19 replies to this topic

[thecasinoroyale]

20 years ago today 'GoldenEye' was released in the US, and soon to follow with the UK and rest of the world.
 
It reinvigorated the series, pulling it back from the brink of death after legal battles robbed Timothy Dalton of his 3rd 007 outing with a 6 year haitus.
 
It showed that James Bond could survive in a post-Cold War world and introduced us to Pierce Brosnan as our new charming, sophisticated and dangerous 007 along with a new female M in the guise of Dame Judi Dench, preparing for a 17 year run herself in the role alongside 2 incarnations of James Bond.
 
We also got what is widely considered one of the best video games of all time!
 
Thank you, 'GoldenEye'!

[Professor Pi]

Definitely an important film in the franchise, and the first to make $100M in the states in its run.  Also gave us one of the better Bond women in Natalya Simonova, and one of the more interesting characters in a while, Xenia Onatopp, as well as probably the most over the top cinematic death for Sean Bean.  The tank chase was vintage Bond.  Daniel Kleinman debuted his titles with some of the best in the series.  Like Spy and Casino Royale, it was a movie whose success saved the franchise.  People forget this now in the age of Daniel Craig, but back then Pierce Brosnan's Bond was touted as the role he was born to play.  It brought Martin Campbell to the series who would redefine it a decade later.  It was also the last production Cubby Broccoli had a hand in. 

[thecasinoroyale]

Xenia Onatopp was, and still is, one of the best (albeit very few) villainesses in the series and there hasn't been one since.

 

A perfect name with a cheeky slice of innuendo, but also a great performance and very dangerous and deadly for all the right reasons.

[glidrose]

Dear GoldenEye,

 

I didn't like you then and I still don't like you now.

 

You are easily the most overrated film in the series.

 

Brosnan is fantastic. Shame the rest of you is so dowdy.

 

Your younger brother Tomorrow Never Dies is everything you failed to be.

 

Best wishes,

 

A curmudgeon who likes whizzing in people's popcorn.

[Turn]

Glidrose, I agree with all except for the Brosnan part. Never did find him the ultimate successor most have. He was adequate then and adequate now. Nothing against him, just nothing that really set him apart when everyone else was anointing him.

 

It was very unsettling having waited a long 6 years for a new Bond film only to be underwhelmed. Nice to know I wasn't alone.
 

[freemo]

While I actually agree point for point with Glidrose's amusingly frank letter, GOLDENEYE has always had a large and dedicated legion of devotees, and I'm surpised a bigger deal hasn't been made out of this day of days. Really, there should be dancing in the streets.

 

Come on, GOLDENEYEites! Bring on the parade. Bring on the celebration. Bring on the marching band. The dancing girls. The virgin scarifice. Let us sit upon the ground and tell stories of the time we first saw GOLDENEYE. How GOLDENEYE touched our lives. What GOLDENEYE means to us. There must be someone here who named their first-born child "Goldeneye". Stories, please.

[DaveBond21]

Back in 1992, I assumed that the last Bond movie ever had been made.

 

When Goldeneye came around, I was so excited (I was 20 years old), and I loved every minute.

 

It is such an important movie in the franchise.

[thecasinoroyale]

Exactly - love it or hate it, as you say DaveBond, it's one of the most important in the franchise for saving 007 in the 90s.

[sharpshooter]

I'll always consider Goldeneye a good Bond movie. I'm sure the general public have that perception too. Hard to believe it's been 20 years since its release. Tempus fugit indeed.

[Professor Pi]

Dear GoldenEye,

 

I didn't like you then and I still don't like you now.

 

You are easily the most overrated film in the series.

 

Brosnan is fantastic. Shame the rest of you is so dowdy.

 

Your younger brother Tomorrow Never Dies is everything you failed to be.

 

Best wishes,

 

A curmudgeon who likes whizzing in people's popcorn.

 

I kind of agree with you.  I can praise GoldenEye for saving the franchise commercially, but I have some criticisms artistically of it.

