the line about getting closer to you in jamacia from bond to lieter in goldfinger refers to the book live and let die, in which felix is eaten by sharks ( the scene was used in ltk )and almost dies. M also used an obscure line in Dr no about Bonds gun jamming and spending six months in the hospital. This was a refferance to the book from russia with love which was the book before Dr No
the line about getting closer to you in jamacia from bond to lieter in goldfinger refers to the book live and let die, in which felix is eaten by sharks ( the scene was used in ltk )and almost dies. M also used an obscure line in Dr no about Bonds gun jamming and spending six months in the hospital. This was a refferance to the book from russia with love which was the book before Dr No
But, Harry, M's line in Dr. No comes directly from the book, and, frankly, in the movie it's very much a throwaway line. However, in the novel Goldfinger Bond does not make reference to the enemy getting close to Felix in Jamaica--and why would he? Felix essentially has a cameo in the book, and the novel appeared some five years after LALD and after a mutilated Felix had shown up in DAF. In the movie GF Felix has a relatively large role and he isn't injured at all. As I said, I think the line in the movie is solely to tell viewers that this is the same character from DN, even though he's now played by Cec Linder rather than Jack Lord.
As I said, I think the line in the movie is solely to tell viewers that this is the same character from DN, even though he's now played by Cec Linder rather than Jack Lord.
Perhaps they wouldn't have even needed the line if they managed to get someone who even in the slightest way resembled Jack Lord. Astute movie-goers would have recognized the name Felix Leiter, regardless of what the character looked like. Adding the "Jamaica" comment was almost like kicking sand in Jack Lord's face - saying "anybody can play this character! and we're going to make it obvious that we don't care!"
Give it time, and I think we'll see Angela Lansbury playing Felix Leiter with Bond saying something stupid like: "I see you've got your peg leg replaced!"
Oh, and how could I forget this--? In the Live and Let Die novel, Felix does not make it to Jamaica; he's mutilated in Florida (as he is in LTK). So, again, the line in GF has nothing to do with a Fleming novel.
Give it time, and I think we'll see Angela Lansbury playing Felix Leiter with Bond saying something stupid like: "I see you've got your peg leg replaced!"
In TB, Bond says to Domino on the beach: "Largo had your brother killed, or it was on his orders!"
Er... don't both of these mean the same thing? ?:)
(In the novel, he says "Your brother was killed by Largo, or on his orders", which makes a hell of a lot more sense. Of course, in the novel Vargas kills her brother while in the film Largo does.) I wonder if Connery slipped up on the line and Terence Young decided to keep it in because the scene otherwise worked well?
Though it violates the spirit of my own thread, another line that has bothered me in recent years is Brosnan's "You're not living if you don't feel alive?! Isn't that what you said?! "badgering of Elektra in TWINE. It's not the dialogue, per se, so much as his delivery of it.
He's clearly meant to be shown making a connection between Renard and Ms.King but instead comes-off as whiney and petulant. Worse, seconds later it's as though the entire matter is forgotten. Brosnan had an unfortuate tendency to want to play it all like Shakespeare which in case gives us the "huh?" of a red-herring/lost opportunity.
Though it violates the spirit of my own thread, another line that has bothered me in recent years is Brosnan's "You're not living if you don't feel alive?! Isn't that what you said?! "badgering of Elektra in TWINE. It's not the dialogue, per se, so much as his delivery of it.
He's clearly meant to be shown making a connection between Renard and Ms.King but instead comes-off as whiney and petulant. Worse, seconds later it's as though the entire matter is forgotten. Brosnan had an unfortuate tendency to want to play it all like Shakespeare which in case gives us the "huh?" of a red-herring/lost opportunity.
I was thinking about this scene yesterday...and the whole thing never made sense to me. His whiney "He knew all about my shoulder" bit was so poorly pulled off - I tried to imagine Connery (or any other Bond actor) with that dialogue, but I think Brosnan is the only one who can portray the "You're not playing nice" Bond. The thing that confuses me most about that scene is that Elektra really never provides any plausible defense for herself, but manages to get Bond swooning back into her arms with a few oblique references. IMO it makes Bond look like a lovesick teenager and not a secret-agent on a mission.
