What is it With GoldenEye?
Colonel Shatner
Chavtastic Bristol, BritainPosts: 574MI6 Agent
Even though GoldenEye is often heralded as supposedly being Brosnan’s best outing and for reinvigorating the tired Bond franchise after it was given a relatively lengthy six year break, twelve years on I don’t think GoldenEye is necessarily Brosnan’s best instalment (that goes to Tomorrow Never Dies), and could reliably be deemed a very middle of the road Bond movie that is overrated.
Oh don’t get me wrong, Martin Campbell did a very good job of fooling many into thinking GoldenEye was a better movie than it actually is, raising the movie above it’s intrinsically mediocre screenplay. The screenplay for GE was better than Die Another Day’s screenplay, but it was miles behind the screenplay for Casino Royale, a movie more worthy of Martin Campbell (who also directed the hideously underrated No Escape).
The screenplay was patchy since I found GoldenEye’s overall storyline to be hopelessly vague, needlessly convoluted , and illogical even by Bond movie standards - it really does not improve on repeat viewing, unlike The World is Not Enough’s rather labyrinth plot that holds together better than GE’s fragmented, borderline nonsense. Tomorrow Never Dies’s storyline is better again by it’s relative simplicity, with fewer narrative moving parts locking together correctly with less plot holes (less can mean more; compare DW’s “Blink“ to “Last of the Time Lords“ for example).
And the villain, Alec Trevelyan 006, does not really make any sense if you think clearly about his staged fake death, his back story, him being a mastermind with unlimited resources pulled out of his backside, and his global extortion scheme (stealing billions from the Bank of England then rendering it worthless by crashing the global economy by knocking out London?). A corrupt and rather crazed billionaire starting a limited nuclear war for media ratings and expanding his corporate empire into China makes more sense I’m sad to say, and it was somewhat novel.
And Bond gets away with more nasty stuff as well - why didn’t he or MI6 answer for the killing of dozens of blameless Russians at a government building? Smashing up St. Petersburg with a stolen tank? Why does Bond go with MI6’s crazy scheme of directly destroying a strategic weapons manufacturing base deep inside Soviet territory in 1986, that would obviously provoke a dangerous international situation? Bond killed Russians before, but in self defence against knowing KGB operatives or renegade Red Army soldiers, and with comparatively restrained force in neutral territory (ie not presumably indirectly killing hundreds of civilian workers and scientists employed at the Arkhangelsk chemical plant that was detonated by MI6 bombs).
Am I alone with my opinions?
Oh don’t get me wrong, Martin Campbell did a very good job of fooling many into thinking GoldenEye was a better movie than it actually is, raising the movie above it’s intrinsically mediocre screenplay. The screenplay for GE was better than Die Another Day’s screenplay, but it was miles behind the screenplay for Casino Royale, a movie more worthy of Martin Campbell (who also directed the hideously underrated No Escape).
The screenplay was patchy since I found GoldenEye’s overall storyline to be hopelessly vague, needlessly convoluted , and illogical even by Bond movie standards - it really does not improve on repeat viewing, unlike The World is Not Enough’s rather labyrinth plot that holds together better than GE’s fragmented, borderline nonsense. Tomorrow Never Dies’s storyline is better again by it’s relative simplicity, with fewer narrative moving parts locking together correctly with less plot holes (less can mean more; compare DW’s “Blink“ to “Last of the Time Lords“ for example).
And the villain, Alec Trevelyan 006, does not really make any sense if you think clearly about his staged fake death, his back story, him being a mastermind with unlimited resources pulled out of his backside, and his global extortion scheme (stealing billions from the Bank of England then rendering it worthless by crashing the global economy by knocking out London?). A corrupt and rather crazed billionaire starting a limited nuclear war for media ratings and expanding his corporate empire into China makes more sense I’m sad to say, and it was somewhat novel.
And Bond gets away with more nasty stuff as well - why didn’t he or MI6 answer for the killing of dozens of blameless Russians at a government building? Smashing up St. Petersburg with a stolen tank? Why does Bond go with MI6’s crazy scheme of directly destroying a strategic weapons manufacturing base deep inside Soviet territory in 1986, that would obviously provoke a dangerous international situation? Bond killed Russians before, but in self defence against knowing KGB operatives or renegade Red Army soldiers, and with comparatively restrained force in neutral territory (ie not presumably indirectly killing hundreds of civilian workers and scientists employed at the Arkhangelsk chemical plant that was detonated by MI6 bombs).
Am I alone with my opinions?
