To me, the Bond movies ended with GoldenEye - No Time to Die (2021) Discussion

[–] Heisenberg (6280) 5 years ago

Bah, I liked Brosnan's version, it was fresh and modern and he was cool.

Obviously, that blonde monkey in the monkey suit playing Bond now I don't like, but that's a travesty dictated only by keeping the pace of other, worse, franchises (bourne), that anybody with a bit of sense recognize as a faux pas.

But I have to agree that Goldeneye was very good indeed, plus plus plus the game on the N64!

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[–] TheAdlerian (2092) 5 years ago

Heisenberg,

I have always thought he looked like a monkey!

I describe him as an alcoholic monkey, and he appears to be a heavy drinker.

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[–] Interlepos (1783) 5 years ago

Goldeneye = meh. Especially when he jumped after that plane in the opening. It was so bad it almost ruined the movie. Even as a kid I thought that was ludicrous. Rest of the movie is OK though. Why don't you like Daniel Craig? You seriously didn't like Casino Royale? or Skyfall? I personally liked Spectre a lot, which was a fun throwback to the Moore era.

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[–] Quint (935) 5 years ago

Interlepos, Craig movies arent Bond movies at all. They havent anything in common with Bond movies and are simple action movies with an extremely dumb actor .

And Bond does ludicrous stuff is a problem for you???? Thats the absolute core of Bond movies!

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[–] Interlepos (1783) 5 years ago

>>And Bond does ludicrous stuff is a problem for you???? Thats the absolute core of Bond movies!

There has to be a shred of believability to the action scenes. That something might be possible. That jump after the plane could never happen in real life. It was a "jump the shark" moment in an otherwise stellar film.

Craig movies are just action films? This was the exact critique that Brosnan got. It's just the way modern Bond has evolved, post Roger Moore. They brought back the stupid with Die Another Day (albeit without quality) and you saw how that went.

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[–] TreeShaman (806) 5 years ago

Starting with Skyfall, the Daniel Craig movies are more unbelievable and impossible than even Die Another Day. We're actually supposed to believe that someone can push a button on a computer and crash a train while somehow knowing the precise moment that James Bond would be standing there? That's absurd. All of the weird techy stuff in Die Another Day was at least based on some kind of experimental technology. The Craig films just copy the lazy Mission Impossible approach where you can push a button on a computer and make a miracle happen.

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[–] Interlepos (1783) 5 years ago

>> All of the weird techy stuff in Die Another Day was at least based on some kind of experimental technology.

Invisible cars? really, that technology exists? Like superheros can do? If that's coming in the future it would be dangerous..

Push a button? I don't remember the scene specifically, but the stuff in Skyfall felt like it could happen. Although I agree that they are copying M:I to some extent, along with Bourne, but that is the way the Bond franchise operates. The films are inspired by the popular trends of the day. Live and let die = Shaft. Moonraker = Star Wars. License to Kill = Die Hard, Miami Vice. Casino Royale = Bourne.

But it's still Bond.

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[–] TreeShaman (806) 5 years ago

Yes, the invisible car is actually based on real technology, and Q's explanation of how the technology works is accurate. Here is a video from 2015 where they demo a cloaking system based on the same technology in Die Another Day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SQ3pdgo-Wo

None of the technology from Skyfall or SPECTRE which are such 'realistic' films could ever exist in real life. But that isn't the point anyway. The invisible car technology barely works in 2015, so it obviously wasn't plausible in 2002. But when the filmmakers insist that their film is 'realistic' then it better actually be realistic. Bond has never been realistic and that hasn't been a problem, but it's annoying when Daniel Craig and Eon insist on insulting the intelligence of the audience by expecting us to believe that some genius hacker with a computer can basically shut down an entire country's infrastructure by pushing a button or that Q simply placing a ring on some random piece of plastic attached to his laptop can magically determine every man who has ever worn it and also somehow generate an octopus logo on the computer screen to prove that these man do in fact work for SPECTRE. How can anyone take that seriously? Probably very few people took the invisible care seriously in Die Another Day, but guess what, they had a fun time at the cinema anyways.