Though it violates the spirit of my own thread, another line that has bothered me in recent years is Brosnan's "You're not living if you don't feel alive?! Isn't that what you said?! "badgering of Elektra in TWINE. It's not the dialogue, per se, so much as his delivery of it.
He's clearly meant to be shown making a connection between Renard and Ms.King but instead comes-off as whiney and petulant. Worse, seconds later it's as though the entire matter is forgotten. Brosnan had an unfortuate tendency to want to play it all like Shakespeare which in case gives us the "huh?" of a red-herring/lost opportunity.
I was thinking about this scene yesterday...and the whole thing never made sense to me. His whiney "He knew all about my shoulder" bit was so poorly pulled off - I tried to imagine Connery (or any other Bond actor) with that dialogue, but I think Brosnan is the only one who can portray the "You're not playing nice" Bond. The thing that confuses me most about that scene is that Elektra really never provides any plausible defense for herself, but manages to get Bond swooning back into her arms with a few oblique references. IMO it makes Bond look like a lovesick teenager and not a secret-agent on a mission.
That scene has always kind of bothered me as I think they wrote the script and were like. "Uh oh, we never really dropped any real hints that Elektra was the villain." So they had to go back and have Bond all suspicious which he should be but it was too full-blown...
The thing that confuses me most about that scene is that Elektra really never provides any plausible defense for herself, but manages to get Bond swooning back into her arms with a few oblique references. IMO it makes Bond look like a lovesick teenager and not a secret-agent on a mission.
You've actually done a better job of defining why that scene doesn't work than I did. We had a chance for some classic "cat and mouse" dialogque along the lines of Bond versus Tilly in GF but instead we get this smitten fool who rolls over with barely the bat of a false eyelash.
I like Elektra's explanation for why she killed her father.It's clearly explained in the novelization but somehow it managed to not appear in the movie.
However, Elektra does shriek,"Izz miiiiinnne!"Maybe for Eon that's enough by way of clarification...
I like Elektra's explanation for why she killed her father.It's clearly explained in the novelization but somehow it managed to not appear in the movie.
However, Elektra does shriek,"Izz miiiiinnne!"Maybe for Eon that's enough by way of clarification...
But it was explained in the film. ?:) Electra was angry at her father for betraying her during the kidnapping and wanted to take back what she believed that her father had stolen from her mother.
"He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. and then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." Death of a Salesman
I like Elektra's explanation for why she killed her father.It's clearly explained in the novelization but somehow it managed to not appear in the movie.
However, Elektra does shriek,"Izz miiiiinnne!"Maybe for Eon that's enough by way of clarification...
But it was explained in the film. ?:) Electra was angry at her father for betraying her during the kidnapping and wanted to take back what she believed that her father had stolen from her mother.
I'm joking,Dan.Yeah,it's explained and I got it the first time around but it wasn't as clearly spelled out as I'd have prefered.Of course,Elektra's insane, so that also explains some of her behavior.(In the original screenplay, 007 doesn't kill Elektra.In the final scene he visits her at an asylum and sees that her mind is completely gone.)
Okay, the scene in TND when Bond and Wai Linn have just escaped the clutches of Carver and outmaneuvered his henchman on the motercycle. They're fleeing for their life, have stolen a motorcycle, and have just destroyed an attacking helicopter. So what do they do next? Take time to shower in the street while still handcuffed together. No worries about more thugs or shedding those pesky handcuffs, even though there is a mission to deal with. I just don't get it.
Well, they were in Viet Nam so it probably was about 110° F, 85% humidity thus I can excuse it. On the other hand, the idea that Wai Ling could have gotten them out of the handcuffs at any point prior I find annoying; reminds me of the scene in ... Roger Rabbit when he observes that he couldn't remove the cuffs whenever he wanted to ... only when it was funny.
