main title reviews
chrisno1
LondonPosts: 3,634MI6 Agent
ok, so I was really bored over the bank holiday and I watched some of the 007 title sequences, it was an interesting hour or so.
Here are my thoughts, for good or bad on first the 1960s Bond titles and then the 1970s
Hopefully I'll follow it up with the 80s, 90s and beyond
Here are my thoughts, for good or bad on first the 1960s Bond titles and then the 1970s
Hopefully I'll follow it up with the 80s, 90s and beyond
Comments
It has always been acknowledged that one of the most important aspects of Bond film is the title sequence. Saltzman and Brocolli wanted their first Bond film to look completely different to anything anyone had seen before and to that end they recruited Maurice Binder to create the title sequence to Dr No.
Binder had designed the titles for the Stanley Donen comedy The Grass Is Greener, a film distinguished with a great cast and design, but little else. It did however have an innovative title design: the credits played over a sequence of two babies messing about with toys on a stretch of manicured sun bleached lawn. The Bond producers were in the audience at the UK premiere in 1961 and decided Binder was their man.
In fairness, although Binder has a reputation for great artistic work, some of his designs for the Bond films do not always hold up to close scrutiny. They are, though, consistently interesting.
1962
Dr No starts with the famous gun barrel and the James Bond walk. Innovative and striking this has become the Bond films’ motif and the excitement audiences must have felt in 1962 when Connery turns and shoots can only be guessed at. Nothing like this had ever been seen before. It introduced the world of 007 perfectly.
Disappointingly, the title design after it is not quite so exciting. The James Bond Theme pounds over the credits for just over a minute and Binder shows us a series of primary coloured dots and film strips flashing across the screen. He soon gives up on this idea, which would have been fine if the main theme had carried the whole sequence.
As it is the Bond Theme fades away into a Jamaican samba which is then segued with the Kingston Trio singing “Three Blind Mice.” The mix of music helps to identify the location at the start of the film, and identifies the three blind assassins, but it doesn’t help the design of Binder’s titles and actually detracts from the brilliant main theme.
The dots fade with the music into a collage of dancing bodies and then a side on silhouette of the three men. It is a foretaste of things to come.
1963-64
Binder wasn’t available for the next couple of years, so the producers turned to Robert Brownjohn, who conjured up two excellent pieces of work, which both utilised the simple idea of projecting images onto the body of a woman.
In FRWL, Brownjohn uses the body of a belly dancer and the title script appears in various bright colours across her arms, legs, head, shoulders and, of course, her belly. To reassure us we are watching the right movie, several seconds pass while we watch the word “007” flicker on the gyrating girl.
The music has a jazzy feel to it and while we don’t hear the lyrics to Lionel Bart’s song, John Barry is careful to preserve the feel of it. He also carefully gives us a snippet of the James Bond Theme and, although the music stops dead, he carries the FRWL theme over into the early scenes in Venice.
The title sequence certainly would have made people sit up and take notice. I really enjoy it and it is more influential than any other Bond title design. It also feels like it belongs to the location of the film, setting the audience up for something exotic and exciting. Technically it is a superb piece of work, but on first viewing it is always slightly confusing, especially if you actually want to read the credits. This is particularly apparent when the leading lady’s name is printed. Brownjohn shows it in two halves: “Introducing Daniela” and “Bianchi.”
Brownjohn does an equally competent job on his next project, Goldfinger. The basic idea is the same, only this time Brownjohn projects scenes from the movie onto a woman painted in gold. He cleverly shows us Goldfinger, Bond, Pussy Galore and Oddjob, before continuing with several short teasers from the film. He unfortunately uses the helicopter scene out of FRWL and also the destruction of Crab Key from DN, but this may be a hint to the American audiences that there are other Bond films they hadn’t seen.
It’s better executed than FRWL and of course it has that powerhouse theme song. At the end the golden girl seems to be covered in the flames of a burning furnace, melting her down.
Brownjohn’s work here was innovative for more than just the cinema. Throughout the late sixties and the early seventies many television shows (think Man from Uncle, Space 1999, Mission Impossible, etc) utilised this “teaser” credit formula before or during the titles.
