I think a number of aspects of GE, and to a certain extent all the Brosnan Bond movies, age badly, notably the whole Bond/Moneypenny dialog just screams 1995, which may have worked then but seems increasingly cringe-worthy as time goes by.
I dunno, I quite liked the MI6 scenes between the then new Bond and the rest of the MI6 staff (the closing segment in Skyfall felt too old school and back to square one in comparison).
In terms of the bigger picture, GE marks the beginning of the era where "the formula" starts to get stale. Once you get beyond the surprisingly decent special effects and the memory of the LTK-GE hiatus subsides, you realize that it is just a very cookie-cutter, formulaic Bond movie where nothing all that interesting or memorable happens.
Memorable "good" things: the iconic dam jump, the chemical plant stand off, the then new M dressing down Bond, the GoldenEye theft, the "Stand by Your Man" segment, the helicopter self-destruct, archive shoot out, the tank chase, the armoured train, the Janus command centre explosion, and dish brawl. Great stuff.
Memorable "bad" things: when Bond slowly fell after that diving light aircraft, climbed in and flew away as the chemical weapons plant blew up (total lack of realism and bad special effects, with that annoying stock "aircraft nose diving" sound effect that's been overused in the past seven decades in many movies). I was a bit troubled by Bond mowing down dozens of Russian conscripts without any geopolitical repercussions (even though many of them could've been as crooked as General Orumov and Trevelyan's mercs guarding the Janus base in Cuba). The quieter St. Petersberg, Cuba, and Monte Carlo segments felt a bit padded and dull on hindsight.
While I'm in the minority of people who preferred Tomorrow Never Dies to GoldenEye, GoldenEye seems to have a bit more deph than the funner TND and the N64 game (where you can walk around the locations from the game) makes you have a real feel for the movie as badly cobbled together as the script was in places.
An example of GoldenEye not being especially well written:
Janus Guard Captain - 'Sir!'
*The Janus Guard Captain gives Alec Trevelyan a portable computer pad linked up to the Janus complex's CCTV system: on the small screen Bond and Natalya are seen climbing down out of the jungle onto the rim of the massive Janus dish*
Alec Trevelyan - 'Kill him!' *To himself* 'The man won't take a hint...'
After that Bond and Natalya ran along the pathway of Janus dish, then had to slide all the way down the dish after being fired upon by Janus security troops charging out of the jungle (at the centre of the dish they find a maintenance hatchway leading into the Janus control centre).
After a brief but heated gun battle between Bond and other security troops in the underground control centre, where Bond plants explosives on giant fuel tanks (presumably part of the machinery that raises and lowers the dish), Bond kills/wounds a couple of guards and then finds himself surrounded by a dozen more Janus guards. The henchmen not only take him alive (contradicting Alec's specific orders) but also didn't check for explosive, and ignored the massive puddle of fuel leaking out of the giant tanks punctered by small arms fire! )
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
The plot was okay, but was annoyed by the "space based weapon" rubbish.
The EMP satellites seemed to work better as a plot device than the bling diamond satellites in DAF and DAD (but the model effects are still stodgy ) ).
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
Bear in mind the satalites (petya and mishca) <-- typo? were one shot ponies. They were in fact nuclear bombs, with EMP being a byproduct of a nuclear explosion. One can only assume the conical shape of the satalites is something to do with how the EMP is channelled towards a target.
Additionally, the 'GoldenEye' is the name for the device with the amber crystal in it, not the satalites.
What I've always wondered is how did the Russians build the worlds largest dish without anyone noticing it, why did it have to be so big and why did it have to be built in Cuba?
Still, for me it's THE best bond film and has everything I'd want from a bond flick. Girls, guns, naughty Russians, even the aston survives. Perfect.
I just wish that for bond 24 they do something as dramatic and cool as the GE tank chase. The Craig era has yet to see such a big effort go into one sequence.
What I've always wondered is how did the Russians build the worlds largest dish without anyone noticing it, why did it have to be so big and why did it have to be built in Cuba?
