Shocking! Positively shocking! (An all purpose 007 thread)

[Wet Blanket]

If I've got a problem with Skyfall, it's that Bond is (fittingly, of course, for the fiftieth anniversary) painted as this worn and aged figure, about ready to pack it in, which jars with the fact that this version of the Bond universe has only seen the man on two cinematic outings, with the second set minutes after the first. It just puts Craig's Bond on unsteady ground, for me. He's not that old, is he?

Daniel Craig was 44 when they made Skyfall, while Pierce Brosnan was 42 when he made Goldeneye. This was also my main gripe with that film, although I basically loved it. The Daniel Craig era ticks all the boxes for me in what I want from a Bond film. I'm worried that the next incumbent will try to distinguish himself by bringing back the Roger Moore/ Pierce Brosnan raised eyebrow of irony.

I have a soft spot for the Timothy Dalton Bonds, especially Licence to Kill, mainly on account of its being eyebrow-raisingly gruesome. The exploding head in the decompression tank, Benicio Del Toro being mangled and Bond setting that guy on fire being particular highlights. I read in that recent history of the BBFC book that it flirted with getting an 18 certificate.   

[CaledonianGonzo]

As someone or other pointed out recently, License To Kill is the knifiest Bond ever - to say nothing of the grisly honeymoon 'enjoyed' by the new Mrs Leiter. 

The tanker chase at the end is one of the all time great finales, and then they go and ruin it with a winking concrete fish.

[kidsick5000]

As much as I hate the look and action of License To Kill, I really don't mind the story.

Along with OHMSS and it's the story I'd like to see redone.

(I really hope the redo OHMSS for Daniel Craig's last Bond, Bond25? It would be so good to have an actor as Bond for it)

I find a lot of Bond fans don't like anything that strays from the "madman taking on the world" formula. Even the makers seem aware of this so they get antsy and insist on every bad guy having an elaborate secret base of some kind to compensate.

[CaledonianGonzo]

LTK has dated in a specifically 1980s way to the pint that - as oft-mentioned - it sometimes resembles an episode of Miami Vice.  Why that's worse than, say, the way the 1970s movies have dated I'm not sure, but it kind of is.

Octopussy was on the telly a couple of weeks ago so I watched it for the first time in a while.  Everyone always mentions Bond dressed as a clown, but he's in the guise of a gorilla shortly beforehand, and earlier on a crocodile.  Most zoophilic Bond?

[Blumf]

I find a lot of Bond fans don't like anything that strays from the "madman taking on the world" formula.

I think that's necessary to raise Bond above the mundane. I always liked that the Cold War was just a shrugged off background detail, whilst Bond got on with more important stuff.

When he starts dabbling in really dull criminal activity, like the drugs trade, the films loose something. It's like a waste of his talents, you just left wondering why somebody on a lower pay grade[nb]I'd be happy to see Harry Palmer bust a drugs ring[/nb] isn't dealing with it like normal.

There's also a kind of reduction in... imagination(?) culture seems to have at the moment. It seems that, back in the 60s we could accept a secret fortress hidden in a volcano, but now it has to be all gritty and real, so we're stuck with a real life deserted island complex. I'm note sure how to fix that, but it's a bigger issue than just the Bond films.

[CaledonianGonzo]

From Russia With Love's action also takes place on a relatively small scale - and given the high regard with which it's held I can see the producers thinking there are worse things to do than to emulate it.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

As much as I hate the look and action of License To Kill, I really don't mind the story.

Along with OHMSS and it's the story I'd like to see redone.

(I really hope the redo OHMSS for Daniel Craig's last Bond, Bond25? It would be so good to have an actor as Bond for it)

The thing they botched in the film adaptations was the OHMSS - YOLT arc from the books.
The film adaptation of OHMSS is very close to the source material. They were supposed to do it after Thunderball, but production couldn't be ready for the next winter, which is why they removed the final frames of the credits of Thunderball (It's now the only Bond which doesn't feature "James Bond Will Return") and made YOLT instead.

Of course, Roald Dahl's script can't use the revenge, which was the main ingredient of the book, and turns into a travelogue in Japan instead.

The novel is basically about Bond, who has just lost his only shot at redemption and a normal life, who's completely crushed, turns to heavy drinking and botches his missions. He's losing M's support, who gives him a diplomatic mission in Japan. The mission doesn't work as expected but the head of Japanese intelligence makes him an offer, which is to kill two foreigners operating in a castle, who are a nuisance to them.
Of course, the guy turns up to be Blofeld and his now wife, Irma Bunt.
Bond, out of shape for the mission, has to start from scratch, being trained as a ninja, hiding to the others he's motivated by revenge. He's helped by a former actress, and is able to enter the castle.