One point worth noting: the golden girl is not naked. Had GF been made in more carefree times, one feels sure her bikini would have been removed.
1965 – 67
Maurice Binder returned for TB and creates what many consider his most artistic sequence for a Bond film. I am not an art critic, but I do appreciate the standard Binder reaches here.
Firstly he allows the music to dictate what appears on screen. The torso of a swimming girl splits the screen to the opening bars of John Barry’s song, a spear gun fires a harpoon to reveal Connery’s name and two clouds of air bubbles send the name “Thunderball” half way up the screen exactly as Tom Jones sings the word.
This continues through the sequence. It is very cleverly edited giving the illusion of being choreographed, although the reality is surely much more mundane. As I understand it Binder merely asked two young models to strip naked and swim about in a pool while he photographed them.
What he does with the footage is wonderful. He silhouettes the girls against blue, red and green backgrounds, puts shards of sunlight across it and then more or less leaves it as it is, adding a couple of scuba divers for show. What it does so well is capture the mood of the film. There is something exotic and erotic about this particular sequence which seems highly appropriate to TB, with its underwater scenes and its bevy of glamorous women.
Binder repeats his success with YOLT, only here rather than the ocean, he chooses a volcanic eruption as his background. The sequence starts with a geisha’s fan opening out from the blood stain on Bond’s bed. It resembles a flower coming into bloom and the next two minutes open out beautifully too.
An expanse of molten lava fills the rear of the screen as a series of pretty Japanese faces are overlaid in the foreground. The lava erupts in slow motion which matches the pace of the theme song. Binder gives the lettering an Oriental slant but other wise doesn’t do too much to suggest the film is set wholly in Japan.
The sequence is much understated and this, like TB, is one of its strengths. It is also splendidly photographed and at the very end Binder and editor Peter Hunt blend the closing sunset into the opening shots of Hong Kong harbour, the first scene of the film proper.
1969
With OHMSS, Binder was confronted with a new James Bond and while for the previous three movies “Sean Connery Is James Bond” was always the credit, here it is Ian Fleming and the movie title first. The whole treatment of George Lazenby’s role shows how uncertain Brocolli and Saltzman were about their star. The script checks other Bond films, as does the music. So, Binder gets in on the act.
The sequence starts with Bond, for no apparent reason, running away from the audience and later on his silhouette hangs off the hands of a clock, as if trying to stop time. Critics have speculated this is to do with Bond running to catch up or running out of time. Another suggestion is that Bond is turning back the clock, to his former incarnation. Whatever it is, it sits uneasily in the sequence.
Equally mystifying are the three women, one who looks like a naked Britannica, posing in front of a Union Flag and a crown. One assumes this is a nod to the title of the film and also, possibly, the College of Arms, which Bond uses as a cover. It is an obvious nod and looks as out of place as the hands of the clock.
The centrepiece of OHMSS is the hourglass in which Binder shows us scenes from the previous five Bond films, as if reminding us again this really is James Bond. Although it rather overplays the point, I like the idea better than some of the ones they utilised in the film itself.
Curiously, I never thought the centrepiece was an hourglass; I’d always assumed it was a stack of martini flutes. This is James Bond after all! I think some of the debate suggests the confusion Binder has created here. Unlike his last two, very straight forward efforts, he has tried to be too clever with OHMSS and ultimately the titles for this film are disappointing.
Maurice Binder created all the title sequences in the 1970s with mixed results. Admittedly he didn’t have the best of movie products to deal with, but, certainly at the start of the decade, he seemed to be losing his touch a little. What was once different and new was starting to look repetitive.
Other title designers had begun creating their own works of art. The sixties spaghetti westerns of Leone and Roger Corman’s cycle of Poe horrors were particularly fine. Credits started to be shown while the action progressed on screen. The days of the old fashioned titles board became a thing of the past.
The cheap and cheerful still remained (Hammer, Carry On, etc) but more often than not directors were influencing the credits, not wanting the action to be slowed down by an intrusive three minute theme tune, or worse, not even wanting a tune. To this respect Bond films almost immediately became slightly old fashioned, but also very unique. Most films by the mid-seventies didn’t even feature proper opening titles and by 1977 Star Wars ran all the production credits at the end of the film, which had been unheard of.
