Goldeneye is Better than Casino Royale. - Page 2

Can't believe I'm going to try to disagree with DaveB, but here goes...

I understand what you are saying about the Brosnan movies, plural, but I think you are letting your impression of the films that followed color your recollection of Goldeneye. Brosnan had that that edge that Dalton brought to the table - you could believe that his Bond (like Dalton's and unlike 90% of Moore's) was a killer - but he also had that movie bond charm. Dalton may have been a believable killer but he always seemed out of place dropping onto the roof of a hot blonde's yacht for tea and strumpets. Brosnan played both sides well, at least in Goldeneye.

His talents were pissed away, IMHO, by Tomorrow Never Dies (a Moore-era plot with some of the Goldeneye sensibility grafted onto the rotting corpse) and the increasingly shallow sequels.

Speaking of which, I know I've seen them all but I've "misplaced" one. TND has Jonathan Pryce's stealth ship and the motorcycle/helicopter bits, then there are two more Brosnan bonds or 3? I remember a sinking sub and the idiot from Wild Things in one, and the Halle/invisible car/ice palace debacle, but am I leaving an entire movie out?

Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World is Not Enough
Die Another Day

You didn't miss any. Bronson only did 4 films.

Goldeneye
Tomorrow Never Dies
The World Is Not Enough
Die Another Day (Invisible Car! Rosemund Pike!)

Your confusion is a gloriously perfect summary of just how absolutely godawful the post Goldeneye Brosnan/Bond flicks were.

Yeah, pretty much. I was pretty excited at the time when I heard Pierce got the Bond role in GoldenEye, he seemed pretty perfect for it. The movie itself met my expectations but each subsequent movie with him as Bond just got worse and more idiotic. I blame the writers and Broccoli's direction for the franchise at the time for it.

That's a rather glorious typo.

That's straight up wishful thinking. Oh, to have Charles Bronson as James Bond...it's the kind of thing that takes me to my happy place.

Bronson? Oh yeah, now I get what you mean.

Well...at the very least Pierce did give us this.

http://rosamunditalia.altervista.org...album=78&pos=2

I think we can collectively agree that Goldeneye is the only worthwhile Brosnan Bond flick.

Don't think I've even seen TND in a good 5 years.

I really think it was the over-the-moon success of the Goldeneye game that ruined things for the Brosnan Bonds. The producers were increasingly tailoring the films for the Nintendo crowd, until Die Another Die resembled a shitty video game far more than a Bond film (or a film, for that matter). Even though DAD is a far worse film, Tomorrow Never Dies was the bigger disappointment for me. It came off GE and all the expectations that film brought, plus it had some great talent (Pryce, Yeoh) whom I had no idea would be totally squandered.

I don't want to be part of that collection. I also prefer TND to Goldeneye, which I found to be too heavy-handed and commercial. And I prefer CR to any of the Brosnan films.

I think I liked Garbage's theme for "The World Is Not Enough," in an I'm-embarrassed-I'm-downloading-this-Chris-Cornell-song kind of way.

Goldeneye is fun and all, but now that the dust has settled I'll still take TWINE over the other Brosnan Bonds. That's not saying much, I think the common love of Goldeneye has more to do with the fact that we were getting more Bond when by all accounts the series was dead. Then when it didn't out and out suck, it was (falsely) elevated to a much higher status than it deserves. Time has not been kind. I think TWINE, while not a great Bond movie by any means, is the best combination of wink wink Moore and Connery brutality.

Glad to see some love for the Dalton flicks, though. Still love those to death.

Yeah, I think TWINE is a close second behind GE. TWINE is overhated. I think the sheer sucktacular performance of Denise Richards taints the film with a large stink, but the rest of it is pretty entertaining. Sophie Marceau is one of the more interesting and complex "villains" the series has had. And smoking hot.

Thanks to TWINE, Richards was dead to me for a long while. That is, until she found redemption as White She-Devil.

Testify.

