The Best of BOND; Let's get this over with - Page 227

 

THAT, my friend, was for Queen & Country.

 

Huh. I had no idea Winchester is American from watching that show. And Stapleton, who plays an American, is from Australia (which I had known). Weird.

 

Actually, either one of those guys could make a credible Bond.

 

For that matter, so could Richard Armitage, from the first series of "Strike Back".

 

 

It'd be nice to at least get a mention of the rest of the 00 Section. You'd almost think from watching the Craig movies that Bond, M and Tanner were the only people in the Secret Service. I miss the days when M was always threatening to replace Bond on a mission with 008. 

No kidding.


Kinda takes me back to 2004. I remember during those years between DAD and CR that everyone and their dog thought Owen was destined for Bond. I think Owen did like a hundred interviews where he flat out said "no" and that he had no interest in Bond, and yet so many fans still persisted that he would get it.


"Forgive me darling, your turn will come up, I promise!"

Nothing better than the Moore run's awful blatant misogyny.

 

Another reason it's completely and utterly worthless.

I think you often exaggerate that. Misogyny? I wouldn't go that far. It never got to the level of Fleming's assessment of women.

“Women are often meticulous and safe drivers, but they are very seldom first-class. In general, Bond regarded them as a mild hazard and he always gave them plenty of road and was ready for the unpredictable. Four women in a car he regarded as the highest potential danger, and two women nearly as lethal. Women together cannot keep silent in a car, and when women talk they have to look into each other’s faces. An exchange of words is not enough. They have to see the other person’s expression, perhaps to read behind the others’ words or analyze the reaction to their own. So two women in the front seat of a car constantly distract each other’s attention from the road ahead and four women are more than doubly dangerous for the driver not only has to hear and see, what her companion is saying but also, for women are like that, what the two behind are talking about.”

And of course this "gem" about ugly women.

'She was an unattractive girl with a pale, rather pimply skin, black hair and a vaguely unwashed appearance. Such a girl would be unloved, make few friends, have chips on her shoulder- more particularly in view of her illegitimacy- and the grouse against society. Perhaps her only pleasure in life was the triumphant secret she harbored in that flattish bosom, the knowledge that she was cleverer than all those around her, that she was, every day, hitting back against the world - the world that despised, or just ignored her, because of her plainness- with all her might. one day they'd be sorry! It was a common neurotic pattern, the revenge of the ugly duckling on society.'

Fleming, what a charmer.

I think Elba, Hardy, and Fassbender would make for far better villains in a Bond film than as 007s.

 

Fancasting Craig's replacement is fun, but chances are the next 007 is still an unknown at this point.  We are at least five years away from the role being recast.  That's five years for the careers of Fassbender, Hardy, and whatever other fan favorite British/Scottish/Irish/Aussie/Etc. actor we have to either become too famous for the role or have their careers completely bottom out.

 

Like Craig, expecting the next Bond to "seemingly" come from nowhere.  It will probably be another damn good bit and supporting player that only cinephiles tend to notice and remember, just like Craig.

 

Question is, then, do you think Owen would have gotten the role, had he actually wanted it?

 

If Owen were willing to do it, I think you'd have found yourself in a similar situation as with Brosnan the late-80s/90s-- Owen as the next Bond was such a no-brainer for so many people, EON likely would have gone for it...

 

 

So, I don't think Craig's replacement will necessarily be a relative-unknown, like he was. If popular consensus fell around a particular, known actor who fit the bill-- and he were willing to take it on-- I could easily see some of the names that regularly pop up in these discussions to be in serious contention. 

 

 

Man With the Golden Gun is pretty much outright misogynistic. Mary Goodnight is basically an idiotic failure who does nothing but fuck up Bond's mission but still gets blessed with his godly penis by the end of the movie. And even if the other films don't stoop to that level(and a few do) huge chunks of the Bond franchise feel like watching an episode of Mad Men without somebody nudging you in the shoulder and saying "This is shit you shouldn't fucking emulate."

 

 

And that shit still uncomfortably infects the franchise to a certain extent. Even Skyfall(which I love) still feels like it's got to have Bond fuck a woman raised as a sex-slave because HEY THAT'S WHAT PEOPLE EXPECT!

 

Then she dies.

Yeah, I think he was conceding your point, with the Fleming quotes. Sexism is in the Bond DNA. It's kind of icky, but speaking from a comfortable place of white male privilege, also kind of funny.

And I will admit that the movies AREN'T as bad as Fleming either. Still I watch this shit and I'm actively more pissed than anything else.

 

 

I want my good espionage adventure stories without regressive sexual politics!

