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Yeah, even the Playboy centerfold is a bit weird.
But surely, that takes nothing more away from the intrinsic quality of the whole film! Hence it's not a jump the shark moment.
How many moments like these do you need? ;)
What I mean is that it didn't really turn the series or changed its nature. It's like the handwave in FRWL: it's a bit silly, but doesn't spoil the film.
Yeah, I'd agree. While YOLT was over-the-top and borderline cartoonish, it was still played pretty straight. DAF, on the other hand, is overtly parodical, with both Connery and Gray essentially playing satirical versions of their characters.
I was joking earlier about SPECTRE, as we still have yet to see what Amazon does.
I tend to agree.
The idiom "jumping the shark", or "shark jumping", or to "jump the shark"; means that a creative work or entity has evolved and reached a point in which it has exhausted its core intent and is introducing new ideas that are discordant with or an extreme exaggeration (caricature) of its original theme or purpose. The phrase was coined in 1985 by radio personality Jon Hein in response to a 1977 episode from the fifth season of the American sitcom Happy Days, in which the character of Fonzie (Henry Winkler) jumps over a live shark while on water-skis.
Interestingly, while HAPPY DAYS remained a rating hit even after that episode, the "coolness" factor of Fonzie was probably lost. While the Bond series has had more than its share of eye-rolling moments, it has always bounced back - even if it took several films for it to happen.
Well said. You defined it better than me. Also, after that episode, HAPPY DAYS also didn't pay as much attention to period detail as previously. The actors were now sporting 80's haircuts in an early 60's setting. I still loved the show, but it lost it's original intent.
Different perspectives. Post DAF undid nothing. If anything, DAF was the first Roger Moore film and the beginning of an era of semi-serious Bond films.
There’s some elements of Dr. No in LALD I’d say but yeah it’s pretty unlike any other film in the series for the most part.
Food for thought as we continue to ponder the "jump the shark" question.
Less Bond-like? What defines 'Bond-like' for you? as I think LALD is as close to the novel as a Roger Moore film could get, and personally, I think the Bond-books are very, well, Bond-like.
Evolution? DAF is the start of where the series strayed from what makes Bond great, I'm not a fan of either films, but Roger Moore was at least in his prime in LALD, Connery was seasoned out in DAF, and for all of Solitaire's naiveness, at least she didn't turned a liability and dumb as Jill St. John in the third act, and the only thing that makes Kananga somewhat mid tier was his death, but he's a decent villain, Charles Grey's Blofeld is one of the representations of absolute disgrace to the series.
What's jumping the shark in that? That's just Bond being his typical self.
If we're talking of OHMSS, the book have many 'jumped the shark' scenes than the film, then Fleming surely jumped the shark with the 'Invisible' (Urine) Ink and the Willy E. Coyote scene of Bond and Tracy flipping the sign board, which thankfully, aren't in the film.
I think DAF should've stayed as a revenge film even after Lazenby left, I think that Connery would've done a great job at that because he's doing things that he hadn't done since and to prove that Bond is still the same man (the Producers betrayed themselves when they've abandoned it here, igniting that codename theory because Connery's Bond failed to acknowledge Tracy's death, which was Lazenby Bond's wife 🙄).
I'm still standing on my ground that Connery was still not 100% rejuvenated in this film, his performance was still the same as in YOLT, although, in DAF, he's also now out of shape.
If we want a Connery rejuvenated performance, NSNA gave us that.
I think DAF should've stayed as a revenge film even after Lazenby left, I think that Connery would've done a great job at that because he's doing things that he hadn't done since and to prove that Bond is still the same man (the Producers betrayed themselves when they've abandoned it here, igniting that codename theory because Connery Bond failed to acknowledge Tracy's death which was Lazenby Bond's wife 🙄).
And I'm still standing on my ground that Connery's performance was still the same as his performance in YOLT, only in DAF, he's also out of shape.
If we want a rejuvenated Connery performance, NSNA gave us that.
I agree, and just like what they're saying, it would be just like "Thunderball on Skis", I'm also glad they've stayed the way they did, and we wouldn't get Diana Rigg, Tracy is the heart of OHMSS, she's an important character, if a lesser actress would've played her, it would've been probably worse.
It depends on how you define it. Superman clearly jumped the shark with Superman IV but it may have jumped back depending on how you view the recent films.
"Jumping the shark" works better as a concept with a TV series than with films because (at least at the time of the Fozz), when a TV series was over and done, it was over and done.
