James Bond: The Wrap-up

Wow, so it took a lot longer than expected, but we have finally gone through all the Eon-produced Bond films. Of course, as a new film is released, I will be sure to promptly review it and rank it in its proper place.  And someday I would like to review the "unofficial" Bond films, such as Never Say Never Again and 1967's Casino Royale, but I think it is a time to take a short break from our British super spy!

Watching all the films again, in order, was truly a fascinating experience.  For better or worse, the franchise changed with the times, accurately judging the latest fads that audiences were into and capitalizing on them.  Sometimes that meant you were getting lean and hungry spy thrillers, and sometimes that meant James Bond was going to space!

This flexibility is also what allowed the franchise to survive longer than any other.  Historically, most film series would chug along until the studios felt the audiences had lost interest, and then they would be put out to pasture.  Bond was different.  When Cubby Broccoli felt the audiences tuning out, he would tweak the formula to get them back in.  We see this phenomenon more often today, as old franchises are rebooted for modern sensibilities. But Eon Productions was ahead of the curve; they’ve been playing this game and playing it well for over half a century.

First things first, here is my final ranking to all the Bond films, as well as links to their individual reviews.  I don’t feel entirely confidant about the middle of the list, as some of these films really shift in their spots depending on my mood.  But I am confident about the films that are in the bottom, and even more confident about Casino Royale being at the top. It really is that terrific.

1. Casino Royale
2. Thunderball
3. From Russia With Love
4. Goldfinger
5. Skyfall
6. The Spy Who Loved Me
7. Goldeneye
8. The Living Daylights
9. Dr. No
10. Octopussy
11. For Your Eyes Only
12. Tomorrow Never Dies
13. Live and Let Die
14. License to Kill
15. Man with the Golden Gun
16. Quantum of Solace 
17. Diamonds are Forever
18. Die Another Day
19. Spectre
20. The World is Not Enough
21. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
22. Moonraker
23. You Only Live Twice
24. A View to a Kill

I also wanted to rank the actors who played Bond themselves.  I have already spent some time going into this, but thought it would be important to official rank them here at the end.  The good thing is that I feel the Bond producers have almost always hit the mark with their lead character, only having missed the target once.  I truly do not like Lazenby as Bond, even though I have liked him in other films.  The rest of the performers playing the iconic role have been excellent choices – though only two have been the perfect package.

1. Sean Connery – the first, the best, the man who made Bond what he is.  Connery perfectly embodied all the elements that Bond needed – he was ruthless and believable as both a spy and a warrior, he was charming and debonair, he could handle a good pun and was completely at home flirting with the ladies. He is universally considered the best, and for a good reason.

2. Pierce Brosnan – the man born to be Bond.  He is the only other actor who I feel really embraced all the different elements of the character.  I do feel that he took a different approach to the character, however. As mentioned in earlier reviews, I always felt that Connery was a fighter who taught himself to be a suave man of the world.  Brosnan seems to me to be the opposite.  He was a charming and roguish prep school kid who then learned how to fight.  However you come into the role, I still feel these are two actors who most embodied everything Bond could and should be.  People discount Brosnan sometimes because his movies were not the best (and two of them are close to the worst), but they should really revisit those films just to observe Brosnan himself.  He truly was born to play the role.

3. Daniel Craig – another bruiser who became debonair, like Connery.  No actor has so fully embraced the flaws in Bond’s character, especially his arrogance, as Craig has.  His Bond is not a role model.  He has deep rooted problems. Craig is dangerous and is excellent in action mode. Admittedly, I don’t think he is as strong in the lady and comedy department. While part of this is because his films are more serious, he has had some opportunities to show off Bond’s lighter side.  And he is fine at it, just not remarkable. Can he nail the one-liner like Connery, Brosnan and Moore?  Sometimes he can, but sometimes the jokes fall a bit flat. And his Bond is also missing one important component – Bond has a certain joie de vivre.  He genuinely enjoys his work.  Craig’s Bond really seems to hate it, which might be why he tries to leave MI6 every single movie. I know that is a character decision and not necessarily the fault of Craig’s performance, but on the other hand, good producers also know to play to their actor’s strengths. Creative teams see what their actor is good at and they build around it to reinforce those strengths.  And Craig’s brooding anger is a huge asset that you can build around.  It just doesn’t necessarily vibe with a character who just loves being a spy.

4. Roger Moore – talk about someone who loved being a spy! Moore was the perfect Bond for the 1970s. He could play up the absurd, and was terrific at delivering a pun.  And his flirting with the ladies was always entertaining.  Look, could anybody in real life get women to swoon the way Roger Moore’s Bond did?  No, absolutely not. It is completely unrealistic. But in the context of the insane world that Roger Moore’s Bond inhabited – with its iceberg submarines and hovercraft gondolas – yes, I absolutely believe all of these women wanted to sleep with him. Yes, the world was crazy, but Moore’s Bond was in on the joke and winked at the audience through seven movies. Could I take Moore seriously as a dangerous spy?  Not really, though he had his moments.  Were Moore’s fights sometimes clunky and not particularly exciting?  Definitely.  Moore was better at throwing a quip than a punch.  But it is hard to deny that the man was having fun, and we were having fun with him.

5. Timothy Dalton – Dalton was the polar opposite of Roger Moore. Until Daniel Craig arrived on the scene, Dalton was easily the most serious Bond, and certainly the most dangerous.  In fact, if you were to think about which Bond actor fits the mold of a real spy, I would pick Dalton hands down.  I totally believe Dalton as a Cold War superstar, whether it is assassinating KGB agents or stopping heroin smuggling in Afghanistan.  Where he faltered was the other part of Bond's character.  He wasn’t particularly funny, and his romantic scenes always seemed forced. I do understand the producers wanted to tone down Bond’s promiscuity as the headlines of the late 1980s were dominated by the AIDS crisis.  But that doesn’t change the fact that Dalton’s Bond just looks uncomfortable with the ladies.  He just doesn’t want to be there.  He’s acting like he is begrudglingly sleeping with these women because he knows it is expected of him, and he would really rather be off somewhere else, beating up bad guys.  Dalton’s Bond can be a complete stick-in-the-mud (which Craig can also be guilty of).  Though he does sometimes enjoy himself like a true Bond should (look at the sheer pleasure he gets from sliding down the side of a mountain on a cello case in The Living Daylights), that is only the case when he is in the thick of the action, which I feel is only half the equation.

