Largest shift between 2 consecutive Bond movies
Higgins
GermanyPosts: 16,619MI6 Agent
Barbel and myself had a disagreement (and for a long time one where he did not threaten me to get banned 
) in another thread.
My opinion: TWMTGG --> TSWLM has the largest shift from any Bond Movie.
Barbel thinks, that the gap between DAD --> CR is larger.
What do you think?
) in another thread.My opinion: TWMTGG --> TSWLM has the largest shift from any Bond Movie.
Barbel thinks, that the gap between DAD --> CR is larger.
What do you think?
President of the 'Misty Eyes Club'.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Comments
I think the change from bowler-hatted midgets to steel-toothed giants is less significant than that between invisible cars and having one's balls attacked with a knotted rope, and that Spy is a deliberately formulaic 007 film (with boxes almost visibly being ticked at regular intervals) while Man is a lazily formulaic one. CR was deliberately anti-formula (you don't need me to list the points**) and succeeded, while DAD made an attempt to be different (1st bit) while still keeping the formula (2nd bit) and most reckon it failed.
* but that's a different argument.
** do you?
He'll tell you about theoretic layouts and drafts, theories and traditions while I put the movies in the player and judge them from what I see and hear.
While I may agree that the old spydays have been over after OHMSS, it kind of returned in LALD.
To me, 007 was still a usual spy in TMWTGG and that changed dramatically with TSWLM and the budget was bigger, the action by a mile more spectacular , the Stromberg Set and the Liparus miniatures simply stunning and all that gave the franchise a totally new level.
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
And since when were you working class and normal? You're rich and elite!
You are not Eva Green, so you don't look good naked!
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
(Edit- added an extra line to previous post which you may not have seen)
Yes, a definite change there but more of an attempted return to the earlier style.
I've seen it and have asked my personel to sue you
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Bond as superhero, to Bond as spy, and back again.
LTK to GE
A Flemmingesque depiction of Bond to a superhero one.
DAD to CR
Bond the superhero to Bond the fledgling spy
8. TMwtGG 9. AVtaK 10. TSWLM 11. SF 12. LtK 13. TND 14. YOLT
15. NTtD 16. MR 17. LaLD 18. GF 19. SP 20. DN 21. TB
22. TWiNE 23. DAD 24. QoS 25. DaF
Let me know when your butler returns.
Thanks, IcePak, all good points. Any thoughts re TMWTGG to TSWLM?
DAD - invisible cars, crazy weapons of destruction (and plastic surgery)
CR - bang, back to earth
FRWL to GF
OHMSS to DAF
MR to FYEO
LTK to GE
DAD to CR
I think the biggest shift is from LTK to GE. It's the change in management that makes the difference seem so big to me. It's hard to place my finger on what exactly changed when Cubby left that makes the Bond films without him seem so different to the ones that were made with him. Brosnan's Bond just seemed less believable than all the Bonds that came before him. Then Daniel Craig changed things, but I still never found his Bond any more believable than Brosnan's.
some of the other shifts mentioned were also bigger too
but it is true that The Spy Who Loved Me was a major change in approach from the last three (or four) films
most definitely in scale: it came out the same year as Star Wars and was on a comparable scale, with the Liparus and Atlantis being as impressive as the Death Star ... also all those desert scenes (with ancient ruins), and the Lotus much like all those spaceships
whereas the previous three movies looked like early 70s car chase movies in comparison, double feature fare
also the humour: Roger's funny before and after, but somehow the positioning of the jokes has shifted...
for example, in LaLD, its almost like a deconstructed parody of the genre, with the foppish white gentleman spy completely out of place in Harlem, babbling about wine vintages to Mr Big, then doing that crosseyed doubletake midsentence after one of the thugs blackjacks him in the back of the head ... outdated fantasy hero placed in a "real world" situation and exposing the inherent silliness
whereas Spy runs unashamedly with the fantasy aspect, like an old Errol Flynn swashbuckler ... when Roger jokes in this one its a wholistic part of the fantasy, like we expect our cinematic hero to be enjoying his adventure
this all is coincident with the shift in Hollywood filmmaking at the same time, from cynical subversive New Hollywood to escapist bigbudget popcorn blockbusters. I don't think Brocolli had any way of knowing George Lucas would be permanently changing the standards of the film industry the same year this new film came out, somehow he just made a similar stylistic shift at exactly the same time
In terms of advances in technology, LTK-GE because of the hiatus.
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
Richard Kiel's, Dave Bautista's, and maybe Robbie Coltrane's.
...sorry... ;%
Definitely Robbie Coltrane's. The letters are next to each other, and the lowercase glyphs look so similar at this small size.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
And no, chrisisall, I'm not- I was 100% sure that Brosnan would be back for Bond 21!
A second "seismic" shift occurred from You Only Live Twice to On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The former film is the last to have that "1960s" feel in cinematography and style. The latter film had much more in common with what would be the films of the 1970s and 1980s, from more reliance on close ups and odd angles to tougher and longer action sequences to a kind of spareness to many of the visuals. Though there are a few "crowd" scenes, the camera angles are tighter and the cuts faster, and action is meant to be more intimate, making things just feel "smaller." The film still has some of the sweep of the earlier Bonds, but like many contemporary Bonds, there are more scenes of one or two actors in large settings rather than the more epic feel of the earlier Bonds.
The rest of the shifts mostly feel like back and forths among the various styles. The Spy Who Loved Me tries to return to the style of You Only Live Twice, only with a blowed-dry, disco feel. The same for Moonraker. For Your Eyes Only is an attempt to mimic On Her Majesty's Secret Service, as is Goldeneye to some degree, though that film just seems like a cheap cable TV movie all-around.
Casino Royale more or less looks like a Brosnan era film in its style and cinematography, but it tries to return to the 1960s films in terms of being more character-driven and playing on Bond's mojo. We hadn't real seen an old-fashioned Bond since then, in the sense that his masculinity is both clearly defined, and he makes no apologies for it. Craig embodies the type well -- the best since Connery. And even if the film falls short in terms of having the 1960s films' sweep and style, it's the closest thing we'd seen in 40 years. In this sense, it's more a return to form that a complete shift to something.
I'm intrigued by this statement Gassy Man. Besides the helicopter scene, what sticks out in From Russia With Love for you that reminds you of North by Northwest and David Leans films?
For instance, both films use a kind of fisheye lens with an actor in the foreground to give the background more depth and scope but also a slight curved quality -- this was a shot that Lean really helped popularize and would use again in other films, like Dr. Zhivago. Unlike modern films, there's an attempt to make sure the background has long depth of field and both breadth and height in shots:
There really wasn't such a big change there. Moore's 80s films had a lot of serious moments and a few dark moments. TLD has some campier Moore-esque moments, such as Bond taking an hour to spend with the girl on the boat or the car chase. The balance of the elements changed from AVTAK to TLD, but the same elements are there along with the same director handling those moments the same way. The only difference between Moore's later films and TLD is that the campier moments were cut back, but the rest stayed the same. FYEO is fairly close to FRWL in tone, and it's a try spy film. Using elements prominently from three of Fleming's stories helped. Octopussy's many serious moments aren't so far off from TLD either.