And after SPECTRE, it never bounced back again, I could safely say that NTTD also jumped the shark maybe because of the ending (too much obvious), I know, I know, but it's a bit blatant to kill the main character and the Mathilde scenes, they've made everything obvious and 'on your face', not subtle like most Bond films are known for.
'Jumping The Shark' is something going on a bit far, and NTTD absolutely did that.
YOLT is perhaps when the line was crossed of silliness. While Bond has crossed the line back over to reality on occasion, YOLT was really the first where if you watched it seriously you'd be a bit lost.
Diamonds was an injection of self-parody, based on the earlier Connery efforts. I don't think it really jumped the shark in any way; it was rather a collage of the previous films coated with some Vegas shine. Perhaps where it jumped the shark a little was with the idea of Bond being famous, but apart from that Diamonds doesn't actually move the needle that much.
Skyfall perhaps jumped the shark in the way that Bond became a Byronic hero with a troubled emotional life. While the films prior had Bond suffer emotionally, Skyfall onward have Bond in an emotional state unseen. Whether this is just a line cross or permanent change depends on the next era. Killing Bond for the sake of his family was just an extension of this.
Never really pegged Bond for the Playboy type. Dislikes public-facing women and all that. Plus it'd be an odd use of money.
The novel doesn't really jump the shark in any way in my opinion. Bond being not fully up to scratch and fatigued started in Thunderball (perhaps even in Goldfinger) and killing his love interest of course happened in Casino Royale. The biological warfare plot simply builds on the plots from Dr. No onward (although Moonraker was the first large scale plot).
The invisible ink was real and used during World War II by prisoners of war. While seemingly odd, to me it feels like Bond is desperate and alone rather than a moment of levity.
Flipping the signpost feels like too small a scene to be jumping the shark, as Bond had done many seemingly silly things beforehand. Bond did sort of the same thing in killing one of the Spangs in DAF, by changing the railway. Le Chiffre's men had enough time to get out of the car and set a trap for Bond in CR. And beyond that even, Bond shoves a man into a piano in Diamonds are Forever.
If the novels jumped the shark anywhere, it would be at Dr. No/Goldfinger.
Well, he'd just stolen it though 😅, it's just the movie Bond being his real self, it's just a small of a scene and a blink and miss moment, so nothing much of a big deal in that, this is the same Bond who forced himself upon Pussy Galore and Patricia Fearing, and those two are much more blatant than it.
Yes, Fleming may have jumped the shark many times in the books, this was explained very well by @007HallY in his previous comment, what I'm only saying is, that Playboy magazine scene in the film is not that much of an oddity compared to what happened in the book (Invisible urine ink and the flipping sign scenes), OHMSS is meant to be mixed with strangeness, as with all of the Bond films (even FRWL have that hand waving the tape scene at the end, and CR have Bond passing through the walls chasing Mollaka like some sort of incredible hulk and the Sinking house in Venice), but I don't see that Playboy Magazine being one of them, it's an aspect of what makes Bond, Bond, being attracted to women, especially the Movie Bond.
Precisely for this reason, it's another step in the evolution of the series. The films were adapting Fleming less and less. Plus, Bond literally jumps over crocodiles. ;)
As for Playboy, it's like watching Superman reading Spider-Man. Weird.
There’s lots of ridiculousness in Fleming, certainly. My point wasn’t that Fleming’s novels ever jumped the shark in the way we’re thinking, but are instead similar to how the films evolved. They became more fantastical as they went on, even becoming a bit more self referential. Honestly, I don’t see how Bond running across crocodiles in LALD is fundamentally different to wrestling giant squids or many of the feats he accomplished in those later books. Certainly don’t see how Bond running through plaster walls in CR is odd either (if anything he’s being smart and using brute force to overcome Mollaka, who’s faster and could potentially escape, which is very much something I can see the literary Bond doing). Even the sinking house is a pretty standard Bond film set piece. At any rate the spirit of Bond adventures are that they are quite escapist and often silly, with this central figure accomplishing feats most people can’t.