Presumably as a safety measure the command signal to Petya and Mischa had to be a strong signal from giant dishes, not illicit signals from smaller ones.
The Soviet Union or/and the Janus organisation kept the construction of the dish secret by disgusing the building project as a water reservoir.
I found Carver's stealth boat a bit more plausible than Trevelyan's dish complex and a OK update of Stromberg's Liparus (though the final battle with Carver's mercs onboard the stealth boat felt cramped and got repetitive).
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
Comments
I dunno, I quite liked the MI6 scenes between the then new Bond and the rest of the MI6 staff (the closing segment in Skyfall felt too old school and back to square one in comparison).
Memorable "good" things: the iconic dam jump, the chemical plant stand off, the then new M dressing down Bond, the GoldenEye theft, the "Stand by Your Man" segment, the helicopter self-destruct, archive shoot out, the tank chase, the armoured train, the Janus command centre explosion, and dish brawl. Great stuff.
Memorable "bad" things: when Bond slowly fell after that diving light aircraft, climbed in and flew away as the chemical weapons plant blew up (total lack of realism and bad special effects, with that annoying stock "aircraft nose diving" sound effect that's been overused in the past seven decades in many movies). I was a bit troubled by Bond mowing down dozens of Russian conscripts without any geopolitical repercussions (even though many of them could've been as crooked as General Orumov and Trevelyan's mercs guarding the Janus base in Cuba). The quieter St. Petersberg, Cuba, and Monte Carlo segments felt a bit padded and dull on hindsight.
While I'm in the minority of people who preferred Tomorrow Never Dies to GoldenEye, GoldenEye seems to have a bit more deph than the funner TND and the N64 game (where you can walk around the locations from the game) makes you have a real feel for the movie as badly cobbled together as the script was in places.
An example of GoldenEye not being especially well written:
Janus Guard Captain - 'Sir!'
*The Janus Guard Captain gives Alec Trevelyan a portable computer pad linked up to the Janus complex's CCTV system: on the small screen Bond and Natalya are seen climbing down out of the jungle onto the rim of the massive Janus dish*
Alec Trevelyan - 'Kill him!' *To himself* 'The man won't take a hint...'
After that Bond and Natalya ran along the pathway of Janus dish, then had to slide all the way down the dish after being fired upon by Janus security troops charging out of the jungle (at the centre of the dish they find a maintenance hatchway leading into the Janus control centre).
After a brief but heated gun battle between Bond and other security troops in the underground control centre, where Bond plants explosives on giant fuel tanks (presumably part of the machinery that raises and lowers the dish), Bond kills/wounds a couple of guards and then finds himself surrounded by a dozen more Janus guards. The henchmen not only take him alive (contradicting Alec's specific orders) but also didn't check for explosive, and ignored the massive puddle of fuel leaking out of the giant tanks punctered by small arms fire!
I did not like it, it was the beginning of the emasculation era of Bond. The plot was okay, but was annoyed by the "space based weapon" rubbish.
The EMP satellites seemed to work better as a plot device than the bling diamond satellites in DAF and DAD (but the model effects are still stodgy
Additionally, the 'GoldenEye' is the name for the device with the amber crystal in it, not the satalites.
What I've always wondered is how did the Russians build the worlds largest dish without anyone noticing it, why did it have to be so big and why did it have to be built in Cuba?
Still, for me it's THE best bond film and has everything I'd want from a bond flick. Girls, guns, naughty Russians, even the aston survives. Perfect.
I just wish that for bond 24 they do something as dramatic and cool as the GE tank chase. The Craig era has yet to see such a big effort go into one sequence.
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Presumably as a safety measure the command signal to Petya and Mischa had to be a strong signal from giant dishes, not illicit signals from smaller ones.
The Soviet Union or/and the Janus organisation kept the construction of the dish secret by disgusing the building project as a water reservoir.
I found Carver's stealth boat a bit more plausible than Trevelyan's dish complex and a OK update of Stromberg's Liparus (though the final battle with Carver's mercs onboard the stealth boat felt cramped and got repetitive).