Goldeneye is not as good,
but compared to Famke - Eva Green looks like a pasty, birdy little schoolgirl.

TIE

I still maintain "TND" is better than "Goldeneye," or am I the only one who thinks the pacing of "Goldeneye" is leaden? And that clunky, synthy score -- ugh.

"Tomorrow Never Dies" has a more confident, more ruthless Bond, not just Brosnan hitting his marks. The setpieces weren't as over-the-top as "Goldeneye" (Jesus Christ, the scene where he jumps the cliff on a motorcycle to catch up to a crashing plane then pulls it out of a nosedive would be absurd in a "Matrix" movie), and even though they make him drive a fucking BMW in both movies, he at least uses the rocket launchers in the headlights in "TND." "Goldeneye" is the biggest cocktease as far as establishing the car has rocket launchers...then never using them.

More, Bond's unable to save Teri Hatcher's character. I thought that lent some gravity to the caper. And Jonathan Pryce is wildly underrated as the villain. Or maybe I just hate Big Media, so this movie's like porn for me.

The Brosnan ones came off the rails early, but not as early as his second film.

FrankCobretti, I really enjoyed...Undercover Brother as well. My favorite scene is the fight between Aunjenelle Ellis and Denise Richards, where UB and the other guys in the room watched the gals attentively.

Felix Natalya, I also am a fan of...License To Kill. Also, Carey Lowell made one smokin hot CIA agent.

I like that about it. The best Bond movies have a weird quality to them, as though you're watching them on a Saturday afternoon while lying on the couch, slipping in and out of sleep, and in your memory they become completely formless.

"Wait, he's only just getting his briefing from M? But it's been going for 45 minutes! Wait, it's nearly finished? Is this the one where he goes scuba diving?"

GOLDENEYE is indeed better than CASINO ROYALE. GOLDENEYE is crisp and smart, and CASINO ROYALE is James Bond for 55 year old ladies. And the the plummet in quality of Jedi Dench's performance between them is shocking. Did she get brain damage in a stroke or something?

Shit, I need to join AARP pronto.

MILF

Yeah, compare that rock-solid bulldyke to this old biddy:



Plus, in CASINO ROYALE she gets all upset and start screaming and whining. Menopause? It reminds me of a scene in one of the Fleming books, where Bond's old housekeeper loses her cool, and he calmly thinks "Change of life" to himself and goes back to reading the paper. Pure. Bond.

All she does in Casino Royale is complain! CHRIST BLIMEY I miss the cold war!

There is much fun to be had in the Playsation TOMORROW NEVER DIES game by kneecapping her with an M-16 while she's trying to give your orders.

But be careful! Kneecap her more than five times and she dies!

In the WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH game you can daze her by throwing a "flashbang" in her face, but this proves nonfatal.

All I know is CASINO ROYALE AND GOLDENEYE are my two favorite Bond movies and I refuse to say a bad thing about either of them. Although I do have a stern word for anyone throwing their support behind all those other shitty Brosnan Bond films. (It really is too bad he ended up in only one good one.)

I would've liked to have seen a new M in "Casino Royale," someone like Michael Gambon or Bill Nighy or any Englishman who rattles off exposition with a voice like butter. In the books, you get a sense that Bond really has an unspoken fondness for M, but with Judi Dench as M in the films, he acts like an insufferable adolescent disobeying his nanny. I like the idea that a misogynist like Bond has a female boss. The execution just doesn't come across well enough to justify having Dench as a holdover from the Brosnan films.

I always thought Dench had a Betsy Palmer thing going on in Goldeneye.

Well, CR was just a first entry. I'd like to think their relationship will further develop as the series continues.

The Garbage theme is still one of my favorites in the series.

Surrender is still the winner from the Brosnan period, though.

I'm of the opinion, that even though the movies got worse, Brosnan grew more confident, and his performance improved. While still hovering just above Lazenby as my least favorite Bond, he actually had an edge to him in the first twenty of DIE ANOTHER DAY.

