Although I haven't looked again at all the Roger Moore Bond films....As. James Bond movie....This is either the very worse....Or a hell of a contender......Its amazing the Franchise survived the Roger Moore years
shareLALD and The Spy Who Loved Me rocked!
This'll hurt him more than me!
Yeah, like there wasn't any cheese in "You Only Live Twice" and "Diamonds Are Forever."
Moore did 7 films for the franchise in 13 years from 1973-1985 and he was always convincing, confident and formidable in the role, even when he was 57 shooting "A View to a Kill." The tone of “Live and Let Die” is similar to Sean Connery’s final canon Bond flick, “Diamonds Are Forever” (1971).
Moore’s stint is my favorite run in the series with all seven films being kinetic, amusing, scenic and just all-around entertaining. There’s not one stinker in the bunch and they were all profitable at the box office.
The Bond movies drifted toward parody after "Goldfinger."
shareExcept that Oddjob's hat was some serious cheese.
shareThat seemed more "pop art" to me.
shareI love "Goldfinger," but Oddjob's hat-weapon is some serious cheese. It may be fun and thrilling cheese, but it's still cheese. And how about the gas flyover by Pussy Galore's girls and the falling-over of the troops? Am I the only one who found those scenes painfully lame?
shareThey did. The Aston Martin DB5 opened the door for gadgets and the god-awful Jaws.
shareIt was a different time.
shareTrue
Moore was the campy Bond era
Still fun!
Words that don’t belong together: “campy Bond.” Bond is suave, sophisticated, poised, ruthless, tough and just this side of amoral. Moore’s portrayal of Bond mostly satisfied these criteria, but he let himself be placed in stories and in situations that did not. The Moore Bond films were for people who either didn’t know, or didn’t like, who Bond is. They were kind of like pro wrestling or NASCAR, both the movies and the fans. Thank Goodness that the Dalton era finally arrived.
PS I will concede that Diamonds Are Forever did make me cringe. The source novel as written well before the Space Age (and so was You Only Live Twice), but their film counterparts insisted on shoe-horning NASA into their narratives. The redeeming aspects of Diamonds are a nude Lana Wood being tossed off a balcony, and Jill St. John wrapped in a best rug. Thise redeem a lot, in R_Kane’s book.
The only “cheese” here is coming out of your brain he88.
This was a good movie & one of the best in the series. This was a triumphant debut for Moore into the Bond canon. Yes I’ll admit, watching it today it does come across as kind of dated & it has a slightly different feel to it as this was intended to be the Bond for the 70’s
“Live & Let Die” was & action packed & more humorous entry into the Bond series. In it you have one of the best & longest tenured Bonds (Moore). In addition one of the best Bond girls (Jane Seymour) & a great Bond villain (The great Yaphet Kotto) & last but not least one of the better Felix Leiters (David Hedison. The only actor to portray him twice in the series)
Flemming himself said Moore was what he had envisioned Bond to be. Yes I can understand why you don’t like it but don’t call it cheese.
Keep in mind that, by the 70's, the spy film craze of the 60s was pretty much over(all the US TV shows like The Man From UNCLE and I Spy were off the air), and it was determined that Bond needed to be "reinvented to survive."
So here's what they did with most of the Roger Moore Bonds:
They based each one on a particular hit film(releasing a year or two after that film hit). Thus:
Live and Let Die: Based on Shaft and Blaxploitation films.
Man with the Golden Gun: Based on Enter the Dragon
The Spy Who Loved Me: Based on Jaws(seagoing adventure; villain NAMED Jaws)
Moonraker: Based on Star Wars
Thus, Roger Moore was really anchoring "movie homages to current hits" disguised as James Bond movies.
There was less of this in the 80s Bonds. "For Your Eyes Only" was "back to basics." Octopussy had some "Raiders of the Lost Ark" influences(adventure in the jungle), but the final Roger Moore Bond was pretty "usual" -- A View to a Kill -- though I thought it showed some "Hitchcock influences" with the one chase on the Eiffel Tower and the climax on the Golden Gate Bridge.
No, it was the 70's Bonds that seemed to be based on the theory: "copy the 70s hits."
Enter the Dragon, of course, was inspired by Dr. No. Interesting how it comes full circle.
shareEnter the Dragon, of course, was inspired by Dr. No. Interesting how it comes full circle.
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Full circle indeed. Before being a "copycat series" in the 70's, James Bond movies were the ones everybody was copycatting from the 60's.
Such an insightful post; I didn't realize the (obvious) associations.
