One Gripe With the Craig 5-Film Stint
Napoleon Plural
LondonPosts: 10,274MI6 Agent
Craig's five film tenure takes him from Casino Royale to No Time To Die. The same film span took Sean Connery from Dr No to You Only Live Twice, and Roger Moore from Live And Let Die to For Your Eyes Only via Moonraker albeit within a shorter time span.
'No lectures, NP. We're ALL familiar with the chronology of the James Bond films...'
Okay, well, let's have a look at this. One could argue that Moore's FYEO is not so different in terms of scope and action to his debut. Of course, an action scene from the LALD novel - keel-hauling - is used in FYEO (though they nodded at that in LALD via Big's knifing of Moore's wrists prior to being dipped in the shark pool, come to think at it, I do digress a lot don't I?)
The avuncular Moore is better for offering to buy Bibi an ice cream than deflowering poor young Solitare though in truth both scenes are cringey.
Generally, LALD and FYEO occupy the same universe - one critic pointed out that while FYEO was said to be going back to FRWL, it only made it back to LALD in tone - but oddly the feel is different. Because LALD was still about pushing the boat out with the fantastical while FYEO tried to rein things in after the outlandish Moonraker, it does make heavy weather of things.
Of course, Moonraker is just out there, it doesn't belong in the same universe. The same goes for the one before it, TSWLM. I like to think it's the same guy, the same Roger Moore Bond, and it is, but the world is all different. You can't, for instance, imagine the gadget-laden Lotus in a film like LALD, or in FYEO for that matter. Yes, it's there - or an update of it - but to see it do its underwater stuff in that film just wouldn't be believable. Like a hilarious joke from the night before, or a holiday romance or one-night stand, an attempt to repeat it will fall flat without the build-up or the proper context. In fact, you can't imagine the underwater car being credible even in a film like Moonraker.
You could argue the same of the Aston Martin DB5. it works in Goldfinger, but not in a film like Diamonds Are Forever. It's not the same car in OHMSS, perhaps because the audience would be waiting for the gadgets to appear, perhaps because it's not the same kind of film, perhaps because at the end we'd be thinking, why doesn't Bond go after Blofeld with his gadget laden car, or - oops - let's hope he doesn't press the ejector seat by mistake and eject his dead bride. 'Without this body, the car will be lighter, you can go faster!' as Tatiana might say.
Anyway! Of course the Aston DB5 does reappear in Thunderball with its gadgets. But that works because TB is one of those movies that works as a sequel to GF, just as FRWL was arguably a sequel to Dr No. The pair roughly occupy the same universe.
Likewise, one could say that Golden Gun is a sequel to LALD in that, again, they appear to be the same kind of film, obeying the same logic and occupying the same universe. JW Pepper may be an unwelcome return but it is not as incongruous as showing up in Moonraker. Perhaps.
Jaws reappears in Moonraker and it makes sense because broadly they are the same universe. You can't see him in the other movies really.
But even then, Jaws looks different in MR, almost unrecognisable bar the teeth. Gone are the double breasted suits and air of Hammer menace, replaced by a lumbering gait, long hair and Tommy Cooper braces. It's like they don't want to be accused of repeating themselves.
The Sean Connery of YOLT is different to that of Dr No, as is the world he occupies. It just isn't the same. You don't notice because it takes a while to get there. And because we don't want to. Anchoring the films are the actors who play M, Moneypenny and Q, and who seem to age less than the Bond actors. I like to believe that the Bond of Moonraker is the same one of Dr No too and this was easier in my youth, after all, look how I was to change in 20 years - why wouldn't Bond and his films.
Another reason to believe was that the films were largely standalone. This is where the Craig movies differ, and is the problem I have (among others, natch).
The Bond universe of NTTD is just not the same as that of CR. Naturally, it has evolved, the Bond films always do. I would not want YOLT to be the same kind of movie as Dr No. The problem is, the plot arc that runs through the Craig movies impair this. You can have QoS as a kind of sequel to CR, just as FRWL was a kind of sequel to Dr No and so on. But Skyfall is a different kind of movie, isn't it. And the different directors along the way again make for a subtle different universe each time. I can buy SP as as sequel to SF as they're both Mendes. To buy NTTD as a sequel to SP is a big ask.
In some ways, the Bonds are the Bond genre in the same way that Raiders of the Lost Ark, Casablanca and The Sound of Music are the World War II genre. They all are, but just not the same kind of film. As there is nothing to link them, it's not jarring.
You can't rejig it but one problem for me with the Craig tenure is this - I personally love Spectre. Others don't. Because it has legs, because of how it deals with the Blofeld plot, it for some pollutes all the other movies. I didn't care about those previous films so I don't mind. I do care that NTTD - which I don't like - spoils Spectre for me (not for others) as it's a sequel. It takes away that old enjoyment of the standalone Bond films, where you accept that each one mostly occupies a different universe to the others but you just go with it because it breaks the monotony and you like the actor.
