Really boring time to be a Bond Fan
John from Cork
Posts: 129MI6 Agent
When I started secondary school back in the early 80s, you had the whole battle of the bonds thing which was rather exciting, by the time I finished secondary school Dalton was bond, Now all Eon give is on average 2 bond movies per decade, a bond fan who started secondary school in 2016 will have gone their entire secondary school years without a single new bond film.
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But we have to try to soldier through it.
The battle of the Bonds was better in the expectation than the viewing as NSNA wasn't very good.
It was more speculative in the early 90s because Bond seemed a busted flush as an action hero, partly cos Dalton was the incumbent and not to everyone's tastes.
Perhaps it's as well Craig's film is still out there and unseen? If it had been released with no new Bond on the horizon things might feel even more dead and finished, just waiting a year or two for the announcement of the new James Bond.
As it is, we've something concrete to look forward to, to tide things over.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Anybody had a dream yet that they're finally seeing the film? If so, whatd your dreamversion look like?
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even if there were no new film...
I'd say we're better off now than when I became a Bondfan (1977). Two years between films was a lifetime for a kid like me, and the old films only irregularly showed on teevee, out of order, cut up by commercials, fuzzy picture, mom interrupting me. Next Monday in school we all had contradictory memories of what exactly we'd just watched, and itd be maybe a year before that old film came on teevee again.
Now we have them all on dvd, and online streaming, instantly accessible for obsessive overanalysis. And theres so much related material and research available just online, heck just here on this forum. Reading through that stuff oughta keep a Bondfan occupied for ten more months.
Just yesterday Revelator posted a link to a dozen longforgotten Fleming newspaper articles I'm going to be reading as soon's I get the chance. I never would have know such Fleming rarities even existed in 1977, let alone have the chance to read them at my leisure.
And related spyfilms and teevee shows from the classic era, theres so much online on free sites, I've been watching classic spy cinema (Harry Palmer, Matt Helm, the Avengers, the Saint, Man from UNCLE, all the lo-budget Italian stuff...) almost every single night since this lockdown began, and shall not run out until well past the NTtD release date.
There's a lot of Bond related content to keep us busy til the big day!
"The spectre of defeat..."
Yes, it’s nice to be able to watch the old films and read the old books on demand, but if you compare the past 5 years to even the 2006-2012 time period, things look pretty bleak at the moment.
A bit of a Bond diversion for me was revisiting the Blu Rays of some of the Bond films after I got my 75" 4K TV and finished my 5.1 surround sound set-up. It gave me an even greater appreciation for the overall quality of those remastered Blu Ray editions. It's certainly one thing that EON has done right.
Unlike other big franchises, EON are very uncreative & lackluster in regards of fan-service.
What actually is there for us fans? Some sh*tty Instagram-Quiz, scene reposting or them always wanting selling their 007-branded random stuff (shirts, cards,...) just doesn’t do it for me...
The surely must have archives full of unseen BTS-stuff they could put out...especially when there are six years+ in between movies. But there are so many more examples.
It‘s exclusively the FANS that actually do the fan-service by writing books, making videos, designing alternative posters, have competitions.
EON does nothing of that.
IG: @thebondarchives
Check it out, you won’t be disappointed
Looking forward to reading this when it arrives in March.
I couldn't agree with you more. In terms of their merch and social media presence, they leave a lot to be desired. Personally, I think EON takes their fans for granted.
https://sistraininggear.com
I don’t even think they take us for granted...I think they just don’t care about the fans too much at all...
IG: @thebondarchives
Check it out, you won’t be disappointed
What is it you're actually looking for from them?
• give the DVDs the attention like they used to have: full making of, BTS, etc... not only these 4 1min vlogs and music video
• maybe a competition once in a while
• release some never before seen stuff
• interact with the fans, e.g. sharing THEIR 007-content (like your beautiful poster)
There‘s lots of stuff they could do...
IG: @thebondarchives
Check it out, you won’t be disappointed
I fear that by the time audiences get to see NTTD, any interest in the continuity of the Craig era will have long since dissipated. People will want new stories, not glorified footnotes to pre-pandemic tales.
What I try to do is watch/read other spy things. I'm focussing in particular on books i.e. Jack Higgins, Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, Matthew Reilly etc.
I prefer books written by real spies myself. "Spy/Counterspy" by Dushku Popov is more Bondian in feel than some Bond continuation novels.
Just popped in to say - it's still a boring time to be a Bond fan.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Ditto with(out) interest...
I checked this out - maybe the library has it but they tend to go for around £50 min and often around £100 or double! Maybe the KGB bought them all up.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Not so boring you managed to keep your pledge to stay away from the website for a fortnight, though!
We've no match for Thunderpussy's stamina!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Though it's still a boring time to be a Bond fan, one thing that makes it less boring are the hilarious YouTube reviews by Calvin Dyson.
His in-depth review of Never Say Never Again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAZQ5f4CD0I (forgotten how to do a url) is well worth a watch but it's three-quarters of an hour so don't start watching it late at night. These seem to be pimped up reviews and not the same ones a teenage Dyson did years ago. Calvin is up close on the camera a bit more - you could almost reach into the screen and pinch those cheeks - and I don't know if he repeats his bonkers summary of the plot of Casino Royale 67 by taking off his shirt and putting a saucepan on his head like an ageing rock band running thru their old hits!
If you thought the Dyson report on Parorama and Martin Bachir was harsh, wait til you see his NSNA review. What's great is how he points things out you sort of had observed but never processed. Like Largo actually being a nice guy boss, knowing everyone's names in his ship. At the time this isn't so bad because you might think it's setting things up a bit - he'll be mean to them later on, machine gun them down like Zorin, or cruelly dispatch one to his death for a mistake, so it's all okay. It might also be cool modern misdirection. But nothing is done with it, it just wrong foots us a bit and I'm not sure we see this Largo do anything personally murderous, it's as if the film lacks the guts to do it, just as we never see Connery really kill anyone much, it's like the film doesn't believe in itself.
Dyson is on weaker ground, sorry I'll call him Calvin, it makes me think of the Brexit vacuum salesman - on weaker ground re the relationship between Largo and Domino, pointing out that they seem to get on pretty well unlike in Thunderball so she's less of a kept woman. She does later find he's killed her brother! The film doesn't quite explore the leverage he has over her - was she being used to coerce brother Jack's compliance? Once his purpose is served, why is she still around? But Calvin has a point. Connery seems like the stately interloper who has to use her brother's death to cop off with her.
I disagree with Calvin about Connery in this - he thinks he's having a ball and is better than in DAF and YOLT but for me he lacks all his previous edge and is unnecessarily old looking, they couldn't even get his toupee right. Calvin is spot on about the long boring drawn out climax though some of this stuff, the film numbs you to by that point so you almost don't notice.
There are some hilarious blink and you'll miss them jokes in Calvin's review and a brilliant use of sock puppets to explain the legal shenanigans between McClory and Fleming.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I agree, that was a particularly good piece of work from Calvin.