1971
Sean Connery and Shirley Bassey were both back for DAF and Binder himself seems revitalised. He’s given a lovely haunting song to work with and the theme of diamonds is a very photogenic one.
Binder starts his sequence by focussing on Blofeld’s Persian cat, whose eye turns into a beautiful diamond. The cat makes a few more appearances, crawling between the legs of beautiful women and wearing a necklace of diamonds. Binder doesn’t concentrate too closely on the cat, but it’s juxtaposed with the feline grace of his silhouetted ladies.
The girls are all wearing diamonds and they sparkle like little torch lights. When Binder resorts to his famous silhouettes he fills them with shining jewels. It’s a sparkling sexy sequence, which ends with two girls polishing a huge diamond with their hands.
The diamond ends up in the belly of a naked girl and as the sequence fades away it becomes the Star of South Africa, sitting in a display case. All in all a very beautiful design.
1973 - 74
However by LALD, Binder seems to have slackened off a bit. He repeats many of the things we have already seen: there are flaming torches (YOLT lava flow), hands splitting the screen (GF, TB, DAF) and the title appears word by word in time to the music (TB).
The most interesting ideas here are probably the voodoo elements and he doesn’t concentrate enough on these. There is a great moment where a girl's face changes to a skull and back again and another where a girl stares out of what appears to be a nest of vipers, like Medusa, but these are few and far between. When he decides to show a naked girl he covers her backside with a spear of praying hands and then shows the same girl in silhouette dancing in slow-slow-slow motion, so slow she hardly moves at all.
It’s a very curious piece of work and I am not entirely sure what Binder was trying to achieve here. Unlike George Lazenby however, Roger Moore is given top billing straight away. The producers are already telling us he is James Bond.
If LALD was something of a let down, the feeling was amplified by TMWTGG. Here Binder tries to imitate his best work of the sixties, but it doesn’t relate to the film. There are a lot of oriental girls in the sequence, yet there are none in the film; he makes all the images shimmer, as if they are rippling with water, but the film has no underwater scenes; and he keeps showing us lotus flowers, but the story has precious little to do with them either.
The only enduring image is the golden gun, which Binder uses in a similar fashion to the harpoon guns and scuba divers in TB, having them appear from time to time to represent danger and threat. Only this time we also have an added sexual element as the girls erotically stroke the gun barrel. Later on a girl dances ecstatically in front of some fireworks. Binder has definitely been reading his Freud.
1977
A three year lay off did some good for Maurice Binder and he provided one of his best title designs for many a while with TSWLM. His main device here was to put Roger Moore into the title sequence, outlining his features and then adding him to the action. Binder also ensures the action we watch on screen reflects some of the moments in the film.
He has plenty of beautiful females running around, but dresses them up in army hats, has them holding small automatic revolvers and performing gymnastics with the barrel of Bond’s gun. All these images suggest these are women from the USSR. Bond is seen rescuing one of the women and twice he turns away a gun she points at him.
Binder also shows us a huge yellow disc, like the Egyptian sun, and two images taken from the lyrics of the title song. A powerful searchlight looks for Bond and/or his Russian counterpart (“I wasn’t looking, but somehow you found me”) and Bond and the girl are shown running away (“There’s some kind of magic inside you, that keeps me from running”).
It’s a very clever sequence, well thought out and well executed. The girls are the most exposed yet – you can clearly make out their curves and even their nipples! Unfortunately two images always puzzle me. Firstly, Binder cradles the Union Jack parachute in the silhouetted hands of a girl; this is a very familiar image, almost as if he can’t break the shackles of his past. Secondly, the Bond character seems to do a lot of what I can only describe as trampolining and somersaults; again, I have no idea why. It doesn’t make any sense and frankly looks a bit silly. None-the-less I try not to let two dodgy moments spoil a really good show.
1979
Having returned to something like his best with TSWLM, Binder seemed to create something of a greatest hits with MR, combining elements of many of his previous title designs. He even has Shirley Bassey singing again. It’s a good sequence shot in shades of blue, red and gold (a-la TB) with his favoured silhouette girls flying acrobatically across the screen (TSWLM) as if being pulled through space by the force of gravity.