The Craig films inevitably evolve but in having a sort of plot arc we're meant to accept throughout makes the whole thing a bit less believable than it would otherwise be. (Admittedly, for some, the Roger Moore films are all so wholly incredible they are off the list.) But for me, the Craig films all hang together and stand or fall as one.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Comments
A very thoughtful write-up; most enjoyable to read. Thank you, Nap!
For me, NTTD actually elevates the lesser films of his quintet (interesting that you prefer SP, but I can certainly respect that, even if ultimately it's 4th in my Craig preference) and provides what feels like a natural close to the Craig Loop, as it were. And, in fact, it would seem to fall in line with your theory that each long-term Bond has managed to span stylistic universes within their tenure.
Cheers
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
I can see the Connery ones occupying their own universe, the Moore ones their own, the Dalton ones their own, etc. I don't believe they were intended that way, so I can also see them all occupying the same universe minus the fact that Bond's age crisscrosses the various decades.
I wouldn't agree, though, that each film or select groupings are a different standalone universe even with the same actor. Clearly, the Connery films became increasingly bigger and more fantastic, but one could argue Dr. No really makes that possible, despite the diversion to more serious spyjinks in From Russia with Love, with On Her Majesty's Secret Service swinging the pendulum back.
One could argue similar changes in tone and content affect any number of series, including television. The Man from UNCLE, Lost in Space, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea start out as comparatively believable fantasies before deviating to far more ridiculous storytelling (and sometimes back again). A similar point might be made about The Avengers. The various Batman incarnations have drifted back and forth, too.
The great thing about Bond is he lends himself to both more serious storytelling and more outrageous. The character is built on a foundation of fantasy -- he's too tall, too noticeable, and too privileged to be taken seriously as any kind of spy, who need to blend in and move around unobserved, quickly forgotten if they're seen. A man his size would be an easy target to shoot, and he'd struggle to get in and out of cars and planes quickly. He's stick out like a sore thumb in 90% of the world's countries, which would severely limit his effectiveness globally. But once we accept his limitations as part of the fantasy, he can easily be played silly or straight.
it is a good point.
The earlier films always presented themselves as episodic, with very minor exceptions. Thus they can vary radically in tone and even in-universe details, and we can forgive them for that because we have no serious expectation they all line up seamlessly.
The five Craig films were different from the start, because they explicitly took place in their own universe, and were always intended to link together as a long soap opera style saga. So we do expect consistent tone and internal logic in these films, and aside from reprising Vesper's Theme once a film what's more obvious is the wild changes in tone, and the lapses in internal logic.
One problem is of course they took 15 odd years to complete this five part saga. Something like this should have worked better if filmed at the pace of the original films: once every two years, or even every one. Imagine if they'd filmed a five part saga the way Peter Jackson did Lord of the Rings? he did all the proper photography with actors and locations as if it were one film, then took his time with editing postproduction and CGI to space out the releases once per year.
Or even if there were just a behind the scenes long term plan that theyd stuck to. Folks keep saying the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not comparable, but here it is. Kevin Feige and his collaborators know years in advance how all the Marvel releases are going to fit together, plant the clues to the plot threads, and it all seems seamless. They come from the background of real comic books, where that sort of writing has been normal since at least the days of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. These five Bond films on the other hand look like they started from scratch each time and struggle to retrofit what came before if not ignore or contradict.
Having one director for all five films sounds like it should have been a good idea, but in fact the only time a director returned resulted in a worse film than its predecessor (sorry Napster just my opinion) , and which actually undid plot details of his first film that originally made it stand apart from the rest.
Well, my point is, I can accept Moonraker, I can accept For Your Eyes Only (actually, not really, I never cared for that one) - but there was a direct mention in the latter re the former, my suspension of disbelief would fall out the window. A mention in AVTAK - 'Hey, you're the guy involved with that space shuttle!' Or a return of Tatianiana Romanova in TSWLM as Triple X as was mooted at one point, it just kills it. The Lotus and its gadgets in OP - doesn't work.
Yet the Craig films constantly reference past movies - tossing breadcrumbs that lead back to Casino Royale - so it becomes a bit of a bind for me. I am making heavy weather of my explanation though!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
@caractacus potts I saw NTTD for a second time this week and having read so much of everyone else's opinion, it was hard to shake them off and try to appreciate it anew.
As I'm a subscriber to the pseudonym theory, it doesn't bother me one way or another that these five films stand alone. In fact it makes them easier to accept. It also doesn't bother me that, in particular, Dalton and Brosnan at times have the history of Lazenby thrust on them. The references are not as obvious as those in Moore's tenure.