 

I'm going to preface this by saying that I am not being snarky or insensitive here-- but are women who have been abused or raised as sex slaves not allowed to engage in adult, consensual sex with dashing secret agents if they so choose? And if they are, should we be laying any particular blame at the feet of said dashing secret agents for likewise engaging?

 

But yes, Severine's death did suck more than the usual Bond Girl death. I was not on board with that. This shit does get to you sometimes.

 

Something else: for all of Fleming's undeniable misogynism, he did have his better moments. I think there's a reason Gala Brand is a favorite character of many Fleming readers, and why I wish EON would go to the "Moonraker" well one more time, if only to bring her to the screen. A highly competent, intelligent cop (in the early 1950s!) who's actually the one who "solves the case" in that book, and doesn't fall into bed with Bond. Hell, if Fleming had written a concurrent "Gala Brand of Scotland Yard" series, I'd have been all over those too. 

I'm just saying that "Let me sneak up on you in the shower" probably isn't the best way of approaching a victim of sexual abuse.

 

Yeah, I've since gathered that particular bit has been a problem with some people. But at the time I just read the scene as standard romance-novel-type stuff. I didn't connect it up with Severine's background. A failing on my part, I suppose.

 

Then, people getting it on the shower at all is pretty alien to me. Seems uncomfortable, particularly if there's a soft bed anywhere nearby.  

Watching Skyfall again really made Severine feel bothersome to me. Like I know other people harp on the plot details and shit. But Severine is my biggest problem with an otherwise great movie.

 

And I don't know if it's because the actress actually has some degree of pathos, but she literally exists to give Bond information, get fucked, and then die. The fact that she gets a quick backstory that just says "Oh yeah you used to be a sex slave" makes that more problematic for me. It's "woman as victim" shit and I have a hard time with that.

 

If you watch him giving interviews on the set, he does a reverse Christian Bale and stays entirely in character with an English accent. If you watch him giving interviews from somewhere like Comic Con, his accent is suddenly American. It's pretty cool.

 

I have to admit that I did feel slightly uneasy with this. It's as though they needed to get to the sex scene as quickly as possible and simply cut out any further seduction scenes on the boat.

Yeah which goes back to my issues with some of the formula. Bond's gotta get laid so we've got to have multiple Bond girls who's usage is basically "sex" generally followed by "betrayal/murder."

 

It's a really bad bit of the formula and it kind of needs to be retired or utilized a lot less at this point.

The Severine bit is icky for sure. But it's not as if her backstory was some immovable object the writers shrugged at and wrote around. "Jeez, guys, maybe he shouldn't fuck her because she used to be a sex slave." I think the reverse is true. I think it's in there explicitly as commentary on the casual cruelty and misogyny that's become a series trademark, and it's designed to give us pause. "Who are these submissive women Bond gets to fuck with no effort whatsoever? What's their deal?" And it's not a particularly sunny answer.

Thanks, I appreciate your perspective and insight into how you came to your opinions. I definitely think it can be exciting when a relative unknown comes into a part and makes it his own, so I do see the attraction there

I am fascinated a Brit would suggest an American Bond! To be fair, I didn't realize he wasn't British when watching the show. I must admit that I don't think he's right for Bond (just my opinion), as he seems a bit more like a bit of a bro/jock, good natured, loyal, bad ass, but not necessarily someone I'd peg for 007.

 

Interesting suggestion though - not one I'd considered!

 

 

After viewing the BMW Driver series I initially thought Owen would make a good Bond. I've since come to decide that would not have been the case. His kind of cool is just on another wavelength from that of 007. I'm glad he's out there making Clive Owen movies instead.

Agreed.

Mary Goodnight comes off more favorably in the novel, and is of some genuine assistance to Bond.
 

And I think that having a Bond girl be a sex slave is actually fairly new for the series. Usually they're merely kept women, who just fell in with the wrong crowd. I think it's a good moment of honesty to say that some of these women Bond runs across come from troubled backgrounds. In the books the Bond girls often endured tragic circumstances or assaults in their lives, but the movies till now had often brushed past this, content to give Honey Ryder a bikini but shying away from the broken nose Fleming describes in the book.

That is very much my view. It's demeaning to suggest that such a woman couldn't desire Bond of her own free will. Here comes this white knight out of nowhere, a glamorous foreigner who pledges to kill the man she fears. Why wouldn't she be excited to see him turn up in her shower after she'd given up hope and assumed he'd met his death in the Macau Casino?

 

+1 for Gala Brand.

