16 replies to this topic

[IrishCrown]

This post contains some spoilers for the few of you who have not read either Live and Let Die or Moonraker and may even have some spoilers about the new Bond movie

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Over the past several nights, I got inspired to go back and re-read several of the early Fleming Bonds. I started out by going through Moonraker and then Live and Let Die. When I was done, I was in shock. They were written almost 50 years ago and they hold up remarkably well. I was also stunned at the amount of pain Bond goes through. The nasty broken finger in Live and Let Die and the massive burns he sustains in Moonraker. As a screenwriter myself, I tried to think of the rationale behind their creative decisions adapting these novels. They wimped out on Live and Let Die by threatening to break Bond's finger, but backing off. Moonraker is a case of "huh?" when it comes to throwing basically everything out of the novel and creating a new story. I did get a great sense about the new Bond movie when it was revealed about Gala Brand and a villain who is not what he seems involved with some type of rocket, or something. I've felt for a long time that the producers owe it to Fleming to faithfully remake the films where they had the gall to give the finger to Fleming.

[1q2w3e4r]

well, maybe you answered your own question! Graves is knighted by the Queen. As is Hugo Drax (however before he has successfully built the moonraker) DAD could be a remake or homeage to Moonraker!

But yeah Bond cops a beating in fleming's novels, i think IF had a fasination with torture after he was cained and had to run in the cross country event at Eton in the early 20s.

[Mister Asterix]

I love the torture scenes in the Fleming novels. With his descriptions of them I swear I can feel physical pain during the reading.

I do think, however, it is much too late to bring the torture in to the big screen Bond's world. At least to the degree that it is in the books. I am hoping that a torture scene in Die Another Day will at least allude to the cruelty of a Fleming torture, but I think just past alluding to it is really as far as they should take it. I would hate for the movie to pick up an R rating just as many pre-eighteens are getting turned on to Bond.

[Jim]

Having run cross country at Eton in the early 80s, either they toned it down a bit or it wasn't really torture equivalent to broken fingers and rocket burns.

The same cannot be said of Greek on a Friday afternoon.

[RossMan]

Not meaning to sound like a sadist, but I think the torture in Bond novels is great. The one in Casino Royale has to be the worst (best).

None of the post Fleming authors really have too much good torture, though Colonel Sun had a nice scene and I loved the part in Icebreaker where Bond's stripped and dipped into the freezing water.

[1q2w3e4r]

according to one of his biographys. caining at Eton took place at noon and it was brought forward a 1/4 of an hour so he could take part in the steeplechase from memory.

[Bondpurist]

Bond takes a hell of a lot of punishment in the books - in chapter 2 of Dr No the doctor even talks to M, warning him about Bond's physical condition. That's what makes Bond such a great character - his willpower and his mental strength to endure such pain to no personal benefit. You've so far failed to mention Dr No in which he gets very badly injured, what with his burns, bruises and terrible injuries at the hands (tentacles) of the giant squid. He gets shot in TMWTGG and FRWL, knifed in DAF, walloped in the testicles in CR, burned in Moonraker and DN, his skin partially flyed off in LALD, poisoned in FRWL, and knocked unconcious numerous times, as well as bruises in virtually every novel. He is a tough nut, which is not reflected in the films as much - he never gets shot, knifed, burned, etc. very much, which detracts from his literary persona as a man willing to go through any amount of pain to help his country.

[General Koskov]

Is the spoiler code still working (the one that blacks out the spoilers)?

If, so please use it when writing about Die Another Day. I'd rather not have even minute bits of the plot revealed to myself when I think I'm reading a presumably 'spoiler-safe' thread.

Sorry to sound nagging, and such, but I've had several major plot details revealed because the spoiler code or a warning was not used. Only two-and-a-half months to go, and I don't want to spoil Die Another Day.


But on to the topic at hand: I wish the films had Bond enduring the pain that Fleming's Bond endures! The best they got in the early years was the bullet-in-the-ankle of Thunderball. (Bond only does a quick badage job, too! And there is no shown medical treatment given!)