6. George Lazenby – the only terrible Bond. I like all the other actors who have played Bond.  They may have some flaws, but I enjoyed all of them and thought they brought something cool to the role.  But I really do think Lazenby is awful.  And it is nothing against George Lazenby himself.  I’ve seen him in a few other movies and he is fine.  I think he is downright hilarious in his cameo appearance in Kentucky Fried Movie.  But as Bond, I just think he is dull and flat.  Maybe I can give him a pass because this was his first movie and he just didn’t know what he was doing yet.  Maybe if he had accepted that multi-picture deal, he would have grown into the part and developed into a worthy 007.  But in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, he’s just dull and I feel he brings the whole picture down with him.  I don’t believe him as a dangerous spy for a second, he’s not particularly suave or charming, he can’t really deliver a joke, his romantic scenes with Diana Rigg seem forced (apparently, the two actors didn’t like each other very much).  I will say that the man clearly knows how to throw a punch.  So I guess there’s that.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let’s go into a few other iconic Bond “elements” that I didn’t really get into during my reviews. There are a lot of pieces of the James Bond formula, aspects that have now become just as iconic as the character himself, and it would irresponsible for me not to mention them!


Best Bond Song:

The Bond films are now famous for their opening credit songs. As every new film goes into production, people wait with anticipation to see which artist has been Selected for the opening credits.  It’s a brilliant marketing ploy to build buzz, sell soundtrack CDs, and potentially bring a new audience to your movie. Seriously, how many hardcore Adele fans do you really think would have seen Skyfall if she hadn’t performed the opening number?

Just like the films themselves, the Bond songs have kept up with the popular trends of the day, and a number of huge hits have come out of the franchise. I generally prefer the brass-heavy or faster-paced songs, but the franchise is just as well known for its slower ballads.  There are some truly great songs in the canon: Diamonds are Forever, You Know My Name, Skyfall, Goldeneye and A View to a Kill - the last of which gets a special nod because the first 20 seconds are the coolest James Bond has ever sounded.  The whole song is good, but those first 20 seconds...brilliant!

But in the end, these songs (except for the aforementioned 20 seconds) are just honorable mentions. There are two true titans of the franchise, two songs are so good they need to be separated from the rest of the pack. These songs are not just the best Bond songs, but should be considered among the best songs written for any film ever.

Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die is so dynamic and thrilling that it was used as the soundtrack for the entire film, and was somehow perfectly appropriate for both the love and action scenes.

And then there is Goldfinger – the perfect Bond song - full of towering brass and featuring the titanic vocals of Shirley Bassey.  This was also the first time that the song was dedicated to the villain of the film, which I think is just hilarious.


Opening Title Sequence:

For better or worse, the franchise has also become famous for its elaborately designed opening credit sequences, popularized by the late, great Maurice Binder.  Stylized and always heavily symbolic, these opening title sequences ranged from octopus tentacles engulfing the screen to footage of the characters projected on gold-painted belly dancers (and yes, it is just as weird as it sounds).  The title sequences were probably most famous (and infamous) during the Roger Moore years when they truly went off the rails – often featuring blue-tinted nude silhouettes dancing, bouncing on trampolines, swinging off of giant gun barrels (with the guns often serving as the ultimate phallic symbol). They are bizarre and often unintentionally funny, but I wouldn’t call them good, necessarily.

For the best title sequence, I am going to have to go with Goldeneye – it features all the hallmarks of the Bond title sequences (tinted colors and silhouetted dancers), but they are dancing on top of crumbling monuments of Cold War Russia – and in some cases, smashing these monuments apart with giant hammers.  What is a perfect symbol of the uncertain era that Bond is about to enter – a chaotic new world where it isn’t always as clear who the good guys and bad guys are.  It’s pretty brilliant.

Best Pre-Credits Sequence:

Bond was also the first franchise to feature a pre-credits tease, a little mini adventure for audiences to enjoy before the film actually gets started.  Sometimes these pre-credit sequences are connected to the main plot, sometimes they are completely random.  But you can always count on a Bond film to start with one.  There have been a number of truly superb sequences, including the stylized black & white scene in Casino Royale where a newly minted 007 gets his first kills.  But for my money, you have to go back to Goldfinger for the best.  This short adventure is Bond at his most iconic – everything we know about Bond’s character and the formula that has served is his character so well for decades is featured in this tight 5-minute sequence.

Bond sneaks into the villain’s base in a wet suit, plants some explosives and then peels off his wet suit to reveal a tuxedo underneath so he can go to a swanky night club nearby.  We have some sneaky spy work, a few well-choreographed fights and even some spare time to make out with the local belly dancer.  And who can forget Bond giving one of his best Bond puns.  After electrocuting a bad guy at the end of a fight, he looks around in disgust, mutters “shocking” to himself and walks out.  If there is a sequence that manages to literally define everything Bond is about in under 5 minutes, this is it.


Best Bond Villain:

I know the answer is supposed to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld.  As the leader of SPECTRE, Blofeld is Bond’s ultimate nemesis and has plagued him for multiple films.  But honestly, I feel the franchise has always sort of missed the mark with Blofeld.  He was at his most terrifying and powerful when he was not seen, when he was just a faceless, intimidating voice in a Board Room full of villains.  As soon as he started appearing in the films, he somehow became less scary.  Whether it was Telly Savalas, Charles Gray, Donald Pleasance or Christoph Waltz, I never thought Blofeld was a truly credible threat.  Instead, Blofeld’s henchmen were always more menacing – Dr. No, Red Grant, Fiona Volpe, even Mr. White and Silva in the Craig movies (following the logic that both worked for SPECTRE).  But they all pale in comparison to the greatest henchman in the Bond movies, and maybe in any movie: the unforgettable Oddjob! 

I have loved Oddjob, played by Hawaiian actor (and Olympic medialist!) Harold Sakata, ever since I saw him crush those golf balls with his bare hands in Goldfinger.  The guy doesn’t have a line of dialogue, but his silence, with that “I am better than you” smirk permanently plastered on his face, is sublimely and menacingly perfect.  I love that he has an unbelievable weapon (a killer hat he throws at people) that is somehow made believable by his badassness.  And I love that Bond truly cannot defeat him.  He just can’t.  Oddjob mops the floor with him.  In order to win, Bond has to cheat.  I’ve always loved that.  So for me, this really isn’t a difficult choice.  Oddjob is my favorite villain, hands down.


Best Bond Stunt: 

The franchise has also become famous for its stunt work.  Lately, thanks to the vast improvements in digital effects, Bond's stunts have become a bit less flashy.  But back in the day, there was a lot of buzz about the next big stunt - whether it was the record setting bungie jump in Goldeneye or the 18-wheel tractor trailer that pops a wheelie in License to Kill...or the entire winter sequence in For Your Eyes Only that is more imaginative and stunt-laden than most chase scenes today.

But there are a few amazing sequences that rise to the top.  Here are my picks for top three stunts in Bond history below:

Coming in at #3, is The Spy Who Loved Me.  While the franchise had employed a lot of fantastic stunt work in the past, this is the film where they really said, "hey, audiences, guess what?  We are about to blow your mind!"  And when James Bond skies off that mountaintop (another record-breaking moment for the franchise) and deploys his Union Jack parachute, audiences were given one of the most iconic stunts in movie history.  And minds were indeed blown!

