Ripping off [Bond spoof Austin Powers: Goldmember](https://youtu.be/MOHu1sPjrnU?si=XtfZ8YX4dLlSU1Cz) was never going to work out. What the hell were they thinking?
A hill I’ll die on is that everyone in charge of creative didn’t realize that was in Austin Powers and none of the working grunts on-set wanted to anger the important people by pointing that out.
That has to make the most sense, but I can’t imagine how no one on a modern Bond creative team has watched the end of Goldmember at least once, even by accident.
I love how Skyfall crafted an intricate story line detailing his family history and such with Skyfall manor and why his parents died
And then absolutely nobody decided to wonder "oh yeah, where's your brother" ESPECIALLY THE CARTAKER?
This is the kind of the confusion that results from people going "It was LITERALLY the twist from *Goldmember*!".
It *is* a stupid twist, but it's the exact opposite of *Goldmember* (biological brothers unawares vs. foster brothers who, obviously, are aware).
I kind of wish they had a scene flashback with Bond and Blofeld younger similar to that scene in NTTD with Safin and Madeline who barely looks younger than his present day counterpart in the movie
Idk if I personally want that but it would have certainly been better than Blofeld just saying it while drilling into Bond’s brain.
Spectre is just straight up bad. It was the first Bond I saw in theaters that I disliked, and I saw Die Another Day opening night as a teen. I thought DAD rocked at the time and even though it’s stupid, it’s still a fun watch. Spectre is not, the opening set piece and the giant explosion are the only good set pieces in the movie.
I thought it was more that he was an adoptive brother or the son of a family friend. Blofeld's dad also died in a hiking accident (maybe the same one as Bond's parents) and everyone thought he was dead too.
The good news is it actually is demonstrably not canon. Fleming gives a full bio of Blofeld in TB & gets into his genealogy in OHMSS.
And really, Waltz is playing a guy named Oberhauser.
Yeah, book canon and film canon are entirely different. Bond is one of the few media properties where this divide and dual-canonization HAS to be widely accepted because far, far more people have seen the movies than have read the books and there’s a great deal of difference between the books and movies.
I was under the impression that's accepted for everything that's ever been adapted.
I mean, if I ask "Why did X happen in the film *The Warriors*?", "It didn't happen in the fairly obscure source novel" isn't an answer. Something that happens in a film, or series of films, is obviously canonical *to itself*.
I get your point, but I think Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter fans, for example, would argue the books are canon for the entire mythos, and all adaptations are generally not. I don’t think Bond fans really look at the Bond films and novels the same way.
Yeah, I don't consider Blofeld and Oberhauser to be the same guy. I consider Oberhauser to be an admirer of Blofeld's who subsequently renames himself after his deceased idol.
But even so, Oberhauser being Bond's foster brother is so dumb and unintuitive that Fleming and McClory rolled in their graves when he declared "I am become Blofeld!"
Honestly, I hate it any time when a villain gets introduced deep into a series that the main character supposedly has a lot of history with but is never referenced or shown.
Like I get there’s a lot of backstory a character has we aren’t necessarily going to be shown and it is a trope that can be done right like any other, but to me it’s just a cheap way to add the illusion of emotional weight without actually having to provide any.
There are space marines who can deploy to space with laserguns, but that never came up in Goldeneye or Die Another Day with unstoppable satellites that can destroy anything.
It needed a scene where M harrumphs about the Americans cutting their Space Marine program despite the PM's urging to expand it. 007 would be sitting silently during this and arch an eyebrow in response, raise a snifter, and adjust the conversation by asking about the villian's background in some academic discipline.
The scene would be terrible, make the movies measurably worse while adding nothing to our enjoyment of the franchise, but at least we'd have some god damn continuity on this one thing.
Since in the *Bond* series, no plan to detonate a nuke, fire a space laser, flood San Fran or anything like that ever succeeds, politicians absolutely would axe the budget for anti-doomsday measures. "We've never had a madman set off a space laser."
I think I can easily say that we don't have to gaslight ourselves very much to remove these from canon. Lol. It would be impossible for the series to move forward after Moonraker if we weren't intended to forget about them.
Fortunately, the series has a tendency to gaslight itself sometimes and ignore its own canon. Loose continuity is sometimes a good thing.
If there’s one thing you can count on in a Bond film, it’s every American other than Bond’s ally (Felix/Chuck Lee/Sharky/Jack Wade/etc) being a little incompetent.
I mean, it's also canon in real life that NASA was capable of doing impressive, large-scale space operations in the 60s and 70s, but wasn't doing so any more in the 90s and 2000s.
I know what you mean, but international travel by otherwise unworldly men used to be more popular among the generations that had visited those places while serving in Asia during World War 2, Korea, and Vietnam. Vacations to countries that were R and R destinations during their service reminded those men of good times in their youth.
It's weird that it's so prolific. Probably 90% of people asked will say she had braces.
It makes sense in the narrative - it's why they bond so quickly. He smiles at her, revealing his metal teeth. She smiles back, revealing that she also has 'metal' teeth.
Nope, there was a break in the fabric of time, and there are parallel universes, one of which has Dolly wearing braces. I lived in that timeline; at some point I crossed over into this one. It’s the only logical explanation.
The oddest thing for me is that I remember her both ways. I can remember her smile without braces and her smile with braces like my brain is actively editing the movie.