He switches the action and the colour by replicating a shot of the moon (it was a sun disc in TSWLM) and uses clouds to obscure some of the action (TB again). Several times the world is used as a backdrop to the action (YOLT) and a girl sits spinning on top of a sphere, which looks suspiciously like it’s made of diamonds (DAF). He also cleverly has a diving girl represent the space shuttle and then colours her in red and blue dots (DN). At other times the silhouettes of the girls are full of the background of the next scene (DAF).
If the initial shots of circus clowns and trapeze artists strike a dumb note it doesn’t stop me enjoying a very smooth piece of film making. MR reminds me of the good work Binder does. It also anticipates the future repetition in his work that becomes prevalent during the next decade.
Once again, Maurice Binder created all the title sequences in this decade, but he has very mixed results here. Technology was moving on, but Binder seems caught in his past. There isn’t any freshness to this batch of designs and by the end of the decade it’s the music videos which are starting to look more impressive.
1980
With FYEO Binder did do something completely different, he shows us the singer. Once again Binder starts with a girl's arms snaking up the centre of the screen, but when she turns around it is Sheena Easton and she is singing. I remember seeing this originally in 1981, and it causes quite a stir. Unfortunately this is about all the sequence has to recommend it.
Binder is much more circumspect with his silhouettes: they are actively running about and shooting at people this time and at one point he mirror images a girl dancing, which is quite effective. He also uses one of his dancing girls to show us Ms Easton’s face in glorious colour, the rest of the time she seems to be photographed through a gauze lens.
The background is water based again, which does fit in with the film, but there is a peculiar section half way through where the background switches to what looks like mercury bubbles. I could be fussing too much.
There are two images which do stick in the mind, one good one bad. The bad is a dreadful erotic pole dance as one of the girls slides down Bond’s Walther PPK, the good is a huge close up of Sheena Easton’s lips. At the finish there is a nice fade from the background water into the story proper.
The video, a first for a Bond film, was simply the title design minus the titles. Cheap.
1983 – 87
Oh, dear. With OP, for the first time Binder uses a logo, a stylised 007. It appears first projected onto the body of a naked sleeping woman and is preceded by the words James Bond and followed by the Octopus tattoo. It’s a neat touch, but Binder doesn’t make the most of it, changing the focus of his design to include his famous silhouettes, a whirlpool and a couple who appear to be figure skating.
It’s also at times a tad indecent, as when the girl shoots a gun at her groin or when we see diving girls shot out of a pistol barrel. Perhaps his worst crime is the portrait of Roger Moore, which looks like a very bad cardboard cut out.
I don’t have a clue what Binder was thinking of here. He’s lost the plot completely. For what it’s worth the video is a typical ‘80s thing with big hair and lots of clips from the film.
AVTAK isn’t much better. Binder has picked up on the line in the song “dance into the fire” so he gives us some fire and a host of girls wearing fluorescent body paint. Most of these are skiing, which sits ok with the pre-title teaser, but doesn’t have a lot to do with the rest of the film. He also gives us a melting ice sculpture, but I’ve no idea why.
It’s a big pity because the sequence starts really well as we watch a girl unzip her jump suit to reveal the Bond logo. He also shows us a telescopic sight, focusing on a naked woman. Two really sexy and great ideas. But Binder ignores them and chooses instead to give us confusing metaphorical images based on the lyrics of the song.
The video is much better as Duran Duran play spies on the Eiffel Tower.
With TLD, Binder again borrows heavily from the lyrics, not the action on screen. He gives us more painted bodies (for some reason a lot of them wear sunglasses as well, go figure), another water based background and shots of car headlights. The 007 logo appears and Binder reproduces his shooting gun, with girls instead of bullets.
Guns play a big part in this sequence, as perhaps they might, but curiously the telescopic sight doesn’t make an appearance. This is odd as that image is central to the plot. The most memorable shot comes at the end as a girl stares at us from inside a champagne flute. It shows Binder still had good ideas, but he isn’t able to extend them into a full two and half minute design. Like the rest of the Bond team around this time, he just starts to look lazy.