Then at #2 - we have what is easily the best car stunt ever, featured in Man with the Golden Gun.  This stunt is important in movie history because it was the first stunt to ever be conceived and calculated with a computer program.  There was some debate among my friends about whether this stunt was real or not, but I assure you it was.  This was an actual car with an actual driver, a driver who thought he was going to die, and who refused to do a second take when the first take miraculously went off without a hitch.  So enjoy this awesome car stunt.  I urge you to watch this with no sound, because the stupid slide whistle pretty much ruins the whole thing!

And now, at #1, the best stunt in James Bond history!  The cargo net fight in The Living Daylights.  Sure, in the tighter shots, this is Timothy Dalton fighting in a studio.  But for the wide shots...those are literally two stunt men hanging off the back of a cargo plane...this is an incredibly dangerous and awe-inspiring stunt once you realize what those stunt men are actually doing and how life-threatening it is...well, I'll just let the video do the rest of the talking:

Best Bond Girl:

Last but not least, the Bond Girl has become an enduring and iconic part of the franchise. The Bond Girl has become such a key ingredient of the franchise that there is actually an entire documentary about the phenomenon (Bond Girls are Forever).  It’s an exclusive club – though in fairness, these actresses were often given nothing to do except to look pretty and get rescued.  There is certainly a lot of sexism in these films, and watching how many of the female characters are treated, especially in the older films, can at times be uncomfortable.  But there are also a lot of empowered and progressive Bond Girls – badasses like Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), Xenia Onatopp (Framke Janssen), Tracy (Diana Rigg), and Agent Mai (Michelle Yeoh) who go toe-to-toe with Bond and serve as equal partners or powerful villains.

So who is the best Bond Girl? I know I am supposed to say Ursula Andress in Dr. No.  She was the first, and she has that famous entrance as she walks out of the ocean with a knife in her belt, like some sort of armed Venus de Milo.  It's an iconic moment, and rightly so.  And for that beach walk alone, she probably should go near the top of the list.  But I would never put her at No.1 because after that iconic entrance, she kinda…doesn’t do anything.  She’s just there, serving no purpose and adding nothing of value (except for her looks, of course).  So who would I pick in her place?
 
It's also tough to choose just one because the Good Bond Girls and Bad Bond Girls are so different and hard to compare to each other.  So I will pick a favorite in each of the three categories.

For the Bad Bond Girl, I love Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) from Thunderball, one of the few truly dangerous villains in Bond’s rogue’s gallery. One could argue that she is actually smarter than Bond; she’s almost always one step ahead of him.

For the Good Bond Girl, I would say Vesper Lynn (Eva Green) is terrific in Casino Royale; she is the one Bond Girl that I honestly believed the character could fall in love with.  Her arc in that film is positively heart-breaking.

But wait, I hear you say, you mentioned three categories. Was that a typo?  Definitely not!  There is of course the important third category, the Bond Girl That I Would Most Likely Fall In Love With...and that is without a doubt Solitaire from Live and Let Die, played by Jane Seymour.  Because it is Jane Seymour.  And...well, yeah, there really isn't much else to say about that.  It's Jane Seymour.

So there we go.  That’s it.  This series of reviews is over!  This has been a fun experiment, and while I hope you enjoyed revisiting this franchise as much as I did.

But I’ll be honest, I do look forward to reviewing other films again!

Until next time…

Die Another Day

So now at last we come to the end of Pierce Brosnan's mixed tenure as James Bond.  Today's review is Die Another Day, or as I like to call it, "The Tale of Two Bonds."

"It was the best of Bonds, it was the worst of Bonds."

Yeah, let's just say this is a weird one.  Die Another Day is loathed by most people; many even consider among the worst of the franchise, if not THE worst of the franchise.  An emphasis on explosions, dodgy CGI and invisible cars were all symptoms of everything that was considered bad about the Brosnan era.  And half of the film really is that bad.

Unfortunately, it is the second half of the film, so people leave the movie with the bad taste in their mouths.  But the judgement on this film is not really fair, because the first half is actually not that bad. Actually it's pretty darn good.

And to be honest, Eon Productions needed Die Another Day to be good. Not only was the film the 20th in the franchise (which is quite a milestone), but 2002 was the 40th anniversary of Dr. No, the first film in the series, and the 50th anniversary of when Ian Fleming published the first novel.  The best way to celebrate such an achievement would be to go big and create one of the best films of the franchise.  Die Another Day even pays homage to all every single film that came before it - ranging from cute gadget cameos (Thunderball's jet pack) to Halle Berry's memorable recreation of Ursula Andress' first appearance in Dr. No. At one point, Bond even picks up a book called "A Field Guide to Birds of the West Indies."  Ian Fleming, an avid birdwatcher, quite enjoyed the book - so much so that he decided to borrow the author's name...that name was James Bond.

Even separate from the multiple anniversaries, there was a tremendous amount of pressure to make Die Another Day good.   The World is Not Enough was financially successful, but the criticism from both fans and critics was harsh and there were lessons to be learned.  There were also actors like Vin Diesel who declared the age of the well-tailored super spy were done.  It was a new generation and Bond wasn't awesome enough. He put his money where his mouth was by producing and starring in the extreme sports/super agent movie, xXx, which literally kills off a tuxedo-clad secret agent in its opening scene. xXx was a big hit, and I remember hearing rumblings that maybe Bond was no longer "cool enough."

So, yeah, I think the pressure was on to make Die Another Day the biggest and the best.

The movie gets started on a strong note and finds Bond going undercover as an arms dealer in North Korea.  He plans to assassinate a rogue military chief named Colonel Moon (Will Yun Lee) and his henchman Zao (Rick Yune), but somehow Zao is tipped off that the arms dealer is really a British agent and a fierce gun battle ensues. Immediately the action sensibilities of the director are felt, with Lee Tamahori (The Edge) delivering a knockout opening fight that is well-staged and exciting.  I felt like we were back in good hands again after the bland action of the previous film.  Bond gets his man, killing the colonel and wounding Zao, but is captured by the North Korean army.  And then something interesting happens.  Bond doesn't escape, nor is he rescued.  He is disavowed by MI6, thrown into a dark prison cell, and tortured with scorpions for over a year.

That was unexpected!  And already infinitely more interesting than anything in the previous film. Bond is eventually released in a prisoner exchange, and then goes off the grid to find out who betrayed him and avenge himself of Zao. The travelogue nature of the franchise takes him to Hong Kong (for a fantastic sequence with his Chinese intelligence counterparts), then to Cuba, where he meets American agent Jinx (Halle Berry), and then back to England, where the trail leads to billionaire philanthropist Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) and his assistant Miranda Frost (Rosemund Pike).

There is a lot of exciting material in the first half of the Die Another Day.  It may not be perfect - Madonna's title song is atrocious and the scene where Bond and Jinx first meet is a terrible attempt at sexual flirtation that just comes across as creepy.  But all in all, we have some exciting material in the first half: Bond's anger over being disavowed, that Hong Kong sequence, Bond actually doing genuine spy stuff in Cuba, and an over-the-top but very entertaining sword fight. While watching the movie, a friend of mine who had never seen it, turned to me and said, "This is actually pretty good.  Why does everybody hate this movie?"

