Bond's " Jump the Shark " moments ?

Thunderpussy

Reading a comment from BlackLeiter in another thread ( thanks by the way -{ ) He
used the term " Jump the shark " an expression from the TV show Happy Days.
Showing how a show can go too far and throw any crazy idea at it to try and keep
it going.
So have any members any thoughts on The Bonds, did they have any " Jump the shark "
Moments ? Maybe some that aren't as obvious to the rest of us )
For Me the a biggest was putting Bond into space in Moonraker !

hehadlotsofguts

Turning Bond Japanese in YOLT, when he still looks the same as before.

Thunderpussy

I always thought Bond disappeared halfway through YOLT, and some Japanese agent
took over ( doing a very bad Sean Connery impersonation ) )

BIG TAM

The baby elephant pushing JW Pepper into the water in TMWTGG, turning what had been up till then a straight-faced thriller into a kiddie cartoon. The JW Pepper cameo I can just about except given his popularity in LALD but I'm utterly baffled as to the thinking behind the elephant gag.

Thunderpussy

I'm reading " The James Bond Bedside companion " anf in it R Benson states that the director
Guy Hamilton was always telling the actors to have fun, I guess at the time it was thought to be
funny, for your average Eight year old.

Barbel

Double-taking pigeon. Tarzan yell. "California Girls".

Thunderpussy

"Jealous husbands! Outraged chefs! Humiliated tailors! The list is endless! "
oops, Getting mixed up in my threads. )

Blackleiter

The first time Roger Moore says "My name is Bond, James Bond." That's the moment the series officially jumped the shark! )

Sir Hillary Bray

Barbel wrote:

"California Girls".

That is the "jump the shark" moment for me.

Number24

hehadlotsofguts wrote:

Turning Bond Japanese in YOLT, when he still looks the same as before.

I don't think that counts, since it's in the novel and is a neccesety to film the plot of the book.

Gassy Man

Bond taking off the wet suit and having a tux underneath clearly signals to me that the series will be taking a very different direction (even more so than the camouflage bird moments before). After that, while we get some "serious" attempts at a Bond film, they seem more to cleanse the palate of the fact that Bond will infuse more fantasy and comedy into the mix.

Lazenby's "This never happened to the other fellow," seeming to break the fourth wall, is another such moment. While it could be interpreted in different ways, it seems to be self-referential (though I will admit that when the police officer says, "He'd have wanted it that way" in You Only Live Twice, he seems to be talking as much to us the audience as to the other officer in the room).

After that, the Bond films become less a series than a franchise, so tonal and character changes don't register as much for me anymore. I just accept them as Bond movies, no matter how ludicrous or brooding.

Blackleiter

Number24 wrote:

hehadlotsofguts wrote:

Turning Bond Japanese in YOLT, when he still looks the same as before.

I don't think that counts, since it's in the novel and is a neccesety to film the plot of the book.

True, it was in the novel, but I think it was very poorly executed in the movie. And this is from a guy who loves the movie version of YOLT.

Number24

I think we need to agree on what Jumping the Shark means to really discuss this. The way I see it Jumping the shark is. According to wikipedia it is: "Jumping the shark is an idiom created by Jon Hein that was used to describe the moment in the evolution of a television show when it begins a decline in quality, which is usually a particular scene, episode, or aspect of a show in which the writers use some type of "gimmick" in an attempt to keep viewers' interest."

In my opinion the Japanese makeup doesn't fall into this category, and the poor execution is irrelevant. Bond in space in however a very good excample.

Charmed & Dangerous

I'd have to say, Having Blofeld's lair inside a hollowed-out volcano probably fits this category, although I wouldn't say that YOLT represented a decline in quality.

Having Bond surfing on an iceberg courtesy of CGI and returning to his invisible car however is probably the point when the shark had been so completely left behind that it was necessary to reboot the series...

hehadlotsofguts

Probably a legitimate example would be Drax's plan to repopulate the planet with a small group of hand picked people. I assume his crew in the yellow jumpsuits are just there to run things.

Firemass

I could have sworn there was and oldddd thread on here that asked the same "jump the shark" question. I distinctly remember it because I'd never heard that term before. Hmm now I can't find it.

It's funny that some people make a big deal about Bond going into space. As a kid/teenager watching Moonraker, I never even questioned it for a second. And still don't!

Thunderpussy

Damn here's me thinking I was New and Groovey, and it seems I'm just like
Roger Moore, Replacing an Original. )

Firemass

Would it be fair to say that the Bond series never jumped the shark because the Bond is still going strong in 2014 ?

Sure there have been some dodgy moments and missteps, but overall the series has held it together pretty well.

Dalton's lucky he didn't literally jump a shark while water skiing in LTK.

Barbel

Firemass wrote:

Would it be fair to say that the Bond series never jumped the shark because the Bond is still going strong in 2014 ?

More than fair. Imitators come and imitators go, be they called Matt Helm or Jason Bourne, but the Bond series is unique. There's never been anything like it before and who knows, there won't be anything like it again. For over 50 years (!) we've had James Bond films, made by a consistent group of people (gradually replaced by heirs or proteges in many cases) and every single one has been financially successful (yes, BT, that includes TLD and LTK).
We as fans can carp over the dodgy moments and missteps Firemass mentions, but above all we should be grateful and proud that one thing is certain:

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN

and you can't say that for every franchise!

