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Is TLD the most faithful adaptation?


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#1 Call Billy Bob

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Posted 17 September 2014 - 02:12 PM

Granted, the source is only a short story, but the entire sequence lifted from Fleming stays extremely true to the text. Just thought I'd get thoughts from others on which film adaptation you felt kept closest to Fleming's originals. Just for kicks, my honorable mentions go to OHMSS and FRWL.



#2 Guy Haines

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Posted 17 September 2014 - 03:01 PM

I listened to the short story The Living Daylights" when on my audio book binge over the summer. I'd say the scene in the film is quite faithful to that in the novel save of course for the change of scenery - for Berlin read Bratislava. However, there's more to the story than one scene - the patient day after day waiting for the British agent to try and make his escape, during which Bond spots the blonde with the cello every day and, frankly, fantasises about her - which in this story puts him on the same level as any other red blooded bloke who spots an unapproachable but attractive young woman. It's probably the closest Bond would get to the reality of Fleming's male readership! ;)

 

I'd say the closest any of the Bond films came to the books was OHMSS. There are differences of course - Blofeld's bio-warfare threat is global rather than aimed just at the UK, and in typical Bond movie villain fashion he explains his diabolical scheme to Bond rather than, as happened in the book, Bond, M and government officials having to work it out for themselves over Christmas dinner. And of course Tracy is captured by Blofeld - giving Draco an extra reason for going on his airborne "crusade" against the villain. But on the whole the film sticks fairly closely to the book, and is the better for it, in my view.



#3 saint mark

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Posted 17 September 2014 - 08:10 PM

OHMSS is in my opinion the closest to Fleming, and then Dr. No and FRWL.



#4 glidrose

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Posted 17 September 2014 - 10:50 PM

To the OP: you're kidding, right?



#5 Call Billy Bob

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Posted 17 September 2014 - 11:59 PM

Not at all.



#6 DLibrasnow

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Posted 18 September 2014 - 11:15 AM

I think it's hard to vote against "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". In my opinion OHMSS is the most faithful movie to the source material.



#7 AMC Hornet

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Posted 18 September 2014 - 03:47 PM

I don't dispute any of the posts so far, but I'd like to add what a treat it was to see Risico acted out in the middle of FYEO.

 

Personally, though, I'd like to re-edit the film so that the brawl at the Albanian dock and the death of Loque occur after the scenes in Meteora. I think it would make a better finish than four guys punching it up in a monastery like the climax of an episode of The Persuaders.



#8 Jim

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Posted 18 September 2014 - 04:00 PM

It's faithful(ish) for about two minutes and then meanders off to do its own thing.

Bit like the dog.

#9 plankattack

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Posted 18 September 2014 - 05:18 PM

I don't dispute any of the posts so far, but I'd like to add what a treat it was to see Risico acted out in the middle of FYEO.

 

Personally, though, I'd like to re-edit the film so that the brawl at the Albanian dock and the death of Loque occur after the scenes in Meteora. I think it would make a better finish than four guys punching it up in a monastery like the climax of an episode of The Persuaders.

 

A bit harsh on The Persuaders, surely??  :)



#10 dtuba

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Posted 18 September 2014 - 09:44 PM

I think the OP is referring to the sequence where Koskov defects, not the whole film of TLD. In this case I whole-heartedly agree...including the actor portraying 007!



#11 Call Billy Bob

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Posted 18 September 2014 - 10:39 PM

I think the OP is referring to the sequence where Koskov defects, not the whole film of TLD. In this case I whole-heartedly agree...including the actor portraying 007!

Thanks, dtuba, that's exactly what I was going for. Just the translation of Fleming content to screen - TLD does it very well!



#12 glidrose

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Posted 18 September 2014 - 11:21 PM

I don't dispute any of the posts so far, but I'd like to add what a treat it was to see Risico acted out in the middle of FYEO.
 
Personally, though, I'd like to re-edit the film so that the brawl at the Albanian dock and the death of Loque occur after the scenes in Meteora. I think it would make a better finish than four guys punching it up in a monastery like the climax of an episode of The Persuaders.


Honestly, the plotting in FYEO is so arbitrary that your suggestion makes just as much sense - and perhaps more - than the current order of sequences.

#13 ChickenStu

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Posted 19 September 2014 - 01:06 PM

I just logged in to mention For Your Eyes Only. We all know it's a combination of the stories For Your Eyes Only and Risico. Apart from a few notable deviations I found it more or less to the stories that inspired it. 

