Yeah, Dalton’s Bond actually felt like a real person doing real things in a real world, rather than the smirking cartoon character that Moore had become. When Bond was shaking with rage at the fair because the agent he’d just clashed with had been killed, Dalton made you feel that his Bond was a man angry at the needless death of a friend and colleague.
You didn’t think the idea of brainwashed beauties of all nations (one of whom is allergic to chickens) was cheesy? I thought that was super-cheesy.
EDIT: Oh, maybe you’re referring to The Living Daylights. I agree that movie was one of the least silly of all the Bond movies.
Can you imagine Roger Moore doing that pistol-whipping scene with John Rhys-Davies? (The answer is, no, you can’t.)
Easily. Moore’s Bond bitch slapped Octopussey’s actress in the Man with the Golden Gun, until she told him what he wanted, having earlier threatened to shoot off a gunmakers testicles, (having “missed” just before). He kicked a villain down a mountainside, threw Jaws into a shark tank, dumped “Bloefled” into a chimney…
On a top ten list of “most cold blooded things Bond has ever done” Moore’s Bond has most of the spots sown up.
It’s not the cold-bloodedness of it; it’s the physicality of it. I mean, anyone can say they’ll shoot a guy’s testicles, or switch off an electromagnet to drop someone in the water, or whatever – but if your go-to answer for him plausibly roughing someone up is the time he “slapped Octopussey’s actress,” that’s not quite up there with Dalton really putting his legs into it when beating a man unconscious.
Physicality? In *Octopussey *he dealt with the Assasins by throwing one of them into a poisonous Octopus tank. In Moonraker, he threw the Kendo weidling attacker through the clock tower glass. Climbed up the St Cyrils tower on his own in For Your Eyes Only.
Eluded pursuers by dropping from ludicrous heights and gliding around on one ski before snowboarding upwards to overwhelm multiple gunmen – and straight over water those skiers sank into – on his way to casually dropping an enemy helicopter with a single shot, in A VIEW TO A KILL! Why, he’s Clark Kent without that pesky kryptonite allergy!
But do you believe Roger Moore as a hard-swinging puncher beating people unconscious? If so, fine; neither of us can disputum the other’s de gustibus; but I kinda gotta work at suspending disbelief, even while recognizing that he’s of course written as effortlessly managing whichever comic-book feat the script next throws at his stuntman.
In my own internal headcanon:
Craig: Younger Bond-till Skyfall at least
Connery, Lazenby, Dalton: Bond in his professional prime.
Moore, Brosnan: Older, more experienced, mellower Bond.
I think thats one of the best things about Moore’s portrayal, how it links to the other Bonds… I can easily imagine Moore’s Bond acting like the others when young.
When Moore refused to go to bed with the young hot ice skater in For Your Eyes Only he morphed into grandfather Bond.
OHMSS is not one of my favourite Bond films – except for one thing: It follows the book pretty closely.
‘Hypnotized hotties’? Well, it’s a Bond film. Nevertheless, the premise of spreading biological weapons isn’t that farfetched nowadays.
Not to mention that For Your Eyes Only was the one where he kicks the guy in the battered car that hanging off a cliff to his death after tossing the dove pin on him.
That was pretty physical and cold-blooded.
Cold-blooded, sure – but an impressive kick? That car was already almost falling.
Yeah, but one of Moore’s biggest weaknesses as Bond was that he never sold you on the fight scenes; they were almost always done with a nudge and a wink. Unlike Dalton or Connery or Craig, you never really believed that this Bond was a man who fucked people up for a living.
Especially Connery. The fight with Robert Shaw in the train compartment in From Russia With Love and the fight in the elevator from Diamonds are Forever are classic.
Is George Lazenby the only Bond who cried?
“She’s resting. We have all the time in the world”
I think so.
It’s ambiguous, but it looks like he cried in SKYFALL.
Wasn’t she supposedly 17 years old or so? I would expect most adult males to have an 18 year old (or older) minimum.
Rewatched the film tonight because of this thread.
The fight scenes are clunky. Not only are they pieced together and somewhat disjointed (though not anywhere near as badly as a modern “no shot more than 0.6 seconds” fight), but they use cheesy sounds for the punches, and hits that sound more like metal hitting metal than flesh.
The initial fight with Bond by the water has him and the other guy getting farther into the water with every punch, but no movement by either is seen. When Bond is fighting the henchman in Tracy’s room, we see him pull his Walther, and then suddenly hear a shot and see the gun fly out of his hand without the benefit of a proper hit by the henchman.
But it is still a good movie. Not without its plotholes, sure, but what Bond film doesn’t have tons of them?
And, by the way, what was Tracy’s motive for trying to commit suicide, and why did she never try again? I guess it’s possible that she was just flighty and changed her mind. So what were he father’s henchmen (which we didn’t know at the time worked for him) doing there? If they were protecting her, why didn’t they stop her? Why were they going to kill a perfect stranger who only was trying to help her? The scene makes sense if they were Blofeld’s men, but they weren’t.
I guess the UN really was risk-adverse. They were afraid of attacking Piz Gloria with the full weight of the military, but Bond and Draco successfully destroyed it with three Hueys and a handful of gunmen
I think You Only Live Twice might be my favourite, precisely because I don’t look for realism in Bond movies. The underground/volcano lair, the henchemen, the monorail, the control-room tannoy guy who says everything twice (including 'run away!").
Watching that movie one evening, then The Incredibles the next, only makes it better.