740 replies to this topic

[Colossus]

I'm seeing so many things i agree with here. It is splendiforous!

The only views that changed from my 1st post are

-Didn't like Dalton's two Bonds, but liked Dalton as Bond and think GoldenEye is the best Dalton that never was.

I didn't like Dalton's two Bonds NOR Dalton.

-Brosnan's 3 last Bonds are my least favorites (along with DAF) of the whole series, kind screwed up how his best was a Dalton movie.

No Mr. Colossus i don't agree. Brosnan's last three are now somewhere in the middle and better than the two eras is it is bookended with.

[JimmyBond]

You take Brosnan over Dalton and Craig?

Ok, whatever

[DaveBond21]

I love all the Bond films, and am entertained every time I watch them.

[Colossus]

The Man With The Golden Gun is better than the book. But that's only because the book is lousy

Come to think of it, the movies, taken as a whole rather than using a case by case comparison, are a rather more impressive body of work than the books

You know the more i read the books i'm amazed to see how many of the changes, characters, scenes in the movies are better in comparison.

[Colossus]

Particularly agreed with the following

Thunderball is the most overrated film in the series.

Here are some of my views that are different from those that I typically see on this website:

• Goldfinger is the best 007 film ever.
• Roger Moore is, after Sean Connery, the best Bond.
• Moneypenny and Q are great characters and should be return with film 23.
• Gadgets are cool and should return with film 23.
• Quantum of Solace is the worst film the series.

Wow yes on everything. While GF is not my #1 (def. top 3) it earns every bit of its accolades as the best Bond.

Thunderball is a travesty, while YOLT is the best thing Connery ever did.

Timothy Dalton failed because he didn’t try hard enough.

yep, his bleak performance matched the bleakness of the box office.

Edited by Colossus, 22 July 2009 - 11:45 PM.

[Colossus]

-the Fleming books were larger-than-life, tongue-in-cheek pulp fiction, not gritty, moody espionage thrillers

-most of the so-called excesses of the movies have their origins in Fleming (e.g. over-the-top villains with lavish lairs, indestructible henchman, outrageously-named love interests etc.)

-the Bond of the books is largely blank a cipher - and Fleming even said as much: "I wanted my hero to be entirely an anonymous instrument and to let the action of the book carry him along."

-Roger Moore is a better Bond than Timothy Dalton

-Roger Moore is a better Bond than Pierce Brosnan

-Roger Moore is a better Bond than Daniel Craig

-"Casino Royale" is the most over-rated Bond film

-"You Only Live Twice" is the best Sean Connery Bond

-Lewis Gilbert is the best director the series has had so far

-John Glen's direction and Michael Wilson's writing nearly destroyed the series

-"Moonraker" is far superior to "For Your Eyes Only"

-a faithful, modern version of Fleming's "Moonraker" wouldn't work

-a faithful, modern adaptation of Fleming's "You Only Live Twice" wouldn't work

-"Diamonds Are Forever" is better as a film than as a book

-George Lazenby played Bond one too many times

-Timothy Dalton was fired from the role

Totally. Also on the last one my intuition tells that as well, the more i think about Dalton being 'nobly' called back and graciously stepping down the more it looks like pure Disney, a nice bit of Pravda to keep their images gracious and no one will be the wiser, when in reality Brosnan was already being groomed from the get-go for the series new direction.
.

Edited by Colossus, 22 July 2009 - 11:46 PM.

[O.H.M.S.S.]

Particularly agreed with the following

Thunderball is the most overrated film in the series.

Here are some of my views that are different from those that I typically see on this website:

• Goldfinger is the best 007 film ever.
• Roger Moore is, after Sean Connery, the best Bond.
• Moneypenny and Q are great characters and should be return with film 23.
• Gadgets are cool and should return with film 23.
• Quantum of Solace is the worst film the series.

Wow yes on everything. While GF is not my #1 (def. top 3) it earns every bit of its accolades as the best Bond.

Thunderball is a travesty, while YOLT is the best thing Connery ever did.

Timothy Dalton failed because he didn’t try hard enough.

yep, he is the biggest reason his movies were the bleakest in box office just like his bleak performance.

Timothy Dalton failed? I strongly disagree, he made Bond tough and intelligent again. He brought the character back to it's roots. You "don't try enough" if you read all of Fleming's books before you take on the role, that doesn't make any sense. And box office does not matter, Die Another Day and Moonraker made a lot of money, both of them are chaotic travesties.