And then we hit Iceland.  And everything changes.

EVERYTHING.

Get ready for some spoilers below while I rant about the things I don't like about this movie. And it starts with that invisible car.  Look, I like the Bond gadgets.  There are some really cool ones out there, and it is an important part of the Bond formula.  But the invisible car brought us deep into futuristic sci fi territory and in a very stupid way.  And things get worse from there. 

Bond goes to a hotel made entirely of ice to see a demonstration of Gustav Grave's new satellite.  An ice hotel sounds cool, but it's really not.  He tries to sneak around to see what Graves is really up to, but needs to be careful because Miranda Frost is watching him closely.  Plus, Jinx is staying at the hotel on her own secret mission, though she basically just spends her time finding new ways of getting herself captured.  Bond eventually rescues her during a fight that involves over a dozen lasers in what was an attempt at honoring Goldfinger's laser sequence, but turns into an exercise in hyperactive stupidity.

It is almost like the first half and second half of the film were made by different directors, or as if the team didn't have faith in the first half of the movie and doubled down on what they thought was "cool" in the second half.  So the film is full of moments where the film speed is cranked up because that is what the "cool" movies were doing.  And let's have a whole lot of CGI!  Who cares if Bond is known for its awesome real-life stunts.  Kids today think CGI is "cool!"   I know, let's have Bond surf on a tsunami wave!!!!!  That will be amazingly "cool!"  For the record, even Pierce Brosnan thought surfing on the tsunami wave was ridiculous...

It's just bizarre because the first half of the film is so solid, while the second half is just a mess.  I didn't even get to the worse part where it is revealed that Gustav Graves is really the rogue North Korean soldier Colonel Moon!  That's right, in an extreme example of Hollywood whitewashing, he had an operation to literally make himself white.

The finale of the film includes a giant laser, an electric exo-skeleton battle suit, some of the worst one-liners of the series and a random appearance by Michael Madsen whose tiny role in this film amounts to sounding grumpy, barking orders and getting put in his place by Judi Dench.

Look, is the second half of the film all bad?  I guess there are small moments that work. I like Rosamund Pike, who I think is a solid Bond girl with a great accent and fun sword-fighting skills.  I just wish she were in a better movie.  Because by the time the credits roll, you really can feel it in the pit of your stomach, Die Another Day is just awful...and a terrible way for Brosnan to end his tenure as the character.

That said, at the time, I was still rooting for Die Another Day to beat the xXx in the U.S. box office.  Bond is the once and future king of the action film, and I didn't appreciate Vin Diesel's trash talking.  Die Another Day was a big hit, and made $160 million in the box office. XXX made $143 million.  So while that is not a beat down, I hope it at least showed Vin Diesel that Bond was still "cool" enough to win the box office war.

RANKINGS:

So where do I put Die Another Day?  What is fair?  It's too easy to say, "well, the first half is good and the second half is bad, so put it in the middle."  I can't do that because the second half is SO bad, it drags the whole movie down with it. It's an albatross that unfairly still weighs down people's opinion of Pierce Brosnan's tenure even to this day.  There is enough in this movie that I like that I just can't in good conscience put it with the worst of the worst, but I will put it right above that.  I think right under the stupid, but entertaining Diamonds are Forever is a good place for it...

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia with Love
3. Goldfinger
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
5. Goldeneye
6. The Living Daylights
7. Dr. No
8. Octopussy
9. For Your Eyes Only
10. Tomorrow Never Dies
11. Live and Let Die
12. License to Kill
13. Man with the Golden Gun
14. Diamonds are Forever
15. Die Another Day
16. The World is Not Enough
17. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
18. Moonraker
19. You Only Live Twice
20. A View to a Kill

MVP:

Of course, I am tempted to say Rosemund Pike, whose icy performance makes for a memorable Bond girl.  But I might be biased because I just happen to like Rosemund Pike, in general!  I wish I could say Halle Berry, who is a great actress, but this film goes out of its way to give her the worst dialogue imaginable.  No, in the end, the true MVP is still Pierce Brosnan in his final hurrah as the character.  He is excellent throughout the film and always professional - even during the most embarrassing moments.  People look back on the Brosnan years with disdain now.  They were all hits, but they were products of an over explosive and indulgent time period, and even though they were all successful at the time, fans generally roll their eyes at the movies now. It's not fair because I think that without a doubt Brosnan was the best Bond since Connery.  He was born for the role.  The movies just let him down.  With the exception of Goldeneye, they never lived up to the potential that he brought to the role.  And there is no better example of that than Die Another Day, a film with so much promise that utterly wastes an MVP performance by Brosnan.

BEST LINE:

It's all in the delivery...a fun one-liner delivered in the classic John Cleese style.

James Bond: You know, you're cleverer than you look.

Q: Still, better than looking cleverer than you are.


TRIVIA:

Following the success of Die Another Day, there were plans for a spinoff movie featuring Halle Berry's Jinx character.  Unfortunately, the studios pulled the plug after a few other female-led action films like Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle failed at the box office.  That's a shame.  While I would have preferred a spin-off with Michelle Yeoh's Wai Lin from Tomorrow Never Dies, I do think Barry could have carried the film.  Any problems with the character in this movie were not her fault, so I would have liked for her to have a second chance!

The World is Not Enough

The World is Not Enough

In 1995, Goldeneye resurrected the 007 franchise, and the next film Tomorrow Never Dies showed that it would be alive and well for the long haul.  The world belonged to James Bond once again.  I wish I could make some cool pun here about the world not being enough for Bond because he was about to ascend to greater heights.  But alas, the opposite is true because everything was about to come crashing down.  The world, so to speak, was about to collapse.

Creatively, at least.  I'll just lead with the fact that The World is Not Enough was a huge hit, and the most financially successful film to that point (not adjusting for inflation, of course).  The studios had to have been happy with the film's performance, but that doesn't change the fact that very few people actually liked it.  The World is Not Enough is a stinker, plain and simple - a dull, plodding film with multiple missed opportunities that could have truly elevated it into something cool.

But let's not dwell on the bad quite yet.  This movie has so few good qualities that I can actually list them easily!  Here we go:

The basic premise is actually solid.  After wealthy oilman Sir Robert King is assassinated, Bond has to solve the murder and also protect King's daughter Elektra (Sophie Marceau, Braveheart).  The number one suspect is a vicious anarchist named Renard who had kidnapped Elektra years before. Elektra managed to escape and Renard was subsequently tracked down by British agents and shot in the head.  He somehow survived and was now coming back for revenge on his former captive.  It sounds fairly basic, but on paper it's a solid plot, especially when you tie in the interesting politics behind Sir Robert King's attempts to build a pipeline in Azerbaijan.  There is some intriguing material here that they fail to capitalize on (more on that later).

What else is good?  Pierce Brosnan is good, but then he always is.

The title song, by Garbage, is a great song.

The cinematography is nice.  Adrian Biddle (who shot V for Vendetta and Aliens, and was Oscar nominated for Thelma and Louise) is a true pro and the film looks great.

