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Comments
It certainly plays a role. In the end, it's as much, if not more, a Paul McCartney song than a Bond song.
There's also that. I know of a few people who didn't even know Guns N' Roses' cover was actually a cover. Let alone that LALD was a Bond song.
Well that's the point, isn't it? It's hardly fair comparing a 1969 film to Top Gun which not only had a part 2 come out just recently, but an ongoing discussion about part 3 as well. I bet half the movie goers of Top Gun Maverick hadn't even heard about the first film until this one came out. And the first part was already 15 years after TBOB.
So yes, for now Top Gun and the Top Gun anthem which is, by the way, blistering good and recognisable, will easily outgun TBOB. But that doesn't take away any of it's recognisability and fame. TBOB is the film that started the preservation of WW2 aircraft. Which resulted in more of them flying now than ever since the end of the war.
And yes, play it at any aviation event, and at least 80% of people will recognise it, young and old.
(funny how the statistics you refer to show that TBOB is searched for most in China. Talking about worldwide recognition ;-) )
EDIT/PS: I just noticed belatedly that this is the "Controversial Opinions About Bond Films" thread. How did we get to Top Gun vs. TBOB?
Even most of the film's defenders would find its climax a lesser aspect, but I very much enjoy it. I think it's a nice set, and I really enjoy Felix joining in too.
Is this the only time, bar the LTK opening, in which we see Felix taking part in the action?
Even the final fight with Largo is quite well done.
In other movies they would spend half an hour in that setting but perhaps here they rushed the matter a bit.
I guess you could say he's more of a desk job intelligence officer rather than a special forces type agent as Bond is, but the films never really make that very clear. Arguably that is until Wright's Felix turns up, and somehow you can feel the difference between them a bit more, especially in QoS.
Tbf my favourite film set of all time is probably the Moonraker launch control room, and that’s on screen for maybe 60 seconds!
Same here. I know several people who had never heard the original before the GNR cover. Let's also not forget the album which the cover features on either. Use Your Illusion I was a very highly anticipated album at the time of release, and debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, and have since been certified 7× Platinum.
Fun fact: the only reason it debuted at Number 2 was because its counterpart, Use Your Illusion 2, was released the very same day and debuted in the top slot. Iconic, if not bloated, albums. If Appetite For Destruction was Goldfinger, then the Illusions are Thunderball and You Only Live Twice.
Glad to read that. Casey is my very favourite Felix.
I think I'd put him above Lord to be honest. Lord is more memorable than most but feels like you can tell he thinks he's cool, and him and Bond don't really work that well together for me. Casey is barely in NSNA as you say, but there's a more genial relationship and they do try to make it seem like they're friends.
Very much agree. I don't think there are enough good songs to justify there being two albums, and they're far from the same level as Appetite for Destruction, which to me is GNR's only truly great album. Live and Let Die is obviously among the 'good' songs from the Use Your Illusion albums, of course – and I also prefer it to their cover of Dylan's Knockin' on Heaven's Door, as well.
I don't think it is fair to put DAF and Thunderball on par. I think Thunderball is far superior (and I think both 'illusions' are equally good. I understand it when people say Appetite was their best album, but I can't help but think that's because it was their breakthrough album and it was a bit more rough. But songs lime 'November Rain', 'Coma', 'Breakdown' '14 years' are either musically intricate masterpieces or just really good rock songs.
'Illusions 2' is less consistent, I agree, but far from DAF territory.
It feels like such a set. Compare TB when Connery is in the narrow cave when he swallows the pill, and you just feel it.
Also, Moore gets slagged for the clown outfit (in character, I say), but not Connery for his swim jeggings? LOL.
I think it was TB and YOLT @Ryan was referring to as the Use Your Illusion I and II to Goldfinger and Appetite for Destruction?
And I get that comparison, where the two films following Goldfinger went for "bigger and better" – which may in some viewers opinion make them "bloated". That being said, I think TB is the right kind of bloated with the elements that made Goldfinger as a form of "template", in a bigger scope. That's why TB to me, is actually all the way up there with OHMSS and FRWL as my favourites of the series. YOLT I've never really liked that much, so that's where I feel they went a bit too far.
I think with Appetite for Destruction, the appeal – to me at least – is in fact that it is a bit more unpolished, which also makes it all the more hard hitting and exciting to listen to. I feel GNR lost a bit of that "edge" with the two UYI albums, which they never regained. Some might agree that this is the case with Goldfinger being a bit more unpolished and smaller than the two films that followed.