[tim partridge]

Moggy into the chicken coup:

John Barrys decision to drop the twang guitar from MWTGG gunbarrel onwards was a big mistake (the tamborine on all the later Barry gunbarrel scores is horrible).

We have not had decent gunbarrel music since LTK.

Bond finding Della dead in LTK is as haunting as Eva Greens death in CR

The PTS of CR is pretty naff

Lois Chiles performance as Holly Goodhead is perfect

Brit Eklund is intentionally very funny in MWTGG

The sunny Sanfran climax of AVTAK seems gloriously exotic

Connerys hair in DAF was an improvement over YOLT

Lewis Collins should have replaced Moore for FYEO or TLD

The score to TSWLM often out-Barrys Barry (particularly entering Liparus)

The GE score is magnificent

Robert Brownjohn and Daniel Kleinmans title sequences are vastly more impressive (and the formers more influential) than Maurice Binders.

Brosnan moved and looked physically impressive in GE

David Arnolds scores have vastly improved since Craig arrived

The guy from ROME should have been called Moneypenny in CR

Ms office in QOS was an enormous improvement

[Tybre]

The Man With The Golden Gun is better than the book. But that's only because the book is lousy

To each their own I suppose. Personally I love The Man With the Golden Gun as a novel and find it to be only mediocre as a film. As a matter of fact I rank Man with the Golden Gun as my second favorite Fleming, behind only Live and Let Die. I suppose that qualifies as an unorthodox Bond opinion, doesn't it? Certainly seems everyone around these parts didn't care for the book anyway. About the only change with the film I really genuinely enjoy is making Scaramanga essentially NegaBond instead of just a random gunman.

[Safari Suit]

Well, in some ways by putting such a statement in an "unorthodox Bond opinions" thread, I'm kind of admitting I'm "wrong". But that is genuinely what I think.

-the Bond of the books is largely blank a cipher - and Fleming even said as much: "I wanted my hero to be entirely an anonymous instrument and to let the action of the book carry him along."

That's baloney

This one touched a nerve.

[Rufus Ffolkes]

-the Bond of the books is largely blank a cipher - and Fleming even said as much: "I wanted my hero to be entirely an anonymous instrument and to let the action of the book carry him along."

That's baloney; he changed over time:

Thanks to Daniel Craig (and his underrated predecessor Timothy Dalton) we've heard a lot of the phrase "Fleming's Bond," as in "Craig comes closest to Fleming's Bond, the ruthless government assassin" and so forth. This phrase has always rang false to me, perhaps because Fleming's version of the character was never a fixed concept.

Maybe "blank cipher" is a bit strong. Perhaps its more because Bond was never a "fixed concept", but I just don't get a strong sense of Bond as a character when I'm reading the books. It's not the quality of the writing, because I do get a clear sense of who villains like Blofeld and Goldfinger are, and even a clear sense of who most of the girls are, but Bond himself remains elusive.

Again, just my unorthodox take on it.

[Rufus Ffolkes]

Totally. Also on the last one my intuition tells that as well, the more i think about Dalton being 'nobly' called back and graciously stepping down the more it looks like pure Disney, a nice bit of Pravda to keep their images gracious and no one will be the wiser, when in reality Brosnan was already being groomed from the get-go for the series new direction.

There was an interesting article in Premiere magazine some years ago that I wish I had kept which went into considerable detail about the Eon/MGM legal wrangling leading up to the making of "Goldeneye."

The gist of it was that, in 1993, Dalton fully expected and wanted to return as Bond - and Broccoli wanted him to return - but the new head of MGM basically said that the studio would refuse to finance the picture with Dalton in the role.

Obviously, there are only a handful of people who know what really happened, but everything I've heard and read on the matter tells me that Dalton was forced out of the role.

Edited by Rufus Ffolkes, 23 July 2009 - 02:02 PM.

[volante]

For sure Dalton was forced out.

They wanted Brosnan, and as soon as he was available he was in.

[Tybre]

For sure Dalton was forced out.

They wanted Brosnan, and as soon as he was available he was in.

And oh what a mistake that proved to be

[00Jaws]

For sure Dalton was forced out.

They wanted Brosnan, and as soon as he was available he was in.

And oh what a mistake that proved to be

Lol how? Financially the Brosnan era was much more successful.
Imagine Dalton in that nude scene with Xenia

[Tybre]

For sure Dalton was forced out.

