This:
Ah, well then. Different strokes. I’d be curious to see how Bond strikes me now as an adult. I never liked the super serious Bonds.
“On top of the train you’re still like…on the train, plus you got all…that. There’s absolutely no reason to ever get on top of a moving train.”
-Archer
pulykamell - I’ve found that some of the older Bond’s still stand up over time (I still enjoy Goldfinger as an adult). Other’s can feel very “Austin Powers-ish” due to the dated effects and gadgets.
On the subject, aren’t secret agents IRL supposed to keep a low profile and covertly collect intelligence? What secret agent from any country anywhere ever operates by rolling up on a casino, 5 star hotel or country club in an Aston Martin, order a couple of drinks (martini, shaken not stirred) and then pick a fight with the local drug-kingpin, international terrorist, billionaire super-criminal or dictator under his ACTUAL NAME?! Usually by fucking his girlfriend!!
The difference between Connery and Moore:
Connery’s Bond (until the last couple movies) was wasn’t sure if he would succeed or not, but he knew he had to try because the fate of the free world (or whatever) hung in the balance.
Moore’s Bond not only knew from the outset that he would succeed, he knew he wouldn’t get his suit mussed doing it.
I have my own opinions of relative values (not all Moore movies sucked), but I wholeheartedly second (third? fourth?) the idea of watching them all in order and deciding for yourself.
I also second the reminder to keep in mind the era in which each movie was made — both in terms of geopolitics and in terms of filmmaking.
Octopussy is basically a sequel to the original short story which appeared in Playboy.
Another vote for watching all of the Bonds, and then deciding for yourself. Even the crappy movies have some worthwhile moments.
Anyone who loves James Bond should definitely check out Archer on FX. “Eat grenade, stupids!”
There’s also a reference to James Bonds’ wife being killed in The Spy Who Loved Me when Agent XXX(gotta love the old Bond girl names) is listing his history and he stops her midway through because he finds it a painful reminder.
There was an homage to this scene in Casino Royale.
That’s kind of what I vaguely remember about the Bonds. The Sean Connery ones felt a bit more “real” and “serious,” while the Moore ones were a bit more exaggerated, perhaps a little bit campy, and definitely more like a superhero-type movie than a serious spy movie. But I guess that’s what I liked as a kid.
A minor gripe against Moore was that he didn’t do his own stunts. There were scenes where a stunt-man substituted for him in nothing more risky than climbing down a short ladder. For an action hero in an action movie, having a non-active actor is…bad.
Cayuga is right: he wouldn’t even get his clothes mussed up. He doesn’t have to go all the way to Doc Savage extremes, and have his clothes torn off…but his fight scenes always seem so abstract, so lifeless. It’s like watching a mime emulate a fight scene.
What’s campy about a slide whistle? (Oh, the pain!)
Holy shit, that’s hilarious!
You and me both. The movie is one of the best, if not the best(I refuse to pick).
The book, well, it was an ambitious experiment(being told from a woman’s POV) that went horribly wrong.
Oh yes, continuity! Sheriff J. W. Pepper made two appearances. I love his line in LALD, when told he can’t arrest that ‘commie’ Bond because he’s a secret agent. Pepper’s (quite reasonable, considering the carnage Bond left in his wake) response: “On whose side?!”
I literally just finished doing what the OP planned to do - except I had only seen a handful of the Brosnan movies and had a vague childhood recollection of The Living Daylights where Dalton complained about someone’s cello. All in all, excellent experience, and although I started to watch NSNA after Octopussy, to stay in chronological order of release, I stopped about 20-30 seconds in, since I already knew it was just a remake of Thunderball. Just felt like a mistake, so I bailed.
