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Although I agree @sirseanisbond was being extremely annoying and childish there, please stop bitching about how you miss the old site. You've said this multiple times now.
I wasn't a member on the old site, but most, if not all, of the people from there seem to have gotten over it and are happy with the new forum.
If you're going to keep bitching about how much better the old site was (and almost 2 years after they moved it too) and how bad the discussion level on this forum is, then why not just leave?
Long live the new forum.
But the best of the Series? No way! Right now I can name ar least 7 or 8 better films in it if we speak neutrally in terms of overall quality and taking into account the time where they were made... For instance, Dr.No, FRWL, GF, TB, OHMSS, TSWLM, FYEO, GE, CR and, of course, Skyfall.
HOWEVER, no one of them will ever beat LTK as my fav movie not only in the 007 series, but of all movies (well, at the present moment, at least :D ). LTK has a place in my heart and I think no movie in the whole series will ever pass it by (my stance in the "all movies" issue can easily change, of course).
I don't think that they should have cut the scene where Pam gives Bond a backstory on Truman Lodge (he was a Wall Street wiz-kid wanted for insider trading), as it really fleshed-out the character. As it is, I'm left thinking, "Who is this guy"?
Thunderball is an underrated Bond film. LTK is just slightly above average. it's nothing special...
B-)
I don't think I've ever heard any non-Bond fan criticise TB, despite its lethargic pacing and bloatedness. That's not to say it doesn't have its positives. But for that reason I don't think I could class it as underrated. If anything I think it is one of the entries that escapes just criticism on many occasions, other than from Bond fans.
I'd say the exact opposite. I never heard anything against Thunderball, many claim it to be one of best Bond films. I personally find it terribly boring because of the underwater scenes. If they removed all the underwater parts, the movie would be one of my personal favourites.
One must see it in the theatre to truly appreciate its grandeur IMO.
AND, what's wrong with a few slow spots in a movie? :-??
MOVIE REVIEWS : Revenge . . . and Romance : 'Licence': A Darker Version of Bond
July 14, 1989|MICHAEL WILMINGTON
Time marches, age withers and everything falls into decay . . . except James Bond, still spruce and deadly after all these years.
The series has been with us since 1962 and, like many another old timer, tends to repeat itself. Yet, every once in a while, it pulls in its stomach, pops the gun from its cummerbund, arches its eyebrow and gets off another bull's-eye. The newest, "Licence to Kill" (citywide), is probably one of the five or six best of Bond.
At first, it's hard to suggest why. "Licence" (the title is deliberately anglicized) milks the formula as before: a mix of sex, violence and exotic scenery, with Bond on a one-man raid against an archetype of evil, while seducing women and taking in sights. Here, the locales include the sea-spray expanses of Key West and the garish palaces of Mexico City disguised as a fictitious "Isthmus City."
Yet the overall tone has gotten more burnished, somber. The new movie sends the new Bond, Timothy Dalton, on a desperate one-man vendetta against an apparently omnipotent South American cocaine czar. And it isolates him, kills or maims three of his best friends, strips him of his rank, his government, his very license to kill. It leaves him with almost nothing but his wits--and dear old chic-weapons expert Q (Desmond Llewelyn), who pops up ex officio with another bag of lethal cameras and exploding toilet accessories.
It even strips away a little libido. As Timothy Dalton plays the role--with wolfishly sad eyes--this is a more wounded and sensitive Bond than we've ever seen, the sort of Bond the late Laurence Olivier might have imagined. (The look is there, but not the lines.) Bond's appetite for sex seems more distracted, tentative. His women--Carey Lowell as a helicopter pilot and double agent, Talisa Soto as the drug czar's faithless mistress--are more self-sufficient. His armor has sprung a leak.
Where Sean Connery was wry and self-confident and Roger Moore natty and self-mocking, Dalton projects something strange for a hero identified with impeccable sadism: inner torment. The walk is tense; cigarettes pour out fumes of Angst ; the smile carries a hint of pain.
Connery always seemed to be enjoying the world hugely--and he carried the audience along with him, made them enjoy it as much as he did. Roger Moore didn't seem to be enjoying the world so much as ignoring it and, instead, enjoying himself--or perhaps some internal reflection. Dalton, by extreme contrast, doesn't project much enjoyment at all. He projects pain. And pain, obsession and revenge are what "Licence to Kill" is all about.
