Geez, "Never Say Never Again" is the worst Bond movie ever.

[GOPisEvil]

I guess Connery bought a new house or boat or something. I liked this movie when it was called "Thunderball". :eyes:

[djeseru]

1. It could have been worse.

Roger Moore could have been in it.

[GOPisEvil]

2. "The Man With The Golden Gun" was just on.

You are correct.

[djeseru]

5. In terms of getting "smarmy"...

...with the ladies, I have no problem with Connery. Moore, on the other hand, disturbs me. Deeply.

Hey, whaddya doin' watching TV? You mentioned something about school the other day... :)

[GOPisEvil]

6. Connery had some smoothness.

Roger Moore hitting on women 1/2 his age was just creepy.

Hey, I did school stuff this morning. I'll do more later this afternoon. My assignments are due Friday, so I'm ahead of the game. :)

[djeseru]

19. Oh my yes...

...I was so glad I saw other Bond films before A View to a Kill. I try to find some kind of positive in every film, but the shower scene killed the rest of the movie for me... :scared:

Cool, I love that feeling too...being ahead in schoolwork. Maybe I'll get to see you out here later again!
:hi:

[GOPisEvil]

24. Definitely. I'll be back out to play later on.

:hi:

[jobycom]

18. Ian Flemming preferred Moore to Connery, though he died before Moore

actually played Bond. Flemming pushed for Roger Moore as James Bond, and called Connery a glorified stuntman who couldn't act. He later changed his mind, and began altering Bond in his books to fit with Connery, even giving him a Scottish father in "You Only Live Twice" (maybe Flemming's best book, though not movie).

I actually like Moore better than Connery. I've never understood why. Moore has some of the worst films, but I always felt he was more human than Connery. Bond in the books is full of self-doubt and remorse for his killings. I always felt Connery was too shallow an actor, I think. Moore loses it in his later films, because he's too old to be believable as a babe magnet (one of the biggest problems with Never Say Never Again, too).

I wish they had made more with Timothy Dalton. He was the best actor to play Bond, and by far the most like the Bond in the books.

[GOPisEvil]

28. Interesting. I didn't know that about Connery.

Dalton's movies were pretty good.

What stinks is that they pick actors to play Bond who are in their 40s. That gives them time to make perhaps 2-3 movies only. I don't know how old the new guy is.

I should have read the books. I think I've only read one or two and that was years ago.

[jobycom]

36. Bond in the books is in his late thirties. Dalton only made two because of

the same copyright dispute that led to Never Say Never Again.

The original Thunderball wasn't a book to start with, it was a script written by Ian Flemming and two other guys. They delayed production, so Flemming went ahead and wrote it as a novel and published it. One of the script co-writters sued for partial rights to the book and movie, which was made before there was a ruling (not clear on the details). The judge ruled he had no right to the book, but allowed the rights of the script to return to the co-writer after a certain number of years (25, I think).

When the rights to Thunderball returned to the co-writer, he claimed he had rights to not just the script, but the character as well, so there was more court action. Timothy Dalton's second film had been released, and they were preparing for a third, but the rights were in jeopardy, so the whole thing was shelved for six years, until the issue could be resolved. Not sure if it was resolved in court or through a settlement, but by the time they were able to start Goldeneye, Dalton had moved on to other things, and was a bit old, so they chose Brosnan.

[Mike Daniels]

54. I actually liked the Dalton movies as well

Not only did he give the role an air of ruthlessness, the motivation behind the villians in his two movies was basically just good old fashioned greed.

If there was any further motivation behind the arms running and drug dealing I missed it altogether.

[Bossy Monkey]

3. Wait for "A View To A Kill"

Blond Chris Walken, psycho Grace Jones, Duran Duran on the soundtrack-- I paid full price to see this shit. It was my introduction to James Bond movies, which is probably why I've never seen another. One of these days I've gotta give Sean a chance, I mean back when he had his own hair.

[GOPisEvil]

4. Oh God, that one is horrid, too.

Give me Goldfinger, Thunderball and Dr. No any day.

[dryan]

7. Moonraker....

total yuck!

[jobycom]

9. Moonraker far, far worse than View to a Kill.

[GOPisEvil]

10. The worst Bond movies had Roger Moore.

Ugh.

