Reporting For Duty
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Categories
John Glen
MrBond
Station S
I was just Thinking for myself why so many people don't like John Glen as a director. I mean he made 5 movies and 4 of them was really good. I think he kept Bond alive when they gained cash and stayed with the same crew throughout the 80's. So what do people think he did wrong?
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
Which I think the regular moviegoing public didn't fuss about much.
And in general I liked the films and don't find him a bad director. I especially like TLD.
Glen had little (or no) flair; very much the "journeyman" director. He got the job done, at any rate.
John McTiernan shoud've directed LTK.
imo these films had a very, very dull and lifeless cinematography. compared TB, FRWL, OHMSS with FYEO, AVTAK, TLD, OP and LTK, and you'll see the difference. I have never seen such a boring director as Glen. he has such a boring, by the numbers style, it sometimes puts me off his films.
and you just proved my point with 'his directing was straight forward'. Straight-forward means dull and lifeless. in movies you expect to be surprised by the directing/cinematography.... straight-forward means by-the-numbers directing, no surprise, nothing. That's not what movie directing is about.
John Glen is a very safe, boring, typical director. He was lucky he had good scripts and actors, otherwise the 80's would be by far the worst decade of Bond films.
Octopussy is a prime example of a lifefull movie which did surprise me the first time i watched it.
But i can agree that he played it safe in AVTAK, put other then that. No.
95% of the shots of OP are dull, colourless, boring. Even when there are colours in the shot, the camera lenses are of very bad quality, and/or very badly chosen, as it makes these colours look dull.
But John Glen doesen't handel the cinematography. Alan Hume did that during the early 80's.
the point is the 5 1980's films just look very bad. They have great scripts, great music and great acting performances, but that's it. the technical aspect of the 80's Bond films are simply appalling.
Dull? Disagree. Camera work, editing, photography... they are all fine IMO. I admit that when I was 12, I wasn't too excited about them either but growing up, I learned to appreciate the material these films offer. Also, Glen's the director. He can't be held accountable for every aspect of the filmmaking involved.
Well we can't just pin that on Glen can we? Anyway aren't you the one that DEFENDS the Moore films?
Defending films doesn't mean you can't partially criticise them. Defending them as if they are 110 % perfect would be dumb and DC ain't no dummy. ;-)
Well, it isn't just his responsibilities. As you know it is a lots of other persons who handles those things.
When I finally saw FYEO I was surprised that it had a bit of visual flair; not much but it was there. But that was gone by Dalton's time and the films were very by-the-numbers, at least visually. Rewatching TLD in a theatre a while back surprised me as I would expect a Bond film to look classy and travelougue-y and TLD looked neither. Nor did LTK when I rewatched it recently. There were some nice shots and scenery but it wasn't photographed very well.
However, what Glen was good at was building the narrative as the film went. I think that LTK has one of the best "journeys" of any Bond film; you really feel that there's a conclusion at the end and that Bond has earned his victory. That's pretty impressive especially given how formulaic Bond films are. I think that Glen does deserve a lot of credit for that - I mean, a lot of the Bond films look dull. Other than the 60s I think the only films I can think of that have beautiful cinematography are GE, CR, and QOS.
This could also be directed at Michael David Apted whose TWINE seriously was all those things and more. EON made a mistake not asking Glen back to direct a Brosnan movie, IMO. It seems like Glen took the rap for their scaling back on production values, such as shooting LTK in Mexico and not Pinewood. I honestly feel if Glen had been involved in TND, TWINE or the awful DAD then some of us Bond fans might think better of those movies.
Well the problem is that Glen did so many movies that the concept became tired. Just like it became with DAD. So they did the right thing to put in a new director for GE.
But Glen did a good job to keep the movies inside the frame of money and location. And he delivered movies that was most of them good and all of them were different to eachother.
Despite what some Bond fans might think round here, Brosnan's movies lacked creative cohesion and as a consequence felt disjointed. Nothing we can fix now, but I honestly feel John Glen could have helped resolve the mess made after Campbell's departure on GE. He really was a good "action director" and had an excellent understanding for good narrative and what made Bond work. Give me John Glen over Lee Tamahori, Roger Spottiswoode or Michael Apted any day.
It's a shame he's not given the credit and respect he deserves anymore.
I thought Glen was a safe pair of hands. And he directed three of my top ten films, so he can’t be all bad.
He did the best of a situation when the Bond movies didn't get so high budget and when other competing franchises popped up. He was what the series needed, something safe. The same reason why Moore was kept onboard thru the 80's.
For Your Eyes Only 8
Octopussy 6
A View to a Kill 2
The Living Daylights 8
License to Kill 6
Glen always seemed to have a thing with birds and pigeons and anything with feathers that flew if you noticed, and started out in 1981 with a most fine Bond adventure with a James Bond actor who redeemed himself from previous mishaps only to fall short again soon after and disappeared off the radar. Octopussy was a bit stale and nowhere near the success of first time out, AVTAK, the least said the better, big black mark for Mr Glen that year (and all involved), before Director and a new Bond were back with force and put together a most enthralling and entertaining Bond release in 1987 in Tim Dalton's debut as 007. Sadly Glen was not able to leave the 1980s as Bond director as he entered it, as License to Kill was a bit of a letdown and seemed so far detached from Bond at times. All said it was a bit of a mixed bag from Glen that decade, but he did do some fine work
If that was the case to me, then three of his five movies wouldn't be on my top ten Bond movies list. And two of them are on my list of top five Bond films.
License to Kill was a bit of a letdown and seemed so far detached from Bond at time.
And you solely blame Glen . . . instead of the screenwriters and the producers?
I agree.You can't blame glen for ltk not being a good film. The script and casting of so many bad american actors doesn't help the director.
This may suprise you @Bondsum but I agree. Glen had his faults but his films were (on the whole) better written and better made.
He can't beat Martin Campbell though as you say ;)