Interesting article from Huffington Post regarding the settlement between MGM, the production company Danjaq, and the estate of Kevin McClory. What does this have to do with James Bond’s arch-villain and head of the evil organization known as S.P.E.C.T.E.R., Ernst Stavro Blofeld? Read on and learn:
For those who wondered what the deal was with Sean Connery’s last (until now unofficial) outing as James Bond, 1983’s Never Say Never Again, a thinly veiled remake of the 1965 Bond film Thunderball, the answers can be found in that article.
For those unwilling to check the article out, the bottom line is this: Mr. McClory collaborated with James Bond creator/author Ian Fleming with some concepts that he felt Mr. Fleming eventually “appropriated” without attribution and in the novel Thunderball. In the making of the 1965 movie, Mr. McClory came up with both the white-Persian-cat petting Blofeld and S.P.E.C.T.E.R. Blofeld, always played by a different actor in film, would become Bond’s arch-villain and appear not only in Thunderball but in the three subsequent Bond films You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
After that four movie run as Bond’s archvillain, Blofeld abruptly disappeared from the series until returning in the intro segment of the 1981 Roger Moore Bond film For Your Eyes Only (perhaps due to the McClory lawsuit, the Blofeld-like character in this segment went unnamed even though he looked, acted, and carried a white Persian cat suspiciously like the one Blofeld had).
Mr. McClory apparently managed a favorable enough legal ruling regarding his contributions to Thunderball that this allowed another studio company to use the Bond, Blofeld, and S.P.E.C.T.E.R. concept and story in Sean Connery’s very last (unofficial) outting as James Bond in Never Say Never Again.
So fast forward to the above article. If the issues regarding Thunderball have been resolved, it means that not only could Never Say Never Again become part of “official” Bondian lore, but the character of Blofeld and his organization might just make a return. I suspect this is what the makers of the recent Daniel Craig Bond films are eager to do. They hinted to a worldwide organization behind the villains of the three Daniel Craig films though they never outright stated that the organization was S.P.E.C.T.E.R.
With the release today of Skyfall, the latest James Bond film, there have been plenty of internet bandwidth devoted to exploring the best and worst of the James Bond films. Some of the sites include:
I find the lists intriguing as I’m a bit of a contrarian regarding at least on of the Bond films many view as a disappointment: Diamonds Are Forever. This film, which was the last “official” outing by Sean Connery as James Bond, also seemed to set the template for much of the Roger Moore films that followed: Campy, jokey (at times), while delivering some good action and wild scenery.
But many others, it seems, aren’t as taken in by that film as I am. I happen to love the lighter tone and found the entire work a fun film. No, it certainly wasn’t one of the “serious” Bond films…not by a long shot, but I enjoyed it for what it was.
For what its worth, my all time favorite Bond film is probably From Russia With Love, the second Bond film made. However, Goldfinger, the film which followed this film and is considered by many as THE best Bond film of the lot, is also extremely high on my list.
As for the others, I like Timothy Dalton’s first foray into Bondian territory, The Living Daylights and felt Pierce Brosnan’s first Bond film, Goldeneye, was likewise his best. Similarly, Daniel Craig was damn good in Casino Royale and, while I was disappointed with the follow up film, am curious to see him in Skyfall.
Which leaves us with the one oddball (IMHO) Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. There are those who consider this, George Lazenby’s only outing as James Bond, one of the best Bond movies of them all. I’m not one of them. Yes, there are some good action sequences, but overall the film doesn’t do it for me. George Lazenby is not that bad, but on the other hand he doesn’t quite project the charisma needed for a James Bond. Again, IMHO. Further, the plot I always found confusing. Why doesn’t Blofeld (Telly Savalas) recognize James Bond -and vice versa- right away when they meet in this film? After all, in the previous Bond film, You Only Live Twice, they confront each other in that film’s climactic conclusion yet in the follow up act as if they don’t know who each other is.
Very strange, continuity wise.
As for the worst Bond films? Of the Connery ones, I’d have to go with the already mentioned You Only Live Twice. It was a little too much gadgetry and not enough humanity, despite some interesting elements which would be reused in the far superior Spy Who Loved Me (that film was essentially a remake of You Only Live Twice!). Of the Bond films, the worst include The Man With The Golden Gun (perhaps the greatest potential wasted…having the great Christopher Lee as the villain should have alone made the film a knockout. Instead, the film moves around lifelessly), A View To A Kill (Roger Moore was really looking waaay too old for the role by then), and my least favorite, despite a pretty good opening act, Moonraker. Too much silliness.
Ah well, let’s see if Skyfall lives up to the hype and proves to be one of the better ones!
A few years back, the James Bond franchise hit a wall. The current actor playing the James Bond role had obviously played himself out, it appeared, to both audiences and the producers of the films. Realizing they needed to make a change, the producers of the films decided to go in another direction and bring us a more “serious” Bond. They wanted to make the stakes higher and minimize the “camp”.