Brosnan era themes? Give me Tina!

When I read our McCartney had never heard of Chris Cornell...I felt really fuckin' old.

Having recently rewatched both the only part that lagged for me in both of them was the airport sequence in CR.

Like many others I would give a slight edge to GoldenEye mainly because the joy and wit factor are so in sync with each other in a way Dalton and Glenn could never achieve. My only problem with Eric Serras score is it makes me think of The Professional and I get a bit misty, but thats because both are awesome.

TND was clearly rushed although there are a lot of great moments sprinkled through out, like Bond waiting for Mrs Carver to show up, the Q Car sequence, the chemistry Yeoh brought to the bike chase, but the film is let down by its ending which is not only weak, but also pisses on what was pretty believable plot until then.

Also GE credit sequence and song are 20 times better than CR's.

I always find my dads Bond choices odd, he loves Connery and Brosnan owns all there films save Diamonds, but can barely sit through a Dalton and Moore. and is not gun how on Craig but added CR to the DVD collection so it must have connected in a way Moore and Dalton did not.

DAD up until right after the fencing match looked like a return to form, then it caught fire, and ended up 20 feet in the ground from where it started.

You're mixing your franchises, Mac.

I think they're both great Bond flicks - Goldeneye does indeed have wonky pacing, and now that I think about it, it's probably got the strangest structure of the series.

I love almost everything about it, though - The dam sequence, the silly car chase with Famke, the gloriously 32-bit Eric Serra score, Sean Bean in his finest hour, and Izabella Scorupco is one of my fave Bond girls. She's a major player in the film, but she never becomes distractingly domineering.

As for Casino Royale... well, it's damn near perfect as far as Bond movies go. I enjoy it just a little bit more than Goldeneye. In fact, I'm still bemoaning the loss of Martin Campbell and I'm dreading what Mr. Forster is concocting with Quantum of Solace.

Nice to see someone who appreciates Izabella Scorupco's performance, Belmont. Goldeneye is probably my favourite Bond film of all time. The Spy Who Loved Me coming in a close second.

I share your misgivings about Marc Forster. I don't know very much about him to judge how he'll handle a Bond film. I am getting a rather Arty Farty feel from him, judging from the Blogs.

Am I the only one that thinks almost all of the Bond films are pretty darned bad?

Right there with you, Overlord. That's why I actually prefer watching the Bond films that have the guts to be gloriously awful. See: basically every Moore film, with special kudos going to A View To A Kill and Octopussy.

Casino Royale actually works as a film. The performances are great, and as mentioned before, you actually care about Craig's Bond. Pfff, how dull! Give me Grace Jones, Chris Walken and Duran Duran!

nevermind

I know the Best of Bond thread started to meander, but did we need a whole new thread?

Yikes I would say I actually perfer The World is Not Enough to Tomorrow Never Dies.

While World is a very flawed film and Denis Richards is well...you know...Denis Richards, they found a much better balance between spy/action/comedy than did Tomorrow which was action/comedy/comedy/comedy/action/spy


Goldeneye is the best of his films and if you prefer it casino more power to you but they are apples and oranges.

Goldeneye was a great 90's spy movie. Casino is a great 00's spy movie. These movies adapt and evolve with the changing times. They made a James Bond in space movie after star wars for god sakes. I'm of course not saying that was a good thing but my point is after Die another Day it was time for a change. The world likes their spy/action movies grittier and darker now as the Bourne movies have shown.

To their credit I feel they took Bond and transitioned him into the new era well.

I actually don't hate the name Quantum of Solace.

I thought CR was pretty great, but I have one glaring (to me, anyway, it probably doesn't bother most people in the slightest) problem with it, that being that it is rivaled only by the climax of Maverick in having the worst, most over-the-top Movie Poker ever.