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[–] Interlepos (1783) 5 years ago

>>Probably very few people took the invisible care seriously in Die Another Day, but guess what, they had a fun time at the cinema anyways.

Are you sure you want to stand behind this statement? Die Another Day is the worst, bar none, James Bond movie ever made. The films gets into such cheese territory, that it becomes what some people would describe as "Superman IV" bad. The scene where James is surfing the tsunami -- is LAUGHABLE. Junk that is not worthy of Bond. I mean forget the invincible car for a moment...

Spectre I enjoyed the hell out of in the cinema. I guess it's different strokes for different folks. When I saw DAD, I was sitting there thinking that this is such a dumb movie. The scene you describe from Spectre didn't ruin the film for me because maybe they had invented a software capable of tasks like this. The Octopus logo might have popped up because they had witnessed that logo before and it was already in their system. On the other hand, in Goldeneye (jumping after plane), and DAD (surfing the tsunami with a paraglider) is physically "too much" to suspend disbelief for.

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[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

"Are you sure you want to stand behind this statement? Die Another Day is the worst, bar none, James Bond movie ever made. "

Moonraker would give it a run for its money. Jaws was a great villain in the previous movie and in this one he becomes the cringe worthy comic relief. That scene where Jaws -- mute for two movies up to this point -- cracks a bottle of champagne with his newfound nerdy love and sez: "Well, here's to us" as they are crashing? Gah.

Weirdly, both Moonraker and DAD started strong. The whole bit with Bond being imprisoned and tortured in North Korea had me intrigued. Then Madonna's theme song kicks in and the whole thing goes for shite. Ugh.

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[–] Heisenberg (6280) 5 years ago

Interplos, look it up, real people have actually jumped off a plane and hot air balloon with no parachute.
That stunt in the opening of Goldeneye to me was absolute awesome Bond, I wish they could find something that cool, gutsy AND REALISTIC again in this franchise.
That's seriously a masterful action sequence, you are mistaken on that one.

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[–] TreeShaman (806) 5 years ago

I don't think there have been very many impressive stunts since John Glen stopped directing the films. The stunts in the 80s films, particularly TLD and FYEO, were the best.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 5 years ago

The parkour sequence in Casino Royale was magnificent, though.

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[–] TreeShaman (806) 5 years ago

I agree it was a good scene, and one of the only action scenes I actually like with Daniel Craig because the emphasis is on the chase rather than a fight. I don't like Daniel Craig's fighting style which would be completely ineffective in real life.

The parkour chase is good because the black guy is actually a professional free runner who did all those stunts himself, and Craig was good enough at following him. If it was just a simple fight scene then it would have been pretty bad.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 5 years ago

I also really liked the stairwell/hotel fight and the car chase in Casino Royale. The house siege in Skyfall, the Day of the Dead in Spectre - there's lots of stuff I like in the Craig films (action-wise). I'm not saying you "should" like these things, and if you hate the action sequences, or the Craig films in general, that's cool. But there's a lot of sequences I really enjoyed.

His fighting style might be unrealistic, but that's not what I really look for in Bond. From Russia with Love is my favourite Bond picture and he spends the whole fight in the gypsy camp doing some weird thing where he does a half crouch and shoots his Walther from the hip. He'd be lucky to hit anything like that. And yet, I love the film.

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[–] TreeShaman (806) 5 years ago

I thought the stairwell fight was complete overkill. It really doesn't serve any purpose in the story, and I think it was just added in for yet another high-intensity scene. I feel like so much of Casino Royale is Eon trying to convince the viewer that Daniel Craig is truly a menacing guy. The pre-title scene was already convincing enough. The parkour chase was even more convincing. And then there was even the runway scene to further convince us. Everything after that was overkill, and it doesn't help that fighting the African guys made no real sense. Why did they even fight? Was it because they mistakenly thought that Bond having an ear piece was a sign that he was one of Le Chiffre's thugs? I guess that kind of makes sense, but not really. Bond could have just said who he was and they probably would have stopped fighting and maybe even teamed up to take down Le Chiffre. Those guys even knew Mr. White. MI-6 would have loved to give them amnesty in exchange for intel.