Alas, box office history wasn’t made there nor, especially, in the second and last (and, IMHO, pretty terrible) Timothy Dalton Bond film, 1989’s Licence to Kill. Though its hard to judge and I may well be “mind-reading” here, I nonetheless had the feeling Timothy Dalton knew this second Bond film was a dud. His performance throughout was pretty dull and he looks to be having a terrible time before the cameras. It hardly came as a surprise, therefore, that he didn’t return for thirds.
Strangely enough, history essentially repeated itself afterwards. The next Bond, Pierce Brosnan, certainly looked great in the role of James Bond. However, I found his films to be…mediocre. Though I saw all of them, I’d be hard pressed to give you details of any of his films…other than the first, Goldeneye, which I consider the best of the lot.
So when Pierce Brosnan was let go, the producers of the Bond films once again decided to “go serious” and brought in Daniel Craig. Unlike the Timothy Dalton experiment, their fortunes were rewarded this time around even as history repeated itself in other ways. Like Timothy Dalton, the first Daniel Craig Bond film, 2006’s Casino Royale, was pretty damn great. The follow-up, 2008’s Quantum of Solace…wasn’t. In fact, I think I enjoyed Licence to Kill a little more than Quantum…though at least Daniel Craig remained more interested in his role here versus Timothy Dalton.
Which is my very long winded way of saying that I’m curious to see the new James Bond film, Skyfall.
But am I the only one who thinks Adele’s theme song for the movie is…pretty terrible? Don’t get me wrong: Her singing voice remains a pure joy to hear and, on the surface, getting her to sing the theme song to a Bond film seemed a total no-brainer.
The problem, in my humble opinion -and, no, I’ve haven’t sold quite as many of my own albums as Adele has! ;-)- is that they put “Skyfall” and words that rhyme with it a little too much into the song. It’s just a little too much, IMHO.
What are my favorite Bond theme songs? Three immediately spring to mind:
Goldfinger by Shirley Bassey. Perhaps what Adele was striving for?
Then there’s the rockin’ Paul McCartney “Live and Let Die”:
Finally, loved Carly Simon’s “Nobody Does It Better”. Really liked the way she subtly threw in the movie title, “The Spy Who Loved Me” within the context of the song. Pretty much the opposite of the way Adele has Skyfall a little too pronounced in the song’s lyrics.
Once again reaching into my bag of old posts, this one is from December of 2009. I re-post it because very recently I also re-posted my thoughts on the Roger Moore Bond film Moonraker (read about that here) and decided to post my slightly more detailed opinions on all of Mr. Moore’s Bond films in light of an article from Entertainment Weekly. Re-post begins in 3…2…1…
This article ran a couple of weeks ago in Entertainment Weekly and is available to be viewed online:
To many, Sean Connery IS James Bond, but I have to admit, I’m not as hostile as some are regarding Roger Moore’s take on the character. He was certainly different in the role, and if there is some criticism to point out about his take on the character, it is that at times he seemed a little too suave and/or fancy to be a killer secret agent. But to me the Moore Bond film’s worst “sin” was that for each “good” one released it seemed to almost always follow that the next one would be mediocre or downright wretched.
For what it’s worth, my take on Mr. Moore’s Bond films.
The Best: For Your Eyes Only– Granted, those watching it for the first time today may feel it is tame, but I loved the stripped down -and non-gadgetry filled- plot. The stunt-work is also first rate. Only real debit is that Roger Moore was beginning to look a little old for the role. The Spy Who Loved Me – I suspect even those who don’t think much of Roger Moore’s Bond films like this one, a reworking/remake of You Only Live Twice (my least favorite Sean Connery Bond film). Unlike YOLT, the plot here was presented, in my opinion, far better than in the Connery vehicle. Jaws (Richard Kiel) makes for a truly memorable heavy. Only real debit is that Barbara Bach (the spy who loved him) turns out to be more of a damsel in distress than the deadly Russian spy she’s advertised to be. Certainly a sign of those times. I suspect if the film were remade today, her character would be far more independent and lethal. Live and Let Die – Moore’s first outing as Bond was one of the actor’s best. He appeared incredibly comfortable in the role, as if he had always been there. The plot is rather nonsensical (and some today might even argue borderline racist), but the action sequences (especially an escape from a pond filled with alligators that has to be seen to be believed) make this an enjoyable romp.
The Good-But-Not-Great Moore Bond: Octopussy – Roger Moore was looking very old by this point (this was his second to last outing as the super spy), but the film was nonetheless an enjoyable “let’s-hit-the-audience-with-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink” tongue-in-cheek action extravaganza…at least to me. On the other hand, I can’t argue too strenuously with those who view the film far less charitably. Again, I think its a decent -if not great- film.
The Worst Roger Moore Bond films: The Man With The Golden Gun – You would think that after the success of Live and Let Die the people behind and in front of the cameras would re-work their magic of the previous film, improve upon it, and give us an even better bang for our buck their second time out. You’d be wrong. TMWTGG is so lukewarm and forgettable that I’m still astonished the movie’s villain, Scaramanga, is played by the legendary Christopher Lee…and even he is not all that interesting. Worse, the final encounter between Bond and Scaramanga, something the film was building up to during its entire run time, winds up being too brief and incredibly anticlimactic. A major disappointment. Moonraker – Roger Moore’s worst Bond feature, although if you hunt around some of my previous posts, you’ll find that upon seeing it again recently, I had to admit the first twenty to thirty minutes of the film was not all that bad. The rest of it, alas, remains pretty dreadful. A View To A Kill– Moore’s last swing at Bond proves a strikeout. David Bowie (by now you must know how I feel about him) was at the time sought by the movie’s producers to play the villain, but when he backed out Christopher Walken (sporting a definite David Bowie “Let’s Dance”-era look) stepped in. Mr. Walken and Duran Duran’s theme song may be the only good thing about this weak, weak film, which also features one of the most nonsensical plots.
