The worst cinematic Bond moment?

stagstag In the thick of it!
in Bond Movies Posts: 1,053
Firstly I've done a search and can find no similar topics.

We all love 007, our membership of this site proves it, but even our favourite action hero can sometimes be the cause of mild embarrassment. With that in mind what was the most cringeworthy line, scene, outfit, you have witnessed?

For me it has to be the dance scene in NSNA. When Bond tangos with Domino. Truly toe curling awful. SC was stiffer than a day old corpse. Who the hell thought that would be a good addition to the film?

Comments

  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy My Secret Lair
    Posts: 13,384
    For me the worst cinematic moments were.
    CR 67 and NSNA both awful films.
  • Posts: 11,189
    In terms of the official films DAD windsurfing. Easy.

    Other good contenders though are the fire engine chase scene, Britt Eckland's arse cheek and Jaws falling in love.
  • GoldenGunGoldenGun Per ora e per il momento che verrà
    Posts: 6,760
    BAIN123 wrote: »
    In terms of the official films DAD windsurfing. Easy.

    Other good contenders though are the fire engine chase scene, Britt Eckland's arse cheek and Jaws falling in love.

    I don't mind that one ;)
  • GamesBond007GamesBond007 Golden Grotto
    Posts: 66
    I didn't even think about that tango sequence in NSNA, that scene is awful. But I'd have to give it to the windsurfing scene in DAD.

    Honorable mentions...

    1. "Yo momma"
    2. "Anytime you want to drop by and listen to my Barry Manilow collection"
    3. Sherriff J.W Pepper
  • DarthDimiDarthDimi Behind you!Moderator
    Posts: 23,449
    When the CGI surfing happened in 2002, I nearly lost the contents of my intestines. I remember turning my head to my friend next to me and making a "is this real?" face. For a split second, I imagined that someone was pulling a prank on us and the real DAD had yet to begin. To this day, though I have softened quite a bit on the film itself, I consider that scene one of the most inexcusable errors any Bond film has ever committed to celluloid.
  • Posts: 11,189
    True Lies did the whole Spy-Tango thing far better.
  • LeonardPineLeonardPine The Bar on the Beach
    Posts: 3,985
    The 'Californian Girls' song playing while Bond 'surfs' down the mountain in AVTAK.

    God knows what audience age it was aimed at and who they thought would actually find it funny. The moment Bond films became nothing but a cheap joke.

    AVTAK is actually an ok film in all, but it's a shame the makers couldn't have re-done that scene George Lucas style and omitted the song for DVD and BD releases.

    Jaws falling in love is a close second....
  • ForYourEyesOnlyForYourEyesOnly In the untained cradle of the heavens
    edited September 2017 Posts: 1,984
    Most of NSNA is shockingly bad. The tango gets beaten by Connery's absolutely appalling delivery of "Bond, James Bond" (every time I hear it I rank him #6 of all the Bonds for about ten seconds) and that video game sequence. I'm not sure how NSNA made such shoddy work out of such good actors, but there's also Max Von Sydow's Blofeld doing the live extortion message. Something about his delivery there was just wildly off for me.

    Here's my worst for the official Bonds though:

    1. Jaws falling in love (almost offensive to the character we knew in TSWLM, although in fairness he was dipping into comedy there as well)

    2. TMWTGG's pointless tangent with the karate school, Hip's nieces, Hip randomly driving off without Bond, the god-awful "Mexican screw-off" line, J.W. Pepper's forced return, the 20,000 baht boy being pushed off, and all the rest of the stuff pointlessly added in for cheap laughs. You completely forget that the movie is supposed to be about Bond hunting for Scaramanga at this point.

    3. DAD's horrible CGI-fest

    4. That pathetic slide-whistle dubbed over the car-flip in TMWTGG. Could've put the Bond theme but instead ruined an unprecedented stunt with that terrible sound-effect.

    5. The snowboarding in AVTAK. Another chance to put the Bond theme over it (which was indeed criminally underused in the entire movie) but instead they have that horrific Beach Boys song. Apparently it was funny at the time, so what do I know, but it's pretty cringeworthy today. I'm not as bothered by it now, but it's still very disappointing.

    6. Blofeld in drag. Pointlessly demeaning to the character. It's such a short and minor scene so it's not crippling, but by the same token, if it's so minor it could've been omitted.