Spoiler alert

Now, it's getting interesting: Bond is captured, evades and has a sword duel with Blofeld. He manages to kill Blofeld for good, while the castle is blowing up. He gets hit on the head by a debris, collapses near the fishermen village where Suzuki the actress was waiting for him and ends up an amnesiac, which mirrors the traumatic events he had lived. Rather than revealing him the truth, Suzuki poses as his wife, spends months with him and gets pregnant. Bond's obituary, dictated by M, gets published in The Times. One day, Bond reads another paper, finds an allusion to Russia and gets part of his memory back. He lives her to go the Soviet embassy, assuming he's connecting to Russia.

[close]

This was the final novel completed by Fleming. It's quite elegiac, and, of course, they couldn't make a film out of it now that they were switching actors for Bond with every movie and that they had to use a third Blofeld. Why would Connery punish the guy who had murdered the wife of the other "other fella"?

But elements from the plot were used a couple of times, most notably in Skyfall, QoS and Licence to Kill, where it's mentioned that Bond lost a wife with a lot of similarities. LTK was an attempt at doing by proxy the revenge film that couldn't be developed after OHMSS due to the circumstances (and later the fact that EON lost the movie rights on Blofeld and SPECTRE).

So, if they truly wanted to do something similar to OHMSS (and M's death in the film is already a clear call back to Tracy in OHMSS), they have to be sure they can do the one-two punch.
That's also why I'm not fond of QoS. They played the revenge card but it was too early for a guy who's just a rookie at the time. Give him a few more years and missions and it would be understandable the guy would do anything to get even with the people who took his last chance at happiness.

[CaledonianGonzo]

The novel of YOLT's unfilmable, at least not without some hefty alterations to turn it into something more closely resembling a 'Bond Film' - at times it's not much more than a travelogue and the Garden of Death conceit wouldn't transfer particularly well.

In their own way, they completed the arc with Diamonds Are Forever.

[spock rogers]

I saw a bit of Goldeneye on the telly the other day, and there's a bit where he's having a car chase with some fit bird in a car. This is the music that is playing during the scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7CNGN0bWlU&list=PLYZ4DQq9Vj5k2ZPzd3tdUUtzldOT4p4C5

Are they taking the piss? It genuinely sounds like something from Vic Reeves Big Night Out.

[CaledonianGonzo]

Éric Serra's GoldenEye soundtrack is notoriously awful.

[kidsick5000]

I saw a bit of Goldeneye on the telly the other day, and there's a bit where he's having a car chase with some fit bird in a car. This is the music that is playing during the scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7CNGN0bWlU&list=PLYZ4DQq9Vj5k2ZPzd3tdUUtzldOT4p4C5

Are they taking the piss? It genuinely sounds like something from Vic Reeves Big Night Out.

One of those situations where I would love to have been in the room when they first heard it.
IIRC David Arnold had been touted as the obvious new guy. Young Americans (particularly the Bjork theme Play Dead - the 90s version of a Bond song) and Stargate had already sealed his rep as John Barry's heir.

But someone had watched Leon (The Professional) and thought this Eric Serra was the man.They were rebooting after all, why get a Barry-ist in.
To be honest, can't blame them. Serra's work on Leon is brilliant. Sinister, brooding, arabesque.

But yeah, What he turned in for Goldeneye - especially the end credits song - as unBond as it gets.

Next film, Arnold all the way.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

The score for GoldenEye is terrible. They actually used some secondary writers during key moments, because Serra's work was so awful (the tank chase gets a more traditional score by another guy, for instance)

Arnold was actually involved in the franchise after EON failed three times in a row to get John Barry.

Barry was recovering from an operation after LTK was completed, so they hired Michael Kamen at the eleventh hour, and that's why the score is so generic.

For GoldenEye, he had just fathered a child, so he wasn't interested.

For Tomorrow Never Dies, he wanted a raise compared to his previous fees and be involved with the theme song, and the producers didn't agree. But at that point, they had heard about Arnold through John Barry, as Arnold was then assembling his Shaken and Stirred project of re-recordings of various songs and Barry was enthusiastic about his work.

When M goes back home in Skyfall, they actually shot the exterior in front of a flat where John Barry lived in the early 80s.

