#1: It's amazing the 007 franchise ever got off the ground, let alone survive to encompass over 20 full-length movies. Perhaps they were just more impressive back in the day, but now they're (sorry grandpa) fairly bad films. I have yet to rate one of the "classics" above 3 (out of 5) stars. I'm not just bagging on dated special effects, either. I'm talking about plot holes, bad editing, and fight scenes so disjointed as to be incomprehensible.
#2: Wandering Monster Tables. The most recent Bond film we watched had 3 action sequences that have no correlation whatsoever to the plotline. I'm not just talking about the "In Media Res" intro scene of an unrelated mission. I accept that without complaint as both a genre convention and a way to catch the audience's attention from the first frame. Instead, I'm talking about mid-film car chases and assassination attempts from unknown third parties who are never satisfactorily explained. They're like the "wandering monsters" of D&D - pointless, unnecessary, distracting, and with little real threat of defeat.
#3: Bond is a rapist (at least in the Connery years). I'd remembered him as suave (with a touch of smarmy), and, of course, a bit of a horndog, but as a young viewer, I thought those who bitched about his misogynism where overreacting. Now I see that it's just that I was clueless to how many of his so-called "seductions" were basically rapes.Case-in-point: Thunderball's spa scenes. There's this nurse that he attacks, forcing his tongue into her mouth, and she slaps him and recoils across the room, making her intentions (or lack thereof) clear. Later, Bond's chiropractic machine is sabotaged and she rescues him. He knows it was sabotaged, yet he accuses her of setting it wrong and threatens to turn her in to the authorities (and get her fired) if she doesn't sleep with him. He backs her into the steam room (no other exits and cover of fog), and then she capitulates. Later scenes attempt to give us the impression she'd just been playing hard to get, but at the time of his sex-for-silence request, there was no apparent irony.
#4: What's up with the CIA? Felix (or some other CIA operative) shows up in nearly every single Bond film, but rarely does anything other than hold Bond's coat or refill his martini. I've been bouncing the meaning of this around in my head for a while, but have yet to decide what purpose it is intended to serve.
#5: The best Bond film really is "Andrew Crosby is Tim Forbes as James Bondage 006.9 in: A View To A Clone, Part 2: In The Mouth Of Cloneness." That, or maybe Golden Eye.
3 comments:
My wife pointed out to me recently that Ian Flemming has written the following line in one of his books (or something like it):
"Sex with her had the satisfaction of a rape."
...She refused to watch/read anything Bond-related now.
The skeptic in me wanted to look this up. The line is "And now he knew that she was profoundly, excitingly sensual, but that the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would each time have the sweet tang of rape.", and it was in Casino Royale. Discovered on Amazon UK in this comment:
There are several shocking moments - when you realise that Bond has a scar down the right hand side of his face, his 70+ a day cigarette habit and a quite shocking reference to 'the sweet tang of rape'. This really is NOT the Bond we think we know - he's far harsher, more cruel and his dislike, even hatred of women, comes out very clearly.
More on the subject if you google the phrase.
Yuck.
Thank you for confirming my feelings / suspicions. Here I was worried that perhaps I was over-reacting or misinterpreting. Clearly, I wasn't reacting strongly enough.
The 2 stars I ended up rating that film might have been 1 too many.
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