    7. Brosnan's overreacting in that moment where he tries to confront Elektra over her suspected betrayal.

    8. Kananga's death: just poorly done, even for its time.

    9. "Yo-mamma" — self-explanatory.

    10. Moneypenny's VR moment. Cheesy and bad.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,328
    TLD cello case sled scene.
  • Posts: 11,189
    Most of NSNA is shockingly bad. The tango gets beaten by Connery's absolutely appalling delivery of "Bond, James Bond" (every time I hear it I rank him #6 of all the Bonds for about ten seconds)

    As far as I'm concerned he's playing himself in NSNA rather than James Bond.
  • GoldenGunGoldenGun Per ora e per il momento che verrà
    Posts: 6,760
    Have people mentioned the jungle chase from OP yet?
  • Fire_and_Ice_ReturnsFire_and_Ice_Returns I am trying to get away from this mountan!
    Posts: 23,105
    GoldenGun wrote: »
    Have people mentioned the jungle chase from OP yet?

    'Sit' Good call that is pretty poor
  • LeonardPineLeonardPine The Bar on the Beach
    Posts: 3,985
    Murdock wrote: »
    TLD cello case sled scene.

    I'd put that bemusing 'truck wheelie' from LTK way before the silly but good natured Cello case scene.
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    I would say the worst cinematic Bond moments didn't start happening until 1967 and the idea to disguise hulking Connery as a hunched over Japanese fisherman, then;

    Diamonds Are Forever, where the producers skimped on budget and story and gave us the weak third act; it's likely they knew the audience will come and see Connery, so the money was not up on the screen for the first time in the series.

    Turning Jaws into a cartoon did start to creep into TSWL. I've always been partial to the consistent menace of the Red Grants and Oddjobs (and Necros, to come later). I have never liked, not even when I was a child, the fact that Jaws goes from assassinating a man in a phone booth (absolute evil menace), to Wile E. Coyote fighting Bond in the ruins. This, of course, was a bigger problem in MR. Without taking these types of characters seriously, then there's no tension. It becomes a cartoon.

    OCTOPUSSY is my favorite Moore Bond-Film (along side TMWTGG). What was an amazing set-up in the jungle hunt was ruined by the Tarazan shout-out... This type of embarrassing, take-you-out-of-the-moment "joke" was again repeated upfront in--

    A VIEW TO A KILL, and the ski/surfing sequence. Also, like DAF, the producers skimped on this budget and it appeared cheap. This spotty production value went right down to some poor editing (the fight in the lab where the old geezer guard can be seen laying down on the transport belt).

    LTK was stripped down as much in story as it was in production, and, for a third time in the series, the money didn't seem to be on the screen, giving the visuals a made-for-TV look. Robert Davi elevates the entire film for me-- and it shows the importance of the villain. If you have a good villain moving the story along, someone that poses the ultimate challenge to our hero, it builds natural tension as these two forces of nature get closer and closer to colliding (also see: DIE HARD).

    After GE and it's promising start, it seems as if the producers and their team took the path of least resistance. These films were making bank, so they re-cycled a formula, very rarely stepping outside of this "comfort zone". I call this the Cynical Period that, thankfully, ended with the blockbuster (but story-wise and visual embarrassment), DAD.

    I have mainly enjoyed the first three Craig efforts. The money's been on the screen, DC's been a strong Bond, and second only to SC. However, concern ebbed into my consciousness at the end of SF... The first two films were fresh and exciting. No need for gimmicky gadgets, or Q or Moneypenny... We were grounded in hyper-real sets and locations (I did love M's office space in QoS as a modern HQ where she ran the service with constant "live" feeds coming in at all hours of the day). No need for Q here, although we got a Q-like character in these scenes. Certainly nothing ridiculous.

    We were so far away from these tropes, and then SF makes a sharp 1-80 and brings us back to the old characters and office and, from this decision, I think, comes the Handcuffed Period; bringing us back to these people and places, now there's also going to be expectation... (MP at her desk, Q in his lab creating stupid toy gadgets like exploding watches... )... SP was a boring disaster, and certainly not Bond at his cinematic best--

    These characters, and their "familiar" settings, led to some unnatural interplay that the Craig era was never designed to experience (or at least according to what was established in his first two films); and then of course, they expand on this familiarity to also bring back an old foe: Blofeld.