In FRWL, during the gypsy camp fight, Bond jumps into the fray but he seems to not be helping at all. There are a couple of times where he dispatches some invading Bulgars, but often times he's hindering the fighting gypsies. In one instance he collapses a tent on a gypsy and his foe, in another instance he pins them to a fence with a burning wagon, and a third time, he dumps a gypsy and bulgar into the water. If I were a gypsy, I'd be asking myself "Who's side is this guy on?!"
Similarly, Octopussy's "I have no price on my head!" tantrum, followed by her storming out of the room, is certainly not consistent with the dialogue that precedes it.
This one has always foxed me too, but, having just finished watching Octopussy on UE DVD (and a word of warning; my version didn't have the "East Berlin" or "Kremlin Fine Art Depository" captions onscreen, though sadly it did have "GET OFF MY BED") I think I may have finally worked it out.
This is not a defence of Maibaum, Wilson & MacDonald Fraser, as I think it's still badly written; but I've come to the conclusion that the reason this doesn't work is because Maud Adams and John Glen have misjudged the character of Octopussy. As portrayed on film, she's flirtatious, smiling, and pliant, and yes, as a result she's a very pretty Bond Girl. However, I think as written, she was intended to be much colder and more dominant - more along the lines of Elektra King, with all the "is she or isn't she?" tension that would embody. (Remember, in early drafts, she was the villain).
Think of it this way; Octopussy is a powerful, domineering woman who is used to snapping her fingers and having people obey (Kamal: "A no from you has very little chance of becoming a yes"). In her first appearance, Bond enters and confronts her about 009's death, and she immediately changes the subject. As filmed, it's clumsy, a total sea change in the conversation for no apparent reason. If Octopussy were a far more strident woman, then the change in topic would be because she has no interest in talking about Bond's topic; she has one of her own to deal with (It would also hint that she knew full well that someone had been murdered, perhaps even on her orders, so that her smuggling scheme would not be destroyed). The story of Dexter Smythe suddenly acquires a tension it is missing onscreen. She is discussing her father's death with the man who brought it about (not, as it appears onscreen, using it as a chat up line).
Octopussy: I'd hoped fate would bring us together one day. Bond: To avenge him?
(A pause; in that moment she is possibly on 007's side, probably not. Then she smiles, and a small crack appears in her cool facade)
Octopussy: No. To thank you for giving him an honourable alternative.
By making her a much more ambiguous figure, there is a tension to their relationship. They are equals, with Octopussy having a similar dispassionate attitude to life and relationships as Bond. That is why they are "two of a kind".
So we get to the aforementioned scene. Octopussy is now asking Bond to wait for her while she goes away on business; except she's not asking, she's telling, making him into the little woman at home. She is asserting her dominance over the relationship because that is what she is used to. She sits down, and basically gives Bond his orders; he'll become a member of her staff, a bounty hunter doing her bidding ("There are vast rewards for a man willing to take risks") - in as many words, she's making him her concubine.
But Bond turns her down. He refuses her, and she becomes petulant, because no-one has refused her before. She storms out, passionate and enraged that someone has the temerity to disagree with her - yet at the same time, aroused by the challenge. (Admittedly, the bit about "I don't have to apologise to you, a paid assassin, for what I am" still doesn't make any sense, and definitely comes out of nowhere - he didn't ask her to!).
Now that Bond has reasserted his dominance, he is also aroused, because 007 wants a woman to challenge and excite him. So he goes in the other room, concurs that they are two of a kind, and they fall into bed.
That's how it exists on the page, but somewhere, in translation, Octopussy became a lot softer round the edges. Maud Adams is all smiles from her first appearance, and it's hard to believe that she could be the head of a crime syndicate, even if all her underlings are girls. Think of Octopussy as played by Sophie Marceau or Honor Blackman, and suddenly the script makes a lot more sense. (Though it still doesn't excuse the Tarzan yell or the Barbara Woodhouse - what were they thinking?).
