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Goldeneye set up poor Pierce pretty badly for his run. His Bond is introduced as a buddy cop, and that characterization informs everything else in the movie. Of course, this angle has nothing to do with anything in any Bond movie that came before or has come since. His Bond is extremely pastiche, dropping both of his signature lines in a casino early in the film, and just generally coming off as a generic "James Bond" avatar Pierce could have played as a guest on The Muppet Show or something.
Adding to it, four characters other than Bond give extended monologues about him, referring exclusively to cliches that would be known to people who have never seen a Bond film, or weird melodrama alien to the series. It's just not a good start for Pierce's Bond...he doesn't have much meaningful to work with. It's a generic action hero with the simplest Bond cliches sprinkled on top.
Basically, the biggest change would be hire someone to write a script that isn't terrible.
A second option would be to cast an age-appropriate actor for 006, and maybe don't have him say things like "it's insulting to think I haven't anticipated your every move" immediately prior to putting Bond in a spectacularly ill-conceived death trap and leaving him unattended. As unintentional comedy, it's magnificent, but yeah, Bruce blew it in a big way.
Just a little (from Dench) would have gone a long way. It gets to be a little much with Moneypenny and Tanner chiming in on that theme--is MI6 supposed to be a catty or a professional work environment when an EMP goes off over Russia?
And it sets the series up for more (bad) meta to follow: "Can you translate that to English for those of us who don't speak spy?" Say what now?
Was there ever a reason given as to why they didn’t actually use the Z3 I wonder? I know a chase sequence was planned with a helicopter and a buzzsaw (so what we got in TWINE) but I have no idea why it wasn’t filmed.
Yeah. Same here.
Money? The movie doesn't have a lot of action.
Anyway, they shoud have cut the Q scene but BMW paid a lot for the ad.
The only significant explanation I can find is Campbell claiming the BMW deal happened late in production. I guess it kinda makes sense - although it seems a little bit odd considering it’s set up with gadgets quite overtly in the Q scene and it features when they filmed the scene with Wade in Puerto Rico I believe. Then there’s the planned buzzsaw helicopter thing which I know little about. Considering Campbell was capable of incorporating product placement into GE (ie. Making Bond fiddle with an IBM device or whatever during the Q scene) I get the sense while it did in fact come in late into production, it wasn’t quite as late as implied, and it’s sort of an unfortunate tread that couldn’t be edited out between story practicality and the demands of product placement. That or perhaps it was turned into a gag which doesn’t quite land.
They still could have devised something better with it. But it’s very weird when watching it in the context of the film. Again, the only significant thing I have against it.
Yeah. It's probably why they felt a gadget-laden car chase must be done for TND. Also, maybe Campbell felt featuring two car chases in one Bond film was too much. Even if the one with Bond & Xenia was playful.
I always think GE had one in particular: make the Janus Syndicate a recurring adversary during the Brosnan era. They could have made Trevelyan a Largo-like figure, a field operator, with the head lurking in the shadow. Or have Janus being two headed and keeping the second one for a subsequent movie.
Then Elliot Carver as their member like Largo did in SPECTRE.
Elektra couldn't be included, since her villainy has something personal to do with M.
I'm not a big fan of Elektra to be honest. I was more thinking about a figure that would show up in TWINE and a very different DAD (rechristened Death Can Wait, but that's another topic).
Anyway, back on topic, while having a recurring adversary has its share of risks, particularly villain decay, it can also give an extra aura of danger and it gives some material to work a proper arc over a tenure. Given that GE was meant as a return to form, it would have been nice to give Brosnan a crypto SPECTRE with Janus. The movie would have remained self-contained, with the same antagonism with Trevelyan, but another larger threat looming above.
To me Tomorrow never dies feels more like Brosnan’s first bond film
Of the two characters I think he was a fit for Alec over Elliot. However we would lose that brutal and banger of a fight in the dish at the end of the film. I can't see Hopkins and Brosnan being believable in such a fight.
Yes, that's thing. It would be best to keep Sean Bean as Trevelyan as long as they changed his backstory and motivations to suit his age better. That way the physicality of the final fight between Bond and Trevelyan could be retained.
Just a double agent. you don't need more.
I think with that kind of casting decision you have to go with which actor brings out what’s in the script best. Hopkins is an actor who, quite frankly, has always come off as older than he actually is, and while he would have brought a mentor dynamic to Travelyan, I can’t see him coming across as a match for Bond in the PTS and during the fight scene. Bean, while younger, is an actor who could have been cast as Bond. Travelyan is kind of a twisted mirror image of Bond anyway so it makes sense casting that kind of actor. Travelyan’s backstory also plays into that dynamic as well so I can see why it wasn’t rewritten (and why would they? It’s a great and very Fleming-esque backstory for a villain and gives him believable motivation when his actual plan is quite outlandish. I’d argue if his backstory was rewritten Travelyan could well have become a weaker villain). So despite Bean’s young age (and he was rather young - mid 30s I believe), I think it’s best we have him.
Edit - just realised Travelyan’s meant to be 6 at the end of WW2! So I’m wrong about the age margin. Ok, they could have at least done light rewriting to have had him only be a few months old when his parents kill themselves or something/have him find all this out as an adult, haha. Still, I think it’s best they kept the backstory more or less the same. And Sean Bean’s great.
Mission Impossible did something similar and it worked better.
True to a degree. They just picked and named the wrong character, lol.
It always irked me a bit. He could have been the son of Cossaks survivors?
Well, like Bond, he has good genes: they both aged about five minutes between 1986 and 1995. God knows how old these guys are.
Good point.
Much agreed. Hopkins' a great actor, and a villain who suits more of a stay at home ilk. Hopkins wasn't going to look athletic or convincing during fight scenes. But Sean Bean's Alec is like Bond and feels like Bond's match, same way Scaramanga and Silva were. Maybe we need that sort of villain again for Bond 26. A villain who's like Bond.
Hopkins would have been utterly unconvincing going mano a mano against Brosnan in his prime. Heck, even the much younger Robert Carlyle didn't really cut it. But Bond villains who are "like Bond" or darker reflection of him work better as henchmen (like Grant) or freelance agents (like Scaramanga) than mastermind villains. Hence my thought that the Janus Syndicate should have been run by two people, one field commander (Trevelyan) and one shadowy boss (say a crypto Blofeld).
Yes, that's what I thought myself. I think Trevelyan said his father killed his mother and then himself because he couldn't live with the shame of being a Lienz Cossack. So I suppose it could have been a while after the war, although I'd concede that even then it would be stretching things a bit. Logically you'd think it'd be something that'd happen at the war's end when Nazi collaborators were thrown to the wolves.