The video is a disappointing performance by a-Ha set on the 007 sound stage at Pinewood.
1989
LTK starts with a girl photographing the wedding party. There are recurring images of a camera shutter, which Binder uses even though it doesn’t have any relevance to the film, and the outline of a gun sight, which is more appropriate; perhaps he wanted to rectify his mistake on TLD.
He also shows us a roulette wheel, suggesting Bond is gambling with his life, and we have the return of his famous naked silhouettes, shimmering models and girls shot out of guns. I don’t understand why so many of the girls are Asian. Sometimes I think Binder wasn’t watching the same film.
The most interesting thing about LTK isn’t the title design itself, it’s the video, which was directed by Daniel Klienman. Again he utilises the camera shutter (Where did this image come from? Did I miss something in the film?) but has four of them, from which dancers appear. He also utilises the gun sight idea and the dancers are shot by a gun. It looks like a trial run for a title sequence. It wasn’t long before Klienman got the gig himself.
But it explains why some of the credits were a bit limited, if the pts didn't offer too much.
With OHMSS I thought it odd that the past clips shown looked a bit rough, not remastered at all. Not sure it quite works, though you can see why they did it, it's a bit 'look at my CV!'
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Im hoping to put my thoughts on the Brosnan era on here in a couple of days
so watch this space
Brownjohn is almost the father of the credits sequence, as what Binder did in Dr No doesn't anticipate later Bonds. It's surely Brownjohn who originated the nudes (okay, with a bikini) yet only Binder who gets namechecked. I really liked the use of other films in GF; the helicopter from FRWL for instance, and I believe a scene deleted from GF from Q branch. It was only really credible to do this then, however, because Bond's world was more realistic. Later on, you'd be thinking it might break the suspension of disbelief a bit to think this guy Bond had been in those other adventures, even if you keep it to just that actor's films. Clips from GE in the DAD credits, for instance, if they'd done that. (Bores self...)
The camera shutter from LTK came from the idea of wedding photos I guess (Leiter's wedding in the pts) and also that gimmicky camera Q comes up with, with a silly joke about skeletons on the polaroids.
The idea of Binder echoing the lyrics is a ropey way to direct, it's called pigeonholing, in that if you'd illustrate the term by showing a pigeon flying into a hole. Videos are meant to not directly show what the lyric is...
Binder was a bit hamstrung by the asexual Dalton years.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
With Maurice Binder surrendering his long hold over the title credits, Eon turned to Daniel Klienman who had done such a sterling job on the Licence to Kill video. He brought a more modern approach to his work and running through the Pierce Brosnan era titles is an undercurrent of sensuality which is missing from much of Binder’s final works.
Perhaps the one major difference between Binder and Klienman (other than modern technology!) is that Klienman uses the movie title “logo” in all his title designs. This is probably more to do with marketing than anything else, but the logos sit uneasily with the rest of Klienman’s designs. It is something Binder never did, although he did utilise a rather crappy 007 logo.
1995
GE starts off with a gentle introduction: in the distance the Russian army base explodes and the scene fades away, being replaced by the famous gun barrel, the final sheets of flame erupting towards us and welcoming Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.
The explosions continue erratically in the background for a while, but latterly Klienman prefers luscious shades of gold, green and blue. In front of these vivid colours are presented a series of naked, erotically dancing silhouettes. As they dance the remnants of the Soviet Union falls around them: sickles, flags, hammers, stars, guns and statues of Lenin et al.
The action is well matched to the pace of the song. I still remember when I first saw it. It has immediate impact and I recall how much better I thought it was than any Bond design I’d seen in the cinema before. It left me with a sense of anticipation for the film to follow.
Klienman doesn’t actually reference the film much, but there is an obvious one, for Bond meets Yannis/Trevelyan in a graveyard for statues. Additionally he shows a two faced female, one masculine and smoking a cigar like Onatopp, the other demure and pouting suggestively. He also references Binder’s shooting gun.
I always call the title design to GE the “Fall of Communism” as it is steeped in so much Soviet imagery. It is splendidly realised and has a real sense of place, recognising the times the movie was made in and the flavour of the film itself. Later on the female models destroy the statues with the hammers.
