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Moore definitely knew what he was doing. That's the first time I've seen him accused of taking Bond too seriously anywhere.
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Sep 5, 2018 14:42
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In fairness, I may be misunderstanding and Basebf555 is suggesting that the movies (i.e. the scripts) are taking themselves too seriously, Moore notwithstanding. That's a different debate and I feel like it probably depends on the individual movie.
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Sep 5, 2018 14:54
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edit: poo poo, I totally misunderstood the post. Nvm.
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Sep 5, 2018 14:59
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Wheat Loaf posted:In fairness, I may be misunderstanding and Basebf555 is suggesting that the movies (i.e. the scripts) are taking themselves too seriously, Moore notwithstanding. That's a different debate and I feel like it probably depends on the individual movie. Yea I wasn't really making a specific assignment of blame to Moore alone, there's definitely something wrong with the scripts in most of his movies. The pacing is off in several of them, they drag really badly, and it's been brought here before but the tone is all over the place. I think Moore lacks physicality, but even that isn't down to just Moore, a lot of hands are involved in creating a Bond fight scene. But for me he's always been the Bond that I believe the least when he's beating up goons or doing a crazy stunt or whatever.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:14
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I've been watching through the Moore Bonds myself lately and I think part of the problem is that by time you get to like For Your Eyes Only at least he really does seem just too old for the role. I also watched Never Say Never Again the other day and while that isn't like a great movie or whatever they at least try to address Connery's age by playing up the fact that he's something of a relic from an older generation.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:22
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At least in For Your Eyes Only, Bond declines to sleep with that teenage ice skater, that's something. I remember reading how Moore became increasingly embarrassed in the sequels and would try to lobby for less inappropriate casting with the Bond girls.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:25
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Oh, yeah, one of the final straws was quite notoriously making A View to a Kill when he was about 57 and discovering that he wasn't just older than Tanya Roberts - he was older than Tanya Roberts's mother. To be honestly, I really like Moore as James Bond, but I can't help but feel he was too old in 1973, never mind in 1985.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:28
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I don't think that they ever really quite knew how to write Bond after Connery left. There's also the natural inclination to make each movie bigger or better than the one before it and you can't keep doing that and achieve any real longevity or consistency.
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Sep 5, 2018 16:03
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The Moore movies have a massive tone problem. Most of them really cannot decide if they want to be a serious spy movie tackling big serious threats, or basically comedies. Like, there's nothing wrong with quips and Q being quirky at the beginning before poo poo gets real, but there's a huge issue if you go from dogs mercilessly hunting down a defenseless woman to wacky gondola adventures within...actually, I don't know how many minutes because Moonraker consists of barely connected scenes of wildly varying quality from start to end. Or having a nuke countdown ticking down about to make the cold war hot contrasted with Bond having to dress up as a clown at the same time, during the climax of your movie. Those whiplash-inducing tone shifts kill any goodwill I have for Moonraker and Octopussy despite both of them containing a lot of good stuff as well. I don't dislike A View To A Kill nearly as much because it's always a comedy. The entire first hour is completely farcical and it never quite reaches serious territory, maybe in the mine as all the workers get mercilessly slaughtered, but Walken is so over the top that it's still impossible to take it seriously. It still would have been far better if Bond wasn't geriatric but it's still a movie I enjoyed a lot once it became clear what kind of movie it wants to be, and that was clear very quickly. Incidentally, terminal tone whiplash is also what really ruined The Last Jedi for me.
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Sep 5, 2018 16:20
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The Most Dangerous Game-like hunt scene from Octopussy is another example. That could have been one of the darker moments of the Moore era (if not the entire Bond franchise), but it was tainted with the lame attempts at comedy: telling a tiger to "sit", the Tarzan yell, etc. None of the post-Moonraker Moore movies, in my opinion, are very good. The plots, the man antagonist and the love interests are all completely forgettable, and Moore is so old and tired by that point that you can feel the series creaking along with him. Dalton is/was such a breath of fresh air after the goofy Moore-era stuff.