    Earlier I said a great villain creates natural tension since he's the giant obstacle in our hero's way. Yeah, well... I don't think there was anything threatening or menacing about this Blofeld. And this failure to create a great character sunk the story. It also tried to force us to believe, just because the script told us so, that Blofeld is such a genius, he's been behind all of Bond's tragedy.

    Perhaps if they showed him messing up Bond in the present (with higher and higher stakes being set), we could believe this shoe-horn of an idea. This is DAD-level laziness where, once again, the producers felt like they gave a collective shrug, hoped that the audience wouldn't notice the piss-poor attempt at making a Bond film, fingers crossed that they would make bank, and come away injury-free.

    The silver-lining: historically, EoN always seem to learn from their big missteps.

    Saying that, it is strange they brought Craig back;. Usually this type of misstep or laissez-faire attitude concludes with the introduction of a new actor to give the series a fresh feel again. It does give one pause to think they're not doing this this time. That they're double-downing on DC

    Even more strange, is that Craig has accepted. As @bondjames and I were saying the other night: he doesn't need the money. He's well respected in the industry to build a fruitful "character-actor" type resume with a mixture of stage, films and TV, and... if B25 is a failure in any way, it could taint his entire era. So why is he coming back?

    Filmmaking is a risky business on the best of days. No one can say a film will be amazing until the final cut's delivered.

    Craig and Co returning gives me hope that this time, after the sub-par SP, they are going into production knowing what the stakes are: screw this one up, the Craig era will look like a failure and an experiment that got out of hand. BUT, get it right, make an amazing film that will have legs, with a strong conclusion, then SP will look like a hiccup in an otherwise Second Golden Era of the series... The stakes are high for this one, indeed.

    (my apologies, I didn't mean to make this post so long; thoughts kept popping up; excuse this rare stream of conscious moment!)
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    edited September 2017 Posts: 23,883
    @peter, the more I think about it, I believe Craig's return is more a business decision than a creative one. Of course, they don't intend to screw B25 up. that goes without saying. However, I believe MGM's continued troubles and their desire for a sale (leading to a one picture deal) is what has led everyone to go for the 'safest' option in terms of box office pull. It also helps to lock in the distribution deal. From Craig's perspective, he has mentioned a couple of times now in the past few weeks how the press have got him wrong and that he didn't like being portrayed as a whiner and an ingrate. This gives him an opportunity to clean up his image as well, and I'm quite certain that has played into it. I don't think we'll be seeing the loose cannon Craig on deck for the next 2+ years. After he delivers B25 though, all bets are off.
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    @bondjames, business certainly has to play a role in any decision made on a film (after all, people wanna make $$$!); but don't you think now would have been the perfect time to make the ultimate business decision and start building the Next Era with someone like Chris Nolan and a re-cast? Wouldn't that have made more business sense? SP looked like it had concluded the DC era. It was a troubled effort. Bring in fresh blood, with Babs working with Nolan and he directing and producing with her, starting from the ground up and a new Bond, a new vision?
  • ForYourEyesOnlyForYourEyesOnly In the untained cradle of the heavens
    edited September 2017 Posts: 1,984
    @peter - Good picks. With TSWLM, they managed to avoid turning Jaws into a complete parody with moments like the train scene, although it basically bounces between threatening and farcical with him. His next encounter with Bond is him in the car that flies into a roof. Then we have his final fight with Bond where he isn't particularly threatening but at least doesn't become a joke, and it's followed by that great scene with him fighting the shark.

    I agree that in MR, the issue became worse. After his introduction at the airport, I don't recall him being threatening or frightening even once. It was all jokes there.
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    edited September 2017 Posts: 23,883
    @peter, as I said, MGM's troubles prevent any long term move at this point (including Nolan). Keep in mind they are owned by hedge funds looking for a return (read sale, as they already contemplated with the Chinese and wasted one year). If they sell the entire operation to amazon or apple, then I wouldn't be surprised if everything gets shaken up again and we move to a reboot scenario with some speed. At the present time, from a strictly business transaction point of view, they are stuck in a 'one picture deal' status quo scenario. This is how I read it.

    Just see how this has all come out over the past few months. It's been a bit strange.
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    @bondjames that makes sense from MGM's perspective, but what about DC? Why would he accept, with the risks to his own era? He doesn't need the money, he is respected as a strong actor in the industry-- pre Bond and now in the present (although I didn't like LL, DC was a stand out that critics and audiences loved; THE KINGS didn't get strong reviews, but once again there's good word of mouth about DC's performance).

