BONDage: a 007 Thread in Anticipation of SKYFALL

For Your Eyes Only was my first Bond film -- always will be one of my favorites.

I think it's interesting that most people's list of "best" Bond movie and "favorite" Bond movie can be very different.

My favorite Bond movie has always been You Only Live Twice. I think it's the first one I ever saw, and it's always stuck with me. Bond getting "killed" in the pre-credits, Little Nellie, the hollowed out volcano, the microdot photo, the battle with the ninjas at the end and Bond being "turned Japanese" have all been burned into my brain since I was a kid. It's far from the best of the movies, the plot makes no sense, and it's fairly racist at times, but I love it more than any other Bond.

"Bond. John Wilkes Bond."

Good choice. I'd put Tom Hiddlestone alongside him.

How about Tom Hardy?

I used to think so until I saw him on the street. He's tiny, like Tom Cruise tiny, 5'7".

All that, and nothing about his Lord President Rassilon?

Have you see Our Friends in the North? Craig is much too ugly. Except it turned out he wasn't.

Fassbender basically plays a young Magento as James Bond IMO. He may as well have a white tux on he's channelling 60s Sean that well.

Balls. Total balls.

Craig is ageing appallingly.
No Irish-Kraut for Bond!

Idris Elba tested for Bond. I remember when there was some right-on movement at TBBS for Colin fucking Salmon to take over. Then The Wire premiered. I wouldn't mind him at all.

It's not balls, as you'll see from the link Hood has subsequently posted.

I don't want it just to have a black Bond, not because I have a problem with a black Bond, but because the casting will all be part of the political correctness of British entertainment these days. It's gimmick casting. "Ooooh, look at us, we cast a black Bond, aren't we so very 21st Century". It's like a female Doctor Who. The reason for such gimmick castings should only be 100% based on the merits of a particularly actor, not the colour of his skin, but my fear is that the skin colour still plays a motivating element, whether it be a (perceived) positive or negative motivation.

Plenty of people claimed it was wrong to have a blonde Bond.

Fassbender would be an incredible Bond, definitely gets my vote.

To me the interesting part of the next Bond will be the tone. Watching old bonds and looking a the series as a whole there's a definite cycle, alternating between a edgier, rough around the edges Bond and a smoother, British gentleman with more gadgets and gimmicks. Connery and Dalton being the previous, Moore and Brosnan being the latter of course.

With nuBond eschewing gadgets and pushing verisimilitude on all fronts, will the next Bond cycle back the other way?

I've always thought the Bond movies reflected the times they were made. It depends on the movie appetite over the next few years. Will super realistic grounded action thrillers give way to more camp? Who knows. Batman Begins, Bourne, and Casino Royale signaled a direction to what we're watching now. We're still on the track and I'm not sure we're heading off it anytime soon.

As for alternating - I would propose that the frequency of tone changes is far more common than Connery/Dalton v. Moore/Brosnan.

Take for instant just Roger Moore:

Live and Let Die wasn't actually too heavy on camp. A fairly serious affair for the era (and Blacksplotation) it was followed up by the far odder Man with the Golden Gun featuring the karate craze of the era (two people take out an entire troop of ninjas using their mad skills). Then the pendulum swung back.

The Spy Who Loved Me had gadgets but it was pretty straight forward and considered one of the best Bond movies. But that was too serious so we swung back to Moonraker. Say what you will, but it was Bond in Space - the strangest reaction to Star Wars you can think of. It was super unrealistic.

To temper that, the produces swung back to For Your Eyes Only, a somewhat grittier outing for 007 that features him killing the henchman in cold blood by kicking his car over a cliff. It's a story of revenge. OK...maybe that was too serious so then we get Octopussy which features a horse that turns into a plane and Bond dressed as a clown. A View to a Kill wasn't a full pendulum swing back, in my opinion, but it was more tempered than Octopussy. It featured Christopher Walken but also Bond on a firetruck.

I can understand why, after Octopussy and View to a Kill, the producers toughened it up with Dalton's two outings - an obvious reaction to 80's action films.

For our British friends...which would "offend" you more: (1) a black Bond or (2) an American Bond?

'Cause I'm thinking Wesley Snipes is available.

[action=Paladin]runs for cover.[/action]

I'd be interested in seeing them reboot the Fleming novels. I mean lets face it: quite a few had little more than the name in common with the novel. The Craig "Casino Royale" stayed fairly accurate to the book. I'd enjoy it if, having rebooted the character, they redid the stories too. Then the question is whether you have to make them Cold War period pieces or you can swap in China and Islamic fundamentalism for the global background.

Certainly some of them are ripe for remake treatment. Moonraker the book would make a great story reframed as terrorists or some made-up M.E. country trying to start a war by causing the launch of a secret weapon. The movie that had the name moonraker was awful and entirely disconnected to the book. A remake would probably need a different name, though (kind of like the the Thunderball remake).

And Moonraker was already a rehash of Spy Who Loved Me. Pretty much the same plot.

No, it is still balls. They aren't 'talking' to Idris Elba. He had a fuckig elevator chat with Babs. Not. Going. To. Happen.

Apropos of nothing, I've found a grand total of one full length Bond movie for free on YouTube: Octopussy.

Re-watching that one recently, I've decided it's not quite as bad as its reputation. Its main fault is making Bond do a few ridiculous things (telling a tiger to "Sit!", swinging on vines doing the Tarzan yell, dressing in a gorilla suit, being a clown), but the story itself isn't bad. And the stunts--particularly the airborn stuff at the end--are pretty good.

I'd rank the Moore outings thus:

1. The Spy Who Loved Me
2. For Your Eyes Only
3. A View to a Kill
4. Octopussy
5. Moonraker
6. Live and Let Die
7. The Man with the Golden Gun

Can't believe you ranked it that high. It sucked donkey balls. I would easily put in my list of top five worst Bond films. (Excluding the Pierce Brosnan debacle, all of which automatically make the "worst" list.)

Having just watched all of these in the last week, I'm kinda going with the question "Which one would you want to watch again soon?" as my criterion.

A View to a Kill had a lot of things going for it: Christopher Walken! Mayday! Patrick MacNee! Skydiving from the Eiffel Tower! The San Francisco City Hall burning! The firetruck chase! The climax on the Golden Gate Bridge!

Certainly not one of the greatest Bonds, but a decent/average one I thought.

True. They're all watchable in one way or another.

I did all the Bonds at my blog in January.

http://dickynoo.blogspot.com/2012/01/big-bushel-of-bond.html

Eh....it wanders off into misanthropy territory a couple times..but, the reviews are fair....

As you can see, though, I championed Lazenby.

Yep, and your comments about OHMSS--and its audience--are right on. People didn't WANT Bond humanized.

And I love what you said about the plausibility of Moonraker:

Yeah, I'm not big on volcano bases either. If it's something you'd find in Austin Powers, we don't need it with 007.

You're joking, right?

The reason Dr. Evil has a volcano lair is because it's mocking Blofeld's base in You Only Live Twice. So, the Bond movies did a volcano base long before Austin Powers.