There is a heckuva good scene late in the film, which I'll also come back to later.

What else is good?  Out of all his Bond films, this one gives Pierce Brosnan his best wardrobe.  He has some incredible suits in this movie, especially the white suit with the blue shirt that he wears during the climactic fight.  Wait a second, is this movie so bad that I am more interested in Brosnan's tailor than I am in what is happening onscreen?

Well, yes.  Yes, it is.  I can't think of anything else I liked in this movie.  And I am trying really hard. To be fair, it's not like the rest of it is outright awful.  It never approaches the stench of A View to a Kill, for example, but there just isn't that much to like.

I think the problem starts with the director, Michael Apted, who is actually a fine filmmaker.  He directed the fascinating Up series of documentaries and several solid dramas, including Nell, Coal Miner's Daughter, and Gorillas in the Mist.  If I were a producing a drama, he'd be on my list of potential directors. But I would be leery about hiring him for an action film, much less a Bond film. And as expected, he seems out of his element here.  The action scenes are just completely stale, and lacking of any sort of momentum, tension or excitement.  They are all just BLAH, as if no one had any interest in making them exciting at all.  Which doesn't surprise me because Apted seems to have zero interest in action films (this being the only one on his filmography).  When I watch The World is Not Enough, I just keep scratching my head because I can't figure out why they hired this guy.  I can only imagine Eon brought him on board to help with the female characters - but if he is able to add some degree of strength to Elektra, he completely fails with Dr. Christmas Jones, who is one of the worst Bond Girls of all time.

Let's move on to her for a moment, shall we?  About halfway through the movie, James Bond runs into a nuclear physicist named Dr. Christmas Jones, played by Denise Richards (Wild Things).  Look, no one should take Bond films too seriously.  These movies are often absurd, but this casting decision just jumped the shark.  And this is not me being a film snob.  When Richards was cast as a nuclear physicist, the entire world gasped a collective "WTF?!"  Maybe in the crazy days of Roger Moore, she could have pulled his off.  But The World is Not Enough is a darker film, and for the most part attempting to be more serious, and Richards just looks lost.

In the end, I think the biggest problem with The World is Not Enough is that it is a film full of missed opportunities.  SPOILER TIME!  The villain Renard has some real potential.  When he was shot in the head, the bullet severed the nerves that cause him to feel pain.  So you can hit him, punch him, stab him, shoot him...makes no difference to him.  He can't feel a thing.  That is a neat concept, and a worthy character trait for a Bond baddie, and the movie does...absolutely nothing with it.  There are so many cool things they could have done with this idea.  Instead, the only time they really go into any depth into Renard's special ability is in badly written love scene full of psychoanalytical malarky, where he laments that while he physically feels nothing, emotionally he still feels SOOOO much for the love of his life, Elektra King.

Yep, that's right.  The woman he kidnapped, Elektra King, who actually turned the Renard over to her side by seducing him and then cooking up this master plan to kill her own father, is the true villain of the film.  This is an interesting idea - there are hints, a few throw-away lines, about hating her father.  Her mother had been from Azerbaijan, and Elektra always hated the fact that her father seemed to be stealing the legacy of her mother's people, an interesting statement on British Imperialism.  There is a lot more they could have done with this idea - killing her father (a symbolic representative of the Western world that she feels raped her homeland) was only the first step in striking at Europe itself.  That is a goal that could have made Elektra truly scary, but it is a motivation only lightly hinted at.  Instead, her primary goals seem to involve blowing up rival pipelines and destroying Istanbul - oh, and most importantly, getting back at daddy for not doing enough when she was kidnapped.  Can't forget that.  That's her character's defining trait, according to this movie, not all the interesting politics and the struggle over her cultural heritage.  Sophie Marceau does what she can, but she isn't particularly well-written, and there is only so much she can do with the role.  You do end up liking her performance by the end of the film...but I think it is because of the strength of one fantastic scene, and also because even in her worst moments, she is miles beyond Denise Richards.

What else was a wasted opportunity?  Why did they have to kill Robbie Coltrane's Zukovsky?  This was his second appearance (after a memorable turn in Goldeneye), and he could have really been a fun recurring character.  Instead, he's killed off, and in ridiculous fashion, too.  What a sad ending to a character with so much potential.

You know what?  I'm done.  I can complain about this movie for hours.  Look, it's not as bad as Bond at its worst.  But it's also not any good.  Ugh, I'm done.  All the good will Brosnan engendered because of Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies was at risk.  For me, at least, a lot was riding on his next film.  Would Die Another Day deliver?

RANKINGS:

What to do, what to do.  I really don't like this movie, but it's definitely not as bad as the worst of the worst of the franchise, though it is close.  Maybe it's the best of the worst?  If that is the case, I should put it right below Diamonds are Forever, which isn't a particularly good film, but one that I still enjoy...

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia with Love
3. Goldfinger
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
5. Goldeneye
6. The Living Daylights
7. Dr. No
8. Octopussy
9. For Your Eyes Only
10. Tomorrow Never Dies
11. Live and Let Die
12. License to Kill
13. Man with the Golden Gun
14. Diamonds are Forever
15. The World is Not Enough
16. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
17. Moonraker
18. You Only Live Twice
19. A View to a Kill


MVP:

This is an easy one.  I could say Brosnan, who puts in his usually reliable performance, or Garbage, who performed a really terrific Bond song.  But instead, I am going to give the award to a specific scene - the one truly great scene in the film.  Near the end of the movie, Bond is captured and strapped to an old Byzantine torture device, one that will eventually break his neck as Elektra slowly turns a wheel - which she does, while straddling Bond very suggestively.  It's an odd sequence - sensual yet dangerous, sexy yet deeply disturbing...the more you think about it, the more uncomfortable you are about what Elektra King is doing to Bond.  Is she trying to arouse him while she is killing him?  It's a strange scene, and absolutely one of the only moments in the film that crackles with any sort of energy or excitement.  It's well-written, well-directed, and well-acted by Marceau and Brosnan, and it's easily the best part of the movie.  Shame Zukovsky shows up and ruins the scene and then dies a ridiculously death that sends the entire film spiraling down from really bad to almost unbearable to watch.

BEST LINE:

Here is a nice pun in the aforementioned torture scene...and what Bond intends as his last words before Elektra turns the screw one final time to break his neck.

James Bond: You meant nothing to me.  Just one...last...screw.


TRIVIA:

When the real MI6 learned that the film would shoot a scene around their headquarters, they immediately moved to block it because of the obvious security concerns.  But the nation's Foreign Secretary Robin Cook stepped in, saying, "After all Bond has done for Britain, this is the least we could do for Bond."

I thought that was pretty cool!