    Doing B25 has to be more than a rehabilitation tour for him; in fact, just by doing good work in these non-Bond films, and being friendly with the media, as he has been doing, is all he really needs to do.

    I'd be so bold in saying that, at this point in his career, DC doesn't need another Bond film (and the risks it brings; what if it's as terrible as SP?). What does he have to gain from doing another Bond picture?

    Other than he wants to solidify and conclude this project the way he started it, I can't think of why??
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    Posts: 23,883
    There's far more to this than we are currently aware of @peter. I'm quite certain of it based on my read of his comments recently. Let's see how this plays. We have two long years to go and a lot of pieces left to fill in.
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    I agree on that @bondjames
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    edited September 2017 Posts: 23,883
    @peter - Good picks. With TSWLM, they managed to avoid turning Jaws into a complete parody with moments like the train scene, although it basically bounces between threatening and farcical with him. His next encounter with Bond is him in the car that flies into a roof. Then we have his final fight with Bond where he isn't particularly threatening but at least doesn't become a joke, and it's followed by that great scene with him fighting the shark.

    I agree that in MR, the issue became worse. After his introduction at the airport, I don't recall him being threatening or frightening even once. It was all jokes there.
    I've always found Jaws to be quite menacing throughout TSWLM. I realize there are moments of humour thrown in (e.g. the stone drop and the car through roof) but generally Kiel maintains a menacing presence with his mannerisms and demeanour. From the very start of MR he is portrayed as a goof with the arm flap, and it continues with his comedic expressions in the cable car and again when chasing Bond on the boat.

    Certainly the creepy murders of Fekkesh and Kalba in TSWLM serve to heighten his threat. There's none of that in MR.

    I've said it before, but I really think the entire team (which was essentially the same group who did the earlier film) decided to take a deliberately different tonal approach with MR in comparison with TSWLM. I think retrospectively it was an excellent move, because despite having essentially the same premise, they are quite distinct films when viewed back to back because of the tonal differentiation. MR is almost the kid friendly version. TSWLM by way of Star Wars (and I don't mean the space component, but rather the more accessible to the masses approach).
  • stagstag In the thick of it!
    Posts: 1,053
    peter wrote: »
    I would say the worst cinematic Bond moments didn't start happening until 1967 and the idea to disguise hulking Connery as a hunched over Japanese fisherman, then;

    Diamonds Are Forever, where the producers skimped on budget and story and gave us the weak third act; it's likely they knew the audience will come and see Connery, so the money was not up on the screen for the first time in the series.

    Turning Jaws into a cartoon did start to creep into TSWL. I've always been partial to the consistent menace of the Red Grants and Oddjobs (and Necros, to come later). I have never liked, not even when I was a child, the fact that Jaws goes from assassinating a man in a phone booth (absolute evil menace), to Wile E. Coyote fighting Bond in the ruins. This, of course, was a bigger problem in MR. Without taking these types of characters seriously, then there's no tension. It becomes a cartoon.

    OCTOPUSSY is my favorite Moore Bond-Film (along side TMWTGG). What was an amazing set-up in the jungle hunt was ruined by the Tarazan shout-out... This type of embarrassing, take-you-out-of-the-moment "joke" was again repeated upfront in--

    A VIEW TO A KILL, and the ski/surfing sequence. Also, like DAF, the producers skimped on this budget and it appeared cheap. This spotty production value went right down to some poor editing (the fight in the lab where the old geezer guard can be seen laying down on the transport belt).

    LTK was stripped down as much in story as it was in production, and, for a third time in the series, the money didn't seem to be on the screen, giving the visuals a made-for-TV look. Robert Davi elevates the entire film for me-- and it shows the importance of the villain. If you have a good villain moving the story along, someone that poses the ultimate challenge to our hero, it builds natural tension as these two forces of nature get closer and closer to colliding (also see: DIE HARD).

    After GE and it's promising start, it seems as if the producers and their team took the path of least resistance. These films were making bank, so they re-cycled a formula, very rarely stepping outside of this "comfort zone". I call this the Cynical Period that, thankfully, ended with the blockbuster (but story-wise and visual embarrassment), DAD.