And I don't really care that fighting in movies is unrealistic unless the filmmakers are constantly trying to beat us over the head telling us that this is 'realistic' and 'gritty,' and especially when the number of such scenes is overkill. There's also the problem of Daniel Craig being elevated by Eon into some kind of cult-like status that no other actor has received. The Daniel Craig Bond films are more about Daniel Craig 'getting over' than they are about James Bond.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9334) 5 years ago

I can certainly understand that point of view. I feel similarly about Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy; it works so hard to "ground" the story in reality that I wound up questioning why Wayne would bother playing dress-up as a rubber bat.

I still love Casino Royale and Skyfall. Skyfall's run time is padded, and I roll my eyes at the "plot twist" with Silva's plan (in a time frame when every other movie villain was getting captured on purpose for nonsensical reasons). But, overall, I really dig them.

Not a fan of Spectre (waaaaaay too long and underwhelming/repetitive) and I loathe Quantum of Solace.

But I definitely get why that would bug you.

As for the stairway fight, I think that it serves a point. It might be poorly justified (I don't have an answer; it's been awhile since I've seen CR, but there might be one) but the point, I think, is so Vesper witnesses the violence of this world first hand. That leads to major barriers between herself and Bond being broken down. So, I think it does serve a purpose in the film's arc.

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[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

The fight scenes in Craig's movies are very true to CQC moves. I trained in traditional martial arts (karate / TKD) for about eight years, but gave it up to train with a couple of military / police use-of-force experts after an incident.

The skyscraper fight in Skyfall in particular was on point...

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[–] Interlepos (1783) 5 years ago

People jump out of airplanes without a parachute - fine. I'm not saying this is not believable. The plane going down? Credible. Bond jumping after the plane? Plausible. Bond being able to catch the plane, going almost vertical down a mountain, in midair before it crashes, and have enough time to get inside and steer it to safety? So dumb it belongs in a B-movie, not a Bond film. And also let's not mention the horrible CGI in this scene, and the green screen work is terrible. People have tried a similar thing in real life, except they practiced 100 times before doing it, and the plane was going horizontal, not vertical.

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[–] Heisenberg (6280) 5 years ago

Ok I agree the timeline was a forced and not that believable, it could have benefitted from a quicker cutting inside the plane. And the fx are not the best.
But for a Bond movie it was not that outlandish: it's till ground in reality and possible action, just pushig it a bit.
I think it obviously tries to redo the skying scene from the spy who loved me, I find it very similar in pacing and realism and it has the same concept (bond escaping the bad guys into a cliff: once you think he's fucked, here comes the Bond theme for the unexpected save). They are both aimed at making you think "he's in deep shit, how is he gonna get out of it this time?". If you think about it, both sequences would be pretty stupid if you thought since the beginning "he's safe because anybody would be able to steer that plane up/have the chute ready". It's that surprise moment, that you don't think would be possible given the extraordinarity of the event, that makes it Bond.
(ps: also in that sequence the fx are not the best: you can spot the huge backpack on Bond at the end of it, clearly not the one he had on before. But we cannot hold 30 year old real stunts to the same standards as modern cgi).

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[–] Interlepos (1783) 5 years ago

The skydiving stunt in The Spy Who Loved Me is cool, eloquent and full of style. Totally believable, and the stunt seemed halfway planned by Bond, since he had a parachute. Jumping after the plane in Goldeneye was an impulse solution to an insanely complicated problem. It was a risk that payed off, and normally I would love a scene like this in a Bond film. Rarely do I complain of a Bond film not being realistic, but this stunt in Goldeneye just didn't feel right. Happy that other people are able to enjoy it, though.