Octopussy almost saw Bond needing all his will to survive a knife-in-the-heart, but alas, Bond always keeps a wad of Rupees close to his heart. The World is not Enough had the broken arm thing, but it was merely a tool to get Bond to lay the firm's physician and help with the Elektra-Renard connection. In other words, the broken arm was 'abnormal', rather than just another (comparatively painless) entry in the series of Bond's wounds.

[ThomasCrown76]

He still kind of suffers in the films, but the producers don't want to to turn off the mainstream public with the sadism. Moore even had his incident with the centrifuge. Dalton had his accident with the truck. Brosnan has been bloodied up a bit.

[jetsetwilly]

The difference is, and this'll probably sound dumb, but if you're going to suffer, you have to look bad, and that doesn't go over too well on screen. The Hollywood studios, in their wisdom (sic) think that we only want to see pretty people. Who wants to see Pierce Brosnan, bloodied, battered and bruised, retching into the sea, covered in wounds - as he would be after the events of the novel of Dr No - when we could see him casually wipe a spot of dust from his lapel?

Personally I love the agonies that Bond goes through in the novel. Call me a sadist, but that what makes him a hero- a man I can admire and empathise with.

[Loomis]

Bond takes a hell of a lot of punishment in the books - in chapter 2 of Dr No the doctor even talks to M, warning him about Bond's physical condition. That's what makes Bond such a great character - his willpower and his mental strength to endure such pain to no personal benefit. You've so far failed to mention Dr No in which he gets very badly injured, what with his burns, bruises and terrible injuries at the hands (tentacles) of the giant squid. He gets shot in TMWTGG and FRWL, knifed in DAF, walloped in the testicles in CR, burned in Moonraker and DN, his skin partially flyed off in LALD, poisoned in FRWL, and knocked unconcious numerous times, as well as bruises in virtually every novel. He is a tough nut, which is not reflected in the films as much - he never gets shot, knifed, burned, etc. very much, which detracts from his literary persona as a man willing to go through any amount of pain to help his country.

I've just re-read "Dr No" - boy, does Bond take some punishment. Compared to what he undergoes in the Flemings and "Colonel Sun", he seems to get off extremely lightly in the Gardners and Bensons. Fleming's Bond would probably laugh contemptuously at Benson's Bond for leading "the soft life".

I know that Bond does go through various horrors in the Gardners and Bensons, but the sadism in Fleming and Amis seems genuinely, well, sadistic. In the Gardners and Bensons, it seems to be a case of just going through the motions and not delivering anything too nasty that might turn off fans of the fun-for-all-the-family Moore and Brosnan films.

Perhaps that's the problem with the continuation novels - they're just too tame. Not for a moment saying that they should all have been like "American Psycho", with graphic gore and sex on every page (in fact, to judge by "Never Dream of Dying", explicit sex scenes don't actually work in Bond novels - Fleming's description of Honey on the beach is far more erotic than Benson's frank account of something best left to the reader's imagination, which comes across as juvenile, redundant and boring); but it's just that there's nothing shocking in the works of Gardner or Benson. Fleming was terribly shocking for his time, and his books remain pretty strong stuff.

[Mister Asterix]

I've just re-read "Dr No" - boy, does Bond take some punishment. Compared to what he undergoes in the Flemings and "Colonel Sun", he seems to get off extremely lightly in the Gardners and Bensons. Fleming's Bond would probably laugh contemptuously at Benson's Bond for leading "the soft life".

I know that Bond does go through various horrors in the Gardners and Bensons, but the sadism in Fleming and Amis seems genuinely, well, sadistic. In the Gardners and Bensons, it seems to be a case of just going through the motions and not delivering anything too nasty that might turn off fans of the fun-for-all-the-family Moore and Brosnan films.

[mra]I felt the torture scene in Icebreaker, but other than that instance I agree. Fleming

[clinkeroo]

Good thread. I don't really attempt to psychoanalyze Fleming the man when looking at his torture scenes, instead I deconstruct his literature and his writing method. To offset the fantastic elements of his stories he had to use gritty reality. Fleming knew his own strengths were in his descriptive powers, especially sensory perceptions, ergo the strong reliance on sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and all things tactic. The torture scenes in the novels are almost always placed directly before the climax of the story, almost foiling the plot itself. The big torture scene is a purposeful crescendo of hyper-reality meant to balance the improbable finale, like a dominatrix Mary Poppins giving you a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. Live and Let Die is something of an exception in that it is violent throughout, but they do save the boat dragging for the big torture scene. If it were a Felix Leiter adventure, as opposed to a Bond adventure, the shark scene would have come just before the end.