[CanuckAmok]

39. Bite your tongue!

The axis of evil of Hitler-cloning-experiment-gone-wrong-even-by-Hitler-cloning-experiment-standards Christopher Walken and Deadly masculine assassin Grace Jones was perfect! She killed someone with a butterfly marionette, for the love of dime! Then she pumped a handcar with a giant TNY detonator away from the bulk of the wxplosive so save Silicon Valley!

Are you mad?!

[jobycom]

46. I liked Walken and Jones in that film.

Walken has one of the best villain death scenes. It was a decent script. My only issue with it was Bond's age (still not nearly as bad as Never Again), and the fact that Tanya Roberts screamed "Oh, James!" so often that I still hear it in my nightmares. That woman never could act, but she's got some wierd charm about her even ignoring her looks.

The premise of the Hitler cloning experiment was cool, though not original, but they never had Walken do anything exceptionally brilliant to justify it. Psychopath, yes, but not as brilliant as some of Blofeld's plots.

I didn't hate it. Not nearly as bad as Moonraker.

[CanuckAmok]

49. Submerging Silicon Valley not brilliant enough for you?!

I don't know... considering the time the movie was made, at the outset of the modern computer age, I think it was pretty clever.

And I enjoyed the way Walken gleefully murdered all his workers with and Uzi, just for fun. Or pitching the potential investor out of the blimp? "Anyone else wanna drop-out?"

Good times!

[jobycom]

8. It isn't usually considered a real Bond movie

I guess you know that story. I think Moonraker was the worst legitimate Bond film, and Never Say Never Again is much worse than that.

Sad. I thought Klaus Maria Brandauer (no idea how to spell his name) could have been a great Bond villain in a good production.

[GOPisEvil]

12. You're right.

Brandauer would have been a good villain in a regular production.

[Initech]

11. Actually, Never Say Never Again was never an official Bond to begin with!

It was never authorized by the Broccoli family or Ian Fleming's estate during production, that's why they never make any of the classic Bond references or catch phrases in the movie itself.

Trust me, I've seen every Bond movie multiple times. I think in one of the commentaries, they make note of that.

[GOPisEvil]

13. Oh, I know, but it's on now, and it just sucks.

:)

[Initech]

20. It is pretty horrible, I will admit...

Although personally, I think the worst Bond ever made goes to Casino Royale, even if it was meant to be a spoof. :puke:

[AllegroRondo]

52. It was done by a different movie studio also

United Artists owns the Bond franchise, I believe MGM did "Never say never"

[Initech]

55. Actually, it was done by someone who has nothing to do with Bond...

MGM owns UA, which owns the Bond franchise.

Never Say Never Again was done by... *drum roll* Warner Bros.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086006/companycredits

[AllegroRondo]

57. Thats it - thanks!

[Deep13]

14. Connery should have stuck with, "Never again."

Some of the Moore films are a bit campy. That deflates the tone and makes it hard to take the film seriously. At that time the studio thought the public was not into the whole brinksmanship/cold war thing and prefered what amounted to a parody of the genre.

[GOPisEvil]

15. I could not agree more.

I mean...a piss-poor remake of Thunderball. Why not do a piss-poor remake of one of the shitty Roger Moore movies?

[Deep13]

25. I don't like remakes generally.

The only thing that justifies an actual remake is if the original is in such bad condition that it is unsalvageable. Otherwise, just watch the first one. That is not the same as doing a reinterpretation of a source material. For example, I don't look at Spielberg's War of the Worlds as a remake.

[Taverner]

16. I dunno...i still think its better than any Lazenby/Moore/Brosnan/Dalton

bond movie...

[GOPisEvil]

17. Well, the Lazenby movie was a spoof. And a poor one.

Dalton's movies were ok. Brosnan made some half-decent movies, too.

This is just a shitty remake of one of the better original Bond movies. Connery should have passed.

[Taverner]

21. But Lazenby's was official...

"On Her Magesties Secret Service" - the only one where Bond gets married...

[GOPisEvil]

22. Then why is it never shown?

All these marathons, and I never see it.

[Taverner]

26. Probably because it was the weakest

Although some people consider it the strongest....go figure...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064757/

For me, Connery was the only Bond...and he had worn out his relevance when Connery stopped playing him...

[Tyrone Slothrop]

34. It's one of my faves

In the same league with Goldfinger and From Russia With Love as far as I'm concerned.

Diana Rigg...rowwrrr!