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
Comments
I very much enjoy Goldeneye for the same reasons
you find it distasteful. Bond is a killer. That's what the '00' is for. In 1986 the Cold War was still very much on and the Soviets were in violation of international law by making Chemical Weapons. Those employed there were not ignorant of their roles. The existence of such a plant is reason enough to destroy it. As for St. Petersburg, General Orumov killed blameless Russians, including Minister of Defence Mishkin.
When people started shooting at Bond he started shooting back. If someone opens fire at me with a Kalashnikov I'm not going to hold him blameless no matter what his motivations are.
Alec (006) is a terrific villain and Sean Bean is impressive in the role. Until Goldeneye, other 00's were relegated to the background or not seen at all, save a brief scene with 009 in clown makeup at the beginning of the ridculous Octopussy. I was glad to see Bond face off against an equal. The fight these two extremely tough, ruthless men have at the film's climax is
well worth the occasional silliness( the tank smashups in St Petersburg, Boris being turned into an icicle etc.) Brosnan's first outing at Bond is fine and the introduction of Judi Dench as 'M' is a masterstroke.
I will agree with you that Alec probably would not have the resources to pull off this scheme unless 00's are paid very, very, very,very well.
Remember though that Alec was using Soviet equipment he had access to via Orumov. It's not hard to imagine that he corrupted some of the more susceptible techs and soldiers with the promise of a big payday.
I had my own doubts about Pierce Brosnan in the role of 007 but upon seeing Goldeneye, I changed my mind. Brosnan here is lean, tough, smart and every inch Bond. His later efforts in the role didn't match the first, but Goldeneye was a very fine first.-{
Agree with you 100%. The script is breathtakingly formulaic. Even to the degree that when I saw yet another set with lots of monitors and blinking lights at the climax I thought here we go again. And Xenia Onatopp is a textbook vamp.
Goldeneye is a the bedtime book of Bond cliches.
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I agree with you. In the hands of a lesser director it really would have been a cumbersome dinosaur. But still it drags. But maybe that is to do with Eric Serras clunky music. I do find myself switching sides every time it comes on telly.
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A Who fan and a very discerning one. At least with 007 we dont have that champion sharkjumper Russell T Davies writing for it.
The problem with Goldeneye is that it has dated horribly. What was fresh and exciting in 1995 seems average now. In fact I would say it has dated more the TMWTGG and its Solex Power plot. The "new Russia" in trouble and soulsearching in 1995 is now in the past as the "Russian bear" seems to have awoken and realised its power with natural resources. The Cold War as we have seen with the Litvinko business is still there and could get worse.
It does have a good Bond girl (for the Brosnan era) though and a wonderful title song with Tina Turner but doesnt bear up to multiple watching. I dont even own the DVD.
Well put. Half of it is fun to watch, half of it is annoying as hell and it's not a clean split. TND works much better for me as an updated 60s Bond film than GE does as an updated 80s Bond film.
That pretty much sums up my feelings as well. GE is my favorite Brosnan outing by a fair margin; if anything, I think he started to take the role a little too seriously with subsequent outings, even as the events unfolding around him became more and more fantastical.
Plausible plots and realistic character development have never been high priorities in a Bond film for me. That's why films like GE rate highly for me while I barely give entries like Casino Royale a second look.
As to how Alec could amass such an empire - again the "hows" aren't always that important to me, but check out Lord of War with Nicholas Cage sometime for one possible explanation; it cleverly ties the fall of the Soviet Union with one man's rise as a world-wide gunrunner.
As it had been years since the last Bond, they make the hero very self deprecating, as they did a bit with Moore in LALD, to ingratiate themselves. Every character Bond meets takes the mickey out of him and his place in the world: M, the evaluatoin girl, Valentin, Alec, Wade and so on. It's repetitive.
Also it's two films running concurrently, it jumps between Bond and Natalya's story until they meet, like a soap opera jumps back and forth between two plot lines when on their own neither would be that interesting.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The Soviet Union manufactured chemical weapons, so does the United States, Britain, Israel, Iran, North Korea, and China. I know that Soviet facility in the pre-title sequence was not brewing Dr. Pepper, but if all the weapon production facilities in a superpower like Soviet Russia became fair game for British wetwork operations, then that would clearly esculate the Cold War into a red hot one - only universally ostracised countries like Israel and America randomly blow up factories in Third World countries because they're allegedly a cover for NBC weapons (with said countries on very hostile terms to begin with).
And being the enclosed and heavily controlled Soviet Union, do you think the workers, most scientists, and guards posted at the chemical weapons plant had a real choice being there and that half of the soldiers probably didn't even know what they were guarding?
Point well taken. Indeed, the Soviets were not the only ones with these weapons. And you are quite right to say that those involved probably had no choice in the matter.