When a poker game plays a large part in the plot of your movie, the idea would seem to be that your hero triumphs by outwitting his opponents. But when you have screenwriters who know nothing about the game, they figure that the most dramatic way to end things is by giving the bad guy a one-in-a-million hand and the good guy a one-in-two-million hand. But that's stupid, because it negates any demonstration of skill or intelligence on the hero's part. Anyone holding a straight flush against four of a kind is going to win all their opponent's money, no matter how stupid they are or bad their poker face is. You don't play great poker with great hands, you play it with shit hands.

But apparently that isn't cinematic, so most filmmakers tend to go with the "oooh" hands. Which is kind of like having George triumph over Mr. Potter at the end of It's A Wonderful Life by winning the lottery instead of through his neighbors' gratitude for his lifetime of service

You want a missile-launching ghetto blaster to the face, punk? Maybe a rocket/leg cast to the balls???

Hear ya. But that last example isn't quite fair.

People like the idea of Fate being on the Hero's side. Its the reassuring thing about the cinematic world.

(4 of a kind, Mr. Badguy? Fuck you, Bond's got a straight flush!)

After playing in far, far, far too many poker tournaments, I can tell you that if you play enough hands wacky things are going to happen.

In one "limit" tourney I was reasonably certain I was facing an ace high flush (I had a small flush), but the pot odds were so great I tossed in another twelve chips just to make sure I wasn't being bluffed. The other guy did indeed have the ace flush, but the final card was a five of clubs. I had a three and four of clubs. And a six and deuce of clubs were already on the table. True story.

I've been on the other side, too. I've flopped Aces full of Queens only to be beaten by four Kings on the river (it was a tournament, so I didn't even get the jackpot). I once had 49,816 chips in a tournament with only 50,000 chips total, and I lost heads-up. I went all in something like nine straight times and lost every time. I printed out the hand summary. I also gave up on-line poker and decided to only play live immediately thereafter.

Basically, if a table is going for fourteen hours, someone is going to luck into an impossibly bad win/beat at some point. I've always interpreted the scene as follows: Bond was playing unpredictable opening cards (not a bad thing to do from time to time), was fishing around for a flush, got incredibly lucky, and managed to stay cool and not blow his wad all over the table.

On my top Bond list, CASINO ROYALE is #5 and GOLDENEYE is #9. So there you go.

I find this interesting, since I think it's actually CASINO ROYALE that ends up being a great movie despite its incredibly bizarre pacing. This is a movie where the primary villain is killed two-thirds of the way in, and where the action comes to a screeching halt twice -- once for Bond to heal up while his leading lady decides she might truly love the guy, and once for some god-awful cinematic poker. (Stop defending it, Overlord. The whole point to Bond getting this assignment is that he's MI6's best poker player. All the movie ends up proving is that he's the luckiest.) Then you consider all the Bond-movie conventions that were, for better or worse, dropped from the film. Seriously, how does ROYALE end up being so damn great?!

I'm not defining it as a plot point, as a mechanism to show Bond's skill, or anything else (although, it does take some skill to know what marginal hands should be played in an attempt to surprise other players). I'm only defending it against those who would say hands like that "don't happen", or that it's "ridiculous." Sit at any poker tournament at any table for 10+ hours and you'll see one or two hands like that.

I never said it was implausible; that kind of thing does happen regularly, if not exactly frequently. Just that it's not an example of brilliant poker playing, but sheer luck.

The point I was making is that it wouldn't have mattered at that point if Bond had blown his wad all over the table. The bad guy still would've looked down at his cards and had to call anyway. The pot odds you mentioned pretty much require you to call any bet when your hand is that strong. From a strategic standpoint, folding winning hands is much worse than calling with losing ones. And since that particular hand is going to win 10,000 times for every time it loses, there's really nothing to think about.

It's not that Bond played badly, it's that he did the only reasonable thing, and so did his opponent. They just constructed a hand so unlikely that both players actions were determined for them. Bond knows he can't lose; Bad Guy knows that he can only lose to a hand that Bond is 99.9995% likely not to have, so all strategy goes out the window. If the idea is to impress me with the hero's skills, this does not do it.