27 replies to this topic

[bondfisher007]

Which bond film is the most realistic one ever made so far?

Edited by Dustin, 20 August 2014 - 09:08 PM.

[AMC Hornet]

Perhaps a poll should be attached.

Failing that, I'd say it was down to a choice between:

 

Thunderball

OHMSS

LALD

FYEO

TLD

LTK

CR

&

QOS

[Call Billy Bob]

Agree on FYEO, the two Daltons and CR.

[Hansen]

I guess it mostly depends on how realistic the vilain's plot is

Not sure about Thunderball & OHMSS

I would list

FRWL

LALD

TMWGG

FYEO

OP

TLD

LTK

CR

No Brosnan, one Connery, lots of Moore (strange, no ?) and Dalton

[RedsBaron]

 While no Bond movie has been truly realistic, I would probably vote for From Russia With Love. Its gadgets were feasible, wanting to obtain a Russian decoding machine made sense, and there wasn't too much fantastic moments requiring the suspension of belief.

 My runners up for a realistic Bond film would include Thunderball, For Your Eyes Only, The Living Daylights, License To Kill, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.

 Most unrealistic would include You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, A View To A Kill, Die Another Day and Skyfall. 

[Turn]

Wasn't CR rooted in Fleming's experience in bankrupting some Nazi during the war or am I off on that?

[AMC Hornet]

Wasn't CR rooted in Fleming's experience in bankrupting some Nazi during the war or am I off on that?

Attempt, rather than experience, and I think the agents were only funded with German money, rather than being actual Nazis.

 

Fleming made a better story of it eventually, but naturally the interesting aspects of the true story get played up in productions like Spymaker.

[Leo R.]

Maybe a points system would help:

- Lots of guns fire at Bond and they all miss: -5 points

- Bond gets injured: + 5 points

- Current world politics event: + 5

- Actual living people shown: + 5

- Fancyful gadget shown that became available in the real world later (e.g. GPS in Goldfinger): + 5

- Bond kisses girl within 10 seconds after meeting her for the first time: -5

- Bond kisses girl half his age: -5

- Double-taking pigeon: -10

- Ice hockey score board: -10

- Bond makes wise-ass comment about nerdy field of interest (lepidoptery, orchids): -10

 

...and so on.

Edited by Leo R., 22 August 2014 - 12:17 PM.

[Call Billy Bob]

Maybe a points system would help:

- Lots of guns fire at Bond and they all miss: -5 points

- Bond gets injured: + 5 points

- Current world politics event: + 5

- Actual living people shown: + 5

- Fancyful gadget shown that became available in the real world later (e.g. GPS in Goldfinger): + 5

- Lots of guns fire at Bond and they all miss: -5

- Bond kisses girl within 10 seconds after meeting her for the first time: -5

- Bond kisses girl half his age: -5

- Double-taking pigeon: -10

- Ice hockey score board: -10

- Bond makes wise-ass comment about nerdy field of interest (lepidoptery, orchids): -10

 

...and so on.

- Slide whistle sound effect during a car flip stunt: -100

[Major Tallon]

Hi, Turn,

 

The story about Fleming's inspiration for Casino Royale is found in many places, but you might want to look at Chapter 5 of Lycett's biography.  Fleming and Admiral Godfrey were at the Palacio Hotel in Estoril, Portugal (seen in the film of OHMSS) in May, 1941.  Fleming spent an evening at the casino, gambling against some Portuguese businessmen, and lost.  As he was leaving, Fleming mused that he might have imagined that his opponents were German secret agents and that Fleming  had beaten them out of their operational funds.  No Germans were actually involved, but Fleming later recalled his musings about the evening and made them the basis for his first novel. 

[Dustin]

Poll added.

[Dustin]

FRWL, OHMSS and FYEO seem the most 'realistic' to me. OHMSS particularly as for example a highly contagious disease today might easily be turned into a weapon by someone with access to, say, twenty or fifty volunteers and the funds to distribute these persons over the three or four biggest cities of his respective targets. Alone the threat would cause serious concern with the respective governments.

[Call Billy Bob]

I struggled to choose between CR and FYEO, but Casino took the cake.

Playing the stock market, losing huge amounts of money and winning back the money playing poker > KGB and MI6 race to obtain submarine communication system

[Syndicate]

IF you are asking a Bond film being as realistic to real spy world, like The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, A Most Wanted Man, The Hunt For Red October, The Siege, Clear And Present Danger, The Assignment, No Way Out, The Fourth Protocol and Tinker Tailor soldier Spy. That is hard, since it mostly a super spy type. and Goldfinger is the blueprint  for the super spy theme and formula.