Maybe it's a different discussion, but I think TB kind of failed to take a lot of the learnings of GF and ended up a bit less fun. The wackiness of GF is lost a bit in a much more pedestrian and 1950s plot where someone just steals some bombs; bombs we barely see. Bond was handcuffed to one last time! There's no Oddjob-figure, everyone's a bit less colourful, Bond doesn't get any sexy fun gadgets this time (a pill and a camera, not exactly Christmas)... it's got a good atmosphere but feels like a bit of a backward step to me. YOLT is messy but does feel like a sequel to GF.
The film at least gives Bond more of a connection to Domino’s brother which I think is an improvement and makes him a lot more active in the investigation. But I do wish the creative problem solving that went into making GF a much better film than novel had been there with TB. I do agree even just as a Bond film it doesn’t feel ‘bigger’ than its predecessor despite the scale. I think a lot of it comes down to the wrong choice in director. The series had evolved by GF and to some extent Young was stuck in the spirit of the first two films (his directing method of shooting economical footage also didn’t work as well given how much bigger these films got. It’s why the last fight is so strangely edited).
You forgot the two dorsal reactors, one airborne, the other underwater. And, BTW, people didn't believe that an underwater camera could work (which it did), but believed that the rebreather apparatus could (which it didn't, and still doesn't).
Jetpacks you mean? The underwater one just makes him look silly rather than cool; it even has a car headlamp stuck on the front like Q's just welded a load of stuff together. Whereas the opening jetpack should be cool, but he uses it to do something he could have achieved with a staircase. And then his Aston Martin fails to start. I don't know, I find it all a bit underwhelming and they don't catch the imagination like the gadgets in GF. Kids weren't holding out to get the underwater jetpack Corgi toy that Christmas.
The baddies on the other hand get the rocket motorbike and the Disco Volante: it's all a bit backwards. The rebreather is more memorable though at least.
Yeah definitely. It feels great mostly because of the location: watching it is almost like having a lovely beach holiday. But the pleasing wittiness and invention of the previous film isn't there.
I’m sure more could have been done in adaptation to make it stronger. Honestly, a strange quirk I’ve always found with this story is that the bombs are never actually armed to destroy anything during the climax. We just have people scrambling to attain it. It’s not really good enough, a bit lacking in tension. The bombs may as well be decoding devices or some other nondescript McGuffin. At least with GF we got a bomb about to explode and even YOLT gave us a proper ticking clock with the space shuttle.
I think TB feels not only big but epic too. They could have made a 3 hour movie with an intermission if they wanted to.
Yes I suppose in theory they could have. Just imagine how long those underwater scenes would have been. They’d be even more boring than they currently are.
And the movie has a story to support this. YOLT is pretty hollow in that sense.
I can understand that. YOLT isn’t exactly a Bond film that holds up logically. It has portions where it drags and there’s very much a sense we’re moving from set piece to set piece without much to really keep it together. Why exactly does Bond fake his death? Not too sure. Why does Helga trick a tied up Bond into going up in a plane with her only to try and kill him? Reasons… A helicopter with a magnet that appears out of nowhere to get rid of some henchmen? Sure, go for it.
TB has its share of nonsense (why Bouvar dresses as his own widow to his fake funeral I’ll never understand). But yes, it feels more coherent as a story with more plot directly driving it. But my issue with it is that story, while coherent, isn’t always as thrilling as it could be. As I said I found the novel a bit weak too in that sense. While both films are stylish I think YOLT’s spectacle is more accomplished and keeps me with it for longer. I think the climax of YOLT is actually rather good too and an improvement on TB. But neither are favourite Bond films of mine to be honest.
The movie has some pacing issues but I don't mind. It's a perfect Summer blockbuster.
(The funny thing is that it didn't premiere in the summer).
However, compared to some recent Bond films, it's a lightning fast pace.
Definitely not alone. TB, for me, is the ultimate formulaic Bond film, quoting my own short review on it here for a moment:
"This one just has everything a classic Bond film needs: a supercool Sir Sean, a likeable (and conveniently stunning) Bond girl in Claudine Auger, a devilish femme fatale in Luciana Paluzzi, an eye-patched villain with a pool of sharks, the DB5, the SPECTRE meeting, the jetpack, the John Barry score, the Ken Adam sets, beautiful location work, elegant surroundings, stylish outfits, great atmosphere and superb action. The underwater scenes are always the talking point here though, so let's dive into them: personally I think they are gorgeous and hardly ever outstay their welcome. For me "Thunderball" is stereotypical Bond at its very best and, as such, a stonecold classic."