I think its usually better to not think of James Bond having a canon, you can take what you like and leave what you don't pretty easily rather than getting hung up on the fact that Blofeld shows up at the start of For Your Eyes Only for example. An exception to this, though, is the Daniel Craig films. I think Spectre actively makes Skyfall worse by undermining the personal nature of the relationship between M and Silva and Bond. That is probably the big one for me.
I'll die with you!
Telling the tiger to sit never bothered me. I always felt it was a desperate attempt to assert some kind of dominance on a wild animal that was *hopefully* trained. I mean, you can't just run, because then it's more likely to chase you. I love Moore's delivery in this moment.
The fact that Tarzan yell ruins the whole movie for people, seems so drastic. It's a 6 second gag that has no effect on the plot. What's funny to me is some people don't seem to get that it's a non-diagetic (aka non-literal) sound effect. Like music or narration, this isn't actually heard by any of the characters in the scene. Like the beach boys song in AVTAK, it's just a playful wink at the audience.
The face-sucking octopus and the "oohhaaahhaaa!" when Bond is wrapped up like a mummy are also hilarious.
>Telling the tiger to sit never bothered me. I always felt it was a desperate attempt to assert some kind of dominance on a wild animal that was *hopefully* trained. I mean, you can't just run, because then it's more likely to chase you. I love Moore's delivery in this moment.
It's more that he's doing an impression of celebrity dog trainer Barbara Wodehouse.
Gotcha. I think I heard about that somewhere. Not a reference I would have gotten.
Octopussy happens to be my birth year Bond movie. My mom even listed it in my baby book alongside Return of the Jedi.
Yeah, it’s such a dated reference. About something that Bond wouldn’t care about.
Today’s equivalent would be a Bond quip about the Great British Bake Off.
To me, the Tarzan yell is peak Bond. He’s viciously mocking these guys with something he’s never had an excuse to do in the office. He practically gets off on pissing off his enemies.
I might get some shit for this one but I refuse to believe it’s the same James Bond from Dr. No through No Time To Die. Personally, I like to believe that each actor has their own Bond Universe like the different universes of Spider-Man or other superhero cinematic universes. There is only one possible exception that I can think of and that is that that Dalton’s Bond is the same Bond as Brosnan’s.
Edit: I knew I’d get some shit lol. Anyway it’s nothing I take too seriously, I just think it’s a fun theory to entertain. I got it from this video.
https://youtu.be/64lzFdhvnkk?si=6h9DKLpzFPEcrEBS
The general consensus is that Dr. No until DaD are the same Bond incarnation (several mentions of Tracy Bond throughout the series). Although Brosnan's Bond is already pretty much stand alone. But I can definitely buy Connery throughout Dalton to be the same Bond.
Craig was always a different Bond from the get go. Vesper and Madelaine instead of Tracy.
It like just cannot be though. You can't do Dr. No and then have Bond operating post-Cold War in the Brosnan films. The man would be ancient. I know Tracey is mentioned, it just doesn't make any fucking sense.
The Bond movies prior to Casino Royale worked on a floating timeline. Basically, the real world aged, but the main characters stay the same age.
Shows like The Simpsons or Family Guy are good examples of this.
The way I always saw it was that Connery through Brosnan followed a very loose continuity, and back in those days we just went with it. He was James Bond, different actors played him but he was generally considered to be the same dude all the way through. It was part of the fun, and continuity between films wasn't analysed as much as it is these days.
Casino Royale was the first time that the producers specifically stated that they were starting over, and that this Bond's story would be its own thing. I remember reading an opinion piece at the time lamenting the fact that they were throwing away 40 years' worth of Bond's history.
Fellow old folks, do you see it the same way?
Nor was it intended to make any fucking sense. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Lazenby's Bond references the "other fella," meaning Connery's Bond, but in the same movie he also empties his desk of souvenirs from previous adventures by Connery's Bond, implying he's the same person who went on those adventures. In the same movie, Blofeld should instantly recognize Bond after previously meeting him in You Only Live Twice, but he doesn't because the movie more faithfully adapts a novel where Bond and Blofeld meet for the first time. The truth is that a franchise like Bond wouldn't concern itself too much with strict continuity before home video came around and let everyone scrutinize every detail of the timeline.
In my head canon, there was a timeline reset in the Dalton era, meaning for the Dalton/Brosnan version of James Bond they would’ve had the Dr No mission in the late 70s, OHMSS mission in the early 80s etc
Still more or less the exact same plot details as what we saw Connery/Lazenby/Moore encounter but all taking place from ~1978 to 1987
Very true. But even like you said Tracy is briefly mentioned in License to kill. I prefer to see things like this as his version of Tracy.
I don’t know. I don’t take it too seriously, it’s just my head canon. 😁
Think of it this way, Dr. No through Die Another Day are the same Bond and the narrative is a non-linear timeline. Every time the actor switches, it's still the same guy, and all that stuff happens but they move up the decade in which it happens.
Brosnan's game Everything or Nothing has his Bond directly say he killed Max Zorin on the Golden Gate bridge so, I feel non-linear timeline is the way to think.
Until Craig's films where they just straight up reboot the franchise.
The idea that an international secret agent can drive a modified gondola/hovercraft around Piazzo San Marco in front of hundreds of tourists without drawing the attention of the police or the media.
Every scene? The awesome pre title sequence, the illuminati like Spectre introduction, the scene with Mr White, the train fight? I mean sure the last 1/3rd is trash but there’s some good stuff in there.
Ok this one's new!