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Sep 5, 2018 17:03
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Saint-John Smythe
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Sep 5, 2018 19:14
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So with Craig’s Bond being named James Bond from birth, how do you keep that name moving forward? Disconnect the next Bond as a fresh reboot like Casino Royale? Or MI6 keeps the name for a new agent to keep the legend of their best agent alive and active in the field? Does Bond die or does he pull a TDKR and his last scene is a glimpse of him finally happy, in a French coffee shop, retiring in marriage with new wife Judi Dench, joining him after herself escaping from the dangerous spy game at the end of Skyfall? They embrace as a call back to OHMSS, but this with a much happier ending.
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Sep 5, 2018 23:04
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Violator posted:So with Craig’s Bond being named James Bond from birth, how do you keep that name moving forward? Disconnect the next Bond as a fresh reboot like Casino Royale? Or MI6 keeps the name for a new agent to keep the legend of their best agent alive and active in the field? None of that is at all required, they can just recast the role the same way they always have.
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Sep 5, 2018 23:27
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The codename thing has always been dumb, it's a movie, it's all pretend, just cast a different guy.
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Sep 6, 2018 02:02
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I really think the Moore movies are fine and not really incongruous with the silliest Connery stuff. I have never gotten why people suddenly pretend that Moore stuff is way out there compared to the earlier movies. As far as being very "good," well, whatever, Bond movies are just super-budget exploitation movies. The only real crime a Bond movie can commit is to be boring--those and only those are the "bad" Bond movies.
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Sep 6, 2018 02:16
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Sodomy Hussein posted:I really think the Moore movies are fine and not really incongruous with the silliest Connery stuff. I have never gotten why people suddenly pretend that Moore stuff is way out there compared to the earlier movies. As far as being very "good," well, whatever, Bond movies are just super-budget exploitation movies. The only real crime a Bond movie can commit is to be boring--those and only those are the "bad" Bond movies. True. If you look at Connery's later movies, you can see the goofiness begin to creep into the picture. Blofeld and his double secret probation volcano lair? Bond turning Japanese? Moore gets a lot of crap but the silliness didn't begin with him.
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Sep 6, 2018 02:29
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Neo Rasa posted:I have to be frank, I still can't believe A View to a Kill was released. Total failure to work in every way on every level. Excuse me? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWVbVT3igdw I also think Grace Jones is an inspired choice for a Bond girl but she would have been matched much better with Dalton than with Moore.
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Sep 6, 2018 02:34
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Basebf555 posted:None of that is at all required, they can just recast the role the same way they always have. He's a Timelord
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Sep 6, 2018 02:53
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sebmojo posted:The codename thing has always been dumb, it's a movie, it's all pretend, just cast a different guy. Yeah, especially since his codename is already 007. Sodomy Hussein posted:I really think the Moore movies are fine and not really incongruous with the silliest Connery stuff. I have never gotten why people suddenly pretend that Moore stuff is way out there compared to the earlier movies. As far as being very "good," well, whatever, Bond movies are just super-budget exploitation movies. The only real crime a Bond movie can commit is to be boring--those and only those are the "bad" Bond movies. The problem with Moore isn't so much the silliness but the fact that I could never in a million years believe he could really beat up a guy. But I like Moore anyway. I don't think there's ever been a bad Bond, actually. Even Lazenby was fine (despite being hobbled by that awful voice dub for a good portion of the movie) and showed potential that he could have really grown into the role. I especially admire the way Lazenby acquits himself in the fight scenes. He's unlike any other Bond in that area, moving with a sort of cat-like grace and fluidity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhBCiQ49Iz8 John Glen's fast-paced editing throughout the action scenes in the movie is also pretty ahead of its time. I especially admire the cutting of the luge chase at the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MochwVdcaEk Taken too far this sort of thing can be disastrous (I'm looking at you, Quantum of Solace) but here I think it works fantastically. It gives you an almost first-person perspective of the frenetic energy and up-close confusion these kinds of struggles would really engender, without totally losing track of what's going on or giving you a headache.