 

And even though Licence To Kill isn't based on any particular Fleming story (aside from lifting a scene from Live And Let Die) I thought Anthony Zerbe was PERFECT casting for Milton Krest (a character created for the short story The Hildebrant Rarity). He looked and acted just like Fleming described the rotter. 



#14 Guy Haines

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Posted 19 September 2014 - 04:42 PM

There's one important element missing from the portrayal of Milton Krest in LTK compared with the story The Hildebrand Rarity. Krest was a boor, a bully and a drunk - but he was also a wife beater. That element was transferred to Franz Sanchez and if you've seen the versions of LTK shown in the US and Far East you'll remember that Sanchez produces his version of "The Corrector" - a whip - and uses it on Lupe Lamora.

 

One element added to the screen Krest is craven cowardice - he's clearly scared of Sanchez. It's as if the character of Krest from the book was split for the film - the drunken boor played by Anthony Zerbe and the sinister sadism added to the character played by Robert Davi.



#15 FlemingBond

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Posted 20 September 2014 - 09:13 PM

there were some faithful elements to TLD , but it was a short story so there was a lot added.

OHMSS, FRWL and Dr.No and the most faithful. Goldfinger and Thunderball aren't that far off , probably 80% similar . Kind of goes to show you when they stuck to Fleming the films were better.



#16 dtuba

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Posted 21 September 2014 - 01:07 AM

Say what you will about the directing talents of John Glen, but at least he tried to inject as much unused Fleming material as possible in each of his films - with possibly the exception of AVTAK. 



#17 tdalton

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Posted 21 September 2014 - 01:20 AM

I'd say that it's pretty faithful, although I'm not sure that I'd say it's the most faithful.  As others have already said, that would probably go to films like On Her Majesty's Secret Service or From Russia With Love.  Still, on the whole I'd say that both Dalton films are fairly faithful to Fleming.  Licence to Kill is probably a better adaptation of Fleming's Live and Let Die than the film bearing that title was, and The Living Daylights does a pretty good job of taking Fleming's short story and then building outward from it to craft a good, solid thriller.  



#18 Guy Haines

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Posted 21 September 2014 - 07:52 AM

Going slightly off topic, I think it's a pity the short story "From A View To A Kill" wasn't incorporated in some way into a Bond film. By this I mean the motorbike assassins and their secret base hidden behind NATO lines.

 

Granted dispatch riders are old fashioned in the age of instant internet communication, but I'm sure some other reason for having this hidden base could be dreamt up and it would make for a great action scene or series of scenes with 007 and villains chasing each other on motor cycles (Ooops, it's been done of course in Skyfall, but not in the way it took place in From a View To A Kill, with Bond finding this ingenious secret lair from which the motorbike killers operate.)

 

I'd like to see it in a future Bond, not least because of the characters involved - Rattray, the rather rumpled RAF type who is head of section, Colonel Schrieber the unsympathetic NATO bureaucrat, and Mary Ann Russell, another "Gala Brand" but a dab hand with a gun - and, it seems at the end of the story, rather more attracted to 007 than Policewoman Brand was.

 

And one more reason - the first Bond book I ever bought and read was a dog eared copy of "For Your Eyes Only" from a bookstall on the open air market in my home town decades ago. I bought it because I'd seen all the Bond films to date (This would probably be around 1974 or 1975) and wanted to read something I hadn't already seen a filmed version of. (I then started to read the rest of the books and soon realised that there were some significant differences between the books and the films!)

 

So the first Bond story I read was "From A View To A Kill", and I wouldn't mind seeing something like it as part of a future Bond film.



#19 Call Billy Bob

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Posted 21 September 2014 - 08:15 PM

Well said, Guy. That would make for some great scenes.



#20 glidrose

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Posted 22 September 2014 - 06:30 PM

Going slightly off topic, I think it's a pity the short story "From A View To A Kill" wasn't incorporated in some way into a Bond film. By this I mean the motorbike assassins and their secret base hidden behind NATO lines.

So the first Bond story I read was "From A View To A Kill", and I wouldn't mind seeing something like it as part of a future Bond film.


Somebody, somewhere else, wrote an article showing how the PTS does in fact incorporate the Fleming short story. As for the rest of the story/film, the villain's lair is underground, we've got underground scenes at film's end. Both story and film take place in France. The story's got gypsies and the film has Grace Jones. Couple of other similarities too.