They wanted Brosnan, and as soon as he was available he was in.

And oh what a mistake that proved to be

Lol how? Financially the Brosnan era was much more successful.

Money =/= good

Case in point:

[Safari Suit]

That's actually a very pretty image.

A reply, and as fate would have it probably an unorthodox opinion too.

[The Ghost Who Walks]

Imagine Dalton in that nude scene with Xenia

Yeah, imagine. It might even have been a good scene with Dalton in it.

[00Jaws]

For sure Dalton was forced out.

They wanted Brosnan, and as soon as he was available he was in.

And oh what a mistake that proved to be

Lol how? Financially the Brosnan era was much more successful.

Money =/= good

Case in point:

Who knows if Bond would still exist without Brosnan and Goldeneye.
It seems to me that people blame Brosnan for the weak 90's Bond and DAD.
As if the movies would have been so much better with Dalton...

[Tybre]

For sure Dalton was forced out.

They wanted Brosnan, and as soon as he was available he was in.

And oh what a mistake that proved to be

Lol how? Financially the Brosnan era was much more successful.

Money =/= good

Case in point:

Who knows if Bond would still exist without Brosnan and Goldeneye.
It seems to me that people blame Brosnan for the weak 90's Bond and DAD.
As if the movies would have been so much better with Dalton...

First off, not blaming the whole of the mess on Brosnan, but Brosnan did have a hand in some of it. My earlier comment was really intended as "The Brosnan era as a whole was a mistake". As for Dalton, to some extent, yes. The scripts would have been more tailored to Dalton's strengths, we would have had a Bond who seemed comfortable with the role, and the horrendous jokes would go out the window. But this is another discussion for another thread.

Moving back to the topic at hand, I actually like the pink DAF tie. Well, "like" it in the "it makes me laugh" sense, but at least I don't hate it like a good number of people seem to.

[Mr. Blofeld]

For sure Dalton was forced out.

They wanted Brosnan, and as soon as he was available he was in.

And oh what a mistake that proved to be

Lol how? Financially the Brosnan era was much more successful.

Money =/= good

Case in point:

Who knows if Bond would still exist without Brosnan and Goldeneye.
It seems to me that people blame Brosnan for the weak 90's Bond and DAD.
As if the movies would have been so much better with Dalton...

First off, not blaming the whole of the mess on Brosnan, but Brosnan did have a hand in some of it. My earlier comment was really intended as "The Brosnan era as a whole was a mistake". As for Dalton, to some extent, yes. The scripts would have been more tailored to Dalton's strengths, we would have had a Bond who seemed comfortable with the role, and the horrendous jokes would go out the window. But this is another discussion for another thread.

Moving back to the topic at hand, I actually like the pink DAF tie. Well, "like" it in the "it makes me laugh" sense, but at least I don't hate it like a good number of people seem to.

Well, it seems to have come back into style, what with all of the emo bands adopting it as their trademark...

[Mr. Blofeld]

For sure Dalton was forced out.

They wanted Brosnan, and as soon as he was available he was in.

And oh what a mistake that proved to be

Lol how? Financially the Brosnan era was much more successful.

Money =/= good

Case in point:

Who knows if Bond would still exist without Brosnan and Goldeneye.
It seems to me that people blame Brosnan for the weak 90's Bond and DAD.
As if the movies would have been so much better with Dalton...

First off, not blaming the whole of the mess on Brosnan, but Brosnan did have a hand in some of it. My earlier comment was really intended as "The Brosnan era as a whole was a mistake". As for Dalton, to some extent, yes. The scripts would have been more tailored to Dalton's strengths, we would have had a Bond who seemed comfortable with the role, and the horrendous jokes would go out the window. But this is another discussion for another thread.

Moving back to the topic at hand, I actually like the pink DAF tie. Well, "like" it in the "it makes me laugh" sense, but at least I don't hate it like a good number of people seem to.

Well, it seems to have come back into style, what with all of the emo bands adopting it as their trademark...

[Mr. Blofeld]

For sure Dalton was forced out.

They wanted Brosnan, and as soon as he was available he was in.

And oh what a mistake that proved to be

Lol how? Financially the Brosnan era was much more successful.

Money =/= good

Case in point:

Who knows if Bond would still exist without Brosnan and Goldeneye.
It seems to me that people blame Brosnan for the weak 90's Bond and DAD.
As if the movies would have been so much better with Dalton...

