The opening titles for Casino Royaleshould have been a model for the following films. They reinvented the previous tired Bond titles by replacing the slow song with naked women dancing with something incredibly fast-paced with incredible visuals that matched the symbolism and tone of the movie perfectly. It’s the perfect match for the best Bond movie.
So what did the following movies do? Give up opening titles that were incredibly half-assed with a foot solidly stuck in the past and other foot trying to imitate the Royale style, and failing miserably at both. Skyfall is a great song but the opening titles leave much to be desired.
With the exception of On Her Majesty’s Secret Sevice. The Sands of Time flowing through the hourglass with the montage of scenes from the Connery Bonds was Art with a capital “A.”
The soundtrack was one of the series’ best ever too. And I *liked *George Lazenby as Bond; I wish he had done more. He gave up the role on the basis of some very bad advice.
And the dialogue leading up to that…
-I think we should be leaving now
-Ya, that’s probably a good idea
I’ll add in The Hangover (and to a lesser extent, the sequels). As the credits roll, they show all the pictures they took on the previous night. It was the perfect ending to a really good movie and one of the things a lot talked about after watching it.
You should have read the entry you’re citing a little closer - he was criticizing the opening montages that followed the Daniel Craig Casino Royale, not the original Maurice Binder James Bond openings. I have to admit, I like all of Binder’s openings*. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was interesting because, AFAICanRecall, it’s the last Bond credit opening where it was purely instrumental, as with Dr. No and From Russia with Love (Binder didn’t do the credits for that one). The credit sequence was also interesting for using clips from the previous Bond films to tie this film into the series – important, as this was the first time someone other than Sean Connery was playing Bond in an Eon film.
*Binder did other credit sequences, too – besides the aforementioned Charade he also did the opening for Arabesque, which was also partly written by Charade’s scripter, Peter Stone. He didn’t do them for Mirage, though, the one Stone scripted between those two. Binder also contributed a non-credits sequence to the 1979 John Badham/Frank Langella version of Dracula. He did the above-mentioned opening for Barbarella, too. Wikipedia lists a bunch of his films – Maurice Binder - Wikipedia
The credits certainly aren’t better than the movies (which are filled with Harryhausen animation), but I do like the openings to The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts, which show key elements of the upcoming story, rendered in artwork that resembles a Persian miniature and a Greek Wall or Vase painting.
What I should have done was click on the link, since I assumed he was referring to the original Casino Royale with David Niven and Peter Sellers. I don’t recall ever seeing the Daniel Craig version.
Even without the link, the description he gave pretty clearly describes the Eon films, and the Binder openings, with the later Bond films that he’s criticizing following the Binder model to closely with the naked ladies – that doesn’t fit the animated style of the 1967 Casino Royale opening credits at all.
I get chills just listening to the (instrumental) theme. And how the women’s silhouettes mimic Britannia and the supporters on the Royal Coat of Arms is inspired. Note too how the hourglass resembles a Martini glass…
Just due to the minuscule chance that you might not know this, the Naked Gun movies were based on a tragically short-lived TV show, Police Squad, which always opened with a scene viewed from the top of a police car, driving through increasingly ridiculous situations. I think most of Police Squad episodes are on Youtube, and they’re as good or better than the movies.
Speaking of opening credits and “Police Squad”, the other great thing about them was that the opening credits would always include a short scene of the week’s Special Guest Star (an at least somewhat famous actor) getting murdered. The Guest Star would never appear again, and the murder would never be referenced in the show.
Also their end-credits were usually over a freeze-frame of the last scene, except it wasn’t a real freeze-frame, it was just the actors ‘freezing’ in place, while coffee continued to pour (spilling over the mug) or a confused arrestee (who didn’t freeze) slowly realized the cops weren’t moving at all and eventually got up and ran out.
Back to movies, does the opening sequence of “Up” count?
The style, with the recap words fading off into the distance and seriously foreshortening, was pretty deliberately lifted from the old Flash Gordon serials. Lucas took a lot of stuff from his cinematic precursors, and didn’t try to hide a lot of it:
The music, of course, was another story. The old serials were made on shoestring budgets, and often re-used music from the studio music library, or stuff in the public domain. Lucas had an incredible advantage in the original compositions of John Williams, a debt he has acknowledged.