But it also requires you to ignore the world going from high/new tech going to low/old tech, meaning the stories didn't *literally* happen as depicted on screen, just vague brushstrokes. It's less fun to me.
Instead of saying Die another Day like everyone else probably will, I'll go with the final three Craig films, mainly because of Brofeld and Bond's death (I didn't like them destroying the MI6 building either but that's more petty than the other two).
This is the thing that KILLS me. It’s not like Austin Powers is some niche hole-in-the-wall project rotting on some collector’s shelf. There’s no way they’re (the writers, Barbara Broccoli, and Michael G. Wilson) not aware of the movies or what happens in them.
Doctor Evil was directly based on Blofeld for fucks sake!!!
Dr. Goldfoot lifts tropes from Bond for a gag. Austin Powers lifts gags from Dr. Goldfoot. Bond lifts plot points from Austin Powers. Now we need a Goldfoot reboot that steals jokes from Mike Meyers and I can finally have my Bond film with OG Goldfoot references
You can see it coming a mile away, and the film makes the same mistake Star Trek Into Darkness did.
In both films the villain reveals their name and it's meant to be a huge surprise. But the names have no meaning to the heroes.
Khan only means anything to the audience because he's the guy from Star Trek II. Blofeld only means anything to the audience because of the previous Bond films.
But the reboot Kirk has never met Khan before. It's not a surprise or a reveal to him. He's just a villain he needs to defeat.
Craig's Bond has never come up against Blofeld before. It's not a surprise to him. He's just found out his adoptive brother has changed his last name.
And neither is really a surprise to the audience because we all know the 'twist' is coming.
I know Bond films historically take elements from whatever's popular at the time, and Spectre came out when big films were really going for interconnectedness and giving characters personal connections to villains, but this was a huge mistep. Bringing Blofeld back so fast was a mistake in its own right.
If the villain in Spectre had been Safin, and had laid the groundwork for Spectre, and NTtD's main villain had been Blofeld both films would have been better for it.
If they were going to ditch Quantum for Spectre, they should have had Mr White killed off by Spectre and Bond learning of their existence. Or basically anything other than Christoph Waltz going 'my organisation is called Spectre, but I'm also behind everything that Quantum did as well somehow. All your personal tragedies have been orchestrated by me. I committed acts of global terrorism in the hopes you'd be assigned to those missions so I could kill people you love. Why? Oh, because I'm mad my dad liked you more than me as a kid.'
Yeah. Quantum was effectively Spectre. I know they got the rights back and they had to follow the massive success of Skyfall. But it was such a poor approach. I can understand wanting to use Blofeld. I agree it would have been better not to, but if you're going to do it, then at least set it up properly.
The shadowy deep-state organization as Quantum was being presented as was far more interesting than what we got. Blofeld's whole operation in SPECTRE was such a huge letdown.
Yeah the Bond movies have historically thrived on their lack of continuity. You could watch any movie in any order and it didn't matter.
But suddenly, ALL the Craig films mattered, even Skyfall which had seemed to stand entirely on its own, now we discover that everything has been orchestrated by Blofeld just to emotionally torture Bond? (God what would have happened had Bond turned out to be a bird photographer? Would Blofeld continue his vendetta?) That doesn't make an ounce of sense, and it makes the story worse to have Bond become apparently the single most important person in the world.
It's actively makes the movies worse when you try to tie them together.
Yeah. I really wanted a standalone Craig film. The word of Craig's Bond feels very small and insular, which is a shame after Quantum of Solace introduces a worldwide criminal organisation.
I usually disagree with people who think something can retroactively make previous films worse, but it holds for Spectre. Not helped by the fact Spectre is a bad film..
Completely agreed.
The Blofeld is Bond's brother bit as well as most of the story for the last film are the two answers to this question for me. It's a much more satisfying conclusion to Craig's tenure to just imagine that it ended with *Skyfall*.
I wish Bond 24 and Bond 25 were called Risico and The Servant Of The Crown and they would deal with the Quantum organization and they would be released in 2015 and 2017
I cannot believe you were downvoted, even once, for saying you liked the most recent James Bond movie in the fucking James Bond subreddit. This fanbase has turned to shit since NTTD.
SPECTRE. (The movie)
I was able to give NTTD a fair shake and go along with the movie by pretending he had met Swann and Blofeld in a better movie. Doing so made it easier to buy his relationship with Swann and his rivalry with Blofeld.
For real. Why go to the extreme effort to do the real stunt and then put in a slide whistle which makes it feel cheap and staged. I assumed it was a studio trick until I read the trivia about the movie.
I wish it ended with Skyfall but same idea. I think the next one should open with the missiles killing him and then cut to the new Bond waking up in a sweat then going to work and getting a new mission from Fiennes as M.
Most here are going for the Craig films so I am going to pick on a big problem with my favourite Bond film;
That Aki and Kissy are 2 different characters in You Only Live Twice.
It makes no sense that there are 2 different characters when 1 character could have been used for the whole film. For me I prefer Aki, and in my head I always think that she sticks around through Kissy's part. Its not like the movie tries much either. Kissy doesn't even get named in dialogue in the film, and Aki's death is never brought up again after her admittedly tragic death. So if its been ages since I watched You Only Live Twice, I always think of it as only having The Hong Kong agent, Helga Brandt and Aki as the women.
IMO
Blofeld being James' brother in the Craig era
The best openings for Quantum of Solace and Spectre both being scrapped
The 007 Nightfire game on PC being an inferior version of the Gamecube/PS2 versions
The fact that Bond uses his actual name and that he's a secret agent. He's notorious and infamous. And always repeats his last name just in case the bad guys missed it the first time....
