James Bond Debate Thread - Autistic about James Bond? Click Here.

Krokodil Overdose said:
The Living Daylights is a pretty generic Bond entry- you could see any Bond actor in the role and it would basically the same. Typical Cold War intrigue (with poorly aged Mujahideen simping.)

License to Kill, otoh, is the "real" Dalton Bond movie. All superficial charm, quiet rage, and utter ruthlessness with an intensity that nobody else could really deliver. It's also a story that's aged very well, since cartels are at least as relevant today as they were back in the 80s.
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I agree with this assessment. The Living Daylights had a pretty underwhelming villain as well (same guy who played Jack Wade in Goldeneye). Also they were simping for the Soviets. John Barry turned out a pretty routine soundtrack as well. Having said all that, I thought Dalton was an excellent Bond and was the highlight of an otherwise mediocre Bond flick.

License to Kill is probably the most underrated Bond now that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is finally getting the respect that should’ve been due to it all along.
 
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Krokodil Overdose said:
The Living Daylights is a pretty generic Bond entry- you could see any Bond actor in the role and it would basically the same. Typical Cold War intrigue (with poorly aged Mujahideen simping.)

License to Kill, otoh, is the "real" Dalton Bond movie. All superficial charm, quiet rage, and utter ruthlessness with an intensity that nobody else could really deliver. It's also a story that's aged very well, since cartels are at least as relevant today as they were back in the 80s.
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That’s why it sucks we never got to see a third dalton film. One of the pitches they had for it would’ve been more goofier. Something more in line with Roger Moore.
 
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Cedric_Eff said:
Personally for me, it’s Brosnan.
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Woody Allen was the best Bond, obviously.

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Personally I think "The Spy Who Loved Me" is peak Bond. The Daniel Craig Bond movies would have been better if they could have lightened the fuck up or made some damn sense.
 
FamicomGorby said:
Woody Allen was the best Bond, obviously.

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Personally I think "The Spy Who Loved Me" is peak Bond. The Daniel Craig Bond movies would have been better if they could have lightened the fuck up or made some damn sense.
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Not only lighten up but try to have Bond become well, Bond. That was the point of Casino Royale and the reboot of the franchise.

Have Bond go from the one in Casino Royale to something more lighter (not necessarily Moore like).
 
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I like The World is Not Enough except for Denise Richards. I suspect that if you remove her character or at least cast a different actress, the movie magically becomes much better.
 
Here seems like a fine place to put my hot take: Octopussy is a top 5 Bond film and the best one Moore ever did.
SamTheEagle said:
I like The World is Not Enough except for Denise Richards. I suspect that if you remove her character or at least cast a different actress, the movie magically becomes much better.
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But what about her massive rack?
I do agree with this sentiment, but TWINE has bigger problems than her (shame really, The World is Not Enough is a brilliant title) :
  • They fucking wasted Renard, who is one of the best villain concepts in the series, by having him just be a lapdog to Elektra.
  • Speaking of, I do like Elektra King, but she was the one thing people remember about TWINE and once she's killed off the movie never recovers.
  • I think TWINE is the movie where Bond starts its trajectory toward "generic action movie" and less uniquely Bond, a transition that the series never really managed to correct. (I'd argue that the decay of "real" Bond started when Brosnan took over, but TWINE is the first movie where it becomes unignorable). This point especially is why I can't think of TWINE as anything other than a generic, mediocre Brosnan flick.
 
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I don't really care much for the actors in the movies, though the best cars have to be the XKR and BMW E38.

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SamTheEagle said:
I like The World is Not Enough except for Denise Richards. I suspect that if you remove her character or at least cast a different actress, the movie magically becomes much better.
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Each Brosnan Bond movie got worse than the one before it. I think Brosnan was a great Bond but got dealt a shitty hand. They wound up fucking him over after Die Another Day because they were desperate to reboot the series.
Wimbydong said:
Here seems like a fine place to put my hot take: Octopussy is a top 5 Bond film and the best one Moore ever did.
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I enjoyed the 80s Moore Bond movies than the 70s. Moore was always self aware, realizing that some guy in his 50s couldn’t actually do the things he was purported to do in the movies. I thought in the 80s, they finally figured out how to make the movies that played up to his strengths. The 70s Bond flicks were all over the place, chasing trends rather than doing its own thing, which was the strength of the 60s Bond movies.

Chasing trends is why I always thought the 70s movies were the low point in the franchise, up until after Casino Royale, for the same reason: lacking the confidence to do its own thing. After Casino Royale, they just became Bourne-style generic action movies.
 
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The Hardest R said:
Each Brosnan Bond movie got worse than the one before it. I think Brosnan was a great Bond but got dealt a shitty hand. They wound up fucking him over after Die Another Day because they were desperate to reboot the series.

I enjoyed the 80s Moore Bond movies than the 70s. Moore was always self aware, realizing that some guy in his 50s couldn’t actually do the things he was purported to do in the movies. I thought in the 80s, they finally figured out how to make the movies that played up to his strengths. The 70s Bond flicks were all over the place, chasing trends rather than doing its own thing, which was the strength of the 60s Bond movies.

Chasing trends is why I always thought the 70s movies were the low point in the franchise, up until after Casino Royale, for the same reason: lacking the confidence to do its own thing. After Casino Royale, they just became Bourne-style generic action movies.
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That’s why I hope they do the right think after No Time to Die.
 
Cedric_Eff said:
That’s why I hope they do the right think after No Time to Die.
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I’m skeptical because the people involved now are so far removed from the good movies or source material. The last good Bond movie is 18 years old. The previous good Bond movie before that is 29 years old. The Bond novels now talk about combatting online Nahtzees. I’d rather they not even bother with new movies but they still are profitable so it’s inevitable that we’ll get at least another one.
 
For some reason I find the Roger Moore Bond movies to be the only ones I'll sit down and watch even if I've already seen them. No idea why, since I freely admit they're objectively silly and by the time A View to a Kill rolled around he was clearly past his prime. Maybe even before.

Also: The couple of Ian Flemming novels I read were just not very good. Maybe the ones I chose were stinkers, dunno.
 
Elwood P. Dowd said:
For some reason I find the Roger Moore Bond movies to be the only ones I'll sit down and watch even if I've already seen them. No idea why, since I freely admit they're objectively silly and by the time A View to a Kill rolled around he was clearly past his prime. Maybe even before.

Also: The couple of Ian Flemming novels I read were just not very good. Maybe the ones I chose were stinkers, dunno.
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Moonraker (book) is goofy. The Southern UK gets nuked and everyone is somehow fine.
 
Car Won't Crank said:
I don't really care much for the actors in the movies, though the best cars have to be the XKR and BMW E38.

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I'm partial to the V8 myself.
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Elwood P. Dowd said:
For some reason I find the Roger Moore Bond movies to be the only ones I'll sit down and watch even if I've already seen them. No idea why, since I freely admit they're objectively silly and by the time A View to a Kill rolled around he was clearly past his prime. Maybe even before.

Also: The couple of Ian Flemming novels I read were just not very good. Maybe the ones I chose were stinkers, dunno.
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Moore is about the furthest away you can get from Fleming Bond, so this just about tracks (that's not a good or bad thing necessarily, it just shows that Bond on the page and on the screen are two fundamentally different beasts). While I enjoy the Fleming books I am currently working through, they only really peak when Fleming manages to come up with a spectacular set piece (the bridge game in Moonraker, the horse races in Diamonds are Forever, and the entirety of From Russia, With Love,, if you have read those); the day-to-day fodder stringing those set pieces together aren't anything to really write home about.
 
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