Diamonds are Forever with Goldfingers Brother
John from Cork
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Originally the idea was that the villain in DAF was going to be Goldfingers Brother who was obsessed with Diamonds. Would this have made it better? The whole ignoring Tracy thing when Blofeld was the villain has always been very jarring, plus the fact that Charles Gray's Blofeld is absolutely nothing like the previous Blofelds
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Gray's Blofeld is nothing like the previous Blofelds, although one could argue that's intentional. Having a less menacing Blofeld arguably fits the more comedic tone of the film as a whole.
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Going with the 'Goldfinger's brother' plot would not have been a good idea, imho; it would probably have felt too much like what's now called 'fan service', or even 'fanwank' - a franchise turning in on itself, as if conceding that it's already passed its prime.
As it is, DAF is a self-reflexive movie which calls back to GF in more subtle ways, some of which may possibly have been hang-overs from the discarded treatment. We have uses of an American setting for parts of both GF and DAF (as in both novels); there are parallels between the scenes with Sir Donald Munger and Colonel Smithers; in both films Connery has light moments of business with a red carnation; Shirley Bassey sings iconic title songs for both movies.
In DAF, it's notionally a surprise when the villain's true identity is revealed to Bond in Willard Whyte's penthouse. Oh, look! Blofeld's alive and well, the instigator of all the villainy! (It wasn't really a surprise for the audience, of course; not least because Charles Gray's star billing and image on lobby cards were clues that he'd have more to do in the movie than simply getting bumped off in the PTS!) Although Cubby Broccoli claimed that this 'surprising' moment in the penthouse was inspired by a nightmare he'd had about an imposter of Howard Hughes revealing his face, one wonders, also, about how 'the reveal' would have worked had Gert Frobe played the villain - the key dramatic beat eventually adapted to the film in its finished version, with Charles Gray in Frobe's place. One can imagine Bond's look of incredulity as he'd exclaim, "Goldfinger!" and Frobe's (re-voiced) reply, roughly along the lines of: "You killed my only brother, Mister Bond... Since then we Goldfingers have understandably been rather scarce!"
A general audience would obviously have picked up on the significance of any return by Gert Frobe. The significance of Guy Hamilton's return as director would have been of note only to those with a closer interest in the Bond films, but undoubtedly Hamilton's presence goes far in explaining what is, in DAF, a call back to some of the lightness and humour of GF, with touches of the bizarre.
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I'm sure the movie would have been as bad with Goldfinger's twin brother as the main villain. The problem is deeper: DAF was the beginning of the franchise's descent into hell in terms of screenwriting until TSWLM, the first Bond film of the decade in which Tom Mankiewicz was not involved.
He did do a rewrite on TSWLM, and worked on Moonraker too.
His contribution to TSWLM was quite minor and it is something you can really feel. The atmoshere of the movie shows it. His name doesn't even appear in the credits...
About Moonraker, he certainely wrote Jaws's romance
But do you consider him as the man whose ideas where put into TSWLM's script and made it a classic ?
I have absolutely nothing against him but it's difficult to say his contributions were faithful to the essence of Fleming's novels, especially for DAF and TMWTGG.
@emtiem What do you think of his work ?
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