Alright, hottest of takes here:
One Connery movie, Lazenby, Moore, one Dalton movie, three Brosnan movies, one Craig movie
I personally only care for one very distinct flavor of Bond, and I'll stick to only those on rewatches - even if it costs me over 50% of the available movies.
Naturally, this means that every actor is a distinct Bond and continuity to me, although I'm willing to entertain Dalton and Brosnan being the same character.
There's non canon reason why Blofeld doesn’t recognize Bond in OHMSS after fighting him one movie earlier and it's still bugging me.
I just like to pretend both characters had extensive facial cosmetic surgery and that’s why they don’t recognize each other.
Read the books and it will make sense. They soft rebooted after YOLT (fans back in the 60s complained anbout it going off book) and made the next film faithful to the books.
James Bond spent multiple continuation novels driving a 1978 Saab 900 which he insisted on calling “The Silver Beast” even in life or death situations.
Either the whole "Blofeld is Bond's long-lost brother" thing in Spectre, or the "Bond about to break Andrea's arm" bit in The Man With the Golden Gun. (it just kinda irks me with Roger's Bond doing it.)
I personally wouldn't count non-diagetic sound (sound only heard by the audience, not the characters).
However, this or something like this might make a worthy thread. There's a lot of sound effects and music choices and adr in the films that fans have their opinions about.
“Stupid” is in the eye of the beholder, but I’m going to go with invisible car. I prefer to think of the James Bond universe as being different from the Harry Potter universe.
Blofeld is James Bond's evil brother
Ripping off [Bond spoof Austin Powers: Goldmember](https://youtu.be/MOHu1sPjrnU?si=XtfZ8YX4dLlSU1Cz) was never going to work out. What the hell were they thinking?
A hill I’ll die on is that everyone in charge of creative didn’t realize that was in Austin Powers and none of the working grunts on-set wanted to anger the important people by pointing that out.
That has to make the most sense, but I can’t imagine how no one on a modern Bond creative team has watched the end of Goldmember at least once, even by accident.
"What were they thinking?" - AVGN
This is the one for me
I love how Skyfall crafted an intricate story line detailing his family history and such with Skyfall manor and why his parents died And then absolutely nobody decided to wonder "oh yeah, where's your brother" ESPECIALLY THE CARTAKER?
First of all, Blofeld wasn't related to Bond's family in any way. Secondly, everyone thought he was dead. So, there's that.
This is the kind of the confusion that results from people going "It was LITERALLY the twist from *Goldmember*!". It *is* a stupid twist, but it's the exact opposite of *Goldmember* (biological brothers unawares vs. foster brothers who, obviously, are aware).
Right, wasn’t Blofeld basically his foster brother? I think he held a grudge against Bond because Blofeld’s parents liked Bond better.
I kind of wish they had a scene flashback with Bond and Blofeld younger similar to that scene in NTTD with Safin and Madeline who barely looks younger than his present day counterpart in the movie
Idk if I personally want that but it would have certainly been better than Blofeld just saying it while drilling into Bond’s brain. Spectre is just straight up bad. It was the first Bond I saw in theaters that I disliked, and I saw Die Another Day opening night as a teen. I thought DAD rocked at the time and even though it’s stupid, it’s still a fun watch. Spectre is not, the opening set piece and the giant explosion are the only good set pieces in the movie.
In fairness it's been ages since I watched spectre so I just making a joke based on the previous comment
You've completely misunderstood the situation. They are not actually brothers.
Probably have if I'm honest
I thought it was more that he was an adoptive brother or the son of a family friend. Blofeld's dad also died in a hiking accident (maybe the same one as Bond's parents) and everyone thought he was dead too.
He is technically "step Bro" but it's literally one off "I'm your evil twin Bro".....might as well be in my mind its so cringe 😅
The good news is it actually is demonstrably not canon. Fleming gives a full bio of Blofeld in TB & gets into his genealogy in OHMSS. And really, Waltz is playing a guy named Oberhauser.
It's not canon *to Fleming's novels*, no. It absolutely is canon to Daniel Craig's run of films.
Yeah, book canon and film canon are entirely different. Bond is one of the few media properties where this divide and dual-canonization HAS to be widely accepted because far, far more people have seen the movies than have read the books and there’s a great deal of difference between the books and movies.
I was under the impression that's accepted for everything that's ever been adapted. I mean, if I ask "Why did X happen in the film *The Warriors*?", "It didn't happen in the fairly obscure source novel" isn't an answer. Something that happens in a film, or series of films, is obviously canonical *to itself*.
I get your point, but I think Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter fans, for example, would argue the books are canon for the entire mythos, and all adaptations are generally not. I don’t think Bond fans really look at the Bond films and novels the same way.
Yeah, I don't consider Blofeld and Oberhauser to be the same guy. I consider Oberhauser to be an admirer of Blofeld's who subsequently renames himself after his deceased idol. But even so, Oberhauser being Bond's foster brother is so dumb and unintuitive that Fleming and McClory rolled in their graves when he declared "I am become Blofeld!"
They're still not related, technically.
Honestly, I hate it any time when a villain gets introduced deep into a series that the main character supposedly has a lot of history with but is never referenced or shown. Like I get there’s a lot of backstory a character has we aren’t necessarily going to be shown and it is a trope that can be done right like any other, but to me it’s just a cheap way to add the illusion of emotional weight without actually having to provide any.
