Not as bad as I remember, but...
it is an unintentional parody. This and YOLT were the template for Austin Powers.
It has a lot of good set pieces and Charles Gray's overly smug Blofeld was hilarious in a good way.
This film is the bottom of the barrel for me.
shareI would need to rewatch YOLT before deciding which is my bottom.
shareMy bottom 3 are:
22) Moonraker
23) Quantum Of Solace
24) Diamonds Are Forever
You Only Live Twice is actually higher up than one would think, I think I put it 14th
That is a reasonable bottom.
Spectre would probably be my bottom, if I could get thru the first 15 minutes, which I tried three times. BTW, Spectre obviously borrows from AP: Goldmember. Bond and Blofeld as "brothers"
And that's my main problem with Spectre, it felt like it had to connect all of the previous films together and had to make Blofeld a bigger, badder baddie than he had to be. There are some things I liked though and I don't think it was as bad as many people say it was but the biggest issue I have is it should have just been its own separate thing but instead I felt like they were trying to set up a "Bond cinematic universe" which is not necessary. It's certainly better than that POS Quantum of Solace.
shareI had hoped with CR that producers would refilm the novels in order with continuity. But I guess they didn't want to pay again.
shareThat would have been a horrible idea. You seriously just wanted them to remake films they already made?
shareIt's a new series . They wouldn't be remaking movies, they would be adapting the novels.
shareThe novels have already been adapted, instead of doing something new they would have just been repeating what had already been done. That would have been a stupid idea. There was nothing wrong with making Casino Royale since at that point an official version did not exist.
shareAlso in case you're going to argue that they would have done the remakes closer to the source material (since you know Live And Let Die 1973 deviated quite a lot) you know that's a lie, as politically incorrect as a lot of the novels are you know damn well that would never fly today. That and having two versions of Live And Let Die is idiotic when they very easily could have done something new. By your plan instead of having Skyfall (which is one of the better Bond films) we just would have had another version of Moonraker.
shareYes, your are correct.
shareIt wouldn't be a new series, it would just be the same thing all over again, and what are the Bond producers supposed to do after they make Octopussy/The Living Daylights? Are they just supposed to make new Bond movies not based on the Ian Fleming novels kind of like how they are doing now? Or do they just start a "new series" all over again? Also how exactly was Casino Royale supposed to segway into Live And Let Die? The Casino Royale novel didn't end the way the movie does? How are the unresolved plot points of Casino Royale supposed to factor into Live And Let Die?
shareThis is right on the money. They pushed so hard to make Blofeld "important" that they forgot to actually write a good plot or character and tried to shoehorn in all the "everything is connected" crap.
It had some good action scenes, though - I liked the car chase, the opening set piece, and some other bits. It's a middling Bond to me, and I agree that Quantum of Solace was terrible.
Quantum is the lowest of the low for my money. The reason is that it only feels like a Bond movie for the sequence at the opera. Other than that it's generic spy-action stuff that could be found in Bourne films and other knockoffs. Just terrible.
I never even really liked the Bourne films and I was so pissed when I realized that QOS was just trying to be a Bourne film. I left the theater really disappointed. The late 2000's in general kind of sucked.
shareQoS was better than the movies that followed it. People don't seem to be able to see beyond the terrible editing.
shareI didn't like the plot, I didn't like the characters - including Bond who barely resembled himself - I didn't like the look of the film, I didn't like the vibe of the film...but, yeah, I didn't like the editing and camerawork.
The only time I liked the movie was the opera sequence. From Agent Fields' entrance to her exit from the picture Quantum feels like a Bond movie. Outside of that bracketed subsection, though, it lacks all the traits of a good Bond picture and just feels like a generic action movie set in the espionage world. It tries to make geo-political commentary on a water crisis. Bond is little more than a typical, taciturn Action Guy.
Spectre wasn't too bad. It had a ridiculous plot twist, it tried too hard to be "big", and it was overlong. But it felt like Bond.
Skyfall has great pacing, exciting action sequences, and a well-plotted story. Bardem rocks as a great villain, and it has a terrific themes about old vs. new, and the past coming back to haunt us. It's a touch too long, the Bond girls aren't that memorable, and the "villain got captured on purpose" plot is hacky, but it feels like Bond.
It was more than just the editing, it was the plot, the characters, the acting, those pretentious title cards, the theme song, the fucking gunbarrel at the end. The list goes on.
shareI like the first Bourne film but I didn't care for the second two. They had plots that seemed deliberately convoluted. "Oh, now that guy's the mole? Oh, okay." Nothing made sense, it wasn't laid out well, and the shaky-cam was appalling. I also hated the shaky-cam in Quantum.
Late 2000s weren't too bad...Inglourious Basterds, District 9, Coraline, The Departed, Pan's Labyrinth, Children of Men, Eastern Promises, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, WALL-E, In Bruge, Moon... Good stuff and bad stuff is always coming out.
Yeah I was in college in the late 2000's and I think I was just exposed to a ton of crap in terms of music/movies from friends and people around me.
shareYup! Those are the years when somebody goes, "I'm going to the movies, wanna come!?" and the response is, "Sure!" Not, "What are you seeing?"
shareFrom 2005 - 2009 the only films that came out that really caught my attention were Batman Begins, Revenge Of The Sith, Casino Royale, The Prestige, The Departed, The Dark Knight, Rambo, and Inglorious Basterds
shareThere's a lot of great stuff from '05 to '09 outside of those films. I love Inglourious Basterds, though.
shareThe bottom three:-
The World is Not Enough
The addition of Purvis and Wade, killers of the genuine Bond series, brings the first signs of literally losing the plot. Rather than this being about the secret agent travelling to some glamorous location and defeating some charismatic villain, it's got fat Robbie Coltrane and a wasted, dull Robert Carlyle in a story in which Bond almost becomes a side character to Judy Dench (a sign of where these films would be going). Garbage. And sadly not just the title song...
Licence to Kill
Again, let's have a James Bond film be a James Bond film not some crappy, subpar extended Miami Vice tribute episode. Was a joke then - flopped badly at the box office - and is a joke today, despite Craig "Bond" fans claiming it as some excuse for the acceptance of the beefy Sid James' harder edged depiction.
Quantum of Solace
The absolute bottom of the pile. Even Craig fans fail to defend this one. Take away the one trick pony of rebooting the franchise to make it "fresh" by becoming a Borne clone, then you're left with nothing second time around. Where do you go after this mind numbing snooze-fest? You copy again - next up Bond Vs The Joker...
Quantum of Solace is one of the most boring movies I have ever seen, the plot is boring, the characters are boring, the action sequences are BORING!!! Back in the late 2000's I HATED that choppy editing that Hollywood seemed to think that we wanted and I was so afraid they were going to do that in QOS and what do you know it turned out that's what happened.
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