Another re-post from my original blog. This post first appeared in April of 2009…
I’m a fan of many of the James Bond films.
My favorite Bond was the first, Sean Connery, and my two favorite Connery Bonds are From Russia With Love and (yes, I admit it) Diamonds Are Forever.One is “serious” while the other is decidedly tongue in cheek and, again to me, quite hilarious (and, lest you think I don’t like the others Connery made, I do, including perennial favorite Goldfinger. In fact, the only Connery Bond that hasn’t impressed me is You Only Live Twice. To the fans of that film, sorry…it just doesn’t do it for me.)
Roger Moore, after George Lazenby’s single outing, proved a strong, albeit different James Bond. However, his films were far more inconsistent and it seemed he had a good film followed by a pretty dreadful one. For Your Eyes Only is my all-time favorite Moore Bond film, with The Spy Who Loved Me, Live and Let Die, and Octopussy ranking in descending order from there. In between those good films, sadly, was the terribly mediocre The Man With The Golden Gun (considering they had the legendary Christopher Lee playing the bad guy, this film should have been A LOT better than it was), the outright terrible A View To A Kill (Moore was looking really old by that point), and the movie I felt was the worst Bond ever made: Moonraker.
In fact, it seemed the producers of the Bond films realized Moonraker was a mistake and went to back to basics in For Your Eyes Only, the film that immediately followed. This week, Moonraker was released on Blu-Ray DVD, and for the first time since its original release way back in 1979, I sat down and watched the movie from start to end. How did it fair after all that time?
To begin, my original Moonraker viewing experience was…troubled. I watched the film with the family at a Drive-In Theatre (the last time we would ever go to one together). The family that parked next to our car, however, came to party. Moments after arriving they had their stereo going LOUD, as if they were the only people there and souring us almost immediately to the whole movie experience to come. Even worse, when the screen finally lit up, instead of seeing Moonraker we were “treated” to Corvette Summer, a terrible “car chase” film. To this day I’m still not sure why the Theatre didn’t announce we were watching a double feature.
By the time Moonraker finally started, it was very late and we were exhausted, both from the partying family next to us and the unexpected (and quite bad) film we had to endure. There was a glimmer of hope, however, when Moonraker started. Alas, that glimmer was dashed pretty quickly. As I said before, I consider Moonraker the worst of the Bond films. Despite all the crap we had to endure before seeing the film, we were open to it and hoped we would see something special. Instead, we left the Drive-In thoroughly defeated. Bond had let us down.
Since that time, Moonraker has popped up on TV now and again and I’ve watched bits and pieces but never bothered to see the whole thing until now. Target had the Blu-Ray Moonraker on sale for a ridiculously low price, and I figured I’d give the movie another try and see if it remains as bad as I recalled.
I don’t want to keep you in suspense: The film remains one of the worst of the Bonds, in my opinion, but, curiously, I saw the glimmer of a potentially good Bond film right there on the screen, if only the producers had decided to play things “straight” instead of going for over the top silliness.
For example, the first twenty or so minutes of the film, the excellent opening skydiving sequence, the hijacking of the Moonraker shuttle, and Bond’s first meeting with the evil Drax (up to the way Drax takes care of an employee that had the misfortune of getting too close to Bond) are quite good. In fact, I’d go so far as to say the opening twenty or so minutes of Moonraker is very strong.
Unfortunately, the film then decided to go gadget crazy, first with the ridiculous Venice gondola sequence (which could easily have been cut from the film entirely) to the cable car sequence (this led to another of the film’s really crappy turns: Jaws falling in love) to the Bond boat sequence (Bond takes out two of the three boats pursuing him in the Amazon…he’s so far ahead of his pursuers in terms of technology and weaponry…and he chooses to abandon his boat?!), to the overblown space fight.
And let’s not forget Bond’s “crafty” way of escaping vaporization by shuttle lift-off just before he embarks on his own space adventure. He’s tied down to a seat under an about to be launched space shuttle and the villain is so lazy he doesn’t strip him of all possible means of escape, including the curious watch he wears. Worse, this was easily one of the worst examples of “If you’re going to kill him, why not just put a bullet through his head and be done with it?”
But, but, but….While I still feel Moonraker ranks low on the Bond movie list, I have to admit there were things within the film that kept me interested. And even though the film’s plot took several wrong turns, there was the glimmer of a much better work just below the surface. For all the bad feelings I’ve had about Moonraker over the years, I can’t help but wonder if the producers had only taken their work a little more seriously, this could easily have been one of the better, not worst, of the Bond films.