[Bourbon Woman]

LTK is quite realistic. It contains plenty of action movie cliches, but the plot and characters are earthbound. Franz Sanchez is actually more subdued than the real-life Pablo Escobar, and the plot is a simple and plausible revenge story. It's probably the only Bond film that I could imagine taking place in our universe.

 

FRWL is pretty realistic, except for a few superspy indulgences like the gypsy fight and SPECTRE island. 

 

FYEO has a fairly realistic plot and characters, but it also contains a lot of Mooresque extravagances such as the Volkswagen chase, Q dressed as an Orthodox priest, etc.

 

I'm surprised that some people think of OHMSS as realistic. The mere presence of Blofeld tips it toward the fantastic Venture Bros side of the spectrum, not to mention Bond going incognito in a kilt, and a psychadelic sci-fi scheme in which a bevy of international beauties are hypnotized. That's as cartoony as anything in YOLT. 

[Grard Bond]

I've chosen From Russia with love. There's nothing outlandish, or over the top, or a realy crazy action scene, in that movie, everything is down to earth. So for me that's the most realistic movie of the lot.

[Guy Haines]

I'd list:

 

FRWL - by Bond standards straightforward espionage. And KGB "honey-traps" were commonplace then, even though in the film Tania is actually working, without knowing it, for SPECTRE.

 

LALD - drug peddling is all too realistic, and that's what Mr Big/Dr Kananga was up to.

 

TLD - almost co-incided with the "Iran-Contra" affair when certain US government officials were dealing with Iran and the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. One or two reviewers at the time picked up on vague similarities. (Complicated plot, villains dealing with one group to support something different.)

 

LTK - more drug dealing, and the preferred method of smuggling - drugs chemically converted to be shipped in oil tankers - is no more far fetched than accounts of real drug barons using aircraft and even submarines to do the job.

 

TWINE - call me old fashioned, but at the time - post Soviet era chaos - the idea of a Russian submarine being essentially "bought" to act as a submersible nuclear bomb didn't seem that far fetched at me.

 

CR - creating an "accident" to manipulate the stock market isn't that implausible. On the other hand, if MI6 wanted to finish Le Chiffre off, would it gamble it all on a game of poker?

 

QoS - governments bought by shadowy figures who are themselves involved in high finance, big business and governments? Water shortages deliberately created?

Quite plausible.

 

I'd have included SF on the basis of the cyber-terrorism angle, if that's what SF was about, but really it isn't. Silva could have been any kind of evil genius using whatever method - he was really interested in destroying M.

[plankattack]

I'm going to say FRWL, OHMSS, FYEO, OP (can't believe I just typed that), LTD, LTK, CR, QoS. Which standing back seems about right - half the series has its feet, or least a part of a foot, planted in reality, and the rest are capers.

 

Giving a free pass to all the action scenes (because if you're going to evaluate each moment of each film, then only FRWL really has much claim), all the others have some element of OTT about them. Whether it's a gadget that just doesn't exist, or something like a spectacular villain's lair, Bonds are by their very being, unrealistic.

 

Am surprised to see TB getting love in the thread. As much as I like the book and the film, water-cannon toting Astons, jetpacks, aren't really my idea of reality. Most unrealistic is Bond's complete lack of urgency.......apparently he didn't hear the "Don't" only the "spend your time sitting about" in his individual briefing with M! Otherwise how else to explain scuba diving pick-ups, hanging out at the casino, going for lunch, chilling at the junkanoo, all while Miami and Washington tick-tock towards nuclear destruction.

 

Or perhaps TB is realistic in that Bond is just another poorly motivated, borderline incompetent civil servant......

 

 

Apologies, civil servants out there  

[Guy Haines]

Regarding Thunderball - there was an incident in the 1960s in which a USAF bomber aircraft reportedly "lost" a nuclear bomb (Indeed, having just Googled the subject it turns out several devices were "lost" over the decades, allegedly!) That adds a semblance of plausibility. But a nuclear weapon lost in an accident is one thing - an RAF V-bomber being deliberately hi-jacked is something else.

 

In his book "The James Bond Dossier", Kingsley Amis writes about certain plots from the novels which seem impossible, but if they weren't this is how they would happen. I'd put Thunderball, book and film, in that category. It in no way reduced my enjoyment of both, though.

[Turn]

plankattack, I don't agree Bond sits around with a lack of urgency in TB. The pick-up underwater was part of his plan and he suspects Largo, so naturally he has to get close to him at places like the casino and Palmyra to confirm his suspicions.

