It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ 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
I understood what you meant, it's just that TLD has far more silliness imo than what came after, except maybe DAD.
$100m, no hits and a show about octopuses: what is going on with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Amazon deal?
The star has taken home a staggering amount of money for doing... well, pretty much nothing, it seems
https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/tvfilm/phoebe-waller-bridge-amazon-prime-video-deal-b1226778.html
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/apr/14/phoebe-waller-bridge-amazon-deal-fleabag
Boris, Jack Wade, Zukovsky, Xena .. the movie is pretty light.
Oh really? Do you have more info on that?
TLD isn’t overly gritty or dark. It takes itself more seriously than the Moore films did I guess, but it definitely doesn’t skew as dark tonally as LTK or GE can.
Anyway, heightened or even comical characters can (and arguably should) exist in a Bond film, even those that lean darker. Look at NTTD. GE’s a film with humour, spectacle etc. but also a harder edge, and ultimately I’d say what we do get in that regard is quite far from TLD, mature as it is (I don’t see anything as visceral as that final fight with Travelyan, Travelyan’s death, the satellite massacre and Natalya’s escape, the death of the admiral, Onnatop’s death…)
Well an obvious action sequence for Bond 26 is Bond fighting a villain in a London Eye pod or on the London Eye ferris wheel itself.
The actor doesn't have to be suspended from the actual wheel (!)..... a part of the wheel can be made with precise accuracy and raised twenty/thirty feet off the ground with padding on the ground. The new Bond actor can hang off the imitation wheel and composited into wide shots of the real London Eye. A pod can be made to scale on a sound stage and the London skyline added in post production.
The London Eye is an ideal location for an action sequence. Maybe the precredit scene. 😉
By the way, Cruise lied about no cgi in Top Gun Maverick plane sequences. Cgi planes were used and the vast majority of the train sequence in Dead Reckoning including the scenes inside the train carriage as it tilts were cgi. Cgi was also used in the halo jump in Fallout. The promo videos of Cruise skydiving were real. That's not what was used in the final edit.
Cgi train in Dead Reckoning.
Never believe everything you see in action films. A huge amount is enhanced in post production.
The fights are fights... There are plenty in TLD.
Sorry, you see a darkness in GE that I don't.
Yeah. I agree. Also, TLD is something of a romantic Bond adventure as well. GE is simply darker. Also, Eric Serra's avant-garde score, adds to it being dark.
There are fights in TLD, but not quite like that one with Travelyan. No music, only the sounds of the two men beating each other up, blood, and of course us seeing Travelyan fall and break all his bones when he lands (before the satellite falls on him). It’s more along the lines of LTK.
The admiral’s death is pretty dark, outrageous as the concept is. It’s definitely played in a macabre, unsettling way with the shadows showing Onnatop trap him, the close up of his face, and then Onnatop’s taking pleasure in killing him. It’s another example of Bond treading those lines, and it’s pretty out there for the series (a villain can kill someone in a unique, outlandish way, and it can still feel dangerous or dark). I can’t think of anything quite as unsettling in TLD. The fact that it’s so weird and has a bit of humour at the beginning even puts it above a lot of the stuff in LTK for me.
But to each their own. Personally, I find GE stands out in terms of the Brosnan era for its harder edge. It’s a good Bond film to look at for Amazon potentially in terms of how it balances everything.
It may be an age issue.
I dunno man, maybe GE’s just not your thing 😉 I must say, you’re not always the best at understanding this film from our conversations, haha.
It’s the fact that his face is fixed in that expression which makes it so unsettling. You know exactly how he’s died. It’s that sense of weird, twisted dark humour that sometimes you get with Bond. Again, I think it treads those lines well.
But anyway, I don’t think TLD has anything quite that twisted or harder edged than those examples. GE’s more comparable to LTK.
I understand the movie perfectly. The thing is, it wasn't my first Bond film.
It definitely wasn’t mine either :) Anyway, sometimes certain Bond movies just aren’t our thing and we revisit some more than others. I appreciate it’s not your favourite and not everything in it works for you.
Of course they used real skydiving shots in the film. Some parts were shot on the ground in a vertical wind tunnel, as shown in the BTS vids. The backgrounds were enhanced in post.