It's not a film about an urbane adventurer, moving with eerie confidence through a violent, chaotic world. It's a film about a bereaved friend, half-crazed with grief, relying on his instincts and professionalism to carry him through a situation rotten with peril. Like Stallone's Rambo or Eastwood's Dirty Harry, this Bond has been stiffed by the world and abandoned by his government. He is a loner, driven by overwhelming personal hurts--confronted with a cool, sexy foe who, in some curious way, almost recalls the old Bond.
Previous villains in the series tended to be older, more urbane, wicked paterfamilias figures. Instead, Robert Davi, a heavy in "Die Hard," makes Franz Sanchez--who's modeled on modern drug kings like Carlos Lehder of Colombia's Medellin cartel--a sexy adventurer who metes out rough justice with style and merciless sarcasm. And he has a code: loyalty matters to him more than money. Against this new-style villain, Bond, the dark angel, twists what seems to be Sanchez's only good quality--his insistence on loyalty--against him, trying to strip away his friends one by one and convince him of their treachery.
It seems to isolate Bond as well as Sanchez. Yet it leaves him with everything that counts: the gimmicks, the archetypes, the formulas, the old jokes of a full 27-year and 16-film tour of duty. Like all Bond movies it has its set-pieces, chief among them a roaring, rousing Mad Max-style climactic, exploding chase involving three Kenworth trucks, jeeps and a small plane set on a desolately beautiful Mexican mountain road. It's planned and staged with the exquisite carnage of a silent comedy car chase, with gags topping gags, and surprises leaping over each other--just as one flaming truck leaps over the plane.
Produced and co-written by old hands Albert Broccoli and Richard Maibaum (whose tour dates back to 1962's "Dr. No"), directed and co-written by new veterans John Glen and Michael G. Wilson, the movie whips up a combustible brew of old and new. Is it just updating the new cliches: the incessant car crashes, gruesome sadism, heavy hardware, feistier heroines? (Just as there used to be obligatory sexpots-in-distress, Carey Lowell almost seems an obligatory lone wolf.) Perhaps--but all those movies stole from the Bond films, too, often draining out the crucial elements that make them fun: self-kidding humor and exotic locales.
"Licence to Kill" (MPAA-rated PG-13, despite extreme violence and suggestions of sex) has the usual bursts of illogic, the gratuitous sex or violence. But gratuitous sex or violence have always been fixtures of Bond's world. Often the formulas grate on you. Here, they ignite. This is a guilt-edged Bond; there's a core of darkness and pain in the glittery world exploding around it.
TLD too...
You made it? Wait...
It was the last of the James Bond film to follow a trend, in this case the Die Hard series and those cheap but insanely funny Cannon Films romps: It's a compilation of what made those films of the 80s so enjoyable. Non-stop action, high levels of violence, ninjas and almost no time to think between scenes. besides there is this proto-Craig performance by Dalton... And Robert Davi was fantastic as Sánchez.
Lol ..no meant my ranking
Yeah, I love Brosnan & Connery, but Dalton rules, and I will support my King.
Great find @getaflix.
CR and QoS are a response to Bourne and SF is inspired by TDK. Bond never stopped following the latest trends.
Great find @getaflix.
QOS maybe. CR? Absolutely not. And I never understood the SF/Dark Knight comparisons. Someone please enlighten me.
So I guess the Bourne series invented serious tones and bone-crunching fights. The same response was made in 1969 with OHMSS. Was that due to Bourne aswell? And I highly EON would ever admit to copying Bourne. Hell the first two Bourne films didn't even do that well in the box office.
likewise Mendes has explicitly referenced TDK as an inspiration for SF.
When did Wilson and Broccoli reference Bourne? Ofcourse Brosnan said that but that was just his childish and jealous response to being fired. I'm sorry I just don't see enough similarities between CR and Bourne to acknowledge any kind of trend being followed especially since that was the third time the Bond franchise made that OTT to serious transition. The timing just happened to match. Again Bourne didn't invent serious the same way Christopher Nolan didn't invent dark.
I'll admit LALD followed the blaxploitation trend and Moonraker followed the Star Wars trend but I'm sorry I don't see CR following Bourne.