    I have mainly enjoyed the first three Craig efforts. The money's been on the screen, DC's been a strong Bond, and second only to SC. However, concern ebbed into my consciousness at the end of SF... The first two films were fresh and exciting. No need for gimmicky gadgets, or Q or Moneypenny... We were grounded in hyper-real sets and locations (I did love M's office space in QoS as a modern HQ where she ran the service with constant "live" feeds coming in at all hours of the day). No need for Q here, although we got a Q-like character in these scenes. Certainly nothing ridiculous.

    We were so far away from these tropes, and then SF makes a sharp 1-80 and brings us back to the old characters and office and, from this decision, I think, comes the Handcuffed Period; bringing us back to these people and places, now there's also going to be expectation... (MP at her desk, Q in his lab creating stupid toy gadgets like exploding watches... )... SP was a boring disaster, and certainly not Bond at his cinematic best--

    These characters, and their "familiar" settings, led to some unnatural interplay that the Craig era was never designed to experience (or at least according to what was established in his first two films); and then of course, they expand on this familiarity to also bring back an old foe: Blofeld.

    Earlier I said a great villain creates natural tension since he's the giant obstacle in our hero's way. Yeah, well... I don't think there was anything threatening or menacing about this Blofeld. And this failure to create a great character sunk the story. It also tried to force us to believe, just because the script told us so, that Blofeld is such a genius, he's been behind all of Bond's tragedy.

    Perhaps if they showed him messing up Bond in the present (with higher and higher stakes being set), we could believe this shoe-horn of an idea. This is DAD-level laziness where, once again, the producers felt like they gave a collective shrug, hoped that the audience wouldn't notice the piss-poor attempt at making a Bond film, fingers crossed that they would make bank, and come away injury-free.

    The silver-lining: historically, EoN always seem to learn from their big missteps.

    Saying that, it is strange they brought Craig back;. Usually this type of misstep or laissez-faire attitude concludes with the introduction of a new actor to give the series a fresh feel again. It does give one pause to think they're not doing this this time. That they're double-downing on DC

    Even more strange, is that Craig has accepted. As @bondjames and I were saying the other night: he doesn't need the money. He's well respected in the industry to build a fruitful "character-actor" type resume with a mixture of stage, films and TV, and... if B25 is a failure in any way, it could taint his entire era. So why is he coming back?

    Filmmaking is a risky business on the best of days. No one can say a film will be amazing until the final cut's delivered.

    Craig and Co returning gives me hope that this time, after the sub-par SP, they are going into production knowing what the stakes are: screw this one up, the Craig era will look like a failure and an experiment that got out of hand. BUT, get it right, make an amazing film that will have legs, with a strong conclusion, then SP will look like a hiccup in an otherwise Second Golden Era of the series... The stakes are high for this one, indeed.

    (my apologies, I didn't mean to make this post so long; thoughts kept popping up; excuse this rare stream of conscious moment!)

    Great post! I really enjoyed reading it.
  • Posts: 11,189
    The bar brawl is actually a pretty good contender for the worst moment featuring Bond himself. I would have thought it would be above Fleming's Bond (at least once he was a mature fully trained agent).
  • ProfJoeButcherProfJoeButcher Bless your heart
    Posts: 1,664
    I have to say it's when Bond uses the jacket bubble thing in TWINE.

    It's a gadget introduced in a comic scene, by a comic character, but when utilized, it's a vehicle for Brosnan melodrama. "LOOK IN MY EYES!" Appalling and embarrassing.

    Some of this other stuff (JW Pepper for example) may have been stupid, but at least it knew what it was doing, and didn't screw up the tone. Had Pepper been a character in the Brosnan era, he probably would have been shot in the face, and Pierce would have sniffed his corpse and held back tears. Those 90s movies were all over the place.
  • edited September 2017 Posts: 5,745
    I'd like to defend the Jaws falling in love scene; I think Moonraker is a big part of why we all were so enamored with Richard Kiel.
  • peterpeter Toronto
    Posts: 8,255
    thanks @stag-- what a nice compliment!
  • edited September 2017 Posts: 38
    When he massages Domino in NSNA and the cgi surfing scene in DAD.
  • CASINOROYALECASINOROYALE Somewhere hot
    Posts: 1,003
    Hearing "London Calling", in DAD.
    It felt so off in a Bond movie.
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