 

The recent Bond continuation novel "Carte Blanche" featured a Gala Brand like character named Ophelia "Philly" Maidenstone, who was a women with an on again off again engagement Bond ultimately chose not to pursue (in a particularly well written scene she mentions over dinner that she lives close by, hint hint, but Bond notices her fingering the spot where her engagement ring had been, and politely declines to take things further, and later misses his chance entirely when she decides to go back to her fiance).

 

I mentioned it on the previous page but I think the movies should give Craig his Gala Brand, a woman who ultimately decides of her own accord that Bond (and his lifestyle) are not for her.

She didn't seem to mind. She seemed like a strong woman, and there was a need for stealth at that moment. Bond couldn't very well rap on the door with his fist to announce his arrival, or ring up her mobile.

This is why I think Severine was a great Bond girl. She had an intriguing back story and Bond's interactions with her say a lot about his character. Bond gets her killed, but that never really seems to trouble him, because in the end she was essential to his ability to complete his mission. He views the situation as unfortunate, but he wasn't about to give Silva the satisfaction of apologizing to her before the end.

Pretty much.
I can see how you'd view it that way, but I don't think pure misogyny is the case behind the filmmakers here, the way Mary Goodnight is portrayed seems more like their incompetence at trying to emulate screwball comedy in a Bond film than just some kind of hatred for women in general. Of course Bond isn't going to play the dumb-as-dirt role in the dynamic, so that unfortunately falls onto Goodnight who's supposed to be an MI6 agent. The dynamic just doesn't work so that's why it's more frustrating for me to watch. Maybe in another film with a different Bond girl type like Lana Wood, but in general I don't think screwball belongs in a Bond film and luckily it only lasted in one film.

 

 

That's actually a pretty interesting reading of the character. I'll admit I was just taken aback because I'm not used at ALL to the movies handling concepts like sexual slavery at all.

 

 

 

 

 

That still kinda sounds really fucking problematic on several levels.

Edited by LaurenOrtega - 12/1/12 at 11:20am

  Back to Fessbender as Bond for a second; I think his Bond would be a meaner Rodger Moore. I can easily see Moore saying,"If this is it old boy, I hope you don't mind if I go out speaking the King's" and "There is a special rung in Hell reserved for those who waste good Scotch, and since I may be momentarily rapping on the door."

 

  That said, I would think the next Bond will be an  unknown.

No argument from me, I think TMWTGG is Moore's worst especially when it comes to the Bond girls. Anders wants 007 to kill Scaramanga and that's why she sent the golden bullet with his number, so what was the point of the scene with Bond physically beating her for info when she could have told him her intentions?

Because the movie has deep issues with women. Granted I don't think they want to be intentionally hateful, but Jesus god.

That's my point, the intention by Hamilton was to make Moore act more like Connery but it's all done in the wrong context and Moore isn't good at playing a bastard.

It's a shame we don't have more Laurens around here as it's interesting to get the female perspective on Bond. Well, unless Mr Stockslivevan is really Mrs Stockslivevan, of course.

 

And also "Guys? It's the 70's! That attitude towards women was getting put under fire by the late 60's."

And their reaction towards that after TMWTGG was to make the females stronger, albeit casting horrible actresses like Barbara Bach and Tanya Roberts in those roles, compromising the whole point. Then you have the condescending attitude.

*mineworker gawks at Stacey wearing miner clothes, with high heels!*
Bond: "It's women's lib, they're taking over the Teamsters!"

I'm up to OCTOPUSSY and NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN in my Bond marathon. I think it was this thread's Paul McCartney who said if the Bond franchise was an album, the 80's would be the filler tracks. I have to agree, the 80's pretty much suck.

Fat Elvis, The...80's Bond films included...

For Your Eyes Only

License To Kill

Octopussy

The Living Daylights

Never Say Never Again 

and the only dud...A View To A Kill!  

I...Easilly prefer the...70's and 80's era Bond Films as they star 

the 2...Best 007s, Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton. For me, the...Worst decade are the...Mid 90's to today.  

Outside of...Tomorrow Never Dies and Casino Royale, Bond is not at his best. Especially...Skyfail...err...skyfall!

 

I guess we could see it this way, though it seems to be giving the filmmakers a lot of credit.

 

I suppose you could say the same kind of thing about her death scene. Normally the secondary Bond Girl is either killed off screen or when Bond's not around (unless she's evil and Bond does the deed). In SKYFALL it's on screen, drawn out, and Bond is an unwilling participant in the killing-- or at least in Silva's sick game leading up to it. So it draws a much more direct line between Bond's actions and the untimely deaths of people he comes in contact with.