 

As much as I love TB, if anything is to criticized as unrealistic it's the whole coincidence thing that hangs throughout the film, especially with Bond just happening to be at Shrublands the same time the SPECTRE plot unfolds.

 

Even though it's on the other side of the discussion of realism, YOLT also has Bond not exactly in overdrive with a ticking clock, some of it due to Tiger's actions or lack thereof. Talking about just two more days training to become a ninja and the whole wedding ceremony and all that to stay undercover. There had to be another way of infiltrating the area without all of that.  

[dtuba]

Believe it or not, I picked QOS.

Privatization of natural and mineral resources is actually a real problem in many 3rd world countries (Pepsi has been a notorious offender in this capacity over the years, in places like India). However it does not make for a very compelling plot for a Bond villain.

 

That and the condition of the Aston Martin after the PTS car chase. That is what every single car in every chase scene in every movie would look like. Dusty, battered, crumpled and barely driveable.

 

And no, I'm not going to comment on the free falling scene.

Edited by dtuba, 23 August 2014 - 10:50 PM.

[tdalton]

None of them are really realistic.  

 

The ones that come the closest are From Russia With Love, For Your Eyes Only, Licence to Kill, Casino Royale, and Quantum of Solace, but none of them are what I'd call realistic.

[Janus Assassin]

I'm gonna go with YOLT, DAF, TSWLM, MR and DAD

[Mr_Wint]

Am surprised to see TB getting love in the thread. As much as I like the book and the film, water-cannon toting Astons, jetpacks, aren't really my idea of reality. Most unrealistic is Bond's complete lack of urgency.......apparently he didn't hear the "Don't" only the "spend your time sitting about" in his individual briefing with M! Otherwise how else to explain scuba diving pick-ups, hanging out at the casino, going for lunch, chilling at the junkanoo, all while Miami and Washington tick-tock towards nuclear destruction.
 
Or perhaps TB is realistic in that Bond is just another poorly motivated, borderline incompetent civil servant......

The most unrealistic part of TB is that the MI-6 staff don't believe Bond is on to something, despite the fact that the villains have tried to kill him a few hundred times already.

"I thought 007 was on to something."
"He obviously has a highly developed sense of... shall we say drama?"
"Pity he didn't make sure before he shouted the odds."

Of course, to be fair, Bond finds the plane just after this conversation. But still, it is obvious that he is on to something before that! Or did all the other 00-agents go through the same thing?

[Mr_Wint]

Also, Bond should have mentioned that, on his way to M, Count Lippe tried to kill him but was interrupted by a motorcycle equipped with rockets that blew the car into pieces. I know, it just another afternoon in Bond's life. But small details like this are so valuable when you are faced with a nuclear threat.

[SecretAgentFan]

 

Am surprised to see TB getting love in the thread. As much as I like the book and the film, water-cannon toting Astons, jetpacks, aren't really my idea of reality. Most unrealistic is Bond's complete lack of urgency.......apparently he didn't hear the "Don't" only the "spend your time sitting about" in his individual briefing with M! Otherwise how else to explain scuba diving pick-ups, hanging out at the casino, going for lunch, chilling at the junkanoo, all while Miami and Washington tick-tock towards nuclear destruction.
 
Or perhaps TB is realistic in that Bond is just another poorly motivated, borderline incompetent civil servant......

The most unrealistic part of TB is that the MI-6 staff don't believe Bond is on to something, despite the fact that the villains have tried to kill him a few hundred times already.

"I thought 007 was on to something."
"He obviously has a highly developed sense of... shall we say drama?"
"Pity he didn't make sure before he shouted the odds."

Of course, to be fair, Bond finds the plane just after this conversation. But still, it is obvious that he is on to something before that! Or did all the other 00-agents go through the same thing?

 

 

Oh, you know how it is with these 00s - always getting themselves into trouble, screwing with married women, angering the locals.  No wonder that people try to off them.

[Professor Pi]

 

Oh, you know how it is with these 00s - always getting themselves into trouble, screwing with married women, angering the locals.  No wonder that people try to off them.

 

 

"Jealous husbands, humiliated tailors, outraged chefs.  The list is endless!"

[thecasinoroyale]

'Licence To Kill' for me. And all the better for it.

 

Grounded realism, gritty and relevant references to culture and society and characters that do away with the fantastical and strips it down for a very realistic feel. Hence why probably it didn't work for audiences back then - because it was TOO real.