[jobycom]

43. That's the common opinion of all but the Connery-philes. The OP

was actually thinking of Casino Royale, as we determined downthread a bit.

I think it had the most moving storyline, it's one of the top tier Bond films, and it was based on one of the two best Flemming novels (the other being "You Only Live Twice.)

I can understand the Connery-philes. After Connery, the format of the movies changed, and not everyone liked the change. But OHMSS followed the old format.

[Taverner]

44. I'll give that OHMSS had great potential

And it was a good story...but Lazenby just wasn't Bond.

To be honest, the relevance for Bond died around '68, when the US and UK were no longer the undisputed good guys in the world's eyes, and world domination wasn't as easy as pointing a laser at the moon...

[jobycom]

48. The original Bond books were more like Philip Marlowe

He was more an international detective with some close brushes with death. Flemming made him more of a superhero as the series went on, but still more of a detective/spy than the comic book hero he became in the later films.

I think you're right about why that happened in the movies. The struggle with the Soviets changed, technology made real spying less detective work and more high-tech gadgetry, and the producers couldn't figure out how to adapt the outdated plots of the books to the screen anymore, so they began writing whole new scripts with little connection to the books. The scripts no longer had that Flemming feel to them. The oldest Flemming books barely involved the Soviets, actually, they were more often connected to independent bad guys like Dr. No or Hugo Drax. The screenplays went back to that style, but couldn't capture what Flemming did.

I still like the later ones, but they are different than the older ones.

On Lazenby, I just disagree. I like him. But I didn't grow up on Connery, so I never saw him as the original Bond. I didn't like him when I first started watching the older films (I grew up on Moore) but when I got older I started seeing what he was doing, and liked him a lot more. I never had that problem with Lazenby, I liked him the first time I saw him.

[jobycom]

27. You sure you're thinking of the right one? I saw it over Christmas

on Spike. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" wasn't a spoof, and it is usually considered one of the top three or four Bond films.

[GOPisEvil]

29. Oh yeah, I'm thinking of Casino Royale.

I'm all confused. :silly:

[Taverner]

35. Ahhh yes that one - John Huston made that movie

Can you beleive that???

[jobycom]

38. I just saw Casino Royale for the first time

Found it on DVD at Half-Price books. It is bad, even for a spoof. Way toomuch psychadelic 60s stuff.

[CanuckAmok]

47. OHMSS was one of the better ones, for dramatic content.

If you read the books, Bond is far from the happy-go-lucky gadabout we seen in the movies. He's actualy quite a brooding, dark character.

I compare Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan to Adam West's Batman, and Lazenby and Connery are more like Christian Bale's Batman.

Both types are good, for their own reasons. For campy fun, you can't beat the Moore movies, but for mood, intricate storylines and "believeable" characters (by Bond standards), it's Connery and Lazenby.

I really enjoyed Lotte Lenya as a former concentration camp guard in OHMSS, and the downer ending was an awesome risk taken by Broccoli & co. It could have set the tone for the more complex, disturbing Bond for the next few movies, but they instead went for glitz and camp (with mixed results).

I think the "Bourne" series, and to a lesser degree the Jack Ryan movies are more enjoyable as modern examples of the espionage genre, but Bond movies are in a whole different league. I mean, audiences accept (and expect) Bond to survive the impossible, the implausible, and the rediculous. They expect him to seduce every woman he sees, and operate every piece of equipment on the planet as if he designed it. If Jack Ryan or Bourne were to do similar things, they'd be laughed off the screen. Bond films are movie "events". I wonder for how much longer.


By the way, the classically-trained, Shakespearian Dalton never wanted to be Bond. He looked cown upon the role, the genre, and the audience. You can see that in his performance. He derides anyone who makes reference to him as Bond, and clearly doesn't consider it as being as "legitimate" as the rest of his body of work. My opinion on this is that Brocolli's money was just as good as Kenneth Brannaugh's, so if you're going to cash the cheques, do it gracefully and STFU. Alternately, if you have "principles", don't take a role you consider to be beneath you. I know a couple of people who have worked with him on other projects, and apparently he's an ass. No surprise there.

[bikebloke]

53. Still haven't seen it

Secret Service is the only Bond film I haven't seen. Though I grew up with Connery, it may have been that initial change over. Next time the video shop pickings are uninspiring, will someone remind me to look for Secret Service.