Still, we have to remember the mindset of the time. The Soviet Union was THE ENEMY. The Western powers, (The U.S., Great Britain and the rest of NATO) were not FIRST STRIKE powers. The Soviets may have claimed the same thing but at that time Great Britain had no reason to fear that the U.S. would launch a nuclear or chemical attack against England. They could not know the Soviet's intentions. Had 006 not been a traitor as we are meant to assume at that point in the story, indeed as Bond is meant to assume, and had the mission gone as planned, the Soviets would not know if the plant had been destroyed accidentally, as the result of an internal mistake or by sabotage and if so by whom.
While the film stretches reality the same can be said of all the Bond films.
Finally, I doubt seriously that anyone involved in the manufacture of these weapons could truly be ignorant of what they were doing.
It is tragic when forced laborers die as a result of their masters' machinations. That's part of what made the defeat of the Soviet Union necessary and why Bond was doing what he did.
It's also part of what makes Goldeneye compelling.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I still find GoldenEye watchable and entertaining in a rather superficially dumb way, but GoldenEye always felt like a warmed up Never Say Never Again spliced with the winding emptiness of The Living Daylights, with elements of The Spy Who Loved Me shoehorned in to lighten things up a bit. Really GoldenEye worked much better as a groundbreaking video game instead of a average Bond film, I never known so much fan awe for such a mediocre and relatively dull movie.
But Famke Janssen was very hot in GoldenEye though, and is still hot today despite being past 40.
Eric Serras' bizarre music was far more suitable to the The Fifth Element and the N64 version of GoldenEye - David Arnold blew him completely out of the water. But through David Campbell, GoldenEye's action scenes were very well executed, with the dam bungie jump, tank chase, and the slide down the radio dish being high points, even though these action intervals were strung together by a vague nonsense plot and were a clear demonstration of pure style over zero substance.
Well at least with Russell T Davies you have richer characters, more personality, comparatively good internal logic, and more emotional depth than any Brosnan Bond movie. "Doomsday" was also broadly better than "Last of the Timelords", due to having a unconvoluted storyline, and better internal logic derived from it's narrative simplicity (really the TND of NuWho). I liked "Utopia" and "Smith & Jones" too, for similar reasons.
I think it has aged terribly in the same way the unaired 1994 pilot for 24 has aged terribly.
I wouldn't mind having the Craig Bond fight semi-rogue FSB agents and Russian businessmen as secondary villains in future movies, but the Russians were never the main antagonist in most Bond movies since Dr. No, only really being the primary antagonists in GoldenEye despite the Cold War supposedly being over. It would good to see China, a Al-Quada style group, and Iran as secondary villains as well, but Political Correct cowardice implied by the producers is preventing that (it was also the same factor that prevented the use of the Russian SMERSH agency in the Connery films, instead the producers opted for the apolitical SPECTRE syndicate as the main villains, but we all know that opened the way for the legal BS involving Kevin McClory).
But there's a danger the film can get overtaken by events if it gets topical.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The Soviet Union was never our friends, was heavily corrupt, and a socialist dictatorship that was a oppressive to most people under it's yoke, but you couldn't just waltz into the Soviet Union and casually shoot up it's sensitive military facilities, killing dozens or hundreds of people in the process. The Arkangel sabotage mission was the MoD seriously overplaying it's hand against the Soviets in the delicate atmosphere of the Cold War, where the US even blowing steam over missle sites in Cuba nearly started a world war.
The Soviet Union in the 1980s must've had hundreds of GRU and KGB operatives located in Europe, Britain, and Northern America - how could MI6 cover it's tracks after blowing up a major chemical plant, a clear act of intentional terrorism on sovereign Russian soil? The alarm would sound and all bets would be off, with the KGB/GRU commandos conducting similar sabotage missions against NATO and industrial facilities in Britain - ten MiGs get shot down above Cyprus, then a Royal Navy ship gets sunk in the Baltic Sea, Russia rolls tanks into Turkey, the Russian embassy in London is stormed by the SAS, Gibralta is attacked by a Spetznaz taskforce, then sombody under the North Atlantic Ocean pushes The Button.
GoldenEye IMO is indeed the best Brosnan film and the second best Bond film of 'em all (CR is my number 1 all the way!).
Yes its a ridiculous plot. It's a Bond movie for f**k's sakes! forget about that and move your concentration to the important part of the movie, the real story behind the extravigance. GE is about Bond, the man himself. It is about a troubled spy finding his relevancy in a new world. It's about the tough decisions and cold-bloodedness that Bond must face and overcome. What makes GoldenEye great is its overall message: The world has changed, but James Bond is forever.
