23 replies to this topic

[DLibrasnow]

Interesting...and all those people said that sequence was unrealistic. Here we have people skydiving, entering the plane and pulling the plane out of a steep dive.

[stromberg]

Unrealisitic about that stunt is the fact that he first has to do a bungee jump down a huge dam to get into that factory, and when he leaves it he's suddenly at - dunno - 2000 metres altitude, which still wouldn't be high enough to pull off that stunt.

Are there really Pierce Brosnan shaped butter knives? Beats Daniel Craig shaped lollies, definitely.

[The Shark]

Interesting...and all those people said that sequence was unrealistic. Here we have people skydiving, entering the plane and pulling the plane out of a steep dive.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf_ZUPeHUVo&NR=1&feature=fvwp

Until you can find a video of someone performing that stunt - WHILE NOSEDIVING TO THE BOTTOM OF A VALLEY AND SUCCESSFULLY STEERING THE PLANE UP... My verdict remains.

[jaguar007]

My take is that if they could have done it for real, they should have done it for real instead of using a bad looking green screen.

[The Shark]

My take is that if they could have done it for real, they should have done it for real instead of using a bad looking green screen.

And if they couldn't have done it for real, ideally they should have abandoned the stunt and opted for something a little less daft.

[Single-O-Seven]

I wanted to see the info about R2D2 in Star Trek.

[Matt_13]

I wanted to see the info about R2D2 in Star Trek.

There's a couple pictures of it floating around the internet. He's definitely in there.

The bungee jump is an impressive stunt, wonderfully shot, but makes no sense in terms of narrative. There's a dam on top of a cliff? And where's the snow everywhere else?

[DaveBond21]

I wanted to see the info about R2D2 in Star Trek.

There's a couple pictures of it floating around the internet. He's definitely in there.

The bungee jump is an impressive stunt, wonderfully shot, but makes no sense in terms of narrative. There's a dam on top of a cliff? And where's the snow everywhere else?

I remember everyone laughing at the stunt in the cinema. But no-one complained about it. It was all part of the fun of a Bond film. Exactly what they'd come to see.

Mind you, some of my colleagues at work lament the end of the Brosnan era, preferring these kind of stunts to the "too-serious" Daniel Craig outings.

-

[The Shark]

The Craig-era's no better when it comes to ridiculous vfx-enhanced stunts.

[DLibrasnow]

I wanted to see the info about R2D2 in Star Trek.

There's a couple pictures of it floating around the internet. He's definitely in there.

The bungee jump is an impressive stunt, wonderfully shot, but makes no sense in terms of narrative. There's a dam on top of a cliff? And where's the snow everywhere else?

The R2-D2 shot in "Star Trek" is as the Enterprise arrives at Vulcan to find the destroyed Federation fleet. The droid is quite clearly seen.

[marktmurphy]

My take is that if they could have done it for real, they should have done it for real instead of using a bad looking green screen.

Well, they did do it for real. There is a shot or two of a real skydiver catching up with the plane; but yeah, it's hard to remember that because the silly CGI bits.

Personally I think they should have done it completely for real at altitude and then computered in some rocks behind it. This was possible at the time: they did something not dissimilar for the plane stunt in Cliffhanger and it's still impossible to spot.

[Turn]

My take is that if they could have done it for real, they should have done it for real instead of using a bad looking green screen.

And if they couldn't have done it for real, ideally they should have abandoned the stunt and opted for something a little less daft.

My thoughts exactly and what made this film get off to a rather underwhelming start, and continued throughout as an uneven event film so many seem to overrate just because it was a return after 6 years.

This was definitely a case where less is more should have applied. You had the bungee jump, the shock of Trevelyan's "death." Wouldn't Bond just catching the plane from the back and trying to get in from there have worked just as well as the flying sequence? No, they had to try and top it once more and the result speaks for itself.

Why not just catch the plane in the nick of time and go from there? There seem to be so many more options than what they came up with. The GE sequence makes the one in LTK where Bond shoots the harpoon onto the plane and pulls himself up and fights his way into it that much better in comparison.

[marktmurphy]

This was definitely a case where less is more should have applied. You had the bungee jump, the shock of Trevelyan's "death." Wouldn't Bond just catching the plane from the back and trying to get in from there have worked just as well as the flying sequence? No, they had to try and top it once more and the result speaks for itself.

Why not just catch the plane in the nick of time and go from there? There seem to be so many more options than what they came up with. The GE sequence makes the one in LTK where Bond shoots the harpoon onto the plane and pulls himself up and fights his way into it that much better in comparison.

No; the shot of Bond riding the bike over the edge in pursuit of the plane remains a fantastic image.

[AMC Hornet]

Sure, the geography doesn't work (bungee jumping into one chasm, then chasing a plane down into another one below it), but like Marktmurphy sez, the audacity of the sequence makes it memorable. It's like in TSWLM: the ski sequence was cool enough and we're expecting the parachute, then we get blindsided with the Union flag. Genius. The bungee jump was well publicized before GE's release, so I was delighted - especially after six years of waiting - to se the film crew top their opening stunt before the PTS was even over.