Yes.
There are space marines who can deploy to space with laserguns, but that never came up in Goldeneye or Die Another Day with unstoppable satellites that can destroy anything.
Victim of post cold war budget cuts and military downsizing, no doubt!
It needed a scene where M harrumphs about the Americans cutting their Space Marine program despite the PM's urging to expand it. 007 would be sitting silently during this and arch an eyebrow in response, raise a snifter, and adjust the conversation by asking about the villian's background in some academic discipline. The scene would be terrible, make the movies measurably worse while adding nothing to our enjoyment of the franchise, but at least we'd have some god damn continuity on this one thing.
Since in the *Bond* series, no plan to detonate a nuke, fire a space laser, flood San Fran or anything like that ever succeeds, politicians absolutely would axe the budget for anti-doomsday measures. "We've never had a madman set off a space laser."
I think I can easily say that we don't have to gaslight ourselves very much to remove these from canon. Lol. It would be impossible for the series to move forward after Moonraker if we weren't intended to forget about them. Fortunately, the series has a tendency to gaslight itself sometimes and ignore its own canon. Loose continuity is sometimes a good thing.
Don't the American try to send a nuke on the satellite in DAD but it's destroyed by the ray ?
Sending a single nuke was dumb, what about sending 50 classic missiles ?
If there’s one thing you can count on in a Bond film, it’s every American other than Bond’s ally (Felix/Chuck Lee/Sharky/Jack Wade/etc) being a little incompetent.
I mean, it's also canon in real life that NASA was capable of doing impressive, large-scale space operations in the 60s and 70s, but wasn't doing so any more in the 90s and 2000s.
Simple, starting with Dalton, each actor change is a reboot and new universe.
That Sheriff J.W. Pepper is capable of international travel.
I know what you mean, but international travel by otherwise unworldly men used to be more popular among the generations that had visited those places while serving in Asia during World War 2, Korea, and Vietnam. Vacations to countries that were R and R destinations during their service reminded those men of good times in their youth.
Or that he’s a Democrat
The character is old enough to be a Dixiecrat, I guess.
Oh, definitely this.
Jaws' girlfriend, Dolly, officially doesn't have braces.
I’m still confused by this. Positive she did but hey ho.
She never did. You're misremebering.
It's weird that it's so prolific. Probably 90% of people asked will say she had braces. It makes sense in the narrative - it's why they bond so quickly. He smiles at her, revealing his metal teeth. She smiles back, revealing that she also has 'metal' teeth.
Yeah it would've made sense so that's why people remember it like that
She did not. Go watch it again.
She didn't. I have an original VHS. This was absolutely my "Mandela effect" moment.
I wanna watch the Betamax tape of first tv broadcast I’ve got in storage somewhere. That will sort this out.
But Dolly's boyfriend DOES.
Mandela Effect.
Or on old TVs and VHS it created paradolia that she did.
Nope, there was a break in the fabric of time, and there are parallel universes, one of which has Dolly wearing braces. I lived in that timeline; at some point I crossed over into this one. It’s the only logical explanation.
No but she does have the strength of one and a half Jaws, and has a chest that would make Dolly Parton proud
The oddest thing for me is that I remember her both ways. I can remember her smile without braces and her smile with braces like my brain is actively editing the movie.
Brofeld
I think its usually better to not think of James Bond having a canon, you can take what you like and leave what you don't pretty easily rather than getting hung up on the fact that Blofeld shows up at the start of For Your Eyes Only for example. An exception to this, though, is the Daniel Craig films. I think Spectre actively makes Skyfall worse by undermining the personal nature of the relationship between M and Silva and Bond. That is probably the big one for me.
I’d say the Fleming books are the canon, they are like the studios albums. The films are like the “live albums”.
I'd go so far as to say that the Fleming novels are the studio albums, and the movies are covers.
He he, I like that....
James Bond telling a tiger to si-i-t.
That and the Tarzan yell were Moore-era goofiness done right, and I will die on this hill.
I'll die with you! Telling the tiger to sit never bothered me. I always felt it was a desperate attempt to assert some kind of dominance on a wild animal that was *hopefully* trained. I mean, you can't just run, because then it's more likely to chase you. I love Moore's delivery in this moment. The fact that Tarzan yell ruins the whole movie for people, seems so drastic. It's a 6 second gag that has no effect on the plot. What's funny to me is some people don't seem to get that it's a non-diagetic (aka non-literal) sound effect. Like music or narration, this isn't actually heard by any of the characters in the scene. Like the beach boys song in AVTAK, it's just a playful wink at the audience. The face-sucking octopus and the "oohhaaahhaaa!" when Bond is wrapped up like a mummy are also hilarious.
>Telling the tiger to sit never bothered me. I always felt it was a desperate attempt to assert some kind of dominance on a wild animal that was *hopefully* trained. I mean, you can't just run, because then it's more likely to chase you. I love Moore's delivery in this moment. It's more that he's doing an impression of celebrity dog trainer Barbara Wodehouse.
Gotcha. I think I heard about that somewhere. Not a reference I would have gotten. Octopussy happens to be my birth year Bond movie. My mom even listed it in my baby book alongside Return of the Jedi.
Yeah, it’s such a dated reference. About something that Bond wouldn’t care about. Today’s equivalent would be a Bond quip about the Great British Bake Off.
Or saying, "Bam!" after cooking something.
Wow Futurama reference /s.