>>(ps: also in that sequence the fx are not the best: you can spot the huge backpack on Bond at the end of it, clearly not the one he had on before. But we cannot hold 30 year old real stunts to the same standards as modern cgi)

Well, Jurassic Park was made 2 years before Goldeneye, and many feel that the FX work (practical mixed with CGI) in Jurassic Park is better and more convincing than the FX work done today. The FX looks bad in the plane scene in Goldeneye, and it doesn't help make it more believable, but it's not the main problem of the stunt. Having said all this, it's still a good film.

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[–] slyck (53) 5 years ago

I can respect that, personally I liked Casino Royale, albeit not on my first viewing (although I was quite young then), but none of the films after that, with the partial exception of Spectre which I think beyond some of the more ridiculous elements of the plot (especially the forced elements to link it to the prior films) I think it had at least a little bit of fun in it.

Part of the reason I have disliked the recent string of releases is because I feel he hasn't grown as a character all that much in 4 films, which is much worse when you consider they set up a whole new continuity with an overarching storyline specifically for these films and turned the clock back to zero. Out of all the Bond's this version should have the most change and growth. Given that one film of gritty action I can buy, two I will tolerate but three I can't do and something tells me they're even going to do it again. I have a whole host of other problems and comments about the current state of the franchise that I will not get into here.

Not to say I have a problem with Craig, I think he is doing his best and doing what he does well. I have seen him in and enjoyed his acting in other films and I don't put any of the blame on him. Especially because from what I have heard (of course I could be wrong) is that he has been campaigning to try and get more of that classic Bond feel back. Although I am not sure how much they could make work with him. Partially because of the already established style with his version and partly because I am not sure he can pull it off, but in my opinion I think they cast him specifically because they wanted to do what they have done to the franchise.

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[–] NotoriousRio (12927) 5 years ago

Well said, totally agree with you, GoldenEye is a good movie with great villains and an ok Bond, Tomorrow Never Dies was such a boring let down after that.

I quite liked Casino Royale and Skyfall on initial viewing but am sick of Sid James Jr playing James Bond now, and all the PC crap that's infested the latest 007 movies.

I know it won't happen but I'd love a fresh reboot set in the 50's and close to the books.

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[–] earl237 (1106) 5 years ago

Casino Royale was already a reboot, and one of the best.

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[–] CharlieHorse (1) 5 years ago

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[–] janelsenor (2042) 5 years ago

It was not a prequel. It was a full on continuity reboot.

That said, after Craig is done, I really doubt they'll just recast and keep making films in the same continuity. They'll reboot again.

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[–] LordBAElish (2015) 5 years ago

Do they really need to reboot? They should just go back to the way Bond films were in the past, not connection to the previous movies, just stand a lone pictures. I don't need to see Bond rebooted again and see his beginnings and have another adaption of Blofeld / Spectre. They didn't reboot Bond after Bronson took over for Dalton after a six year hiatus, they don't need to do it again.

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[–] janelsenor (2042) 5 years ago

It's a different era now and I don't see them going down that road. But, I could be wrong....

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[–] Quint (935) 5 years ago

A different era? Do you rreally think that the 60s and 80s or 50s and 70s are connected in even the sammlest way???

This "different era" stuff is pure BS. They just trying to do a soap opera so that dumb people will be forced to watch the next episode of their favorite soap opera every 2 years (instead of coming uop with new ideas with each and every movie).

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[–] janelsenor (2042) 5 years ago

Do you rreally think that the 60s and 80s or 50s and 70s are connected in even the sammlest way???

Not sure what that has to do with my post, but whatever. It's still my prediction that the continuity will reboot again when Bond is recast.

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[–] TheAdlerian (2092) 5 years ago

Bond movies from the beginning are science fiction movies.

True science fiction is about how advancements in technology affect human psychology and show how people will react to technology.

If we had helpful robots, how would people change? That's a realistic topic to explore.

Original Bond movies were about how technology can be exploited to threaten civilization in some way. Bond counteracts the threat with his humanity and counter technology supplied to him. So, he's a "near future" science fiction hero.

The current Bond is not a science fiction character. He was stripped of advanced technology and the plots are just standard adventure stories. I find them boring and typically they have bad and boring plots.

I wish they would wake up.