Granted, the studio mixing wasn't perfect, but compare it to William Shatner apparently running down the face of El Capitan when he was supposed to be falling in Star Trek V, and you won't complain any more.

As a side note, my brother used to skydive and do aerial photography, and he knows B.J. Worth, Randy Deluca, Jake Lombard and Jake Brake. In fact, he was at their drop zone in California in 1978 and, as he was the same size as whichever one was doubling for Bond (I think it was one of the Jakes) they put him in one of the hidden chute rigs while they made adjustments. So, technically, my brother was once a stand-in for Roger Moore's stand-in.

Edited by AMC Hornet, 10 September 2010 - 10:30 PM.

[jaguar007]

No; the shot of Bond riding the bike over the edge in pursuit of the plane remains a fantastic image.

yep, almost as fantastic as the sight of Bond's Aston Martin turning invisible.

[marktmurphy]

No; the shot of Bond riding the bike over the edge in pursuit of the plane remains a fantastic image.

yep, almost as fantastic as the sight of Bond's Aston Martin turning invisible.

I don't get your meaning... you think that's a bad stunt?

[jaguar007]

No; the shot of Bond riding the bike over the edge in pursuit of the plane remains a fantastic image.

yep, almost as fantastic as the sight of Bond's Aston Martin turning invisible.

I don't get your meaning... you think that's a bad stunt?

actually not so much the motorcycle jump, but the flying down to the plane and catching it (looks real bad) has always been one of the low points of the Bond series in my eye.

[marktmurphy]

I don't think smart alec comments work unless you're actually talking about the same thing that the person you respond is talking about.

[Turn]

I still think it could have worked better without the whole flying into the plane thing. Having Bond almost floating along like Superman just loses the excitement of what preceded it, at least for me.

When he is finally at the controls, desperately trying to gain momentum it adds a bit more suspense. When you finally see it rise up and over the exploding complex it's a nice recovery to send into the titles, but that flying crap always diminishes what could have been one of the all-time great teasers.

[jaguar007]

I don't think smart alec comments work unless you're actually talking about the same thing that the person you respond is talking about.

Well the jumping off the cliff directly leads to the flying down to the plane which as I mentioned, I personally feel is a low point in the franchise.

[freemo]

No; the shot of Bond riding the bike over the edge in pursuit of the plane remains a fantastic image.

I'm with you murph.

Maybe I just don't care enough about GOLDENEYE to be outraged, but I've always liked this bit. Great fun. Memorable.

I'd take it over anything in LICENCE TO KILL.

[Mr Teddy Bear]

It's quintessential over the top Bond and I can only image how awesome it would've been to see at the cinema after a 6 year gap. The whole thing could've been a bit more refined, but I love how gutsy/stupid the image is of seeing Bond on a bike following the plane off the cliff.

I'd love the return of the massive stunt sequence in a PTS.

Edited by Mr Teddy Bear, 11 September 2010 - 07:02 AM.

[oatesy]

For me it is a failure of editing and music selection rather than conception. The two stunts involved in the sequence - The motorbike being driven off the cliff in pursuit of the plane (a frenhcman called Zoot if I remember correctly), and BJ Worth's skydiving chasing the plane are superb and convincingly shot. However there was an overeliance on less convincing process shots. The sandwiching on BJ Worth's stunt between two process shots also undermines it. If they had held the two real shots slightly longer and cut the first process shot, leaving the obvious fakery only for the shots with Brosnan as he climbs into the plane it would have worked for me.

Another big problem is Eric Serra's score at this point. They were clearly trying to capture a similiar atmosphere to TSWLM pre-credits sequence where the complete absence of music on the soundtrack, only the sound of wind got gasps of awe from the audience as they focused on the craziness of Rick Sylvester's jump and then applause as the union-jack joke unfurled and it broke out into the bond theme. That worked because the stunt was a single shot and was clearly not faked. On GE Eric Serra's music for the sequence is a single held note, quite quiet, accompanied by some low-mixed sound effects again to get the audience to focus purely on the visuals, which because of the obvious process work did not stand up to scrutiny. A more boisterous music selection (for instance the second stanza of the Bond theme would probably work well here) would have been a signal to the audience that the makers were saying "Look - we know this is over the top, but it's just a bit of fun" and would have got cheers rather than the laughter.

[marktmurphy]

I don't think smart alec comments work unless you're actually talking about the same thing that the person you respond is talking about.

Well the jumping off the cliff directly leads to the flying down to the plane which as I mentioned, I personally feel is a low point in the franchise.

Yeah almost as much of a low point as Connery saying 'Bond James Bond' at the beginning of Dr No.

Obviously I'm not actually talking about the same scene as you: I just wanted to say something in a sneeringly pointless manner to make myself look clever. But y'know: that Dr No scene did eventually lead onto the double-taking pigeon in Moonraker, so I have a point.