First off, not blaming the whole of the mess on Brosnan, but Brosnan did have a hand in some of it. My earlier comment was really intended as "The Brosnan era as a whole was a mistake". As for Dalton, to some extent, yes. The scripts would have been more tailored to Dalton's strengths, we would have had a Bond who seemed comfortable with the role, and the horrendous jokes would go out the window. But this is another discussion for another thread.

Moving back to the topic at hand, I actually like the pink DAF tie. Well, "like" it in the "it makes me laugh" sense, but at least I don't hate it like a good number of people seem to.

Well, it seems to have come back into style, what with all of the emo bands adopting it as their trademark...

[Mr. Blofeld]

For sure Dalton was forced out.

They wanted Brosnan, and as soon as he was available he was in.

And oh what a mistake that proved to be

Lol how? Financially the Brosnan era was much more successful.

Money =/= good

Case in point:

Who knows if Bond would still exist without Brosnan and Goldeneye.
It seems to me that people blame Brosnan for the weak 90's Bond and DAD.
As if the movies would have been so much better with Dalton...

First off, not blaming the whole of the mess on Brosnan, but Brosnan did have a hand in some of it. My earlier comment was really intended as "The Brosnan era as a whole was a mistake". As for Dalton, to some extent, yes. The scripts would have been more tailored to Dalton's strengths, we would have had a Bond who seemed comfortable with the role, and the horrendous jokes would go out the window. But this is another discussion for another thread.

Moving back to the topic at hand, I actually like the pink DAF tie. Well, "like" it in the "it makes me laugh" sense, but at least I don't hate it like a good number of people seem to.

Well, it seems to have come back into style, what with all of the emo bands adopting it as their trademark...

[Safari Suit]

Similarly, I quite like the blue powder jacket/whatever it is Connery wears at the start of Goldfinger. I rewatched it recently and thought "that's the thing I've read all the embarassed comments about for the past couple of years?!?"

[Rufus Ffolkes]

I'd also add that Pierce Brosnan made a much better Bond in "Remington Steele", "The Thomas Crown Affair," "The Tailor of Panama", and even "The Matador", than he did in any of his actual Bond films.

And Dalton was much more Bond-like in the mini-series "Framed" than he was in either of his two outings.

[00Jaws]

First off, not blaming the whole of the mess on Brosnan, but Brosnan did have a hand in some of it. My earlier comment was really intended as "The Brosnan era as a whole was a mistake". As for Dalton, to some extent, yes. The scripts would have been more tailored to Dalton's strengths, we would have had a Bond who seemed comfortable with the role, and the horrendous jokes would go out the window. But this is another discussion for another thread.

I don't have the impression that Brosnan felt uncomfortable playing Bond, did you?
And i highly doubt that the movies, let's say DAD for instance, would be that much better just because of the scripts. (neglect Daltons age, assuming he would be 41 or 43)

[Tybre]

Similarly, I quite like the blue powder jacket/whatever it is Connery wears at the start of Goldfinger. I rewatched it recently and thought "that's the thing I've read all the embarassed comments about for the past couple of years?!?"

The only part of it that bothers me is that there really isn't much to it on the legs. It just sort of stops at the groin.

[blueman]

-the Bond of the books is largely blank a cipher - and Fleming even said as much: \"I wanted my hero to be entirely an anonymous instrument and to let the action of the book carry him along.\"

That\'s baloney; he changed over time:

Thanks to Daniel Craig (and his underrated predecessor Timothy Dalton) we\'ve heard a lot of the phrase \"Fleming\'s Bond,\" as in \"Craig comes closest to Fleming\'s Bond, the ruthless government assassin\" and so forth. This phrase has always rang false to me, perhaps because Fleming\'s version of the character was never a fixed concept. There are a few Bonds we could call \"Fleming\'s Bond.\" Here\'s my own loose breakdown of the Ages of Bond--please feel free to post your versions:

That there is a great summation of Fleming/'s creation and the works he appears in.

(jeepers, not sure how this quote got like this, anyway hope the intent carries)

[JimmyBond]

Who knows if Bond would still exist without Brosnan and Goldeneye.

Of course it would have existed without Brosnan. Goldeneye came out after such a long gap that it was going to be a hit no matter who was starring in it (except perhaps Dalton).

Again I'll reiterate my "Unorthodox opinion." Brosnand saved nothing.