Tomorrow Never Dies

Tomorrow Never Dies

Sometimes I wonder if Goldeneye should be viewed as a minor miracle. After License to Kill, the franchise seemed lost. I’ve already written how that movie is unfairly blamed for the series’ near demise when the culprits were really a combination of bad luck, legal woes and the fact that many of the principal creative forces either moved onto other projects, retired or passed away. But Goldeneye brought Bond roaring back. The film was a critical and box office hit and got people excited about the character again. With Brosnan a huge hit with audiences and young enough for a good run of films, it looked like smooth sailing was ahead for the iconic franchise.

Unfortunately, I believe a strange period of stagnation was about to kick in. Every film under Brosnan’s tenure was very successful, but time has not been kind to them. It’s sad to say the films never lived up to the potential that Brosnan had, but it's true. And most people I ask look back on those films and say, “Ugh, Brosnan. Those films were terrible…except for Goldeneye, of course.” Which is actually not fair to Tomorrow Never Dies, which is actually not that bad. The cracks are beginning to form, but overall it is a perfectly fine entry to the franchise.

Ambitious media mogul Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce, Game of Thrones) is launching a new 24-hour news network, and needs a great hook to snag audiences away from the other networks right out of the gate. What better news story to grab viewers’ attention than a war?  He is able to get his hands on tech expert Mr. Gupta who has a ‘Global Positioning System’ and then starts wreaking havoc with Chinese and British military guidance systems in order to increase tensions between the two world powers. For good measure, he sinks a British warship and makes it appear as if the Chinese launched the attack. The ‘Chinese massacre of British sailors’ is a good story that explodes in the press, but British intelligence is immediately suspicious because Carver’s news outlet had the scoop hours before any other station heard about it.  Bond is set in to investigate – a search that is at times both helped and hindered by a Chinese agent Wai Lin (the always super cool Michelle Yeoh, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).

In general, there isn’t that much to say about this movie. It is mostly perfectly fine. The acting is generally good. Brosnan and Yeoh are both great, and share a fun chemistry together.   It is interesting to point out that Agent Wai Lin almost got her own spinoff movie, and I would have welcomed that. Yeoh is a terrific Bond girl – looking comfortable with the spy work and certainly kickass in battle. Some of my friends complained about Jonathan Pryce as the villain, but I thought he was fun as the crazed media mogul. And I am happy the franchise tried something different, poking fun at our obsessive “everything now and all the time” media culture instead of settling for your standard megalomaniacal villain bent on world conquest. The same media obsession that drives Carver in this movie has only grown worse thanks to the explosion of the internet and social media, so let’s give the movie some credit for playing with that idea two decades ago.

The rest of the team does an admirable job. After flirting with a synthesized score in Goldeneye, the producers hired David Arnold (Stargate) who gave us a traditional, brass-blaring, old school Bond score. It's definitely good stuff. The movie looks really good, too, with Oscar-winning Director of Photography Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood) behind the cameras. Director Roger Spottiswood (The Sixth Day) does a fine job balancing the humor and action, and he actually stages one of the better sequences of the Brosnan years – when Brosnan is trapped by a master assassin named Dr. Kaufman (Vincent Schiavelli) in a hotel room while a small army of thugs try to break into his car in the neighboring garage. A perfect combination of thrilling, suspenseful and genuinely funny, it is hands down the best sequence of the film.

Unfortunately, there are just as many things to complain about in Tomorrow Never Dies. After the encounter with Dr. Kaufman, the movie heads downhill. It’s not a steep dip, but certainly a steady decline. There is a motorcycle chase through Saigon which is entertaining enough, but should have been much better considering they are being chased by a helicopter. And then the movie continues to get steadily worse and worse until it devolves into your standard fare action movie by the end…and not even really a good one. It’s more like one of those direct-to-video flicks that Steven Seagal and Jean Claude van Damme are churning out these days. It’s just…unremarkable. I’m not opposed to big action finales in the Bond films, but this one just smacks of the “we need to be bigger and louder” mentality that has plagued a lot of action films in the 1990s. I suppose it is another example of Bond changing with the times, which has always been the franchise’s strength. But while the explosions kept the character relevant (and may have put butts in the theaters), I think the films took a creative step backwards. The spy work was becoming more and more subpar (and occasionally even bordering on ridiculous) and was turning into just a means to get to the next explosion.

There are a few other things to complain about – Teri Hatcher is wasted as the second Bond girl, Carver’s wife Paris, and the super big thug of the film, Stamper (Gotz Otto) is about as bland a super thug as you can get. But all in all, I don’t want to sound too negative. I really should emphasize that Tomorrow Never Dies is actually fairly entertaining; but we are beginning to see the cracks that are about to form into the earthquakes that are The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day. Ugh, I hate those movies.

Oh, I can't end the review without mentioning one of my favorite things!!!  I need to comment on how the film dates itself.  I love that Mr. Gupta's secret weapon is a Global Positioning System...as in a GPS.  Every time he unlocks his special box and pulls out this cumbersome device, I look over at my phone and think, "wow, with my phone, I can reroute the guidance systems on Chinese jets.  Who knew my iPhone had that much power!  This isn't a criticism of the movie, and I am sure that in 1997, we were all in awe of this magical GPS device.  But damn, if it doesn't date the film when we're watching it now. It's actually pretty funny!

RANKINGS:

This is a bit tricky, actually.  And full disclosure, I think nostalgia is going to interfere with an objective opinion on this one.  I know that this movie belongs in the middle of the pack, but where is the question.  Is Tomorrow Never Dies a better film than Octopussy, For Your Eyes Only and Live and Let Die?  Yeah, it very well could be.  But I would definitely watch those three before I put in Tomorrow Never Dies, so that makes the ranking tricky.  I think in the end, I will put it right above Live and Let Die.  There are so many things I love about Roger Moore's debut, but unfortunately there is also so much stupidity in there that I could not in good conscience put it above Tomorrow Never Dies, whose sins are less...well, let's call them painful.  So Brosnan's second effort will come in at #10.

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia with Love
3. Goldfinger
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
5. Goldeneye
6. The Living Daylights
7. Dr. No
8. Octopussy
9. For Your Eyes Only
10. Tomorrow Never Dies
11. Live and Let Die
12. License to Kill
13. Man with the Golden Gun
14. Diamonds are Forever
15. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
16. Moonraker
17. You Only Live Twice
18. A View to a Kill

MVP:
This is an easy one. While I really liked the addition of Wai Lin to the franchise and wished she had joined Bond in a few more adventures, this is still Brosnan’s party.  As I mentioned in my Goldeneye review, he is really the first Bond since Connery who is believable in all the character traits that personify the character.  The man was simply born to play Bond. And he is terrific here. It's an easy pick for MVP.

BEST LINE:

Miss Moneypenny: You always were a cunning linguist, James.

TRIVIA:

I couldn't pick just one!  Tomorrow Never Dies has a bunch of fun trivia connected to it, and I really couldn't decide between these three.

1. Did you know Anthony Hopkins was actually cast as Elliot Carver?  But the production was so chaotic, with script rewrites happening daily, that he walked after only a few days on the production. He opted to make Mask of Zorro instead, directed ironically by Goldeneye's helmer, Martin Campbell.  Good choice, too.  I love Mask of Zorro and think Hopkins is fantastic in that role!