[biggytitbo]

The one good thing about the awful Tomorrow Never Dies is the superb theme song, probably the best since View to a Kill.

[CaledonianGonzo]

The title track isn't even the best song in Tomorrow Never Dies!

[Mark Steels Stockbroker]

I thought the whole point of the start of Diamonds Are Forever was that Bond was after Blofeld as revenge for what happened in OHMSS? We also saw Roger Moore remembering his wife at the start of For Your Eyes Only.

Did Fleming not write The Man With The Golden Gun, which was published after You Only Live Twice? It starts

Spoiler alert

with him coming back to London on a mission to kill M, having been brainwashed by the Russians. He then has to be deprogrammed and gets sent off to deal with Scaramanga.

[close]

[Talulah, really!]

LTK has dated in a specifically 1980s way to the pint that - as oft-mentioned - it sometimes resembles an episode of Miami Vice.  Why that's worse than, say, the way the 1970s movies have dated I'm not sure, but it kind of is.

It's the corner of the eye aesthetics that let it down, for example, the tailoring is awful, Dalton dresses like a well paid holiday rep not in the Saville Row finery that was suitable for impressing the natives in which ever part of the British Empire Sean Connery rolled up in, even Moore's Safari suits are better since they signify the unreality of the Bond world. Dalton's films are clearly set in the real decade they were made, Connery's and most of Moore's weren't.

Though all the Connery films belong to the 1960s when you watch any of the other rival Bonds, Matt Helm, The Men from Uncle, the Flint films the sudden obviousness that it is Austen Powers dolly birds mini skirts a-go-go reveals just how carefully the Bond films excised the fashions of the time, it's the kind of creating an idealised timeless kingdom which is sort of set in a mythical decade that other perennially popular cultural writers' worlds do, Agatha Christie's sort of between the wars England, P.G.Wodehouseshire or The Avengers[nb]Both Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg are wearing much more conservative customing in the Bond films than they did on TV.[/nb], it sort of belongs to a known period but yet shimmers hazily out of reach in an idealised summer's glow. Up until Diamonds are forever I don't think you see a man with hair past the collar.

Luckily, as the Quantum of Solace picture posted previously shows, the current lot get it.

[Talulah, really!]

Did Fleming not write The Man With The Golden Gun, which was published after You Only Live Twice?

Yes, though it's pretty much a first draft and published shortly after his death and other people may have had a hand in it, the closing sentence is rather noticeably elegiac I've always thought.

Speaking of which, what's with the Emily Bronte quote biggytitbo, is it a Kate Bush[nb]There's someone who should have done a Bond theme[nb]biggy explodes with pleasure at the thought.[/nb][/nb] thing or are you a closet Genesis fan.[nb]Wind and Wuthering is my fave Genesis album, should you be interested.[nb]You probably shouldn't.[/nb][/nb]

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

I thought the whole point of the start of Diamonds Are Forever was that Bond was after Blofeld as revenge for what happened in OHMSS? We also saw Roger Moore remembering his wife at the start of For Your Eyes Only.

Actually, there's zero mention of the events of OHMSS during Diamonds Are Forever. Bond could be on a rampage just because of the events of You Only Live Twice.

Roger Moore visiting the grave of Tracy Bond is a little weird. This scene was written to mark a short-lived shift into realism and gravity after the excesses of Moonraker. And also because the script was written before Roger Moore had committed once again to the part, so they put the scene to bring some continuity with the early adventures.
Of course, this attempt is totally at odds with the rest of the prologue, with the final appearance of an unnamed Blofeld that's played for laughs and as a comment against the legal procedures submitted by Kevin McClory over the character. The idea was for the producers to say to McClory that they didn't need Blofeld or Spectre to make the things interesting. They could dispose of the unnamed "bald villain" quickly.[nb]EON and MGM actually bought back the rights a few months ago, which means they're free to use a recurring secret criminal organization and an evil mastermind behind it without being sued for similarities to the elements formerly owned by McClory. I guess that John Logan and the producers must be actually very happy.[/nb]

Did Fleming not write The Man With The Golden Gun, which was published after You Only Live Twice? It starts

Spoiler alert

with him coming back to London on a mission to kill M, having been brainwashed by the Russians. He then has to be deprogrammed and gets sent off to deal with Scaramanga.

[close]

The Man with the Golden Gun is a direct continuation of YOLT. As Talulah, really! says, it was a first draft, and nobody knows about the extent of the revisions by other writers. Fleming focused on the plot in the first draft and added characterization later, and the published version is quite terse and formulaic, which suggest the revisions didn't go very far.