Towards the end of the sequence, we focus on a sickle which frames a giant eye, finally morphing into the original gun barrel. This time we are propelled along the tunnel and onto the Riviera roadway.
Klienman’s first effort sets a really high standard. Like Binder’s TB, having provided something so good he struggles to maintain such a high quality.
1997 – 1999
TND starts with a confusion of numbers, letters, fibre optics and microchips which reminds me of the old Pearl and Dean advertising screens. Suddenly we’re faced with a screen full of slowly moving female bodies, lots of them, like bacteria. Later on Klienman replaces the women with guns. This is all very mystifying.
Most of the title design however shows x-ray shots of weapons being loaded and fired, time pieces rotating, bullets and women’s clothes. We also have electronic and computer boards in the background, lots of smashing glass and an equally mystifying diamond necklace that blends into the night sky.
Not a lot of this makes sense. Klienman is more accurate with his television screens that show the girls in full colour, suggesting our reliance on the media. It’s still quite a sexy piece, but the detail on show gives us almost too much to look at and ultimately it confuses. Sometimes the credits get lost amongst all the colour and intricacy on show. Like its theme song, TND is disappointing.
While TND has a bright and intricate look, TWINE is superbly dark. Everything looks like oil. The background swims in rainbow colours. The foreground has beautiful women buried in, smothered by and dripping with crude oil. The occasional explosion fractures the screen only to bring on more fossil fuelled eroticism.
The sequence is beautifully filmed. When we are shown a field of oil wells, even the sky shines black with the stuff. The silhouetted figures drip the oil suggestively over each other and pair off into shapes resembling a spider’s web. Klienman uses simple primary colours here and the result (like GE) is the closest he has got to replicating TB.
2002
DAD saw a new idea for the Bond credits. As I have already stated, most films now run their credits while the action plays on screen. Bond movies have always resisted this, but with DAD, they followed the current trend and we witness, without words and in darkened colours the torture of James Bond.
The sequence starts of wonderfully with the appearance of a sea of scorpions’ coinciding with the click-click of Madonna’s song. We see Bond dunked into water, hung up in chains and beaten, stung with venom, given electric shocks, burnt with pokers and chilled until frozen. We see his pupils dilate into hot and cold fire and ice.
Meanwhile a series of females pass across the screen, turning from flaming bodies into ice sculptures and then illuminated and activated by electricity. It’s a diverting piece of design, helped by the fact it doesn’t have to try too hard, given most of it involves the torture scenes. It would have been easy for Klienman to sneak in a piece-meal review of all the previous Bond films and he deserves plaudits for rejecting this in favour of something genuinely original for a Bond movie.
The Videos
GE has quite a good video which doesn’t dwell a lot on the clips and even gives a different slant to the titles sequence as leather mini skirted girls dance with machine guns. It’s Tina Turner’s show though, but she looks a bit slow and old and her white dress seems dangerously close to coming a-cropper.
TND has uncertain leather clad Sheryl Crow appearing from the gun barrel and singing her dreadful song on what appears to be outtakes from GE. It utilises the T.V. screens better than the title design and shows us clips from the movie.
Personally I preferred Moby’s James Bond Theme and his video was much more fun as well. Oh how great are the lost opportunities!
TWINE is by far the most interesting of these videos as Shirley Manson’s self destructing robot is created and tested and then let loose, running amok in Chicago. Quite why it is set in 1964, I don’t know, but I’ll roll with it.
Madonna’s DAD is another excuse for one of her performance art videos. It starts off with torture scenes similar to the movie, but swiftly becomes an exercise in Madonna’s sexually masochistic dreams. There’s a decent stab at a fencing fight, which turns into a Moonraker pastiche featuring Bond memorabilia. It’s quite a decent effort and refrains from using movie clips. It probably suits the song better than the title design, but you can’t win them all.
1) It's not Connery in the DN titles, but Bob Simmons (who also did the FRWL and GF gunbarrels)- Connery didn't walk the walk till TB, when the sequence had to be reshot for a different screen ratio.