I wouldn’t get too hung up on the Playboy stuff either. In OHMSS it’s a joke, and in DAF the card is a blink and miss it gag. The idea of Bond being more known in those films is exaggerated by us fans (there’s an element of self referentiality in it, but in DAF and TMWTGG Bond isn’t famous but is instead somewhat infamous in that small spy/assassin world. No one seems to know what he looks like and that’s quite key. Even the Russians in Fleming seemed to know a lot about Bond to the extent they knew where he lived and what he looked like, which isn’t great for a secret agent. And of course according to Fleming Bond even had books written about him in this fictional world - which honestly is so bizarrely meta it outdoes much of what I’ve seen in the films).
Agreed 100% couldn't have said it better myself.
I don't think the spirit of Bond adventures is escapist or silly. I think that idea in itself comes from the "jumping of the shark" in some sense. While not as "real" or personal as Smiley or Deighton's spy with their domestic issues, Bond's life doesn't exactly feel fantastical (at least at the start).
But Bond isn't just infamous among spies and assassins; Tiffany Case, a relatively low-level smuggler and criminal knows who he is and is shocked that he's dead. Blofeld unflinchingly accepts that Saxby is afraid of him. And then in Golden Gun, not only does Scaramanga know what he looks like (and well enough to make an accurate wax model!) but Anders can mail him a golden bullet.
There's difference between that sort of fame and the fame Bond gets in both versions of FRWL. In the novels, Bond has had two direct run-ins with SMERSH and then another with Drax (who worked for GRU I believe), plus a history of living and working in Moscow. In the films, he has already thwarted SPECTRE before and has met 3 of their agents. In that sense the former examples seem nonsensical.
Oh, escapist certainly (at least past Fleming's CR, although even that's got that 'airport novel' element to it, and they began to get more fantastical by LALD). That's not to say there isn't some sense of realism to the novels or the films. Often they incorporate real life political contexts, and yes in the books you get Bond's domestic life sometimes, as well as the incorporation of specific products and cars Bond uses. They're not complete fantasy but heightened realty. But they're fundamentally escapist adventures featuring this central character who often does extraordinary things most of us could only dream of doing. Often some of the stuff in those stories are outlandish. I don't agree at all that that idea comes solely from the films or what we're talking about here.
Still seems within that relatively closed underworld of criminals and assassins to me. I don't see it as a massive problem with the films, and I think fans sometimes get weirdly wound up about it. Apart from Scaramanga none of them seem to know what Bond looks like (I couldn't care less how he found out incidentally - it's just there to convey his obsession with Bond and plant the mannequin for the climax, which to be fair is a good pay off).
There's differences between the Fleming example and the films to some extent, sure. But Bond has a pretty notable reputation amongst the Russians and they know an awful lot about him for comfort! It relies to some extent on Bond's notoriety in terms of what he's accomplished. And as I said I don't think Bond's notoriety in DAF or TMWTGG is anywhere near as daft as the bit Fleming included in Bond's obituary about being the subject of popular books. It actually makes the film's self referentiality look quite subtle.
Ultimately though, while they do different things with the idea of Bond's 'meta textual' fame you could say, I think both Fleming (in YOLT anyway) and the films were playing with that idea. There is some precedent. And honestly, as you yourself said we're not in the realm of Le Carre or strict realism, so I think DAF and TWMTGG got away with that (in fact I'd argue they create much more of a verisimilitude to it than Fleming's 'wink wink' snippet in YOLT).
In the mid-60s I believe OHMSS, YOLT and TMWTGG were all serialized in Playboy.
There's absolutely nothing "strange" about Bond (in OHMSS the film), having a look at lovely ladies in a magazine. As @SIS_HQ rightly points out: that was Bond being Bond.
And it was a nice nod to the relationship between the magazine and this character, and tomthe man whom created him.
There is a difference between the higher ups in the underworld knowing Bond, and your average thug being afraid of him (especially in America! Diamonds was his second mission there!). It's not a big deal in terms of say ruining the storytelling or the plot, but its a move that damages credibility of the world in the film (which is important as it is supposed to be similar to our own). It falls into (and lends credibility to) that common joke about Bond: the world's best spy, but everyone knows who he is and he introduces himself by his full name all the time etc.
To the point of the Russians knowing about him: I mean think of it from the other end! Fleming had extensive knowledge of the Russian headquarters and where they were situated, and if he had the resources of a Secret Service he could probably find out a lot about an important agent as well, if the Service required it. We even see how the Russians spy on Bond without generating suspicion when they use the TV man. That doesn't test the credibility of the world in comparison to our own.
The obituary line is a gaffe (and the revelation that many crackpots pretended to be James Bond in TMWTGG) but I suppose it can be more easily ignored as a throwaway line in a novel, with many more sentences than a film has lines of dialogue.