I don't think there was ever any pretence that the tilting train carriages were anything other than on a stage. In terms of the train sequence that video shows additions to the real stunts (filling out the train and the backgrounds) rather than the sequence itself being CGI. Of course the tunnel sequence was in studio, I don't think anybody would have thought that was done for real..?
The funny thing is that it's not one of my least-watched movies. I put a lot of effort into liking it. ;)
What I'm not going to do is pretend Jack Wade isn't there. Or Boris..
It has enough comic relief to fill a bus. I don't blame it. LTK didn't work out so well. A lighter tone was needed.
But hey, I also understand that this is a site that thinks Octopussy is a spy thriller.
All done by an actor called Sean Connery.
You can acknowledge a film has comedic characters and moments, all while having distinctly harder edged or ‘serious’ elements too. In the case of GE I don’t think that side to it can be ignored anymore than Boris or Jack Wade. It’s part of the film. Similar to how NTTD is fatalistic and dark, but has some very silly characters and a number of humorous moments. GE is a Bond film which manages to incorporate that breezy humour/tone and classic Bond tropes along with more serious, harder edged ideas, and I think sometimes people ignore the latter. We’re talking about Bond as well - tongue in cheek humour and a sense of outlandishness are inherent. Even LTK has its share of silliness and jokes. As I said, part of what makes the Admiral’s death so dark is that it’s mixed with a tinge of black humour, and is a noticeably dark idea for the Bond films.
It’s the same with OP - no one can claim it’s a fully serious, hard boiled thriller, and the silliness is certainly there. But it’d be daft to ignore what its story is doing too - the serious undertone of the bomb plot, the Cold War aspects etc. It stands out from many of Moore’s other Bond films and has similarities to FYEO in the sense there’s that ‘down to earth’ element amongst the lightness. I must admit though I’ve not personally seen anyone on these forums claim OP to be a fully serious spy thriller….
I dunno man, do you not think there’s a slight stubbornness of mind here on your part? I would understand if you don’t fully agree with everything I’m saying (although when there’s pushback to every single one of the many examples I’ve been giving I do get a bit skeptical), but I get a sense you want this film to be one thing or the other and nothing will budge your opinion. Again, it’s possible for a bit of nuance in terms of looking at what this film is doing.
Look, I'm a Roger Moore fan, and I know how Roger Moore fans think. Forget the jokes and focus on the positive. But the truth is, the jokes are still there. If they didn't want jokes, they wouldn't put them in movies.
Yeah I watched that again when he died. I'm still very surprised he did all of that, I didn't think he was up for stunts and that's some pretty dangerous stuff. He shouldn't really have done it: one slip would be all it would take.
No matter what you say there will be a contradictory statement back, I just let it wash over me. Try saying the sky is blue ;)
Yes, I think to some extent you might be right! 😂
I didn’t say anything about the beach scene. I never even said the film was ‘deep’. Just that it had a lot of harder edged, darker moments/ideas in there, and that it’s part of the film. And that I think people sometimes ignore that side to GE… that’s it.
Ok… I agree about the humour of OP - silliness is a major part of it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone try to ignore that even if they’re talking about other aspects of the film. But perhaps I just don’t understand Roger Moore fans as well as you do 😉
I agree with you on this, but that doesn't make it a "more serious movie".
I love TLD but Krabbe was so misused. As an actor, he easily was capable of doing the light to dark transition of Koskov. I am generally a fan of Glen's approach of using more Fleming--and his action sequences--but I do not think he directed Krabbe effectively.
Having seen Dalton be much more charismatic in other films, I'm not sure he directed him effectively either.
I don't think we would get to Craig's era without FYEO and LTK. We might have been stuck with the over-the-topness from the '70s and the other '80s Bond films.
No idea. But I find it interesting. I noticed first time I ever watched it how much its violence stood out compared to the Moore and Connery films.
Even George Lazenby said something similar.
Anyway, from a quick look it definitely had quite a few of its scenes cut for home media to make its rating, mainly due to the violence. Maybe after LTK it wasn’t as ‘out there’ and home media censorship wasn’t uncommon, but there are quite a few brutal scenes in there, and is certainly miles away from Connery/Moore!
Personally, I hope going forward Amazon are able to capture that sense of sadism and violence the modern EON films nailed.