#21 Revelator

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Posted 22 September 2014 - 07:55 PM

Somebody, somewhere else, wrote an article showing how the PTS does in fact incorporate the Fleming short story. As for the rest of the story/film, the villain's lair is underground, we've got underground scenes at film's end. Both story and film take place in France. The story's got gypsies and the film has Grace Jones. Couple of other similarities too.

 

 

Both end with a fight on the Golden Gate bridge, and Fleming also quotes the Beach Boys.

 

Getting back to the original post, I wouldn't class TLD as the most faithful adaptation. One big difference is that in the original Trigger really is a KGB assassin, rather than an innocent dupe in an insanely convoluted plot hatched by the defector. The film makes Bond say he only kills professionals, which makes his refusal less shocking and less a dereliction of duty than it was in Fleming. And the film doesn't have the depressed, accidie-ridden mood of the story either--you don't get the sense of an increasingly bored and soul-sickened Bond waiting days to commit murder and slowly falling in love with a girl he sees on the street. That's not a knock on the film, which is still one of the best Bond movies. But it does mean that TLD is perhaps more true to the letter than to the spirit of the original. I'd place CR in that category as well. On the other hand, the films of GF and OHMSS noticeably deviate from their sources, but feel true to their spirit.


Edited by Revelator, 22 September 2014 - 07:56 PM.


#22 Simkins

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Posted 27 September 2014 - 10:01 PM

And even though Licence To Kill isn't based on any particular Fleming story (aside from lifting a scene from Live And Let Die) I thought Anthony Zerbe was PERFECT casting for Milton Krest (a character created for the short story The Hildebrant Rarity). He looked and acted just like Fleming described the rotter. 

 

Re-reading The Man with the Golden Gun, I was struck by the similarities between the novel and Licence to Kill:

 

  • Both are set in the steamy tropics off the Caribbean Sea
  • James Bond ingratiates himself with the villain so that Bond can kill him
  • The villain hires Bond to provide security during a deal to set up a syndicate allowing the thug to smuggle drugs into the United States
  • Someone close to the villain recognises Bond as an enemy and blows Bond’s cover
  • The villain and Bond fight it out in waste land, but Bond triumphs and kills him.

Coincidence? Probably, but it could be that Maibaum and Wilson had the novel at least in the back of their minds when they wrote the story.



#23 AMC Hornet

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Posted 27 September 2014 - 10:18 PM

I can see Robert Davi playing Fleming's Scaramanga.



#24 tdalton

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Posted 28 September 2014 - 02:39 PM

 

And even though Licence To Kill isn't based on any particular Fleming story (aside from lifting a scene from Live And Let Die) I thought Anthony Zerbe was PERFECT casting for Milton Krest (a character created for the short story The Hildebrant Rarity). He looked and acted just like Fleming described the rotter. 

 

Re-reading The Man with the Golden Gun, I was struck by the similarities between the novel and Licence to Kill:

 

  • Both are set in the steamy tropics off the Caribbean Sea
  • James Bond ingratiates himself with the villain so that Bond can kill him
  • The villain hires Bond to provide security during a deal to set up a syndicate allowing the thug to smuggle drugs into the United States
  • Someone close to the villain recognises Bond as an enemy and blows Bond’s cover
  • The villain and Bond fight it out in waste land, but Bond triumphs and kills him.

Coincidence? Probably, but it could be that Maibaum and Wilson had the novel at least in the back of their minds when they wrote the story.

 

 

I'm not sure that it's entirely coincidental.  There are quite a few similarities in Licence to Kill to events in both Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun for it to be a coincidence, considering that they've acknowledged having gone back to Live and Let Die for the key moment that sets up Licence to Kill.  It would make sense, in an effort to bring Dalton's Bond back to the original source, to go back to the novels that the films of the same title didn't even bother to actually adapt.

 

I'd also say that Licence to Kill is a better adaptation of Live and Let Die than that film actually was as well.  We get more than the one scene lifted from the novel.  While the Milton Krest character comes from elsewhere, the stuff in the warehouse is very much from Live and Let Die.  Lupe is something of a Solitaire substitute, a "girlfriend" that's basically trapped within the villain's power structure who becomes emotionaly involved with Bond.  Bond, albeit much less dramatically, scuba dives to the villain's boat in order to do some damage.  There are probably some other more subtle similarities, but those are the ones that come immediately to mind.