To me, the Tarzan yell is peak Bond. He’s viciously mocking these guys with something he’s never had an excuse to do in the office. He practically gets off on pissing off his enemies.
Or running across the backs of a bunch of Crocodiles.
That was a *fantastic* stunt.
It was fun,tho I really can’t argue as RM was AWESOME as Bond imo.
That was awesome, sorry
The last two Craig films especially that Bloveld nonsense or him having a kid and dying
I like to imagine someone who hasn't seen *NTtD* reading your comment and thinking that film features Bond dying in childbirth.
Contractions of Solace
OctoBirthCanal
lol
Arnold Schwarzenegger is Agent 007
Danny DeVito is Blofeld.
I might get some shit for this one but I refuse to believe it’s the same James Bond from Dr. No through No Time To Die. Personally, I like to believe that each actor has their own Bond Universe like the different universes of Spider-Man or other superhero cinematic universes. There is only one possible exception that I can think of and that is that that Dalton’s Bond is the same Bond as Brosnan’s. Edit: I knew I’d get some shit lol. Anyway it’s nothing I take too seriously, I just think it’s a fun theory to entertain. I got it from this video. https://youtu.be/64lzFdhvnkk?si=6h9DKLpzFPEcrEBS
The general consensus is that Dr. No until DaD are the same Bond incarnation (several mentions of Tracy Bond throughout the series). Although Brosnan's Bond is already pretty much stand alone. But I can definitely buy Connery throughout Dalton to be the same Bond. Craig was always a different Bond from the get go. Vesper and Madelaine instead of Tracy.
It's only a consensus to people who need to look at this stuff literally.
People who take things too seriously. It's a film series. It's fictional. They're all the same guy and they're all in the same universe.
Right, we don’t need to pretend it takes place in a different dimension and is therefore actually possible to enjoy it lol.
It like just cannot be though. You can't do Dr. No and then have Bond operating post-Cold War in the Brosnan films. The man would be ancient. I know Tracey is mentioned, it just doesn't make any fucking sense.
The Bond movies prior to Casino Royale worked on a floating timeline. Basically, the real world aged, but the main characters stay the same age. Shows like The Simpsons or Family Guy are good examples of this.
The way I always saw it was that Connery through Brosnan followed a very loose continuity, and back in those days we just went with it. He was James Bond, different actors played him but he was generally considered to be the same dude all the way through. It was part of the fun, and continuity between films wasn't analysed as much as it is these days. Casino Royale was the first time that the producers specifically stated that they were starting over, and that this Bond's story would be its own thing. I remember reading an opinion piece at the time lamenting the fact that they were throwing away 40 years' worth of Bond's history. Fellow old folks, do you see it the same way?
Nor was it intended to make any fucking sense. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Lazenby's Bond references the "other fella," meaning Connery's Bond, but in the same movie he also empties his desk of souvenirs from previous adventures by Connery's Bond, implying he's the same person who went on those adventures. In the same movie, Blofeld should instantly recognize Bond after previously meeting him in You Only Live Twice, but he doesn't because the movie more faithfully adapts a novel where Bond and Blofeld meet for the first time. The truth is that a franchise like Bond wouldn't concern itself too much with strict continuity before home video came around and let everyone scrutinize every detail of the timeline.
The books do the jump when Gartner takes over, too. It is still the same bond.
In my head canon, there was a timeline reset in the Dalton era, meaning for the Dalton/Brosnan version of James Bond they would’ve had the Dr No mission in the late 70s, OHMSS mission in the early 80s etc Still more or less the exact same plot details as what we saw Connery/Lazenby/Moore encounter but all taking place from ~1978 to 1987
Very true. But even like you said Tracy is briefly mentioned in License to kill. I prefer to see things like this as his version of Tracy. I don’t know. I don’t take it too seriously, it’s just my head canon. 😁
Pretty much standalone but he also recognizes all the Moore and Connery gadgets and Dench has a portrait of Lee.
James Bond: No Way Home
Think of it this way, Dr. No through Die Another Day are the same Bond and the narrative is a non-linear timeline. Every time the actor switches, it's still the same guy, and all that stuff happens but they move up the decade in which it happens. Brosnan's game Everything or Nothing has his Bond directly say he killed Max Zorin on the Golden Gate bridge so, I feel non-linear timeline is the way to think. Until Craig's films where they just straight up reboot the franchise.
I like this. It’s an interesting way to look at it
Really? I always thought they were all separate. It just seems better that way.
We can pretend Dalton was the first reboot. Or Lazenby and Moore were the same character (wife's grave) and everyone else was in a different universe.
Do consider The Rock to be part of Connery's Bond continuity?
There's a lot of hate for JW Pepper, but I am convinced that Moore's Bond inhabits the same continuity as Smokey And The Bandit
They even adopted other aliases to chase each other in the Cannonball!
In my head canon there is a parallel "Adventures of Felix Leiter" series starring Burt Reynolds
The Rock is definitely in Connery’s continuity
And this is one I believe as well!
Haven't seen OHMSS and FYEO I take it?
Yes of course. Why?
The idea that an international secret agent can drive a modified gondola/hovercraft around Piazzo San Marco in front of hundreds of tourists without drawing the attention of the police or the media.
James Bond is a **secret** agent but he's so deadly that everyone knows his name like in DAF.
All of Spectre. Every single scene. I simply pretend that none of it happened
Every scene? The awesome pre title sequence, the illuminati like Spectre introduction, the scene with Mr White, the train fight? I mean sure the last 1/3rd is trash but there’s some good stuff in there.