But the main difference between the two books was that on YOLT Fleming was more or less aware he was dying, and this colours the entire book. Bond isn't even 007 anymore. He's now agent 7777.
On TMWTGG, Fleming was just living on borrowed time. Bond is reinstated as 007, but it's a small scale adventure, and he gets his poorest love interest in the entire series:

Spoiler alert

a former secretary of his. During the entire series of books, Bond is flirting with the secretary he shares with a few other 00 agents. First it's Loelia Ponsoby, then it's Mary Goodnight. He sometimes thinks about marrying Ponsoby, more as a by default solution, but she marries first, tired of waiting for him. Goodnight has a desk job first, then becomes a field agent in this novel, but it's still basically fucking the maid in TMWTGG.
The Miss Moneypenny from the original films was a composite between the much more severe (and less developed) character of the same name in the books and Ponsoby.

[close]

[CaledonianGonzo]

Actually, there's zero mention of the events of OHMSS during Diamonds Are Forever. Bond could be on a rampage just because of the events of You Only Live Twice.

While you're correct that it's never mentioned, it seems pretty implicit that Bond's frenzied search for Blofeld in the DAF Pre-Title Sequence follows on directly from the ending of OHMSS.

[CaledonianGonzo]

It's the corner of the eye aesthetics that let it down, for example, the tailoring is awful, Dalton dresses like a well paid holiday rep not in the Saville Row finery that was suitable for impressing the natives in which ever part of the British Empire Sean Connery rolled up in, even Moore's Safari suits are better since they signify the unreality of the Bond world. Dalton's films are clearly set in the real decade they were made, Connery's and most of Moore's weren't.

Brosnan's 90shair is aging in similarly drastic fashion, but the styling in The Living Daylights is alright.  For me it's head and shoulders above any of the other movies of the 1980s in just about every way.

[thraxx]

I suppose that I'm about to ask a very silly question, but here goes:  How do the James Bond books work? 

I've always known that Bond was a literary character, but of course only ever seen the films - there must be fucking dozens of books. 

Is the Bond character in them always the same Bond?  Do the stories in the books follow sequentially into one massive epic?  Are they kids books or adult books (Bond films can be harsh, or they can be light hearted)?  Finally are they any good?  Is it worth me investing the rest of my life buying them and reading through?

[CaledonianGonzo]

They're well-crafted coldwar pot-boilers, notably less light-hearted and widescreen-scale than the movies.  Fleming had dated imperial attitudes but a nice turn of phrase and there are far worse beach reads to be had.  From Russia With Love and OHMSS are two of the movies that stick closest to source material, so that should give you an idea of the type of thing that you're in for.

The character is always the same Bond and as the books progress he changes and ages in a way that (mostly) doesn't happen in the films.

I guess that they're notionally adult books, but I read them as a kid so maybe they could go in the YA section of Waterstones...?

[Bad Ambassador]

Also, there's only a dozen books and two more volumes of short stories. Bond effectively ages in real time from early 30s in Casino Royale to mid 40s in The Man with the Golden Gun. Colonel Sun by Kingsley Amis follows them, and then James Bond: The Authorised Biography has him retired and living in Jamaica in his early 50s in 1972, with Honey Rider being his semi-serious girlfriend.

The novels restarted in the early 80s, now written by American author John Gardner, who turned one every 18 months or so until then mid 90s, then Bond fan and semi-professional author Raymond Benson took over, his last one published in 2002. All of them continue on from the Fleming novels, and essentially ignore the floating timeline problem.

Charlie Higson was commissioned for a series of YA Bond novels after that, with five published in quick succession in the mid-late 00s, and set in Bond's adolescence in the 30s when he was at Eton. The previous novels are basically for adults, although perfectly suitable for a moderately educated teenager who realises that Fleming's bizarre personal opinions were outdated even when the books were published. The Young Bond series is occasionally quite bloodthirsty - the first book starts with someone being eaten alive by carnivorous eels - but aimed at a slightly younger readership than before.

Since then, there have been three more books by prestige authors. Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks tries to fit in with the Fleming continuity by being set in the late 60s, but it's not very good. The setting of pre-revolutionary Persia is original, but it's too much of a pastiche/pisstake of Fleming to not make Faulks look like a twat. I haven't read the other two, Carte Blanche by Jeffrey Deaver or Solo by William Boyd, but the former appears to be a post-24 reboot, complete with a Bond with daddy issues, which is the sort of bollocks you expect from an American airport novelist.