And yes, GE is Brosnan's best performance as Bond. I've never really liked Brozzer's take on the character after GE, but before his latter three mediocre performances, Brosnan played a darker, grittier Bond with a touch of savvy and sophistication. His portrayal of Bond in GE was human, as Bond should be.
But hey, this is just my opinion and won't resolve any argument being made for or against GoldenEye in this thread. We all have our opinions and they're not gonna change any time soon. just thought I'd throw my two cents in for the hell of it.
In the real world you are quite correct and I concede the point.But we're not really talking real world are we? As I stated in a previous post, the Bond films have always stretched reality. If anyone could get away with it, it could only be Bond. What makes Bond so enjoyable is that he does those things that we would like to do but know we can't. Bond breaks the rules and gets away with it because he's Bond. The best Bond films, like Fleming's novels, take
real world issues and give them a twist. That's what Goldeneye does. But Goldeneye does more than that. Each of the Brosnan era films has strong themes of betrayed love, betrayed friendship. Even the dismal Die Another Day had this theme. In GE 007 is betrayed by his friend 006. In Tomorrow Never Dies, Bond abandons Paris Carver who still comes back to him, betraying her husband. In The World is Not Enough, Elektra is betrayed by her father. She seduces and betrays Bond. In DAD Bond is betrayed by Miranda Frost, thrown to the wolves by M and still manages to come back and save the day. Nowhere however is this theme more apparent than in Goldeneye. Bond reacts strongly to Alec's betrayal. Determined to stop his ex-friend, to snuff him out like any other madman,
he tries to turn off his emotions and can't. He becomes human. Again, we're given real world issues with a twist. Bond does not shrug off Alec's betrayal with a joke or try to make excuses for the things he does. He hardens himself and does his job. Goldeneye is a political thriller with a dash of fantasy, a story of betrayal and revenge with the trademark Bondian touches, and a well made action film.
Cheers.{[]
I would be much kinder to GoldenEye if the pre-title sequence took place in 1991 instead of 1986, with the chemical weapons facility implied to be in a corrupt break away ex-Soviet republic, and is run by the newly formed Janus arm syndicate.
007 and 006 are sent in on behalf of the central Russian republic - the facility is guarded by cut throat Janus mercenaries (not hapless peasant conscripts). Trevelyan is seen by Bond getting violently injured and captured by the Janus goons, not shot in the head, and Bond escapes the exploding complex by getting extracted by a Russian or British special forces helicopter (instead of that utterly ridiculous Bond falling after the model plane against a treadmill scenery bit).
Alec Trevelyan 006 is not of Cossack origin, but when in the custody of Janus he gets corrupted by their brutality and money, gets recruited as a Janus enforcer, and wants vengence against Britain and Bond for being left behind four years ago. Over halfway through the story he kills the nominal head of the Janus organization and takes over the GoldenEye scheme. Bond shoots his way through crooked FSB agents on Janus' payrole instead of mowing down ignorant security officers just doing their jobs.
The Cuban final should be beefed up in some places, but toned down in others - I want the Janus complex to be more in a state of disrepair and is obviously a ex-Soviet complex built in the early 1960s, with a much smaller satellite dish raising out of a lake (that remains flooded).
The underground complex is mainly dilapidated, except for the recent Janus renovations that include a medium sized command centre, luxury quaters, guard barracks, the small sattellite dish, with heavy power cables connecting it to the power generators and mainframes.
The GoldenEye orbital weapon's platform is not a one shot weapon, and is more used as a Sword of Damocles for Janus' plan of international blackmail, instead of covering up the tracks of something as banal as a bank robbery.
What do you think of my ideas?
I think you'll find that's a minority viewpoint. While I'm not one of those who pour vitriol on that film, especially the first half which IMO is excellent, it has many weaknesses which tend to turn diehard fans off.
Not bad at all. But, if we are going to change it, let's move away from outer space entirely.
Dr. No, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, Moonraker, Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies(communications satellites) and Die Another Day all incorporated outer space as a back drop to some degree. I agree that the films should be more grounded in reality(in more ways than one). Let's do away with the killer satellites all together. The Goldeneye could be the ultimate computer virus, the codename for an ex-Soviet agent on a rampage, or some other type of threat.
I suppose I AM kinder to Goldeneye because of the fine performances from Brosnan and Bean. Bond for once, is facing an equal and that gives the film much of its edge. Famke Janssen, Izabella
Scorupco(hope I spelled that correctly) and Judi Dench are all marvellous.
All that said, when it comes right down to the bone cutting, give From Russia With Love any day.:007)