Thunderpussy

I always regard the little mishaps in the Bonds, as being similar to when a loved one slips up.
In many ways you love them all the more for it, and you get to pull each others leg over it for
years. )

Firemass

Thunderpussy wrote:

I always regard the little mishaps in the Bonds, as being similar to when a loved one slips up.
In many ways you love them all the more for it, and you get to pull each others leg over it for
years. )

Rog will never live down the tarzan yell he pulled back in '83 )

(but hey Octopussy is still a great Bond film)

Thunderpussy

I'm sure we all have clothes we thought were so Cool ten years ago and now look
back at old photos, and are so ashamed. )

Blackleiter

Barbel wrote:

Firemass wrote:

Would it be fair to say that the Bond series never jumped the shark because the Bond is still going strong in 2014 ?

More than fair. Imitators come and imitators go, be they called Matt Helm or Jason Bourne, but the Bond series is unique. There's never been anything like it before and who knows, there won't be anything like it again. For over 50 years (!) we've had James Bond films, made by a consistent group of people (gradually replaced by heirs or proteges in many cases) and every single one has been financially successful (yes, BT, that includes TLD and LTK).
We as fans can carp over the dodgy moments and missteps Firemass mentions, but above all we should be grateful and proud that one thing is certain:

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN

and you can't say that for every franchise!

True that!

ZorinIndustries

Just watched DAD with my dad this evening, and we both loved it! I'm being serious, by the way :007)

He thought it was a very solid entry to the franchise. I enjoyed this viewing the most for whatever reason. However, his immediate fault with the film was, you guessed it, the windsurfing scene! His comment:

"Too many computers."

That's my "Jump the Shark" moment. Thankfully, the reboot shortly followed.

Firemass

Thunderpussy wrote:

I'm sure we all have clothes we thought were so Cool ten years ago and now look
back at old photos, and are so ashamed. )

Totally. It's a miracle the Bond films hold up as well as they do. Imagine if Lazenby was a long-haired hippie Bond in '69. It would have been super groovy at the time!

NeverSayDie

Invisible car in DAD.

AirJordanFan93

Firemass wrote:

Thunderpussy wrote:

I'm sure we all have clothes we thought were so Cool ten years ago and now look
back at old photos, and are so ashamed. )

Totally. It's a miracle the Bond films hold up as well as they do. Imagine if Lazenby was a long-haired hippie Bond in '69. It would have been super groovy at the time!

Maybe if he stuck around for Diamonds he would of bought his long haired bearded look into Bond

Thunderpussy

Pierce tried that in DAD. )

superado

As it's been mentioned about "Jump the shark" being a reference from the TV show, "Happy Days," let me help put it in context as someone who watched that series faithfully, practically from the beginning up to that point (I missed the last couple of years when it got really awful). Fonzie, who eventually became the central and most popular character of the series, sort of like Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory today, during a multi-episode trip by the cast to California from Milwaukee, goes against the resident beach bully and accepts the challenge to water ski-jump over an area right off the coast where there's a great white shark in a cordoned off perimeter conveniently located right next to a ramp. To make matters sillier, The Fonz wore his trademark leather jacket, along with swim shorts and a life vest and actually stayed relatively dry for most of the ordeal since it was inconceivable to wet his famous leather jacket or his greaser “ducktail” hair-do. The actual jump was held off as a cliff-hanger and I had to wait for the next Tuesday to find out whether the Fonz made it or not.

So…to put the Bond series in that context, I don’t think it jumped the shark until DAF. Even with YOLT, despite of how that movie was panned by critics, most commonly saying how bored Connery seemed, to me the movie as a whole was still sincerely delivered, in that they took what was happening as something seriously taking place.

On the other hand with DAF, in its PTS you see a cursory anger from Bond because his wife had just been murdered, though he was practically winking at us as he takes revenge on Blofeld, looking really bored when he limply raises his hands to Blofeld’s men. Then, to really emphasize Bond’s “cute” insubordination we see him bored and rolling his eyes during the lecture about diamonds in the presence of M. We see the flaming high jinx of Wint and Kidd with Blofeld in drag as the icing on the cake. Then of course there were lines such as “ACME pollution inspection. We're cleaning up the world, we thought this was a suitable starting point... ” and the sending up of the James Bond notoriety with “you killed James Bond!”

Based on what I’ve read, I haven’t really found any admissions from anyone about a creative crisis during DAF and it seems like for a moment, all those in power lost it and perhaps felt invincible with the series’ successes and felt that there is nothing they could do wrong…and they actually dared to put it to the test! Indeed, the conditions of that creative crisis made it ripe for “jumping the shark.”

Barbel

All I've ever read about DAF suggests that the team were deliberately trying to emulate GF (Sir Donald's diamond lecture parallelling that of Colonel Smithers, Shirley Bassey singing the theme song, Guy Hamilton directing, US locations, etc - at one point even considering bringing back Gert Fröbe as Goldfinger's twin brother), make the most of Connery's return, and "correct" OHMSS's percieved faults (too long, downbeat ending, no Connery, few gadgets). Lightening the tone went along with that approach.
It didn't seem to me that they felt invincible, indeed I get the impression that they felt they were playing it safe.

AirJordanFan93

The CGI Surf Scene in DAD