 

Problem here is, as I also mentioned in the post-release thread, that Severine is completely forgotten about after Bond shoots the place up and his backup arrives. That she doesn't rate any more thought in the story is pretty standard for a Bond movie, but at least in CASINO ROYALE Bond's indifference  to Solange's murder is directly addressed. 

 

If Severine's story was supposed to some deeper commentary on the role of Bond Girls in the series, I think the filmmakers dropped the ball somewhere.

 

 

And Fassbender's Magneto in X-Men: First Class is such an obvious Bond riff, it would almost be redundant if he took on the real thing. I really could have stood another movie of Lensherr adventuring around the globe killing Nazis before he went full-on supervillain.

Four years from now Fassbender's various Bond riffs won't be so fresh, and I bet we will all be ready to see him sink his teeth into the role!

You're probably right, Dr Harford! I'm sure Fassbender's time as Bond will inspire comments such as

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keep dreaming that dream, Harford...

 

(MrSaxon, I find your sarcasm unbecoming!) 

 

............

 

Crap. I just found out Fassbender is three days younger than me. I know this is bound to happen eventually, of course-- but the day James Bond is younger will be an unfortunate milestone in my life. Like the time I realized I was significantly older than your average Playboy Playmate and suddenly felt weird ogling them.  

I remember reading an article on possible Bonds to replace Timothy Dalton and one of the names was surprisingly Liam Neeson.   Having seen Taken and a couple of his other late career movies, it would have been fun to see a few Bond movies with him in it.   DDL is another who in his younger days would have killed in the role.   Or better yet, played a villain.

 

As for Fassbender, he'd be an interesting choice but I think the wrong one.  He's a little too cold.   An off the wall choice?   Eric Bana.   His work in Hanna was promising.

Bana is a good actor but he doesn't have the charisma for Bond. 

or the shoulders. 

Classic Pervy Bond Moment # 136: In OCTOPUSSY when Bond takes Q's new TV camera set up and zooms in on the hot young assistant's chest. Grow up, 007!

I was watching You Only Live Twice the other day, keeping an eye on the details. My dad and I decided to track the fate of Blofeld's cat.

 

We noticed it stayed pretty mellow until the bit where the explosion goes off in the control room. Then the poor thing bugs out and tries to claw it's way off Blofeld's arm.

 

It stays with Blofeld until the confrontation at the tram/pod, then there is a quick shot of him dropping the cat. Then he escapes without it! That's it! For all we know, it blew up along with the volcano base. Or, possibly, climbed up one of the commando ropes to safety.

 

According to a random forum post I read, the cat has no official name, but the cat actor's name was Tiddes.

 

 

It's probably the most lively performance in the entire film.

is there ever an explanation as to why Blofeld favors cats so much?

Who doesn't love pussy?

Silva?

These two as well then.



Love that crazy zoom in.

The cat was part of SPECTER; he didn't deserve to make it out alive. Or to quote Sheriff Buford T Justice, "When you raid a cathouse, you arrest the piano player too."

 

Yes, I am giving the filmmakers credit for the process by which the things we saw in the film ended up there. It takes a lot of brains to make even a misfire of a major motion picture. I think the unsavory details of Severine's backstory, her fate, or Bond's reaction to her fate were more likely intentional than the result of whoever was on script revision duty dropping the ball and going home early one Friday. It's all in there intentionally and went past a whole lot of eyeballs getting there.  I think acting as if we noticed something the filmmakers didn't is giving overdue credit. I could be overthinking it but I suspect Logan, Craig and Mendes didn't knock that scene out and high five each other with nary a thought as to how it was presented and/or would be received. I would love to hear them talk about it.

I'd actually love to hear them talk about it too.

 

I'm probably more edgy about Severine's treatment because I'm so used to the movies being twitchy about things like that.

I'm just going to leave this here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTMHdUfMPAM&sns=em

Craig may be the best Bond, but Moore is the greatest of mortals.

 

Yes. I'm aware of that. I only think it's just as likely that Severine's darker than usual Bond Girl backstory and death are simply more of the gritty "realism" that they aim for with Craig's run, as they are some kind of critical statement or commentary.

 

But we don't know, unless Mendes or the writers have said so one way or the other somewhere. The one long-form interview I heard with Purvis and Wade didn't even touch on Severine at all.

 

One thing they did say, though, as a somewhat related side-note: the DB5 that appears in SKYFALL was originally written to be the unadorned one Bond won in CR, and adding the GOLDFINGER machine guns and ejector seat was Mendes's idea. Goes to show you that filmmaking choices aren't necessarily rooted in a lot of deep thought or the needs of a story. Sometimes an element is just cool, or an effecting detail.  Sometimes the surface is all there is.