Flat out bottom Bond Movies for me are (in no particular order):
Moonraker
The Man with the Golden Gun
Diamonds are Forever
I’d take Spectre over any of them.
The James Bond Film Discussion Thread (With Bonus Lazenby!)
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Flat out bottom Bond Movies for me are (in no particular order):
Moonraker
The Man with the Golden Gun
Diamonds are Forever
I’d take Spectre over any of them.
This is such a litmus test. I remember watching Moonraker one time and thinking if this movie didn't have... (Make your list. Magnificent Seven? Double taking pigeons? Roger Moore in kind of a general way?) that it would have been the GREATEST BOND MOVIE OF ALL TIME. The more "serious" portions (it's a Bond film of a certain mode - there is only so serious you're going to get) tend to blow The Spy Who Loved Me out of the water. (Er... Sorry. I see what I wrote now.) Corrine getting chased down and the scientists all dying because Bond left a vial on the table were terrifying to me.
So when I look at MR from a certain angle that's what I see. It recaptures so much of the scope and the darkness of the best of Connery's movies, it looks like a bazillion bucks (so does TSWLM to be fair) and the score is, if not THE best Bond score, certainly the best post-Connery Bond score.
But if you look at it and all you can see is the double taking pigeons, etc? Yeah, it's a steaming pile, isn't it?
I can’t disagree with much of that, but it’s more than talking pigeons that puts me off.
Drax I think is a weakly portrayed villain. The final laser battle is ridiculous and all the stuff with Jaws and his GF is really weird.
They looked at Star Wars, realized they had a Bond story with ‘Moon’ in the title and ran with it. The results are lackluster. Basically a Bond movie designed by a committee that were smelling space dollars.
The model work is alright I suppose, but it looks crummy compared to Star Wars.
Me and my wife are slowly marathoning all the Bond films. Moonraker killed the marathon dead for six months.
This might be our biggest departure. I think Hugo Drax is the platonic ideal of a Bond villain. I wanted to see Jonathan Pryce be this good.
I love the laser battle.
Jaws was not well served by this film, I grant.
Totally. But at the same time they launched a space shuttle before the real world did and I think it looks amazing.
Ouch. Good luck with A View to a Kill.
Worth it for a young Christopher Walken, Duran Duran and Grace Jones being Grace Jones.
I did some digging on YouTube - here's his first episode of Match Game
All that and Barbara Bach.
I do laugh at the “car reveal” honking.
I like view to a kill despite Moore being far too old
Tanya Roberts too. I always liked view to a kill
I do grow tired of the "subvert expectations" thing that some film maker adore. (Don't subvert my expectations so much that I should have gone to see a different film.)
But that one was a home run. "Hey, remember the Lotus from TSWLM that you loved so much?"
Probably the only thing that would make TSWLM better would be if you swapped Stromberg for Drax. Lonsdale is a deliciously wonderful Bond villain.
Possibly a controversial opinion, but I think the 2CV chase in FYEO is one of the best car chases in the franchise.
Possibly a controversial opinion, but I think the 2CV chase in FYEO is one of the best car chases in the franchise.
I think my problem with Moonraker is that they took all of the elements from TSWLM, dialed it up to eleven, yet it feels like a weaker story; almost a 'paint by numbers' approach, with the exact same set pieces happening at the same point in each movie - 'Here's the chase', 'Look there's Jaws', 'Here's big finale.' For the first time, the franchise was chasing/following trends instead of leading them. The series had to scale it back for FYEO
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Gonna disagree with you there. Is Drax a bit effete? Definitely. He's certainly not a man of action like Largo, Savalas' Blofeld, or Scaramanga. But he's so eminently quotable, maybe one of the most quotable Bond villains in the whole series.
Yeah, pretty much. Everyone was smelling space dollars back then; if it hadn't been for Star Wars, Star Trek: The Motion Picture would have been the 2-hour premiere episode of a (probably) short-lived sequel series.
Star Wars was hardly the first trend they chased during the '70s.
Blaxploitation is big? Let's do Live and Let Die with all Black villains and go film in Harlem, New Orleans, and Jamaica.
Kung fu movies are big? Let's take The Man with the Golden Gun and transplant it to Hong Kong and Bangkok, and make sure there's lots of karate.
Women's lib is big? Let's make sure the lead Bond girl in The Spy Who Loved Me is more of a match for 007 than Tiffany Case, Solitaire, and Mary Goodnight were.
Absolutely. Not to mention Bond wielding a .44 magnum the same year the second Dirty Harry film comes out, or creating a character called Jaws who fights a shark just 2 years after Jaws the film.
To be honest part of the reason Bond has endured is because it has followed trends. It hasn't led the way since the 60s.
Moonraker is the most obvious example of this though, especially given the end credits of TSWLM promised James Bond would return in For Your Eyes Only
"James Bond. You appear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season."
This is possibly the greatest line in all of Bond if not all of cinema.
Great observation(s).
Objection. ''The code words are: I love you. Repeat it, please, for the record.''
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