Can anyone explain why, in DAD, Jinx kills the doctor, burns her records, and bombs the clinic? (Of course, I regard Jinx as possibly the only "huh character" in the series: Take her out of the film and the storyline is still the same.*)
*It was perhaps years before I happened to notice that Dr.Goodhead is completely missing from the MR ViewMater reels ... presumably GAF thought the name too racy for children.
I know picking holes in MR is like shooting fish in a barrel, but... the scene where Bond is driven out to meet Drax's shooting party has never made any sense to me.
If Drax intends to kill Bond, why go through all the rigmarole of having the assassin hiding in the tree - why not just shoot him as soon as he arrives? There are no apparent witnesses, and even if there were it wouldn't have looked much like an accident. Then to compound the situation, Bond shoots the gunman and is allowed to make his witty quip and leave. As you say, "Huh?" Why didn't Drax have one of his other henchmen shoot him?
I know picking holes in MR is like shooting fish in a barrel, but... the scene where Bond is driven out to meet Drax's shooting party has never made any sense to me.
If Drax intends to kill Bond, why go through all the rigmarole of having the assassin hiding in the tree - why not just shoot him as soon as he arrives? There are no apparent witnesses, and even if there were it wouldn't have looked much like an accident. Then to compound the situation, Bond shoots the gunman and is allowed to make his witty quip and leave. As you say, "Huh?" Why didn't Drax have one of his other henchmen shoot him?
Or am I missing something?
Don't be silly, Mrs. D...obviously they had exhausted all their ammunition during the pheasant hunt! Bond carefully counted all the shots and did not arrive on the scene until he was positive it was safe.
(Of course, I regard Jinx as possibly the only "huh character" in the series: Take her out of the film and the storyline is still the same.*)
You're absolutely right. The only purpose she served, it seems, was to provide a reason for Bond not killing Zao. However any screenwriter could have come up with a good reason. 8-)
"He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. and then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." Death of a Salesman
I know picking holes in MR is like shooting fish in a barrel, but... the scene where Bond is driven out to meet Drax's shooting party has never made any sense to me.
If Drax intends to kill Bond, why go through all the rigmarole of having the assassin hiding in the tree - why not just shoot him as soon as he arrives? There are no apparent witnesses, and even if there were it wouldn't have looked much like an accident. Then to compound the situation, Bond shoots the gunman and is allowed to make his witty quip and leave. As you say, "Huh?" Why didn't Drax have one of his other henchmen shoot him?
Or am I missing something?
I guess the idea was that it might look like an accident, whereas if an assassin approached out in the open then Bond would spot him and pull his gun. Hidden in the trees, the killer would be hidden.
It's just another bungled attempt by Drax to make an 'accident' like the centrofuge thing.
Sorry Napoleon, but I don't buy it. I can understand the centrifuge/'accident' idea, but Holly turned up to spoil things in that instance.
At the shooting party, however quick a shot Bond is, Drax appears to have at least ten of his men standing around with loaded rifles. They've all seen the chap who took a pot-shot at Jimmy and none of them seemed to think it was a tragedy when he fell from the tree. For Drax to contrive this whole scenario and let Bond drive away seems "Huh?" personified.
I think I liked darenhat's answer better (nice hat, by the way):
Don't be silly, Mrs. D...obviously they had exhausted all their ammunition during the pheasant hunt! Bond carefully counted all the shots and did not arrive on the scene until he was positive it was safe.
Comments
That just screams classy dame right there, doesn't it?
What the heck kind of woman did she used to be when she and Bond had their thing, a biker chick or something? Or maybe a heavy metal band groupie?
The rest of you have come up with some real head-scratchers as well.
But, Harry, M's line in Dr. No comes directly from the book, and, frankly, in the movie it's very much a throwaway line. However, in the novel Goldfinger Bond does not make reference to the enemy getting close to Felix in Jamaica--and why would he? Felix essentially has a cameo in the book, and the novel appeared some five years after LALD and after a mutilated Felix had shown up in DAF. In the movie GF Felix has a relatively large role and he isn't injured at all. As I said, I think the line in the movie is solely to tell viewers that this is the same character from DN, even though he's now played by Cec Linder rather than Jack Lord.
