes off as a bit of a schlub in this scene. We only catch on little by little how dangerous he really is.

James then heads back to MI6, where the previously-established team really starts clicking. Bernard Lee as M and Lois Maxwell as Moneypenney are on their third time around, and Desmond Llewelyn his second as Q. But they all (especially Llewelyn) seem to really inhabit the roles more thoroughly; or at least they’re growing into the qualities that have become so familiar over the years. The Felix Leiter revolving door is in motion, though. Cec Linder is fine, and Leiter has a fairly essential role in this one, but the character still isn’t terribly memorable.

So Bond almost immediately becomes Goldfinger’s prisoner, using his time in captivity to learn about his plans, and works his charms on Pussy Galore, who eventually turns on her boss by swapping out the poison gas in her team’s planes – which we don’t find out until after the fact. Frankly, it’s a pretty thin plan with a huge possibility of failure. But of course that doesn’t really matter. It’s all about the ride, and this one was about as fun as it gets. Gert Frobe and Honor Blackman both nailed their villainous roles. Harold Sakata as Oddjob made an entertaining, if somewhat cartoonish, henchman. The tricked-out Aston-Martin was awesome, the action fast and exciting, and Sean Connery continues to be as suave as can be while narrowly escaping death time after time.

Plus, we get one of the greatest lines in movie history:
“Do you expect me to talk?”
“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”

(Side note: Curse you, Amazon! Since I watched From Russia With Love, they have removed the Bond library from their “included with Prime” package. Goldfinger cost me $3.99. Worth it, but irritating.)

Next up: Thunderball.

Unless there’s some new steaming deal, it’ll be back in a month or so. Looks like some of the later Bonds are on Netflix USA

If Bond clicks for you, the blu Ray set goes on sale on amazon for about $50 several times a year. I’ve bought it and watch some of them every year.

[blondebear]

Goldfinger is my favorite Bond. I first saw it when I was 10 or 11 and it grabbed me from the opening flyover “Welcome To Miami” and the dude diving off of the high dive at the Fontainebleau. Add the Aston Martin, the chase with the Mustang, the laser beam, the crushed Continental, it was all just perfect. My reaction was, as Liz Lemon would say, “I want to go there!”.

[Robot_Arm]

@Wheelz

I also had a small nitpick with the whole convention of mobsters at Goldfinger’s Kentucky compound. Clearly he didn’t want or need their help with the Fort Knox job and planned to kill them all from the start. Apparently his motive was simply to avoid paying the gold bullion he owed them. So why give them the whole dog-and-pony show? I know it was all exposition for our (and Bond’s) benefit, but still. He could have just excused himself from the room and released the gas.
Though it did allow the mobsters to deliver the most stupidly comic lines in the film:
“What’s with that trick pool table?”
“What’s that map doin’ there?”
“Say, what is this, a merry-go-round?”
“Hey, they closed off the fireplace!”

One of the things I really liked in this movie is Gert Fröbe’s performance when he’s explaining operation Grand Slam. The dastardly villain explaining his plan to the hero has become a cliché. Hell, even mocking those scenes has become a cliché. Fröbe just nails it, though. Watch the scene where he’s coaxing Bond to think through the plan, that he’s going to break in to Fort Knox but not steal anything. It’s like he can’t wait to talk about it with someone who can appreciate just how fucking clever he is.

“Banks don’t open on Sunday.”
“My bank will.”

I think he builds that tricked-out pool room and explains the whole plot to the mobsters because he can, and because he loves it.

[Wheelz]

**Thunderball **(1965)

So Goldfinger was a huge success, and I guess they wanted to make the next installment bigger, Bigger, BIGGER! The result was, well, a bit bloated, I think. What should have been a fairly straightforward plot – Bond must retrieve two nuclear bombs stolen by SPECTRE from a hijacked NATO jet - was unnecessarily convoluted by too many characters and too much exposition. Lots and lots of talking between action sequences, and a couple too many of those, even.

Not that Thunderball doesn’t have anything going for it. A lot of it works. There was a bit of silliness early on – the jet-pack escape, the attempted murder by stretching table – but none of that detracted too much once things got going. Largo, SPECTRE’s #2, was terrific as the film’s Big Bad – menacing, ruthless, and intimidating. The underwater sequences were pretty cool for the most part, and the climax was suitably thrilling. The split-apart yacht was just plain awesome. And Connery seems to get more into the Bond character with each installment. I just think the cutting room floor could maybe have been a bit more crowded when all was said and done.