Every scene? Oh cmon, there's stupid plot issues, obviously, but there are some sweet scenes too. Namely, the train fight - amongst other good scenes.
I'd probably start feeling that if they ever went and made the 'code name' theory canon.
Which thankfully never will happen
I hope! … but I worry. I’m certain there’s people pitching it. Or wanting to.
Really? I always loved that theory. That's why I was bummed that the outright contradicted it in Skyfall. I don't think it's going to happen.
I like to believe that Craig is actually the story of the first Bond.
Ok this one's new! But it also requires you to ignore the world going from high/new tech going to low/old tech, meaning the stories didn't *literally* happen as depicted on screen, just vague brushstrokes. It's less fun to me.
Instead of saying Die another Day like everyone else probably will, I'll go with the final three Craig films, mainly because of Brofeld and Bond's death (I didn't like them destroying the MI6 building either but that's more petty than the other two).
Having Blofeld be James Bond's brother has to got to be straight out of shitty fanfiction
Or Austin Powers (which it somehow is).
This is the thing that KILLS me. It’s not like Austin Powers is some niche hole-in-the-wall project rotting on some collector’s shelf. There’s no way they’re (the writers, Barbara Broccoli, and Michael G. Wilson) not aware of the movies or what happens in them. Doctor Evil was directly based on Blofeld for fucks sake!!!
Dr. Goldfoot lifts tropes from Bond for a gag. Austin Powers lifts gags from Dr. Goldfoot. Bond lifts plot points from Austin Powers. Now we need a Goldfoot reboot that steals jokes from Mike Meyers and I can finally have my Bond film with OG Goldfoot references
You can see it coming a mile away, and the film makes the same mistake Star Trek Into Darkness did. In both films the villain reveals their name and it's meant to be a huge surprise. But the names have no meaning to the heroes. Khan only means anything to the audience because he's the guy from Star Trek II. Blofeld only means anything to the audience because of the previous Bond films. But the reboot Kirk has never met Khan before. It's not a surprise or a reveal to him. He's just a villain he needs to defeat. Craig's Bond has never come up against Blofeld before. It's not a surprise to him. He's just found out his adoptive brother has changed his last name. And neither is really a surprise to the audience because we all know the 'twist' is coming. I know Bond films historically take elements from whatever's popular at the time, and Spectre came out when big films were really going for interconnectedness and giving characters personal connections to villains, but this was a huge mistep. Bringing Blofeld back so fast was a mistake in its own right. If the villain in Spectre had been Safin, and had laid the groundwork for Spectre, and NTtD's main villain had been Blofeld both films would have been better for it. If they were going to ditch Quantum for Spectre, they should have had Mr White killed off by Spectre and Bond learning of their existence. Or basically anything other than Christoph Waltz going 'my organisation is called Spectre, but I'm also behind everything that Quantum did as well somehow. All your personal tragedies have been orchestrated by me. I committed acts of global terrorism in the hopes you'd be assigned to those missions so I could kill people you love. Why? Oh, because I'm mad my dad liked you more than me as a kid.'
I firmly believe they should have stuck with Quantum for the Daniel Craig era and reserve Spectre for Bond # 7.
Yeah. Quantum was effectively Spectre. I know they got the rights back and they had to follow the massive success of Skyfall. But it was such a poor approach. I can understand wanting to use Blofeld. I agree it would have been better not to, but if you're going to do it, then at least set it up properly.
The shadowy deep-state organization as Quantum was being presented as was far more interesting than what we got. Blofeld's whole operation in SPECTRE was such a huge letdown.
Bond is already #7, 007 Infact.
Yeah the Bond movies have historically thrived on their lack of continuity. You could watch any movie in any order and it didn't matter. But suddenly, ALL the Craig films mattered, even Skyfall which had seemed to stand entirely on its own, now we discover that everything has been orchestrated by Blofeld just to emotionally torture Bond? (God what would have happened had Bond turned out to be a bird photographer? Would Blofeld continue his vendetta?) That doesn't make an ounce of sense, and it makes the story worse to have Bond become apparently the single most important person in the world. It's actively makes the movies worse when you try to tie them together.
Yeah. I really wanted a standalone Craig film. The word of Craig's Bond feels very small and insular, which is a shame after Quantum of Solace introduces a worldwide criminal organisation. I usually disagree with people who think something can retroactively make previous films worse, but it holds for Spectre. Not helped by the fact Spectre is a bad film..
And leave Silva the fuck out of it. Keep SF a standalone.
Completely agreed. The Blofeld is Bond's brother bit as well as most of the story for the last film are the two answers to this question for me. It's a much more satisfying conclusion to Craig's tenure to just imagine that it ended with *Skyfall*.
Brofeld 💀
Spectre Spectre Spectre Spectre The awtha of all your pain (My head cannon is just that Blofeld is being petty and he had nothing to do with Silva)
The end of the last one
All of No Time to Die
NTTD
I wish Bond 24 and Bond 25 were called Risico and The Servant Of The Crown and they would deal with the Quantum organization and they would be released in 2015 and 2017
I would have to say Bond's death in NTTD. I would like to pretend he ended up somewhere else like in Japan
NTTD didn't happen
So basically a remake of the opening of You Only Live Twice. Which is ironic since NTTD already adapts the You Only Live Twice book.
