Does anyone regard 'Never Say Never Again' as better than Bonds 1-24?
Andy007
Posts: 100MI6 Agent
Anyone honestly think NSNA is better than any of the 24 main films?
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https://www.ajb007.co.uk/post/895849/#p895849
We were just talking about it here.
Octopussy was released at the same time and was much better.
Cheers :007)
unfortunately I'm thinking of the most recent entries as possibilities, yet even the weakest of those have several sustained stretches better than anything in NSNA
Fatima Blush is by far the best part of that film. Maybe an edit just of her scenes would be better?
The film has a wonderfully relaxed, self-deprecating Connery performance, two of the best Bond villains (Largo and Fatima), and some great, cheeky one-liners. It's ultimately let down by a slow-going third act and budget constraints.
I genuinely like DAF, mainly for the genuine wit employed in its script. Actually, the jokes are maybe the best part of NSNA (aside from Rowan Atkinson's mugging), and the better gags were recycled by Dick Clemens and Ian La Frenais from their TV and movie scripts for Porridge. I can't bring myself to hate Never Say Never Again, but it's not a film I return to often.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
I pretty much agree with you here...although Atkinson overdoes the mugging...and I do like Alec McCowen -{
That said, if I analyze the movie itself, it is not that bad. Connery is clearly having fun, the story remains solid (the Thunderball plots is classic Bond) and therefore I raise it higher than DAD (which is quite dreadful) and also DAF.
1. Connery 2. Craig 3. Brosnan 4. Dalton 5. Lazenby 6. Moore
Just out of curiosity, were you Tommy (Pinball Wizard)?
First, there was a rash of films set in India that hit theaters after Gandhi -- A Passage to India, Octopussy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Deceivers, The Razor's Edge etc. Even if some were released after OP, there was plenty of hype, and in those days before the Internet, only a handful of outlets that publicized them, so the sudden, constant influx of India-related marketing, to me, got played out pretty fast.
The other issues is that Glen's films signaled a change in how the Soviets were used as villains. In previous films, there was also something of a fantasy element to the Soviets -- the intermingling of SMERSH and SPECTRE, for instance, or the building of assassins like Red Grant. Even in The Spy Who Loved Me, the Soviets were treated in as extreme a way as MI:6, so that XXX was essentially a female Bond. But with the 1980s, the Soviets were treated, for lack of a better term, more realistically and less imaginatively. The lines were blurred more. On some level, this makes sense since Reagan and Thatcher were constantly going on and on about the "evil empire," but it made Bond seem less escapist and more a reminder of what I saw on the news every night. And I could just see that on the news.
NSNA was more like a 60s film. It had SPECTRE, for starters, and more colorful characters, and it was filmed in a style closer to those films. For all the complaints that it was just a remake of Thunderball, which it was, OP and AVTAK just redid the formula for GF, and not remotely as well. Where OP and AVTAK are superior is mostly in elements that NSNA simply could not reproduce -- the use of the gunbarrel, for instance, and Bond theme and the supporting castmembers. Had these elements been available, though, NSNA would likely rise in people's appreciation.
It's not without its flaws, though. At times, the pacing is off, and the attempts at humor mostly fall flat, especially with Rowan Atkinson and all the obvious self-awareness that it was celebrating the return of Connery in a non-official production. The title song is terrible, as is most of the soundtrack (Phyllis Hyman's original posted below was much better than the song that replaced it, but it sounds, perhaps, too much like a "real" Bond song). Because it had to avoid infringing on Eon's trademarks, it also just looks different -- M's office looks more like Colonel Ross's in The IPCRESS File than what we're used to, and Q's workshop looks more like someone's garage. These seem more concessions to avoid legal entanglements than artistic choices meaning that the production was hemmed in. The contrast is apparent and far too often jarring to a fan.
But I still find NSNA much more entertaining than OP, and in the end, that's what counts most.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBvDSbFdgic
The next generation of Helen Keller jokes.
Give me strength.
If indeed the rumors of an EON sale post Bond 25 ring true, and another studio/company acquires the rights to put Bond on the screen, we may have plenty on non-EON Bonds to compare to. Who's to say their Bond franchise won't look like every other CGI comic film out there starring Ben Affleck or Robert Downey Jr? Who's to say their Bond films won't depart so far from tradition to that it makes NSNA look more and more like classic FRWL Broccoli Bond?
1. GE 2. MR 3. OP 4. TMWTGG 5. TSWLM 6. TND 7. TWINE 8.DN 9. GF 10. AVTAK