This is still the gold standard for Batman so far as I’m concerned. As a whole, I thought the stories were great and I think they still hold up today. They were at once appropriate for children but older people could enjoy it as well. There were only a handful of bad episodes with “Critters” standing out in particular. This is the episode where the hillbilly scientist makes a bunch of dangerous farm animals.
Interestingly (perhaps only to me) my late 40s, progressive, modern, well left of center wife finds early Bond fun. She somewhat embraces the 1960s/70s sexist times saying there is a female fantasy aspect of embracing being a sex object. She wouldn’t want to live like that, but she can enjoy it in the moment.
ISTM the old Bond run benefits from people being able to look at it like a vintage pulp fantasy artifact — with assist from the Austin Powers franchise “defusing” it, letting us freely say “ha! OMG that’s so cringe it’s brilliant!”
There’s no arguing they are sexist (certain scenes and lines are pretty cringeworthy by today’s standards), but there are also many times when Bond is saved by a woman and several of the leading women are surprisingly strong characters. Nothing to shout about particularly, these days, but probably notable at the time I would’ve thought.
The Goonies
The child wit is timeless, but some of the silly set pieces and goofy situations were hard to overlook, even back in the day. They did cut the octopus scene, though.
I would say the Roger Moore movies don’t hold up at all, not because they’re sexist, but because they’re incredibly goofy / stupid.
Yeah I’ve watched this vaguely recently and it really stands out how much better Alan Rickman is than everyone else in the movie. Any scene without him is drivel.
I was never fond of Moore in the role. The two Moore Bond movies written by Christopher Wood – Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me* – are easily the most puerile and embarrassing ones in the entire series.
That said, I can usually find something worth re-watching in any Bond film, and one of the Moore Bond films is surprisingly among the best. For Your Eyes Only, after the stupidity and silliness of the two previous films, is a return to form. It evokes the older Bond films (opening at the grave of Tracy, killed at the end of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, gets to the Last of (an un-named) Blofeld, who was last seen in Diamonds are Forever, but whose fate was unresolved, then serves up a plot derived from Fleming’s own stories – “For Your Eyes Only” and “Risico” from the collection “For Your Eyes Only”, with a little bit from “Live and Let Die” that they didn’t use in that movie. And we’re back to facing off against the Russians again. Pretty well-made film, with wonderful stunts and decent humor. I coulda done without Margaret Thatcher at the end, though.
They tried to do as well with the next film – Octopussy used the plots from “Octopussy” and “Property of a Lady”, both collected in “Octopussy”, and with a nice set-up, but the movie got really silly in the second half. And Bond should never be dressed as a clown.
For me, when Bond is literally at the crossroads, and he can chase the baddies, or go disarm the nuclear weapon, and he chooses the bomb, THAT is Bond at his best.
Sure the countdown to what 007 seconds is silly, as is the clown outfit, but of all the people in the airbase, only Bond knew they were within seconds of vaporization (him included) until the last minute, and yet, he decided to try and stop it. And he did. Makes me proud of humans.
You are definitely in the minority when it comes to The Spy Who Loved Me. It’s generally regarded as Moore’s best and one of the best of the series… but each to their own! The Man With The Golden Gun is far dafter.
She might want to check out an Australian series called Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries. It’s set in the 1960s and captures the vibe really well (the lead character drives an Austin Healey), but with current sensibilities and several strong female characters.
Yeah. I happened to watch Spy Who Loved Me just last night, thinking I would not be able to stomach it, due to silliness as well as over-familiarity, but it was suprisingly engaging and groovy, even if no-one in 1977 used the latter term anymore.
I’ve always heard this about For Your Eyes Only. The Spy who Loved me is a long way below this in Bond rankings. It was derided as “The Spy who Lived Twice” because it stole so blatantly from “You Only Live Twice”
I agree FYEO is definitely one of his best (Thatcher at the end being the thing that spoils it a bit as you say!). I guess we see TSWLM differently, I really enjoy it! Totally get what you say about the blatant plot rip off though.
I’ve heard an interesting theory about TSWLM. In the 1970s the James Bond franchise started to feel unmoored, and started to latch on to other genres popular at the time for inspiration. So Live and Let Die is a homage to Blaxploitation films, The Man with the Golden Gun is a homage to kung fu films, Moonraker is a homage to science fiction films… and The Spy Who Loved Me is a homage to James Bond films.
It’s Bond squared, the most James Bond film that ever James Bonded. Other Bond films acknowledged the existence of an outside universe, but not this one - it’s Bond all the way down. Terrific title song, though.
It’s much, much worse than Kevin Costner’s Robinhood, because KCR never pretended to be historical. I’m part Scottish (member of 2 clans!) and I loved Braveheart when I first saw it. Then I later found out 0% of it was historically accurate.
Then Gibson said “I think we can make a period movie that’s even more historically inaccurate!” and made The Patriot, which was basically ‘Revolutionary Rambo’.
One good thing about TSWLM is that it shows that Bond has learned how to defuse nuclear weapons since Goldfinger. I guess they didn’t want a repeat of that countdown to 007.
Ha, good point. I guess Moore got even better at defusing nukes in Octopussy, because he managed it whilst dressed in floppy shoes and clown clothes. Grace Jones gave him some help in A View to a Kill though. Now I think about it, Moore must’ve spent half his Bond tenure defusing bombs!
In the 70s you’d think the franchise would have felt more Moored, not unmoored.
Not until Timothy Dalton took over in 1987.
The thing about The Spy What Loved Me that bugs me…is that supertanker. It would fold up at the first big wave. The curse of being an engineer, I guess.
What IS it with superbaddies that need too-large open spaces? Like the volcano lair in YOLT or the death star.