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Can't say I blame him. ;)
Where Roger has the snake fight? Yeah, MR was on telly a few weeks ago and I was kind of trying to drink that set in with my eyes in the few seconds it's on screen! It is stunning.
Sir Ken's last Bond of course, he went out in pretty amazing style.
Agreed. What little we see of that base makes me dream of all the details we don't see. Every chamber brings us something new. There's a timeless, adventurous, almost mythical flavour running through his designs of the base. Everything looks "spacy", and far more otherworldly than the Moonraker factory in California. It bothers me that those sets were built only to be broken down again. I wouldn't mind living in such a design. 😉
(from Thunderballs.org)
(PR Still? )
For Your Eyes Only
And here, the boat and sub-models, including cute figurines. Isn't that movie magic? I thought the underwater scenes were full-scale subs and divers.
The model work is seamless in many if not all of the scenes in this film.
The 'plot' of the PTS is ridiculous -- it's a lot of fun, but it's ridiculous -- and tonally so very much unlike the rest of the film that the sinking of the St. Georges almost causes a whiplash. And yet, I'm always looking forward to this little PTS, I really do. The helicopter action is my second favorite action scene in the entire film. (The first is, of course, the ski chase. You simply can't beat that.)
If anyone's interested there's a great American Society of Cinematography article where Alan Hume talks about the production here: https://theasc.com/articles/for-your-eyes-only-007 Some great behind the scenes photos in it.
The Helicopter action should be in the other Bond film, if it's the PTS for, say, A View To A Kill, would've makes more sense.
The problem with the PTS was Blofeld appearing in there, very out of place, and obviously forced and shoehorned, it shouldn't be in there, just silly, almost like a parody, so as much as that helicopter action stunt was good, it's ruined by Blofeld, kind of like how the slide whistle ruined an otherwise great stunt in TMWTGG.
Then yes, Tracy's grave, for me, that scene should've happened right after the events of OHMSS, because in this film, it almost felt like a retcon, it's also felt shoehorned and came out of nowhere, like there's no reason for it to happened, and it took many films to have Bond do it? Why? What's the intention for him visiting her grave other than to explain it in technicality that it's meant to introduce the new Bond actor (which didn't happened anyway), it carries no weight.
Unfortunately, they overdid it by not only taking a sequence out of the Risico short story, which was great, but felt they needed to also tie the Roger Moore Bond to OHMSS (and ignoring the DAF Blofeld). Back then it already felt out of place, but I remember being happy for the fact that OHMSS got a deserved reference and late appreciation. In 1981 the press still treated OHMSS and it's Bond as a failure.
FYEO is a very strange film for some of these reasons. There's so much effort being put into incorporating the Fleming material, the pretty specific reference to Tracy at the beginning of the PTS etc. It's even a consciously much more 'down to earth' film than its predecessor.
And yet it also contains some of the most stupid moments of the series I'd argue. The ending with Thatcher and the parrot, the knock off Blofeld. It drifts into the realm of parody more than even MR did I'd argue.
But you also get the keel hauling scene, that is taken directly from the Fleming novel of LALD, and is wonderfully shot and tense.
Also, the climbing sequence to gain access to Kristatos hideaway is full of tension and thrills.
I do agree, there are moments of silliness that the film doesn't need. But on the whole this is a more grounded film, and Roger Moore to his credit does play it pretty straight compared to his other outings.
I would say it's my least favourite Moore performance, but a lot of that is due to the script. I often say the character Moore's playing isn't recognisably James Bond for me. I can't see in this film the same hardened spy who in TSWLM matter-of-factly (but sympathetically) told Anya he killed her lover, or the one from TMWGG who claimed he only killed for Queen and Country. He seems to wag his finger at Melina a lot and quote Chinese proverbs about revenge whilst killing at least two character in this film for personal reasons. I'd argue Moore played the character much more 'straight' in those other two films, and OP was the film where he played that older, slightly more gentle Bond convincingly (ie. his looks of genuine terror during the circus sequence, or him looking horrified at Orlov's plan which involved killing hundreds of innocent people).
I do like the climbing sequence though. The keel hauling for me isn't quite as impactful without LALD's dark, almost surreal atmosphere and villain.
https://mi6community.com/discussion/13771/the-for-your-eyes-only-appreciation-thread#latest