I'm hoping they'll do with Casino Royale and Daniel Craig (or is it Craig Daniel?) what they did with Batman Returns. Grittier and more human, skipping the spectacle glitz.

[bullwinkle428]

67. OHMSS was the first Bond film I saw, back when ABC was showing

60s Bond movies occasionally as the "Movie of the Week" - I was probably about 10 or 11 at the time, and really liked that one. For some reason, I could never really get into the later Moore films all that much, and couldn't really figure out why. Your explanation goes a long way in figuring out why that was...

[Deep13]

32. I dunno 'bout that.

Thought Secret Service was well done with imaginative cinematography.

Liked all the Brosnan films.

Liked Dalton too, though License was weak. I thought Dalton was refreshing after a decade of the super-starched Moore. Thought Moore did well Golden Gun, Let Die and especially Spy Who Loved Me and Eyes Only. The other films were victims of campy direction and in View Moore was just plain too old.

[jobycom]

41. Wow! Exactly my opinions, across the board.

Dalton was the best Bond, IMO, but the films could have been better. License to Kill was the best acted Bond character but too weak a script, relying too much on impossible stunts, though there are parts of it I really love.

I agree completely with your Moore assessment, too.

[progmom]

23. compared to Wayne Newton as a Bond villian in “License To Kill”?

[GOPisEvil]

30. That's just wrong.

x(

[Deep13]

33. Yeah, that was weird.

Still, liked what's her name from Law and Order.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

31. No, no, no

Diamonds Are Forever is the worst.

Followed closely by Moonraker and License to Kill.

In my opinion, anyway...

[Rabrrrrrr]

37. Moonraker is at the top of my list of bad Bond films

:puke:

What an embarrassment

[eyepaddle]

40. But but but it had Dr

GOODHEAD in it! And every male extra got to say her name at least one time! I think many of them spoke the line in lieu of a paycheck.

Maybe I'm just a bit whimsical, but I could never take ANY of the secret agent movies all that seriously, I am fine with a little Roger Moore campiness every now and then.

Plus, the scenery of the Karst region of China in "The Man with The Golden Gun" PLUS a house with all of those secret passages.....hell, that makes an entertaining popcorn movie right there! ;)

[terrya]

59. "Moonraker" had the most boring Bond villian ever.

I think the only terrifying about Huge Drax was his amazing ability to put the audience to sleep when he was on screen. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[CanuckAmok]

42. Diamonds are Forever was a really good Bond!

C'mon, Jill St. John?

"Plenty O'Toole"?

A reclusive-Howard Hughes-esque multibillionaire?

Blofeldt in drag?

reference to the faked Moon landing theory?

the Mach 1 Mustang?

Vegas?

Gay hitmen?

Exploding desserts?


That one was great fun... excellent pacing, a clever script with some first-rate puns, and some of Bond's best stuntwork.

[kay1864]

45. I met Timothy Dalton once...

A couple of years after he took over from Roger Moore (whose last was A View to a Kill). The first thing that popped into my head as I shook his hand was, "Thank you for restoring dignity to these films".

Too bad about the United Artists dispute with Cubby Broccoli. Dalton could have done a few more IMHO.

[SkipNewarkDE]

56. Dalton was great...

... it seemed like he had actually read the source books. His character portrayal was fully cognizant of the moral ambiguity of his profession. He was good.

[Deja Q]

63. Quite!!!

Dalton rocked. He did restore dignity.

Dalton had also read the Fleming books in order to get a feel for the character.

Dalton is an A+ first class actor.

Brosnan makes Fozzy Bear come across like Chris Rock by comparison. Yuck; Brosnan is the WORST. Of course, the production team had nothing better to do than camp things up and go overbaord with f/x and asinine stunts. Kept in a serious tone, Brosnan would have fared much better and even I think he'd do more justice with On Her Majesty's Secret Service if the production was kept straight.

[ContraBass Black]

50. My favorites are Moonraker and Live and Let Die.

Don't hurt me.

[edbermac]

51. Live And Let Die is the worst

Doesn't even seem to be a Bond film....

[liberalpress]

58. Best Theme Sing...

"The Spy Who Loved Me"

[CanuckAmok]

64. It's fun, and is the only Bond movie to get into Guiness...

The speedboat jump over the police roadblock held some sort of world record for a few years.