A few nice touches made me smile, too. The SPECTRE conference room, the pool of sharks… clichés before they became clichés. Only four movies in, and they’re even starting to subvert their own tropes: Fiona mocks Bond for thinking he can turn any woman from evil to good just by sleeping with her. This was something I pointed out after From Russia With Love, so I enjoyed that bit. Unfortunately, I thought Fiona’s end was a bit too abrupt, not really befitting such a strong character.

Also a couple of weird coincidences I didn’t quite get. Did Bond just happen to be vacationing at the spa, where he just happened upon Angelo and Major Derval’s body, which just happened to be key pieces of the puzzle? Did Largo somehow choose Domino as his mistress because she was Derval’s sister? Why? Did he even know about that?

Let’s see, what else? Oh yes, the theme by Tom Jones! I did not know Tom Jones did a Bond theme. It was kind of forgettable, but still cool. And I had watched a Simpsons episode featuring Tom Jones immediately before starting Thunderball, so I was quite amused by that.

Not my favorite Bond so far, but not a stinker either.
Next up: You Only Live Twice.

[PastTense]

You are going to have to wait for the latest one:
**Bond movie No Time to Die pushed back to November **

Bond movie No Time to Die pushed back to November

Since I think the COVID-19 situation is going to be worse the longer they wait, I would have released it sooner–not later.

[Wheelz]

@PastTense

You are going to have to wait for the latest one:
**Bond movie No Time to Die pushed back to November **
Bond movie No Time to Die pushed back to November | No Time To Die | The Guardian

Since I think the COVID-19 situation is going to be worse the longer they wait, I would have released it sooner–not later.

Well, I figure I’ll probably wait on the latest one until I get to the end of the list, which at the rate I’m going will be way later than November anyway.
And if Coronavirus kills me before that, so be it, I guess.

[ekedolphin]

Tom Jones closed his eyes on the last note of “Thunderball” and held it so long that by the time he opened his eyes, the room was spinning.

[MovieMogul]

@carlb

Bond, for all that he’s thought of as an epicure, was wrong a lot. Pinot Noir and salmon go together beautifully.

But Grant specifically ordered a chianti, and when the waitress helpfully suggests “The white one?”, Grant says No, the red.

[cmkeller]

My only comment on Thunderball is that I’ve always thought of Domino/Claudine Auger as the hottest of the primary Bond Girls.

[Wheelz]

@cmkeller

My only comment on Thunderball is that I’ve always thought of Domino/Claudine Auger as the hottest of the primary Bond Girls.

I suppose it’s hard to argue with you on that; she certainly was gorgeous.
But, boy, there’s a lot of competition for that title.

[Robot_Arm]

@cmkeller

My only comment on Thunderball is that I’ve always thought of Domino/Claudine Auger as the hottest of the primary Bond Girls.

Maybe, but Fiona Volpe had the sexiest voice, ever.

[carlb]

@Wheelz

**Thunderball **(1965)

Let’s see, what else? Oh yes, the theme by Tom Jones! I did not know Tom Jones did a Bond theme. It was kind of forgettable, but still cool. And I had watched a Simpsons episode featuring Tom Jones immediately before starting Thunderball, so I was quite amused by that.

In one interview, Tom Jones said something to the effect of telling the powers that be that he didn’t really get the lyrics; they didn’t really make any sense. He was told to forget about it and just, “sing the hell out of the song.” He said, “well, I can do that,” and thus Thunderball.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Wheelz

Well, I figure I’ll probably wait on the latest one until I get to the end of the list, which at the rate I’m going will be way later than November anyway.
And if Coronavirus kills me before that, so be it, I guess.

Not sure that’s the right attitude for the most fitting movie title ever.

[Frazzled]

I agree with your assessment of the Bond films so far. From Russia with Love was a great spy movie, but taken with all of the other Bond films feels like an outlier because it’s missing whatever it takes to make a “Bond” movie. For me, Goldfinger is the first true “Bond” film - it created the veneer which all of the later films adhere to. Thunderball was ok, but bigger isn’t always better. It’s fun as you do this to compare the films to other contemporary films.

I see up next is “You only live Twice”. No spoilers, but there’s a gyrocopter introduced. This was still an era where inventors would try to have their product introduced in a Bond film just to make it look so much cooler. There’s another one where the Jet ski is introduced for the same reason.