I'm still of the school that the films, especially the later ones, don't really "get" Bond. If all of the torture elements were there, the Bond's would be "R" and much less marketable, plus you'd have a cripple by the end, and not a pretty poster boy who can hop in the sack with the heroine with a quip line. In Fleming, he crawls into the lady's bed, broken and bleeding.

In my eyes, Fleming had it right. If you go back to the threads that followed the release of Die Another Day, most folks, especially the Bond old timers, loved the gritty, torture-laden first half of the film, and were lukewarm about the latter half's sci-fi bits. It would be nice to dream that the folks at EON would notice that the strength of Bond is in Fleming's character and craft, rather than in the flash and gadgets.

[Triton]

The intention of Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli was to create popular entertainment for a wide age range of audiences from the James Bond novels. The James Bond of the films is much more of a fantasy than he was in the novels. I don't know how much of the brutality of the Ian Fleming novels audiences could have stomached and where's the fun?

As for the later storylines not being faithful to the original Fleming novels, I believe that the film makers became concerned that audiences would be disappointed with the rather modest plots of the Fleming novels since there was always a push to make each installment more lavish and spectacular than the last. Wouldn't audiences have been disappointed with a faithful adaption of Moonraker as follow up to The Spy Who Loved Me in 1979?

But I never believe that the film makers ever wasted the best Fleming story material. It just might have taken the film makers a little while to us it in another installment in the series.

[Loomis]

I'm still of the school that the films, especially the later ones,  don't really "get" Bond.  If all of the torture elements were there, the Bond's would be "R" and much less marketable, plus you'd have a cripple by the end, and not a pretty poster boy who can hop in the sack with the heroine with a quip line.  In Fleming, he crawls into the lady's bed, broken and bleeding.

In my eyes, Fleming had it right.  If you go back to the threads that followed the release of Die Another Day, most folks, especially the Bond old timers, loved the gritty, torture-laden first half of the film, and were lukewarm about the latter half's sci-fi bits. 

I love both halves of DIE ANOTHER DAY. Although I consider the early Connerys and ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE far superior to the likes of DAD, I'm of the opinion that a Bond film doesn't necessarily need more than a pinch of "Fleming". That "gritty, torture-laden first half" is terrific, but continuing the film in that vein would have required much more panache and risk-taking than the filmmakers were willing/able to bring to the table. Also, DAD may well have ended up too much of a "downer".

Still, they gave us a good few dollops of "Fleming" (they gave us none in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, IMO), and with that I'm satisfied, since I have all the Fleming Bond novels on my bookshelf.

And, of course, brutality alone does not a "Flemingian" Bond flick make. Plenty of other trademark elements in old Ian's fare, for instance sex, snobbery, the travelogue feel, "the element of the bizarre", grotesque villains with ludicrous world domination schemes.... I view YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and MOONRAKER as two of the more faithful-to-Fleming films, even though the former does not follow the plot of the original novel and the latter portrays 007 as a kindly old uncle figure and sends him to space.

[dajman_007]

Not meaning to sound like a sadist, but I think the torture in Bond novels is great. The one in Casino Royale has to be the worst (best).

None of the post Fleming authors really have too much good torture, though Colonel Sun had a nice scene and I loved the part in Icebreaker where Bond's stripped and dipped into the freezing water.

I haven't read all of the Fleming novels yet, but I don't think CR's torture scene is good at all, while I liked how Fleming described Bond's mindset during the torture, (and don't think I'm a gay pervert, not that there's anything wrong with that) but there was no description of what was accually going on. If I hadn't read The Facts of Death before CR, I would have been lost because Benson explained the torture, and you didn't have to read between the lines.

[ComplimentsOfSharky]

The torture scene in Casino Royale didn't leave any doubts in my mind about what actually went on...

Ian was into some weird things and his books reflect that fact.

I don't care though, he's still my hero.