Perhaps they wouldn't have even needed the line if they managed to get someone who even in the slightest way resembled Jack Lord. Astute movie-goers would have recognized the name Felix Leiter, regardless of what the character looked like. Adding the "Jamaica" comment was almost like kicking sand in Jack Lord's face - saying "anybody can play this character! and we're going to make it obvious that we don't care!"
Give it time, and I think we'll see Angela Lansbury playing Felix Leiter with Bond saying something stupid like: "I see you've got your peg leg replaced!"
Er... don't both of these mean the same thing? ?:)
(In the novel, he says "Your brother was killed by Largo, or on his orders", which makes a hell of a lot more sense. Of course, in the novel Vargas kills her brother while in the film Largo does.) I wonder if Connery slipped up on the line and Terence Young decided to keep it in because the scene otherwise worked well?
He's clearly meant to be shown making a connection between Renard and Ms.King but instead comes-off as whiney and petulant. Worse, seconds later it's as though the entire matter is forgotten. Brosnan had an unfortuate tendency to want to play it all like Shakespeare which in case gives us the "huh?" of a red-herring/lost opportunity.
I was thinking about this scene yesterday...and the whole thing never made sense to me. His whiney "He knew all about my shoulder" bit was so poorly pulled off - I tried to imagine Connery (or any other Bond actor) with that dialogue, but I think Brosnan is the only one who can portray the "You're not playing nice" Bond. The thing that confuses me most about that scene is that Elektra really never provides any plausible defense for herself, but manages to get Bond swooning back into her arms with a few oblique references. IMO it makes Bond look like a lovesick teenager and not a secret-agent on a mission.
That scene has always kind of bothered me as I think they wrote the script and were like. "Uh oh, we never really dropped any real hints that Elektra was the villain." So they had to go back and have Bond all suspicious which he should be but it was too full-blown...
You've actually done a better job of defining why that scene doesn't work than I did. We had a chance for some classic "cat and mouse" dialogque along the lines of Bond versus Tilly in GF but instead we get this smitten fool who rolls over with barely the bat of a false eyelash.
However, Elektra does shriek,"Izz miiiiinnne!"Maybe for Eon that's enough by way of clarification...
I'm joking,Dan.Yeah,it's explained and I got it the first time around but it wasn't as clearly spelled out as I'd have prefered.Of course,Elektra's insane, so that also explains some of her behavior.(In the original screenplay, 007 doesn't kill Elektra.In the final scene he visits her at an asylum and sees that her mind is completely gone.)
Well, they were in Viet Nam so it probably was about 110° F, 85% humidity thus I can excuse it. On the other hand, the idea that Wai Ling could have gotten them out of the handcuffs at any point prior I find annoying; reminds me of the scene in ... Roger Rabbit when he observes that he couldn't remove the cuffs whenever he wanted to ... only when it was funny.
This one has always foxed me too, but, having just finished watching Octopussy on UE DVD (and a word of warning; my version didn't have the "East Berlin" or "Kremlin Fine Art Depository" captions onscreen, though sadly it did have "GET OFF MY BED") I think I may have finally worked it out.
This is not a defence of Maibaum, Wilson & MacDonald Fraser, as I think it's still badly written; but I've come to the conclusion that the reason this doesn't work is because Maud Adams and John Glen have misjudged the character of Octopussy. As portrayed on film, she's flirtatious, smiling, and pliant, and yes, as a result she's a very pretty Bond Girl. However, I think as written, she was intended to be much colder and more dominant - more along the lines of Elektra King, with all the "is she or isn't she?" tension that would embody. (Remember, in early drafts, she was the villain).