Seems like OP has about the best way of going about things. There is some continuity even up to Die Another Day all the way back from Dr. No, but after that it’s basically a full reboot. If you’ve seen all the Craig ones, just assume Connery had a similar experience to Craig in Casino Royale and Quantum (but with 50’s and 60’s tech) before Dr. No, and everything up to and including Die Another Day is within scope of that Bond. Ignore actors and ages. Assume between films everyone is placed in a cryogenic chamber so that Bond/Leiter/Moneypenny remain between the ages of 30 and 40 for about 40 years. The chamber was invented by the original Q and is administered by whoever has the position of M. They stop using the chamber right after The World is Not Enough. Brosnan’s M and Craig’s M may be the same actress, but are different people existing in different universes. Craig’s Bond is a parallel universe where he begins his career in 2005 as opposed to the 50’s, so different shit will inevitably happen to him. Think of Daniel Craig and anything after as Christopher Nolan’s Batman series.
My advice would be to space them out a bit. I did the whole gamut in about 2-3 weeks, but attention waned during the middle parts of many of those films - especially the Roger Moore ones. The other side effect of this is heading to SD to try to retcon all this stuff together immediately after finishing the last one. If you space them out, this will be less likely to happen to you.
Just finished Dr. No.
The sixties-ness of it all was a little overwhelming at times, but in general, it was a good romp.
I did have a couple of problems, though:
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Honey Ryder, as a Bond Girl, just didn’t make sense. She didn’t even appear until the second act, she had a very small role, and she was like, the third woman Bond had boffed just in that movie.
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[Open spoilers for fifty-year-old movie to follow]: The villain needed a lot more development. First of all, his motivation: best I can figure, he was mad because he didn’t get a job with the U.S. space program. Second, his plan was ambiguous, too; unless I missed it, it wasn’t really clear just what he intended to do to the American moon rocket. Interfere with its guidance system? Launch a nuclear warhead at it?
I’ll try to tackle From Russia With Love by the end of the week.
Dr. Julius No was a member of SPECTRE. In the book, he was working with the Russians to disrupt the U.S.'s missile program. In the movie, it might have been that; or it might have been that he wanted to sabotage the U.S. Space program. I don’t remember. Disrupting the Space program would have given the Soviets more of a lead (which they already had when the movie was shot), allowing them to gain the upper-hand in ICBM technology and beat us to the Moon. (Kennedy’s ‘To The Moon’ speech was made in September of 1962.)
Watch them all in order and decide for yourself. Here are my impressions:
Dr. No looks like the Cary Grant murder mystery it was originally intended to be. The dragon boat was an embarrassment.
Connery’s Bond in general doesn’t hold up well decades later. The opening scene from Diamonds Are Forever, where he strangles that girl with her own bikini top, kind of sums up the problems with the franchise.
A critic from Esquire dismissed George Lazenby by pointing out that he was a bad actor in a movie that desperately needed a good one. Hard to dispute.
People remember the Roger Moore movies as awful, and rightly so; the redneck sheriff from the first two, and the whistling sound that orange Camero makes as it barrel rolls over a bayou, really embody all the problems with the 70s/early 80s Bond. But Moore is great in most of them, and even the worst ones are watchable. Live and Let Die is particularly fun.
The two Timothy Dalton movies are terrible, especially the one where he teams up with the guys who later become al Qaeda. But Dalton is not the problem with these movies, he’s kinda great, and License to Kill has two of my favorite Bond girls ever, Carey Lowell (Law and Order) and Talisa Soto (Vampirella). Watch with an open mind. Benicio del Toro has a great bit part.
I remain unapologetically fond of the Pierce Brosnan Bonds, even Die Another Day.
I think the franchise has peaked under Daniel Craig.
That slide whistle is what made me stop watching Bond movies. Seriously.
There were a lot of bad things in that movie (e.g., the completely unexplainable reappearance of the sheriff from the previous movie (who was originally from then-current Dodge commercials, which was bad enough)), but it was the slide whistle that told me the filmmakers and I wanted different things from a Bond movie.
I didn’t see another one until The Spy Who Loved Me came on cable. Then I saw Moonraker on cable, and stopped watching again until Dalton took over.
I haven’t seen the Daltons in a while — I remember liking them, but to each his own.
The thing about Dalton was that he was Fleming’s Bond. Sean Connery is and will always be the best Bond ever, but Dalton absolutely was the character from the books.