2. Before filming the motorcycle chase, the director pulled Pierce Brosnan aside and told him he was supposed to drive the bike.  He then pulled Michelle Yeoh aside and told her the same thing. The result can be seen on camera, as both agents run to the motorcycle and try to climb on at the same time.  Their bumbling confusion is real, and reinforced the idea of Agents Bond and Mai Lin always trying to outdo each other.  It also ended up being one of the more amusing parts of the movie.

3. For the first time in movie history, a film made its budget back entirely in product placements! There were so many sponsorships in Tomorrow Never Dies that the producers made a profit before the film even hit theaters.  That's pretty fascinating, and shows the power of the Bond Brand.  Can you believe the franchise was this powerful when less than 10 years earlier the industry was ready to declare it dead?

Goldeneye

Goldeneye

"Bond is back!"  So proclaimed headlines across the country when Goldeneye was released in 1995. It had been 6 years since the last film of the franchise, License to Kill, had flamed out at the box office.  The following years were tortuous for Bond fans, as production on the next sequel was stalled because of legal woes with the studio, MGM. The franchise was hurt still more with the departures of Bond director John Glen and actor Timothy Dalton, and the deaths of Bond stalwarts, scriptwriter Richard Maibaum and title artist Maurice Binder.  But the worst blow of all came with the illness of producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, the patriarch of the franchise who had guided the films since the beginning.  It was beginning to look like Bond, the father of the modern action hero, was going to be gone for good.

Eventually, MGM's legal woes were dealt with and Broccoli's Eon Productions was able to get back into the business of making movies. And it was time for a complete makeover.  Cubby Broccoli was too sick to serve as anything other than a consulting producer, but he left the franchise in the capable hands of his daughter Barbara and stepson, Michael Wilson. There must have been a lot of doubt in the months leading up to production.  Would Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson be able to recreate the magic?  Did it even matter? Maybe nobody cared about Bond anymore.  The character only really seemed relevant during the Cold War.  He was now a man out of his time, a secret knight of a British Empire that no longer existed.  As an action hero, he had been eclipsed by the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis.  What there a point to resurrecting the franchise?

The answer is a resounding yes.  With determination and perseverance, Broccoli and Wilson showed that Bond wasn't only still relevant, but still deserved to be in the upper echelon of badasses. Maybe Ian Fleming's Bond wasn't relevant in the new post-Glastnost world, but Eon Productions' Bond sure as hell would be.  I think part of the reason Goldeneye is so successful is because it tackles this lack of relevance head-on. In the film, Bond is called a dinosaur - both because of his old school sexist attitudes and because he might not have a relevant place in the new world order.  The former is a pretty brilliant move because it allows Bond to be Bond while having the rest of the world either look down on him (like the new M) or amusingly roll their eyes at his antics (like the new Moneypenny). And the latter - the idea of trying to find one's place in the post-Cold War world - becomes a major theme in the film for multiple characters.

There is a lot to admire about Goldeneye, but let's start with the crew.  Director Martin Campbell was a solid director who had already proved he could handle both action (No Escape) and tense thrillers (the original Edge of Darkness).  The script, by Jeffrey Caine (Oscar-nominated for The Constant Gardener) and Bruce Feirstein (Tomorrow Never Dies) was witty, exciting and genuinely original for a franchise that had been around for three decades by that point. And I have to give major credit to Broccoli and Wilson for one major crew change - a MAJOR upgrade in the overall casting.

Let's be honest, Bond films were not known for their acting. Of course, it was important to cast Bond and his main villain well, and occasionally, the Bond girl (though for every Diana Rigg, there is a Tanya Roberts).  But generally, this was not a franchise for thespians. And then Goldeneye brings on Pierce Brosnan, Judi Dench, Sean Bean, Robbie Coltrane, Tchéky Karyo, Joe Don Baker, Famke Janssen, Izabella Scorupso and an amusing blink and you'll miss it cameo from Minnie Driver.  That's a major cast upgrade and they all come to play. There is not a weak link in this group!

But I ramble.  Let's move into story, shall we?   There might be some spoilers here so be warned! After a top secret stealth helicopter goes missing and a Russian research center is inexplicably destroyed, Bond moves in to investigate, only to find himself facing one of his oldest friends, a long thought dead agent named Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean).  Trevelyan has access to a nuclear satellite called Goldeneye and Bond has to stop him before he uses the satellite's power to destroy London. The story is entertaining throughout, and includes some great classic Bond moments, like a world record-breaking bungie jump, a thrilling tank chase through St. Petersburg, and a memorable romp in a sauna.

Let's focus on that sauna scene for a second, where Bond is seduced/attacked by the evil Bond girl, Xenia Onatopp, played with vibrant gusto by Famke Janssen.  This scene shows the Bond character at his best - he is charming, sexy, funny, ruthless and probably a little too over confident.  And what a great fight with Onatopp, a powerful woman who gets off on killing people (literally). Her preferred method of assassinating people is by straddling them with her thighs and squeezing them to death, a process she enjoys...er, maybe a little too much.  She is hands down one of the best Bond girls of the entire series, and she is just as sexy and ruthless as Bond, and absolutely bat shit crazy (even to the other villains).  She is matched with a great performance by her villainous boss, played by Sean Bean.  For one of the few times in the series, we are blessed with a villain who is definitely Bond's equal.

Which leads me to some of my criticisms of the film, which also has to start with the villains.  At this point, the franchise no longer had the rights to the Blofeld character (as detailed on in my For Your Eyes Only review).  So Bond needed a new arch-nemesis to pester him film after film.  And here, we have a golden opportunity to achieve that with an interesting character who can actually give Bond a run for his money, a former spy with a fascinating back story and a believable grudge against England, and played by an exciting actor, Sean Bean, who can hold his own on-screen against the charismatic Brosnan. And instead of using this character to fill the gap left by Blofeld's absence, they kill him off at the end of the film (and in an incredibly lame way, by the way).  Maybe this isn't so much of a flaw as it is a missed opportunity, but it continues to frustrate me every time I see the film.

Other problems with the film could also be considered pet peeves. As a fan of the crazy stunts in the Bond films, I loathe the scene where Bond jumps off a cliff after a plunging airplane, somehow falling faster than the plane, catching up to it, climbing in, running to the cockpit and then taking control of the plan to fly away and escape. Hell no.  That's just too much.  Even if the Bond stunts were sometimes hard to believe, you still had stunt teams figuring this stuff out.  It was real people doing real crazy stuff. We get a taste of the stunt team's expertise with the record-setting bungie jump in the movie's opening scene, but then we go off the rails into special effects land with the cliff dive. In this scene, the production team just went the easy route and used special effects to create an utterly unbelievable moment...something so ridiculous that it took me out of the movie...and these are the types of shenanigans that would only grow worse and worse throughout Brosnan's tenure, eventually leading to the invisible car and tsunami surfing in Die Another Day. That pain begins here, with the stupid cliff jump, folks!