2) The Kingston Trio were a well-known folk group (incidentally, I was acquainted with one of them in the 90s, the great John Stewart who wrote "Daydream Believer" among many other wonderful songs) and have no Bond connections. The "Three Blind Mice" song is actually called "Kingston Calypso", which may explain where the confusion arose, and was performed by the Byron Lee band.
Is it the same Connery gunwalk on all his films from TB onwards? Because he actually wobbles when he does it - pretty lame! Certainly on DAF (where he is still wearing that bowler hat).
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Yup. My theory on the dodgy headgear is that Simmons wore it to help disguise that he wasn't Connery, obliging Connery & Lazenby to do likewise (though the more fashion-aware Moore drew the line there).
(PS Nice pun on wobbles/lame)
As for Danny Kleinmann, I certainly missed him in QOS. His credits sequence for CR was very clever, with its deliberate nods to the main titles graphics in the 1967 movie of 'Casino Royale' (the pack-of-cards 'clubs' shooting out of guns) and the brief flash of Vesper as the queen in the pack. Not typical of Kleinmann's work on the series to that point, the images were very 'male' in their themes, lacking any silhouetted naked women: this helped signify a change in direction. But I wasn't sure about the way in which Craig's head is wrapped in an animated black mask at the very end of the sequence; it makes him look like a bank robber or paramilitary soldier wearing a balaclava over his face... I remember thinking: why?
My feelings exactly- it's the best. I haven't seen the Imax versions
(Off topic- given that Bob Simmons does the gunbarrel in the first three movies as well as doubling for Bond in many sequences, most obviously in the fights in YOLT, does this mean that he's officially the first big screen 007?)
I'll be reviewing the Craig titles in a couple of days, holdonto your hats,guys!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The advent of Daniel Craig’s James Bond brought a new impetus to the title designs of the Bond franchise. The influence of these two designs is hard to assess, given their very recent appearance, but they certainly showed different takes on the established Bond traditions.
2006
Casino Royale starts in grainy black and white. The sudden flush of colour comes as something of a shock and Daniel Klienman is careful to continue to use primary colours throughout the title, bold shades of gold, green, blue, red and black.
Taking his inspiration from the casino setting, Klienman has cut-out playing cards and suite motifs circling the screen. Even his silhouettes, previously traditionally female, are here all male and designed to resemble the figures on the playing cards themselves. There is a certain retrospective aspect here; it’s very similar to the credits of “The Saint” as the figures fight and shoot each other in time to the music.
Klienman is clever enough not to stick to one idea and has roulette wheels doubling as gun sights, 007 being imprinted on a playing card and bright red diamond motifs used as daggers, sticking out of the chests of several corpses.
It’s a good design; indeed it’s almost too good and actually distracts us from the production credits. Klienman’s (Binders?) guns appear midway to shoot suites of playing cards and he bravely shows us Daniel Craig at the end. Yes, this really is James Bond and he’s certainly back with a punch.
2008
Klienman was unavailable for QOS so the responsibility passed to MK12, which sounds more like a conglomerate than an individual. I maybe need to do more research there!
The design starts effectively with Daniel Craig’s Bond stalking a desert landscape while a naked woman writhes, sleeps or rises from the dunes. In the background a rotating disc of global meridians passes across the screen, for no apparent reason. Equally a group of dancing ladies appear for no reason other than they are dancing women. Bond and other figures fall through the whole scene and end up trapped in the sand. It’s a good looking but obscure sequence
When MK12 encompasses the whole thing with a huge eye, I began to lose patience; luckily he finishes excellently as a single bullet traverses the screen and buries itself in the sand. I don’t understand this design. If someone can help me out, please email me.
The Videos
The video for CR is a rather dull affair, involving lots of movie clips and Chris Cornell singing. Latterly Daniel Craig appears to be following Cornell through an airport, but it isn’t clear why.
QOS is no better and doesn’t even have the saving grace of movie clips. Jack White and Alisha Keyes sing against a desert background which shifts from night to day. They don’t sound very suitable and they look equally uncomfortable together on screen, even when presented against a bare white background. The video is longer than the title sequence and neither the song or the video benefits from it. Frankly it’s a disappointing exercise from start to finish.