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[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Hear, hear, TheAdlerian! :)

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[–] TheAdlerian (2092) 5 years ago

Thanks.

The new movies were part of the dumb "realism" wave that hit characters like Batman. Batman is an advanced science fiction character who would not be remotely possible in our current world. The dumbest thing I saw in Batman Begins was when he was escaping police, in a helicopter, while he drove his car. His technique to evade them on a straight highway was the turn his lights out, lol. People can still see a car on a highway even with its lights out.

Batman can only exist if he can evade all modern forms of detection. So, he needs a science fiction level vehicle, devices, etc. That actually makes the story MORE believable, than saying it's possible now, and having him turn his lights off.

Anyway, to "realists" Bond is a "spy" and not science fiction. Probably most spies are accountants of something and never get into a fight, etc. So, spies are boring. The writers made Bond boring and implausible because he doesn't appear to be a martial arts expert, doesn't have techo devices, and so the films are very unrealistic, because such a guy would be very ineffective.

Kingsman is a comedy, but it has many of the elements that make Bond interesting. Those have been better Bond movies than Bond movies. If you made a serious Bond film with the interesting science fiction stuff like Kingsman, it would be great.

Mission Impossible films come close to that and are better Bond films.

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[–] TreeShaman (806) 5 years ago

He's not exactly stripped of advanced technology though. Isn't it the opposite problem? The technology is so advanced that the writing gets lazy because Q, the villain, or whoever can just push a button and make crazy shit happen like crashing trains on command.

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[–] TheAdlerian (2092) 5 years ago

The stories can always be done better regarding technology.

I think the Mission Impossible movies handle technology well. Sometimes it works great, sometimes sorta, and sometimes it fails. That keeps the characters on their toes and shows them to be awesome people.

As I've said, Bond started out as a science fiction character and the latest films forgot that and made the films boring. You don't have to have comedy and camp to achieve a good SF story.

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[–] FootOfDavros (6684) 5 years ago

For me the series ended with Die Another Day.

Gets a bad rep but take out the infamous unfortunate cgi choices - invisible car, surfing - and this isn't far off being a classic Bond. The first half especially is excellent and I love how they worked in the TMWTGG book opening with brainwashed Bond. Every time I see this I just wish they'd worked in the Icelandic villain's layer for the film's ending rather than the giant laser. Would have worked a lot better...

However it did serve as the entry point for Purvis and Wade which is why I considered this the film the series died with.

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[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

I don't remember a lot about the Pierce Brosnan films, I just remember that I didn't like them, or him. GoldenEye stands out because it's easily his best movie, and it has Sean Bean in it, as well as other memorable characters like Onatopp and that "invincible" geek.

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[–] FootOfDavros (6684) 5 years ago

Onatopp is a great example of a classic Bond villain. Dr Kaufman is probably the only other from the Brosnan era and maybe the last ever? e.g. Robert Carlyle was totally wasted in his role.

Don't recall any from the Craig films, although I've only seen them up to Skyfall once so maybe there was in Spectre. But I guess this is another example where the Craig "Bond" films fail and don't live up to the Bond formula.

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[–] TreeShaman (806) 5 years ago

Purvis and Wade started with TWINE, not DAD.

With how bad the last two Craig films have been, I've actually started to like DAD more because it at least follows the classic Bond formula which is something we haven't seen in nearly 20 years now. It's the last film of its kind, and it's probably more likely that Eon will go bankrupt before we see a film like that again.

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[–] FootOfDavros (6684) 5 years ago

Good call on TWINE. It's weird that they made that first, it's one of the few pre-Craig Bond's I really don't like - the overbearing M storyline and muted Robert Carlyle villain really were signs of what was to come - so it's kind of odd they had that before having one stab at a real Bond film.

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[–] furiousstyles (4359) 5 years ago

totally agree with the OP, Brosnan is Bond, loved him as 007

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[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

You misunderstand, FS: Brosnan is OK as Bond in only his first movie, but Roger Moore is Bond to me, I have all his movies. Followed by Connery and Dalton.