 

First off, I never liked the 006 teamwork thing.  Bond works alone.  Who's this guy he's supposedly friends with and saying "buy me a pint?"  Bond drinks hard liquor, not beer (I know, Craig's Bond now drinks beer.)  But Bond is not a buddy action movie (correction--unless she's hot and badass!)

 

I never liked how it handled Bond resigning from Licence to Kill.  Did old M give him his job back?  Or new M?  Would have preferred Judi's M taking over, and Tanner telling her "there's only one man for the mission."

 

And the line "Your predecessor kept cognac in the cabinet?"  So Brosnan is the same as Moore's Bond?  This one line ruins any attempts to explain continuity with the Judi Dench M of Craig's Bond.  GE can't be after CR because Bond knows about her predecessor!  GE/TND/TWINE/DAD has to be viewed as its own series, and yet TWINE's references to OHMSS and DAD's references to every Bond movie!

 

Plus, the PTS set "nine years" earlier than 1995, while an inside joke to Pierce's original casting as Bond, wipes out TLD/LTK from the canon.  "I don't want you going off on some revenge mission."--M.  "Never"--Bond.  Umm...the last Bond movie?

 

Bond escaping helicopter with ejection seat was a ripoff from Die Hard 2 where John McClane does the same thing.

 

Music score was disappointing.

 

GoldenEye does have its merits (as I noted earlier in this post), but at the end of the day, I do prefer Tomorrow Never Dies.  Still, without GoldenEye, there may never have been another Bond film after LTK.

[Surrie]

I have to pipe up here and say that I was 5 when GE was released and not much older when the N64 game came out. It was the first Bond movie I had ever seen/remember seeing and from that moment I was hooked. I have watched the film over and over, and it's that film alone that made me want to find out everything there was to know about Bond. Growing up I eventually purchased all the original novels, and then the novels from the continuation authors, I saved hard to buy the complete DVD set (at the time was Dr No - Die Another Day), play all of the Playstation games, and searched Waterstones at the weekends to get my hands on the latest non-fiction franchise related Bond book I hadn't got yet... all of this despite being told "James Bond is not for girls"... 

 

I will forever remain a 'superfan' of the franchise and I do have to recognise GE for this. 

[Professor Pi]

Awesome, Surrie.  Like The Spy Who Loved Me, GoldenEye introduced another generation to 007.  I'm not without some nostalgia for GE.  Another of its strong points is its script writers' handling of computer hacking (I'm looking at you, Skyfall!) 

 

Welcome to Bond fandom! 

[Surrie]

I suppose marking the 20th Anniversary of GE yesterday - could actually have marked my years as a fan too! For a 25 year old that's not bad going...!

[DaveBond21]

I had a quick chat with work colleagues, many of whom are only casual fans or not at all, and nearly all of them remember the tank chase!

[freemo]

Good point. I also got to thinking about the tank chase after seeing this thread yesterday.

 

Will SPECTRE's action scenes - the car chase in Rome, the plane stuff - last in the memory in the way that the tank chase and the (much maligned but, go on, admit it, awesome) freefall stunt of GOLDENEYE has? Can't really see it myself.

[sharpshooter]

Will SPECTRE's action scenes - the car chase in Rome, the plane stuff - last in the memory in the way that the tank chase and the (much maligned but, go on, admit it, awesome) freefall stunt of GOLDENEYE has? Can't really see it myself.

I like SPECTRE but have to agree. But I guess iconic sequences are hard to create. They're like gold dust. 

[larrythefatcat]

Xenia Onatopp was, and still is, one of the best (albeit very few) villainesses in the series and there hasn't been one since.

 

A perfect name with a cheeky slice of innuendo, but also a great performance and very dangerous and deadly for all the right reasons.

 

Do you associate 'The World is Not Enough' and 'Die Another Day' with traumatic feelings and have you repressed the majority of those films? I think you've missed a few villainesses since Xenia...

 

And 'Casino Royale' *does* have a villain-aligned female that almost kills Bond. Not that I'd count her as a "villainess."

[graric]

 

Dear GoldenEye,

 

I didn't like you then and I still don't like you now.

 

You are easily the most overrated film in the series.

