He Was Married Once: Why did EON Keep This?
Doctor Know
Posts: 20MI6 Agent
In The Spy Who Loved Me (1976)
For Your Eyes Only (1981)
License To Kill (1989)
Each makes reference to Bond’s tragic short lived marriage to Tracy in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).
However, none of the aforementioned mentioned films are narrative continuations to OHMSS.
The direct sequel to OHMSS (Diamonds Are Forever 1971), is a complete non-sequitur to the previous film. Different Bond, different Blofeld, entirely different clause of animus between the two men, no other return supporting characters from OHMSS (sans M, Moneypenny and Q).
My question is, if the powers that be weren’t interested in resolving or continuing the plot thread from OHMSS. Why keep the referencing the marriage to Tracy decades after the fact?
The Bond series swaps and drops Bond girls, Bond actors and Blofelds without missing a step and rarely ever calls back to previous meetings, loves and adventures.
Just an odd thing I noticed. I wonder if anyone has insight as to why.
Comments
I think OHMSS was viewed as a misstep when it came out, so the ending was ignored for several years, especially in Diamonds...
over time its reputation improved, becoming the real fans favorite James Bond film, so they started referencing it
even then, its really the only thing we learn about Bonds background, isnt it, until the Daniel Craig era, so its a conspicuous choice. They also start mentioning it about the same time the womanizing decreases and female characters start to be interesting characters in their own right rather than bikini fillers with overdubbed dialog. That one biographic detail may help to make Bond seem less of a letch, gives more context to why his relationships never last
It is a bit mad that they mention it in LTK, really.
'His wife was murdered right after his wedding. Good thing that can't happen to us!' 😁
Hello Doctor Know!
Had Lazenby stayed on as Bond, EON might indeed have continued the narrative strands from OHMSS. Richard Maibaum's initial drafts for DAF support this. But Lazenby's departure and Connery's return led to a course change, and the success of DAF meant that the next couple of films followed suit.
TSWLM was another course change, and was designed as an "ultimate" James Bond film. Dropping a reference to OHMSS makes sense in a movie that references or emulates most of the previous Bonds.
Furthermore, John Glen was the editor and second-unit director on OHMSS and justly proud of it, so it's not a surprise that two of his Bond films reference OHMSS, especially since they were co-scripted by Maibaum, who was also proud of the film. And I think Cubby (in common with Roger Moore) also felt that OHMSS was among the better Bonds.
So I don't think EON was ever ashamed of OHMSS. It's just that circumstances were never right for making a follow-up in the years afterward. By 1989 too much time had passed to create a direct follow-up to OHMSS, but the filmmakers were able to craft an indirect follow-up, a personal story where Bond finally gets revenge for a murdered bride.
LTK's reference to Tracy sets up the emotional transference behind Bond's obsessive need for vengeance. So when Bond sees Della's dead body, the look in his eyes suggests he's flashing back to Tracy's. Despite being denied the opportunity to avenge Tracy, Bond can compensate by avenging Della. The fact that she's the wife of Bond's best friend, who has now experienced Bond's own trauma, adds further flame to the fire. Bond is avenging Della, Felix, Tracy, and himself--all at the same time.
Edit: I forgot to mention that an early version of Octopussy also involved a reference to Tracy's death, along with the return of Blofeld. I presume that the legal complications involved with McClory, Spectre, and Blofeld also militated against a direct follow-up to OHMSS.
Well, they needed a pts for FYEO and director John Glen came up with Blofeld returning - Broccoli may have been keen on this for different reasons as it 'killed' Blofeld, thus nixing Kevin McClory's main villain for his prospective comeback vehicle. Put in Blofeld and you can also have Tracy, as it links the two, helps prep the scene. Glen worked on OHMSS in a big capacity so he had a link. They were trying to make FYEO in the same mold as OHMSS.
Ditto maybe with SWLM - Blofeld had been planned to be the main villain until lawyers intervened, so maybe this was a nod to the old animosity between Bond and his arch nemesis. It's well written, adds weight to the clash with Triple X, why not keep it.
LTK - again, it's just another attempt to add weight to a movie, a bit of credibility. Arguably it's referenced in The World Is Not Enough, a title that's a odd to OHMSS, with Eleckra asking Bond if he's ever lost anyone he loved, he blanks it.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
There was also a very strong possibility that Roger wasn’t returning for FYEO, so that was the reason behind the opening having Bond put flowers on Tracy’s grave…to tie the ‘new’ Bond in…
Thank you all for your insight.
II’ll give FYEO and LTK a rewatch with your comments in mind.
Also, what is known as 'fan service"!
The above films were aimed at just that, pleasing the purists - who were a grumpy minority at that point, but whom EON felt a growing need to cater for.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I have mentioned before that there are subtle hints at continuity across the whole film series. The Bond films are kind of unique in that respect for the most part (apart from the Craig films) as each film can be viewed as a standalone adventure and it is not necessary to watch previous films in the series to understand the events of each film. Like Napoleon Plural has mentioned above, the subtle hints are more like Easter eggs which are aimed at the serious fans of the series and largely go unnoticed by the masses.
I disagree that DAF completely ignored OHMSS. The pre-titles can be seen as a continuation of OHMSS. Bond seems desperate to find Blofeld and is seemingly satisfied once he "kills" him. But that's all we get. DAF was definitely trying to distance itself from OHMSS and the whole Lazenby affair as much as possible since OHMSS had proven to be unpopular at the time and most people saw Connery as the "definitive" Bond.
I think the producers were also trying to imply that Moore's Bond was initially a kind of rebooted form of the character in his early films. If you watch LALD or TMWTGG there is very little continuity in those films which links back to any previous Bond film. Moore's Bond is noticeably different - he smokes cigars, doesn't drink Martinis nor wears a tuxedo. The box office performance of TMWTGG put Eon in jeopardy since Moore was clearly not winning over audiences like Connery had. There was also the problem that in 1975, McClory's 10 year waiting period was going to expire which would enable him to make another version of Thunderball. Also Broccoli and Salzmann were going through a breakup in their business partnership.
I think as Broccoli had an enormous amount of pressure riding on him to deliver a great film to save the future of the series after TMWTGG, one thing was agreed upon was to make Moore's Bond the same character in TSWLLM as the classic Bond. Mentioning that Bond had already been married added a slight emotional backstory that had been missing from his portrayal of the character up to that point.
I think they did the same thing in the PTS of FYEO to again give some emotional grounding to the character that had been missing in a film where Bond gets blasted off into space in MR!
I reckon they did the same thing in LTK as Dalton's performance in TLD is quite different than in other films and TLD seems like a soft reboot of the character. The mention in LTK was again a subtle attempt to iterate that Dalton was in fact the same Bond as before.
The producers also did the same thing with Brosnan in TWINE (as Napoleon Plural already mentioned) and Craig in NTTD but I guess that is a debate for another time.