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Sep 6, 2018 03:16
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Cacator posted:Excuse me? This is one of the worst openings in the franchise and I'm including the video games in that. The song is good though.
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Sep 6, 2018 04:30
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Barudak posted:This is one of the worst openings in the franchise and I'm including the video games in that. Well I was referring to the song itself because the actual music video from Duran Duran is dumb.
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Sep 6, 2018 06:13
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Cnut the Great posted:The problem with Moore isn't so much the silliness but the fact that I could never in a million years believe he could really beat up a guy. But I like Moore anyway. I don't think there's ever been a bad Bond, actually. Even Lazenby was fine (despite being hobbled by that awful voice dub for a good portion of the movie) and showed potential that he could have really grown into the role. I especially admire the way Lazenby acquits himself in the fight scenes. He's unlike any other Bond in that area, moving with a sort of cat-like grace and fluidity: Lazenby was chosen over other actors almost entirely because he impressed Broccoli so much with some test footage of a fight scene he did. I think I read once that he was the only Bond who had martial arts training (I believe he had a black belt in karate) prior to taking the role (although I've also heard that Connery had some similar experience).
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Sep 6, 2018 08:19
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I think the only experience Connery had was against women.
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Sep 6, 2018 09:49
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DrVenkman posted:I think the only experience Connery had was against women. Yes, he was a black-eye belt
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Sep 6, 2018 16:07
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Connery had the body, and they showed it off a good amount in his early movies. He looked like exactly the type of guy you'd need for super-spy work, in terms of his physical presence.
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Sep 6, 2018 16:17
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Connery was the jack of all trades. He could be funny, he could be violent, he could be charming, and everybody bought into it, especially at the time. At least until Diamonds Are Forever. Moore was just bad at action in general, though he could be coldly menacing when they let him be. Kicking the car off the cliff in For Your Eyes Only, slapping the guy hanging off his tie to his death in The Spy Who Loved Me, shooting that guy in the dick in the same movie. Any kind of fisticuffs type scene was usually tragic though. And of course he was already too old by like the midpoint of his run.
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Sep 6, 2018 17:03
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One thing that occasionally came up in the novels (early on it was more common; it's phased out a bit in the later ones) is Bond's age. The first few have him in his late 30s and I believe Moonraker mentions that he is 37, in the context of him being "eight years away from mandatory retirement at 45". Moore was 45 when he started playing Bond.
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Sep 6, 2018 17:11
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I remember I read some of the later books and it seemed from the late 80s to now that the Bond authors wrote him as being close to "too old for this poo poo". Though thinking back on it that makes Raymond Benson a creepy fucker since Bond would always end up with a girl half his age or younger 
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Sep 6, 2018 18:59
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Wheat Loaf posted:One thing that occasionally came up in the novels (early on it was more common; it's phased out a bit in the later ones) is Bond's age. The first few have him in his late 30s and I believe Moonraker mentions that he is 37, in the context of him being "eight years away from mandatory retirement at 45". Moore was 45 when he started playing Bond. This is what I keep saying about the possible Craig replacements that are brought up. Don't make the Roger Moore mistake and cast a guy who's already in his 40's when he makes his first film, and then expect him to still pull off the role three movies later in his 50's. It just doesn't work.
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Sep 6, 2018 19:05
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I just got done watching DR. NO for probably the first time since a teenager. Weirdly I think that movie takes a bit of a nosedive after one of its more iconic scenes (Ursula Andress coming out of the water). The initial intrigue is set up well, and it's fun to see Bond actually do his job instead of just bulldozing his way into a situation. However, once they go through the whole thing of getting caught etc it becomes a little rote. I think Connery gets the best "Bond, James Bond" scene here and he's actually downright charming in his scenes with Moneypenny. I like that, for this movie at least, Bond is treated as just another agent instead of super-spy extraordinaire.
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Sep 6, 2018 19:13
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Aces High posted:I remember I read some of the later books and it seemed from the late 80s to now that the Bond authors wrote him as being close to "too old for this poo poo". Though thinking back on it that makes Raymond Benson a creepy fucker since Bond would always end up with a girl half his age or younger I believe there's one where he shacks up with Felix Leiter's daughter.