And I liked that over-the-top asshole redneck sheriff character, "JW Pepper". He appears in a scene in one of the other bond movies, but I forget which one.

"'Secret Agent'?! On whose side?!"

on edit:

plus it had that Jeffrey guy who did the 7-up commercials as an undead Voodoo villain, and a hot 21 year old Jany Seymour not wearing much. What's not to like?

[jobycom]

66. No Freaking way

It has the best chase scene in any Bond film, and the best music, and, and, and Voodoo, for chrissakes! That alone makes it better than Moonraker!

And I've seen episodes of Saved by the Bell that are better than Never Say Never Again.

[ragin_acadian]

60. which one had kim basinger in it?

THAT one has to be runner up to the the worst one.

[LSdemocrat]

61. That was "Never Say Never Again"

[barb162]

68. Yeah but it also had Barbara Carrera as Fatima Blush

and what a crazed performance she gave. ANd what crazy clothes

[ragin_acadian]

69. and Rowan Atkinson had a 30 second spot in it too.

i dunno. you present a powerful case.

could it be argued that Barbara Carrera, hot as a firecracker, could negate the shrieking wreck that is kim basinger?

i mean, if it weren't for Jack Nickelson, Batman I would have been unsalvagable, what with basinger blowing out my eardrums every five seconds.

[sendero]

62. Spike has been..

.... running those Bond marathons lately and I've watched a bunch of them.

For just plain movie fun, the Bond films usually deliver :)

[Alexander]

65. Every Bond actor had their ups and downs.

I loved "From Russia With Love", "Thunderball" and even "Dr. No" with Connery.

But in "Never Say Never Again" he was a bit past it, and looked it as well. Even in "Diamonds Are Forever" he looked pretty old. There should be an age limit of 50 for any Bond actor - after that, it's almost guaranteed that the movie will fail (with one notable exception - "For Your Eyes Only" - even though Moore still looked too old).

But "Goldfinger" is overrated in my book. (Shock! Horror!) The gadgets were cool but took away from the good spy stories, and as a result Bond started becoming a parody of himself. I thought things like the trick attache case in FRWL would be perfect in every Bond film - subtle devices, that were realistic and that were used as tools, NOT as the basis for the movie.

Needless to say I loved the books - in most cases, a lot more than the respective movies. Ian Fleming was a master at painting a picture just with words - you can envision every single place he describes, down to the tiniest details, and yet he still didn't bore you with plodding descriptions and slow movement.

If anyone likes good spy novels, or James Bond at all, READ THE BOOKS. They are phenomenal.

Regardless of what Timothy Dalton thought of the role, I loved him as Bond, because it was just like the Bond from the novels - moody, brooding and professional, but he still gets the girl at the end.

Moore was unquestionably the silliest Bond, and was in some of the worst movies, like "The Man With The Golden Gun", "Moonraker" and "A View To A Kill". But he was awesome in "The Spy Who Loved Me" (which was MUCH different from the book, but still incredibly good), and when he talks to Barbara Bach's character about how he killed her boyfriend, it's definitely a high point. You could tell he didn't enjoy doing it, and I thought if Moore had done more of those types of scenes he would have made a really good Bond.

Brosnan was good in "Goldeneye", where he tried to take the best parts of all his predecessors, but after that he got stale as Bond really quickly. It became more of a product placement movie series.

I absolutely loved "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", and I think anyone coming immediately after Connery would've gotten trashed like Lazenby did. But I think he did a decent job notwithstanding, and the fight scenes are among the best of the whole series. I read that Lazenby got into it so much that during one scene he accidentally injured a stuntman - and for 1969, it looked better than most fight scenes do nowadays.

It's a crime that in these so-called "Bond marathons" they don't include OHMSS. It's one of my favorites, up there with "From Russia With Love", and in case you didn't guess, it followed the book pretty closely. It felt really fresh, particularly between "You Only Live Twice" and "Diamonds Are Forever", when you could tell Connery was really tired of the role.

Side note: I read once that this woman who was hosting a "Bond marathon" said, on-air, "Bond wouldn't ever get married - not his 'thing'." Now, she is an idiot for saying something like that (they referenced his wife in several movies), but her ignorance can partly be blamed on the fact that NOBODY EVER SHOWS THE MOVIE ANYMORE.

Did I mention I'm a Bond nut?

[Blue_Tires]

70. "too many free radicals, that's your problem!"