So the film isn't perfect (I didn't even get into the atrocious score by Eric Serra!), but does it matter? Goldeneye overall is a really good film, and a terrific inaugural outing for Brosnan and Campbell.  Bond was back, and he was better than ever.  There was hope for the future!

RANKINGS:

This one is tough. I really admire Goldeneye, but I'm not sure I would put it in the upper echelon.  I think it will fit nicely in with Dalton's debut, The Living Daylights.  In some ways, The Living Daylights is better - it's plot is more intriguing and the fights are better.  But I think I have to give the edge to Goldeneye.  The big differences are the cast (especially Brosnan and Janssen) and because I admire how the film cleverly updates Bond and makes him relevant in the post-Cold War world. Most importantly, this is the film that saved the franchise.  And it deserves some major points for that!

So here are the updated rankings:

1. Thunderball
2. From Russia with Love
3. Goldfinger
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
5. Goldeneye
6. The Living Daylights
7. Dr. No
8. Octopussy
9. For Your Eyes Only
10. Live and Let Die
11. License to Kill
12. Man with the Golden Gun
13. Diamonds are Forever
14. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
15. Moonraker
16. You Only Live Twice
17. A View to a Kill

MVP:
We really haven't talked about the biggest change in the franchise - that there was a new Bond in the lead here.  So let's get into it, because Brosnan is the clear MVP, but had as much to do with revitalizing the franchise as anybody else.  He was young, fresh faced, and energetic.  And most importantly, he seemed to effectively embody all the different aspects of Bond's persona.  For the first time since Connery, we had someone who was utterly believable flirting and fighting, someone who could be intense when the occasion called for it, and then flip on a dime and throw out a joke immediately after.  He is definitely different from Sean Connery - I can imagine Brosnan as an upper class, prep school kid with oodles of charm and confidence who then joined the Secret Service and learned to fight.  He started with the polish and then learned to be gritty from there as he needed to.  I kind of have the opposite impression with Connery - who I imagine as rough and tumble neighborhood badass who learned how to be charming and elegant. But both of them are unique as Bonds in that they really have all the check boxes filled.  Would Brosnan ever be as good as Connery? Doubtful - Connery was the first and will always be the best.  But what Goldeneye showed us is that Brosnan had that potential.  He is terrific in this movie, and gets the easy MVP.


BEST LINE:

Bond: No, no, no.  No more foreplay.

TRIVIA:
Casting Bond has to be one of the most difficult jobs in Hollywood.  With the world's most iconic action hero, the amount of scrutiny and publicity that you have to deal with is massive.  Everyone has an opinion.  And one of the miracles of the Bond series is that for the most part, they've done a great job of casting the part. As far as I am concerned, there has only been one misfire, George Lazenby, though a lot of people even disagree with me on that.  Cubby Broccoli had his eye on Pierce Brosnan for a long time.  In the 1980s, Brosnan was the star of a hit show called Remington Steele, in which he played a thief who was very Bond-like.  It looked like the show was about to be canceled, and Brosnan would be available to play the role.  He was thrilled.  Bond was his dream role; it was the part he was hoping his career would lead to.  Meetings with Broccoli went well, the media was buzzing, and it looked like he was about to get the part. And then the network, probably trying to cash in on all the media attention, renewed Remington Steele, forcing Brosnan to return to the show. Brosnan lost the part, and the mantle was taken up by Timothy Dalton (though the quest to hire Dalton is also an interesting story as I wrote here!). Brosnan was distraught, but fate (and Bond) were not done with him!

I also have an Honorable Mention bit of trivia.  Remember that amazing sauna fight I mentioned? Well, the fighting/making out got so intense that Famke Janssen broke a rib!  The moment is when Brosnan slams Xenia into the marble wall.  Janssen told him to really go for it, especially since they thought the walls were padded. Despite the pain, she kept going with the scene like nothing had happened, and that is the shot we see in the film!

BOND...JAMES BOND

Bond is my franchise.  Let me just get that out there.  It was something I realized around the time of Casino Royale (2006).  As a child of the 1980s, I grew up in a time when franchises were really beginning to explode, and I was raised on a healthy diet of Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones and James Bond.  Since then, I have seen all of these franchises hit some dark days.  In fact, in some ways, I'm not sure I want those franchises to survive.  I think many of us would agree that the Star Wars prequels and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull almost killed Star Wars and Indiana Jones, respectively (even if they did make a lot of money).  We'll see what Disney has in store for these series moving forward, but my expectations are not that high.  And Star Trek, while I like the cast and found the first reboot to be genuinely entertaining, was not really Star Trek to me.  It felt more like J.J. Abrams' demo reel to get the Star Wars gig.

So why do I prefer Bond to those others?  Longevity and consistency.  Look, there is not a single James Bond film that is as good the original Star Wars Trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.  No Bond film even comes close to hitting the triumphant peaks that those films reached.  And yet, the character and the formula of Bond endures.  And unlike other franchises, there doesn't seem to be a lot of second guessing.  If Eon Productions makes a bad Bond film, they shrug their shoulders, fix what isn't working, and then move on to the next one.  There is comfort in that consistency.

There is also the matter of Bond himself.  I hear Disney is rebooting Indiana Jones with a new actor in the lead.  That's not gonna work.  Indiana Jones is Harrison Ford.  Bond is bigger than any of the actors who played him.  He has entered the territory of Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, and other icons who are far more important than the actors who are playing them.  I think that is an important point that needs to be made.

As far as I'm concerned, the Indiana Jones series ended with The Last Crusade.  Star Wars only had three films that ended in 1983, and Star Trek was ruined by the Next Generation's cast moving to the big screen (three out of those four films were garbage, and even the good one, First Contact, was only okay).

Nope.  It's official. Bond is my franchise.

One of the longest continuing film series in history, James Bond was the literary creation of Ian Fleming, a British author who had spent time as a naval intelligence officer in World War 2.  While his war service was nowhere near as adventurous as Bond's career, it did give the books a bit of authenticity.  I always felt that Bond was the spy Fleming wished he could have been, but that might just be me reading into it too much!   Either way, the books were hits, and it didn't take long for Hollywood to come calling.

The first Bond adaptation was the Casino Royale episode of the Climax TV show.  It featured Barry Nelson as American (not British) spy James Bond and weaselly Peter Lorre as the villainous Le Chiffre.  I think most people just consider Casino Royale as an interesting side note and mark the true beginning of Bond's cinematic career when producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli teamed up in 1962 to make Dr. No.  And that is where I will begin my reviews.

I plan on watching all these films and reviewing them in order, and ranking them as I go.  It will be fascinating to watch the series change as the decades pass, always riding a wild roller coaster from fairly serious and realistic to over-the-top special effects bonanzas, and then back again, always staying current by cashing in on current trends (including even Blaxploitation, Kung Fu and the Star Wars films) and continually riding on the timeless coattails of one of the most entertaining characters in movie history.  This is going to be fun.

So let's get going!