 

Brosnan is fantastic. Shame the rest of you is so dowdy.

 

Your younger brother Tomorrow Never Dies is everything you failed to be.

 

Best wishes,

 

A curmudgeon who likes whizzing in people's popcorn.

 

I kind of agree with you.  I can praise GoldenEye for saving the franchise commercially, but I have some criticisms artistically of it.

 

First off, I never liked the 006 teamwork thing.  Bond works alone.  Who's this guy he's supposedly friends with and saying "buy me a pint?"  Bond drinks hard liquor, not beer (I know, Craig's Bond now drinks beer.)  But Bond is not a buddy action movie (correction--unless she's hot and badass!)

 

I never liked how it handled Bond resigning from Licence to Kill.  Did old M give him his job back?  Or new M?  Would have preferred Judi's M taking over, and Tanner telling her "there's only one man for the mission."

 

And the line "Your predecessor kept cognac in the cabinet?"  So Brosnan is the same as Moore's Bond?  This one line ruins any attempts to explain continuity with the Judi Dench M of Craig's Bond.  GE can't be after CR because Bond knows about her predecessor!  GE/TND/TWINE/DAD has to be viewed as its own series, and yet TWINE's references to OHMSS and DAD's references to every Bond movie!

 

 

....Except Bond having an occasional beer dates back to the Fleming novels, and the film Dr. No when Connery has a Red Stripe beer, so it is not like this is a trait that was only introduced with Craig's Bond.
(And in any case the 'buy me a pint' line was only ever intended to show the casual banter between Bond and Alec.)

I don't mind having other 00's appear in a Bond movie from time to time, as it does help make the world of MI6 feel alittle bigger than just M/ Moneypenny/ Q/ Tanner. (And the friendship between the two 00's, is slightly in keeping with what is implied in Fleming's novels. Because while Bond is the onlly 00 that every appears on page, he talks fondly of the other two members of the section, and even talks about wagers they have going which would suggest a certain degree of friendship between them.)

And CR is a reboot of the series (a fact which was emphasised at the time, and is even more obvious now with the release of Spectre), so I don't have any issues with Goldeneye's M not lining up with CR's M, as they are not the same character.

(Having said all that Goldeneye is a Bond film that while I like, I don't really love as much as some for one reason in particular: the music. While some of it works, by and large it just doesn't sound like a Bond film and is fairly dull...which fairly fatal in a Bond film.)

[Professor Pi]

Yes, Bond drinks beer in some of the films (I do remember the Red Stripe in Dr. No,) but usually at the behest of someone else and showing respect to his host.  He's not gonna say "No thanks, I only drink vodka martinis."  Timothy Dalton's Bond even said "same" after Pam Bouvier orders a Bud Light with lime, but she's the one who orders first.  But if he's drinking alone or ordering, it's usually vodka.  Contrast Pierce in Tomorrow Never Dies waiting for Paris where he's having a vodka versus Craig in Skyfall in Turkey where he's drinking a Heineken (or in SPECTRE at L'American.)   Fleming even had a passage about Bond's feelings on beer.  Beer back then was of the Budweiser/Coors variety.  Granted, beer culture has changed and today's James Bond would probably be as much into it as anybody else.

 

The SPECTRE snow plane chase reminded me a bit of Goldeneye's tank chase, especially with Madeleine looking through the back window as Bond is chasing them.  And I believe Bond smashes through pallets of Heineken beer in that one, rather than drinking it!

[thecasinoroyale]

Xenia Onatopp was, and still is, one of the best (albeit very few) villainesses in the series and there hasn't been one since.

 
Do you associate 'The World is Not Enough' and 'Die Another Day' with traumatic feelings and have you repressed the majority of those films? I think you've missed a few villainesses since Xenia...

Haha of course not! I did say there have been very few. Granted, Elektra was good but Miranda Frost was laughable. Xenia stands way atop both of them for memorable reasons; name, motives, ways of killing etc.

We need one like her again, not just a bad female with a gun. Xenia had everything a male Bond villain has to be memorable and she was a pleasure to watch.