Gardner and Benson also did novelisation of Licence to Kill through to Die Another Day, with the former clumsily attempting to tie in to the novel continuity despite it already being shot to ribbons, pieces and buggery, while the latter is arguably better than the film, despite Benson outdoing Terrence Dicks in the "he said, she said" school of writing.

[Panbaams]

If you worry about things like timelines, the recent continuation novels are all over the place: Devil May Care is set in the late 60s, Carte Blanche is set in the modern day and Solo, the latest, goes back to the end of the 60s.

A new Young Bond is due out too, albeit not by Charlie Higson – later this year, I think.

I haven't read the other two, Carte Blanche by Jeffrey Deaver or Solo by William Boyd, but the former appears to be a post-24 reboot, complete with a Bond with daddy issues, which is the sort of bollocks you expect from an American airport novelist.

That's not quite fair on Carte Blanche – Bond looking into the deaths of his parents runs along in the background of the main story, and is left open at the end for other continuation authors to pursue, should they wish. To be fair to Jeffrey Deaver, it's a subject that has never really been properly explored in the books before, so it was interesting that he put a bit of a spin on what could have happened.

Gardner and Benson also did novelisation of Licence to Kill through to Die Another Day, with the former clumsily attempting to tie in to the novel continuity despite it already being shot to ribbons, pieces and buggery, while the latter is arguably better than the film, despite Benson outdoing Terrence Dicks in the "he said, she said" school of writing.

There's also Christopher Wood's late 70s novelisations of his two screenplays for The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. The former, in particular, is much more successful as a "written in the style of Ian Fleming"-type exercise than Sebastian Faulks' book.

But you're right about the hoops John Gardner jumps through to tie the events of Licence to Kill in with the novels. I like how nobody mentions that the "He disagreed with something that ate him" note pinned to Felix is identical to the one pinned to him in Live and Let Die!

[Blue Jam]

For Tomorrow Never Dies, he wanted a raise compared to his previous fees and be involved with the theme song, and the producers didn't agree. But at that point, they had heard about Arnold through John Barry, as Arnold was then assembling his Shaken and Stirred project of re-recordings of various songs and Barry was enthusiastic about his work.

David Arnold's Shaken And Stirred "project" may very well be the most 90's thing ever- aren't the Propellerheads on it?

[Thomas]

They are indeed, performing On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which - as I always say - should be the Bond theme.

Just watched a bit of The World Is Not Enough on ITV, but instead of watching some more I've gone to bed.

[SteveDave]

I can vaguely recommend the James Bonding podcast. It's part of the Nerdist group of business.

[Talulah, really!]

I haven't read the other two, Carte Blanche by Jeffrey Deaver or Solo by William Boyd,

Solo is a pretty decent attempt at capturing the flavour of the Fleming novels and the African country civil war setting is a fresh setting for Bond and one that Boyd knows well enough to create atmosphere which is something that Fleming was particularly strong on, most of the Bond novels having a strong sense, for the reader, of the place and time that they are set in. Boyd is also, like Fleming, good at describing action, something that many novelists struggle with, it is easy yet engaging to follow when a character is doing something.

Fleming was certainly a fine thriller writer, his main literary problem, apart from the cardinal sin of being popular, are his novels admit no great moral issues, the good guys, us and U.S., are good and the baddies are baddies are bad and Soviet.

The Bond of the books is a more resourceful character and often, rather amusingly, prone to swotting up on his subjects at the start of many of the novels, there is a great chapter on cheating at cards at the beginning of Moonraker which also, if I remember correctly[nb]And if I don't someone will be along presently![/nb], has the lovely macabre little touch of Bond noticing an obscured sign for a Shell petrol station just before the adventure begins and sees it flashing out "-hell is here, -hell is here."

[gatchamandave]

Just read it, and you are absolutely correct, Talulah.

Oh, and if we are being complete there is, of course you knew, Kinsgley Amis's very sadistic Colonel Sun, with ideas such as M being kidnapped and set up as a patsy and Bond hanging round the Greek islands with swarthy ruffians being lifted by the Eon series at various times. I recommend it - it's not quite right and the Colonel himself never quite distinguishes himself from Dr No or Fu Manchu " fiendish Oriental " stereotype but the continuity with the Fleming series is perfect.

[biggytitbo]

I can thoroughly recommend James Pond:Robocod, which deftly transport the Bond template to a robotic fish that has to negotiate platforms to win sweets and bonuses. Surprisingly faithful to the original books too.