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Sep 6, 2018 19:39
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DrVenkman posted:I like that, for this movie at least, Bond is treated as just another agent instead of super-spy extraordinaire. Yeah. I like how it shows he can make mistakes, liking drinking the drugged coffee. I would think "don't eat or drink anything an evil genius who wants you dead gives you" should rule number 1 but I'm not a spy.
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Sep 6, 2018 20:00
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Violator posted:Yeah. I like how it shows he can make mistakes, liking drinking the drugged coffee. I would think "don't eat or drink anything an evil genius who wants you dead gives you" should rule number 1 but I'm not a spy. Another touch I liked is this idea that that M has managed to reduce 00 casualties since he took over. There's a nice glimpse into some bureaucracy that the other movies never really touch on until possibly the Craig era.
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Sep 6, 2018 20:21
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DrVenkman posted:Another touch I liked is this idea that that M has managed to reduce 00 casualties since he took over. There's a nice glimpse into some bureaucracy that the other movies never really touch on until possibly the Craig era. Yeah, that's one thing I liked about Casino Royale and Skyfall - that while Bond is running around and raising hell, M is having to clean up his messes and answer for it as his direct superior.
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Sep 6, 2018 20:25
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Violator posted:Yeah. I like how it shows he can make mistakes, liking drinking the drugged coffee. I would think "don't eat or drink anything an evil genius who wants you dead gives you" should rule number 1 but I'm not a spy. That, and Bond relies on his wits in that movie more than almost any of the others. His system for detecting whether henchmen have rifled through his hotel room while he's gone is low-tech: a hair stuck to the opening of the closet and a little bit of powder poured into the keyholes of his briefcase. It's refreshing to see after all the various gadgets in the later movies. Dr. No is an underrated movie. Much better than most of the Connery ones that would come after it (not From Russia with Love, which is one of the all-time best).
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Sep 6, 2018 20:34
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Basebf555 posted:This is what I keep saying about the possible Craig replacements that are brought up. Don't make the Roger Moore mistake and cast a guy who's already in his 40's when he makes his first film, and then expect him to still pull off the role three movies later in his 50's. It just doesn't work. Especially these days when they're lucky to put out a film every 5 years. If you want to get 3-5 films out of an actor you're going to have to start him off reasonably young and I think that'd be fine.
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Sep 7, 2018 01:22
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Aces High posted:I remember I read some of the later books and it seemed from the late 80s to now that the Bond authors wrote him as being close to "too old for this poo poo". Though thinking back on it that makes Raymond Benson a creepy fucker since Bond would always end up with a girl half his age or younger Even Specter was bordering with the take being wow look at this poster for a movie starring Daniel Craig about Take Your Daughter To Work Day. But For Your Eyes Only was the most hilarious for that. They should only cast an older guy again if they plan to go for like, two movies an actor or something. Make it like Dr. Who where the point is huh who will be Bond this time speculation happens more often and they can go more out there with their picks that way too. Gillian Anderson isn't getting any younger. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Sep 7, 2018 |
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Sep 7, 2018 01:49
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Just make a live action James Bond Junior and cast Harry Styles. And, more specifically, so I can see a live action version of this Oddjob: 
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Sep 7, 2018 02:26
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Fart City posted:And, more specifically, so I can see a live action version of this Oddjob: But Jon Polito is dead. 
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Sep 7, 2018 19:56
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Actually, that does make me wonder: Bond was rebooted. Blofeld was rebooted. I wonder how far we are away from some of the classic henchman like Oddjob or Baron Samedi getting rebooted. Jaws feels like a super safe bet, since he appeared in multiple movies. It kind of feels inevitable. Edit: Jaws also appeared in the Brosnan era Everything Or Nothing videogame, reprised by Richard Kiel, so there’s definitely precedent for him being loosey-goosey cannon-wise. Tart Kitty fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Sep 7, 2018 |
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Sep 7, 2018 21:33
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