BUT it's not like these 70's Bond flicks were total copycats of these other films. They all feature 007 on a globetrotting mission, and were just influenced by these other movies a bit. For instance, in "Moonraker" Bond doesn't even go up in space until over an hour & a half into the story! Only like 23% of the film takes place in space. That's hardly "Star Wars." To say "Moonraker" was a copycat of "Star Wars" is like arguing "Thunderball" (1965) was based on "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" because it has underwater scenes.
Or take "The Spy Who Loved Me": Besides having ocean scenes and the character of Jaws, is it even remotely like "Jaws," a nature-runs-amok creature feature? It's more reminiscent of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which didn't debut for another four years. Speaking of which, I get your association of "Octopussy" to "Raiders," but it really just harkens back to 007 flicks like "Spy" and "Moonraker," maybe upping the ante a bit in the action/adventure department.
Thank you for your kind remarks...and I would like to thank you for "refining my points" to exactly where they need to be refined:
You wrote:
BUT it's not like these 70's Bond flicks were total copycats of these other films. They all feature 007 on a globetrotting mission, and were just influenced by these other movies a bit. For instance, in "Moonraker" Bond doesn't even go up in space until over an hour & a half into the story! Only like 23% of the film takes place in space.
I reply:
Absolutely. When I used the phrase "based on" I should not have meant that to imply that these 70's Bond films were meant to follow the PLOTS of their source movies. Rather, these were "references" to each of those hits, and usually two years after the hit came out(enough time to add references to the script)
Thus, Jaws came out in 1975....they could add the villain "Jaws" and decide to set a lot of "The Spy Who Loved Me" at sea... and bring that movie out in 1977.
Same with Star Wars. That first BIG movie came out in 1977, which gave the Bond guys time to put some outer space material into "Moonraker"(which, I assume, had space material when Ian Fleming originally wrote the book with that title. I've never read the book "Moonraker."
Here is something: at the end of "The Spy Who Loved Me," I think the credit reads "James Bond will return in..For Your Eyes Only." But when Star Wars hit so big(in 1977, the same summer as TSWLM), the producers elected to move up a movie of "Moonraker," which came out in 1979. For Your Eyes Only was moved to 1981.
Still, you are absolutely right: all of these seventies Bond movies were still BOND MOVIES, with plots taken(I assume) from Ian Fleming's books, embellished by screenwriters with new material and then "injected" -- with references -- just references -- to recent hits(Bond goes to Harlem early in "Live and Let Die" and the black gangstas talk the Shaft/Superfly line.)
That's hardly "Star Wars." To say "Moonraker" was a copycat of "Star Wars" is like arguing "Thunderball" (1965) was based on "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" because it has underwater scenes.
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LOL! Yes, I hear you, and I speak to this above. The "copycatting" was simply of the "hit's reputation": Shaft, Enter the Dragon, Jaws, Star Wars. You can find a little of each in the Bond that follows them. (And BTW, "Moonraker" also made sure that a musical code played out the theme notes of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind.")
Just jokey references, is all. Probably The Spy Who Loved Me -- with a villain called Jaws and the action at sea -- is the most "tied" to a movie(Jaws.) Was any of the short story set at sea?
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I recall with the sixties Bonds, after Goldfinger, we seemed to get "location theme Bonds" -- Thunderball was ocean-based and underwater a lot(especially the climax, a battle mimicked at the end of Moonraker.) You Only Live Twice was "Englishman Bond goes to the Far East and Japan." On Her Majesty's Secret Service (after some initial scenes elsewhere) became "Bond on skis in the snow." Interestingly, SOME later Bonds went for the snow ski action all over again, just in smaller doses (The opening of The Spy Who Loved Me; For Your Eyes Only; A View to a Kill.) I think they felt that "Bond on skis" was always a good action scene.
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I get your association of "Octopussy" to "Raiders," but it really just harkens back to 007 flicks like "Spy" and "Moonraker," maybe upping the ante a bit in the action/adventure department.
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I think by then I was LOOKING for the 70's -type references to recent hits. For Your Eyes Only, after the gargantuan "everything but the kitchen sink" Moonraker(not that there's anything wrong with that except for Jaws romance), was "back to basics," a very stripped down Bond with a "quiet climax" only involving a few men on a cliff , rather than space armies. No 70's-type references there.
Octopussy came out two years after Raiders so I was looking for some Raiders references. Perhaps only the jungle stuff and some of the India stuff; but it also had scenes on trains and aircraft that had nothing to do with Raiders.
What Octopussy was, again, was BIG. Big enough to fight the rather dull and overlong return of Connery(God bless his return) in Never Say Never Again, later in the same year, 1983.
Ian Fleming said no such thing. His choice to play Bond was David Niven, an altogether different physical type. Moore is the only Bond whose films are not in my Bond Library; well, his, and the one with Woody Allen, in which, ironically, Niven actually appeared.
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