Think of it this way; Octopussy is a powerful, domineering woman who is used to snapping her fingers and having people obey (Kamal: "A no from you has very little chance of becoming a yes"). In her first appearance, Bond enters and confronts her about 009's death, and she immediately changes the subject. As filmed, it's clumsy, a total sea change in the conversation for no apparent reason. If Octopussy were a far more strident woman, then the change in topic would be because she has no interest in talking about Bond's topic; she has one of her own to deal with (It would also hint that she knew full well that someone had been murdered, perhaps even on her orders, so that her smuggling scheme would not be destroyed). The story of Dexter Smythe suddenly acquires a tension it is missing onscreen. She is discussing her father's death with the man who brought it about (not, as it appears onscreen, using it as a chat up line).
Octopussy: I'd hoped fate would bring us together one day.
Bond: To avenge him?
(A pause; in that moment she is possibly on 007's side, probably not. Then she smiles, and a small crack appears in her cool facade)
Octopussy: No. To thank you for giving him an honourable alternative.
By making her a much more ambiguous figure, there is a tension to their relationship. They are equals, with Octopussy having a similar dispassionate attitude to life and relationships as Bond. That is why they are "two of a kind".
So we get to the aforementioned scene. Octopussy is now asking Bond to wait for her while she goes away on business; except she's not asking, she's telling, making him into the little woman at home. She is asserting her dominance over the relationship because that is what she is used to. She sits down, and basically gives Bond his orders; he'll become a member of her staff, a bounty hunter doing her bidding ("There are vast rewards for a man willing to take risks") - in as many words, she's making him her concubine.
But Bond turns her down. He refuses her, and she becomes petulant, because no-one has refused her before. She storms out, passionate and enraged that someone has the temerity to disagree with her - yet at the same time, aroused by the challenge. (Admittedly, the bit about "I don't have to apologise to you, a paid assassin, for what I am" still doesn't make any sense, and definitely comes out of nowhere - he didn't ask her to!).
Now that Bond has reasserted his dominance, he is also aroused, because 007 wants a woman to challenge and excite him. So he goes in the other room, concurs that they are two of a kind, and they fall into bed.
That's how it exists on the page, but somewhere, in translation, Octopussy became a lot softer round the edges. Maud Adams is all smiles from her first appearance, and it's hard to believe that she could be the head of a crime syndicate, even if all her underlings are girls. Think of Octopussy as played by Sophie Marceau or Honor Blackman, and suddenly the script makes a lot more sense. (Though it still doesn't excuse the Tarzan yell or the Barbara Woodhouse - what were they thinking?).
@merseytart
Roger Moore 1927-2017
*It was perhaps years before I happened to notice that Dr.Goodhead is completely missing from the MR ViewMater reels ... presumably GAF thought the name too racy for children.
I know picking holes in MR is like shooting fish in a barrel, but... the scene where Bond is driven out to meet Drax's shooting party has never made any sense to me.
If Drax intends to kill Bond, why go through all the rigmarole of having the assassin hiding in the tree - why not just shoot him as soon as he arrives? There are no apparent witnesses, and even if there were it wouldn't have looked much like an accident. Then to compound the situation, Bond shoots the gunman and is allowed to make his witty quip and leave. As you say, "Huh?" Why didn't Drax have one of his other henchmen shoot him?
Or am I missing something?
Don't be silly, Mrs. D...obviously they had exhausted all their ammunition during the pheasant hunt! Bond carefully counted all the shots and did not arrive on the scene until he was positive it was safe.
You're absolutely right. The only purpose she served, it seems, was to provide a reason for Bond not killing Zao. However any screenwriter could have come up with a good reason. 8-)
I guess the idea was that it might look like an accident, whereas if an assassin approached out in the open then Bond would spot him and pull his gun. Hidden in the trees, the killer would be hidden.
It's just another bungled attempt by Drax to make an 'accident' like the centrofuge thing.
Your scenario sounded a bit Schindler's List.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
At the shooting party, however quick a shot Bond is, Drax appears to have at least ten of his men standing around with loaded rifles. They've all seen the chap who took a pot-shot at Jimmy and none of them seemed to think it was a tragedy when he fell from the tree. For Drax to contrive this whole scenario and let Bond drive away seems "Huh?" personified.
I think I liked darenhat's answer better (nice hat, by the way):