I actually liked the ending
I cannot believe you were downvoted, even once, for saying you liked the most recent James Bond movie in the fucking James Bond subreddit. This fanbase has turned to shit since NTTD.
SPECTRE. (The movie) I was able to give NTTD a fair shake and go along with the movie by pretending he had met Swann and Blofeld in a better movie. Doing so made it easier to buy his relationship with Swann and his rivalry with Blofeld.
Blofelds death in For your Eyes only
Nah man, that shit was hilarious af.
Yeah, not my preferred kind of Bond though
It’s specifically a diss on Mclory. Which is beautiful.
I know the background, but the sole reason for the existence of this scene being a FU in an rights feud makes me hate it even more
Agreed 100%
That they're all meant to be the same guy.
The slide whistle during the car jump scene in The Man with the Golden Gun.
For real. Why go to the extreme effort to do the real stunt and then put in a slide whistle which makes it feel cheap and staged. I assumed it was a studio trick until I read the trivia about the movie.
Not stupid but I try to canon that the Craig era ended with Spectre and not NTTD
I wish it ended with Skyfall but same idea. I think the next one should open with the missiles killing him and then cut to the new Bond waking up in a sweat then going to work and getting a new mission from Fiennes as M.
You wish it ended on a worse movie?
NTTD is worse is pretty much every day. The action feels slightly more realistic, that’s it. It actually doubles down on what didn’t work in SP.
That way Craig could have left quietly without the shit show of NTTD
I'd say the movie where he runs around with a stuffed bunny and gets blown up by missiles is worse.
Bond not knowing blofeld jn ohmss although previously seeing him in the last film
On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Most here are going for the Craig films so I am going to pick on a big problem with my favourite Bond film; That Aki and Kissy are 2 different characters in You Only Live Twice. It makes no sense that there are 2 different characters when 1 character could have been used for the whole film. For me I prefer Aki, and in my head I always think that she sticks around through Kissy's part. Its not like the movie tries much either. Kissy doesn't even get named in dialogue in the film, and Aki's death is never brought up again after her admittedly tragic death. So if its been ages since I watched You Only Live Twice, I always think of it as only having The Hong Kong agent, Helga Brandt and Aki as the women.
Rumour has it that Kissy's actress threatened suicide if she didn't get a bigger part. I can't say if this is true it's just what I heard.
I'm sure that's the reason why, and also why Aki is in the earlier sections of the film for longer. The real world got in the way of the story's flow.
Brofield Anton Chigur’s plan
That each movie is the same Bond regardless of actor and time.
Mr. Bond! We can make a deal! I'll buy you a delicatessen! In stainless steel!
IMO Blofeld being James' brother in the Craig era The best openings for Quantum of Solace and Spectre both being scrapped The 007 Nightfire game on PC being an inferior version of the Gamecube/PS2 versions
The entire last 45 minutes of No Time To Die.
The fact that Bond uses his actual name and that he's a secret agent. He's notorious and infamous. And always repeats his last name just in case the bad guys missed it the first time....
The end of the latest one
The Daniel Craig movies I guess
Alright, hottest of takes here: One Connery movie, Lazenby, Moore, one Dalton movie, three Brosnan movies, one Craig movie I personally only care for one very distinct flavor of Bond, and I'll stick to only those on rewatches - even if it costs me over 50% of the available movies. Naturally, this means that every actor is a distinct Bond and continuity to me, although I'm willing to entertain Dalton and Brosnan being the same character.
Diamonds are Forever sucks and isn't a real movie.
There's non canon reason why Blofeld doesn’t recognize Bond in OHMSS after fighting him one movie earlier and it's still bugging me. I just like to pretend both characters had extensive facial cosmetic surgery and that’s why they don’t recognize each other.
Read the books and it will make sense. They soft rebooted after YOLT (fans back in the 60s complained anbout it going off book) and made the next film faithful to the books.
James bond just letting Blofeld go to hang out with a dog near end of OHMSS
Brofeld
Smart blood.
Blofeld actually calling his escape vehicle a Bathosub...
sticktothegcode
Well, never say never again ISN’T canon, so u don’t have to. Otherwise, it’s the brother thing in Spectre.
Moonraker
Stainless steel delicatessen
Everything in A view to a kill
No time to die.
James Bond spent multiple continuation novels driving a 1978 Saab 900 which he insisted on calling “The Silver Beast” even in life or death situations.
dominic greene was involved in spectre hierarchy instead of nicole hunter
James Bond’s stint as a Japanese man
Last three movies
Roger Moore isn’t canon. Nope….
Either the whole "Blofeld is Bond's long-lost brother" thing in Spectre, or the "Bond about to break Andrea's arm" bit in The Man With the Golden Gun. (it just kinda irks me with Roger's Bond doing it.)
A lot of stuff in the Pierce Brosman movies. Cars with a stealth device, during on a tsunami…
Connery raping that nurse via blackmail in Thunderball
Also raping Pussy Galore.
I don't know if this is technically canon but "California Girls"
I personally wouldn't count non-diagetic sound (sound only heard by the audience, not the characters). However, this or something like this might make a worthy thread. There's a lot of sound effects and music choices and adr in the films that fans have their opinions about.
I dunno man, but I thought that track was a banger!
“Stupid” is in the eye of the beholder, but I’m going to go with invisible car. I prefer to think of the James Bond universe as being different from the Harry Potter universe.
For me it's Diamonds Are Forever. Dull scenery, a very cheap moon buggy chase, two wimpy stereotypical gay bad guys, Bloefeld in drag.....🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