All literature is escapist in some sense, so I struggle to put a line on Bond being fundamentally an escapist character or an escapist series. Bond in the first five novels certainly doesn't really meet this tag for me; the novels are quite real, compared to the larger scale of the last 7 novels.
Bond himself never really is the draw of doing extraordinary things. I think Amis mentioned this in his book: the reader believes, with some credibility, that they could do the things that Bond does. After all, he's a bit tougher than the rest of us, but in the first five novels, apart from being tortured (which is really more a mental game), his biggest physical exertion is going diving. He's resourceful in a pinch, but also quite lucky in a way that lets the reader think that they could escape as well.
That's why perhaps the novels pivot once they get bigger. Even if Bond is doing all of the same things (while adding on seducing a lesbian and fighting a giant squid), changing the fate of the US gold supply or rocket program or the threat of nuclear bombs suddenly shoves the story into a bit of a fantasy element.
That's a pivot similar to the films where they start more realistic and then pivot into "fun" or "escapism" as films like Goldfinger get bigger. One could easily say that Goldfinger served as the jumping the shark point for both the films and novels (although Dr. No would probably be more accurate for the latter) into that direction.
Well... no, not all literature is necessarily escapist (maybe a case can be made that most fiction literature is, but literature's a very wide category anyway, and this is a completely different discussion altogether).
I don't really know what to say about your point otherwise... what do you think the appeal of James Bond is for readers and viewers? Because surely to some extent escapism and that sense of enjoyment come into it? Maybe I'm completely mad or there's something I'm missing or don't quite get out of James Bond though... Perhaps it depends on what you mean by escapism in this sense (because that can potentially have a lot of nuances).
Bond constantly defies the odds to survive many of the situations he's in. Both in the novels and films. He's a man at the end of the day (and yes, I think one of the great things about Fleming's novels is that his struggles feel 'real' to some extent. Ultimately Bond is human and can/does get hurt. But again we're into the territory of heightened reality, and this isn't incompatible with escapism or elements of the fantastical, especially with James Bond stories. At the end of the day regardless of the medium, Bond's job puts him into some pretty extraordinary situations.
I don't really understand your last point, as much as I think it's factually correct. Yes, the fantasy gets more heightened during the latter half of Fleming's Bond series, and like many long running series the situations become more elaborate. But all those things you mentioned Bond doing are still pretty damn extraordinary. Those later books are still part of Fleming's output too. Even before that we have our hero managed to stop a nuclear explosion over London. I'd argue in the earliest Fleming books the point was that Bond was a man who got into extraordinary situations because of his job at the very least...
Yes, and I think to some extent those films are playing off that idea. Bond does have a reputation by name because of his exploits. It's within very select worlds, but certain people know he's dangerous (although not many know what he looks like). I actually think it's something they could explore a bit in a new film, the idea of select people knowing about Bond's reputation. I'd love to see them try and redo some of TMWTGG's ideas about an assassin becoming obsessed with Bond in that context.
Anyway, I think it's only damaging to the story insofar as how much the individual viewer is invested in their idea of Bond, or indeed what a James Bond story should be. And of course that has its contradictions and isn't necessarily how this franchise has developed.
No idea if Fleming could do that one way or the other (I suspect it depends), and I really don't care about the strict realism of it one way or the other. It works in the context of the novel and that's all I care about - namely that verisimilitude.
Hmm, it's a pretty conscious idea on Fleming's part, even if it's tongue in cheek and quite throwaway. No, it's certainly not a gaffe. I'm surprised more people don't get hung up about it (I suppose because Fleming's the creator of Bond it gets a pass, but it's a very strange idea - are the books we're reading the pulp novels about the real Bond's exploits, and what exactly does that mean for the 'timeline' of Fleming's Bond? Personally I don't care, but I feel people get hung up way more on some of the stuff in the films rather than that).
Anyway, I think it shows Fleming was somewhat interested in that meta textual element of his character and his increasing popularity. From what I understand he wrote TSWLM in part because he wanted to warn younger readers about how ruthless someone like Bond could actually be. I don't think that book works particularly as a cautionary tale incidentally, and actually if anything Andrea sending Bond a bullet because she somewhat knows of his reputation - and indeed getting killed - is probably far better at conveying that idea on a story level, as much as TMWTGG is a flawed film.