My problem with CraigBond is that his era as you suggest was not prefigured. If it had been, it would surly have made an awful lot more sense. I believe CR to be one of the best films in the series, probably my number 5 or 4, depending on how I feel on the day or whether I've seen it recently. I enjoyed it partly because it was different to the previous 20 entries, being a reboot of the character, returning to Fleming, dramatic as opposed to exciting, a love story, a tragedy. I hoped this was going to pave the road for a more mature take on Bond and in a way QOS fulfils that need. CraigBond's second outing has grown on me enormously, chiefly because as sequel it works. It also isn't overtly connected to CR, only towards the end when Bond learns from Greene the secrets of Quantum and tracks down Yusef, do we return to the story of Vesper and Bond's relationship. Essentially, it stands well on its own.
Similarly SF also bears no relationship to the other two films, a few veiled references aside. It's more to do with M and Silva's relationship. Bond's mission is successful, what goes wrong afterwards is MI6's fault - well, Q's as it happens. I didn't like the idea of Bond disappearing off the face of the digital planet so much. Some people say this is Craig's YOLT moment, but I don't see that at all - no memory loss, no unborn child, no revenge killing to pre-empt his own amnesia. He's just collateral damage and MIA. I can understand why he's pissed, but he soon gets back on the job. They could have made the film a damn sight shorter by cutting out this whole irrelevant segment. It only becomes relevant because the writers cram the incident into Silva's speeches. It's as if they are telling us all the incidents in Bond's life are in some way related to the people he knows and trusts. So, okay, I get that if that's what you want and what you like. Personally, I think it's a cheap way to try and foster emotions and motivations onto your characters. They no longer develop organically through experience, they are delivered wholesale from the past. What made CR so good was it was recreating the James Bond mythology for the 2000s. He didn't have a past - although Vesper guesses a bunch of it - and he doesn't have a future, other than his work; we know that because even when he tries to escape it comes back to haunt him. So why does he try to escape it in SF?
This same problem occurs again in SP with the Brother-Blofeld scheme. This film also harks back to M and some dodgy VCR with beyond the grave messages. I cannot understand why Bond never draws Mallory's attention to this order from his predecessor. The whole going rogue thing had been done in QOS and to a lesser extent in SF. Bond doesn't respect Mallory; he really doesn't, although that's not entirely clear here. For the most part though, SP is a traditional Bond film. It has a mission, it has a resolution. Except rather like SF the film can't stop when it should and we have an extended coda in London which has Bond rescuing people while Q saves the day - redeeming himself for the SF ****-up. The whole Quantum angle, the Silva angle, the Brother-Bond angle, simply doesn't need to be there. It's all shoehorned in around a sensible plot which ought to climax with a pitched battle between the SAS and Spectre at the desert meteor crater HQ. The coda and how Quantum and Madeleine and Mr Whie and Vesper and Silva and M and the whole bloody world, makes no sense. Eventually, Bond departs quite happily, but not necessarily forever with Madeleine Swann.
And so to NTTD. Another fairly good world threatening plot which doesn't need all the emotional baggage, the history and the anger. There is a mission - it's crammed into the mid section in London, a series of meetings and briefings where Bond acts superior to everyone at MI6, some overgrown arrogant sixth former whose just learnt the head boy's badge has been handed to a woman. He's cut up about Felix dying for sure, but why take it out on Mallory? Bond interfered in an MI6 operation and he knew it and he knew it was stupid to do so, because that's what he told Nomi. "Ask the question, MI6 and the Americans after the same man but not cooperating?" He claims it's all M's fault for funding Heracles. No, it's yours for messing about with an MI6 op for no reason other than someone mentions Spectre. Five years out and Bond is still haunted and reels himself back in. So dull. Why have him kicking himself out in the first place?
Bond's MI6 rehabilitation has been done before, in SF. And so has the childhood memory storyline. In SP, Bond is haunted by Oberhauser, who becomes Blofeld. In NTTD, Madeleine is haunted by Safin. But why is that storyline even there? It isn't Bond's story, it is hers. It is only there so the writers can add in all the history of Bond and Madeleine's relationship, can add in Bond and Blofeld, Safin and Blofeld, Madeleine and Mr White and Safin and Blofeld. To be frank, the expositional relationship stuff in the film bored me. Mind you, so did the nanobots. I think this whole sequence of scenes took up about twenty minutes mid-movie when it should have been sorted out in five during a proper MI6 briefing. I wanted this movie to take me somewhere exotic and thrilling. It didn't. It regurgitated all themes we've recently seen in CraigBond's tenure - trust, betrayal, death - with the surprise of a kid and an unwelcome hero's demise.
This might all have worked if some thought had been given to how the 5 films were going to progress. But there hasn't been. The first two maybe did and the fact they came around so fast tells me there was a cognitive decision to do this. SF stands alone. Even with Quantum / Spectre hanging over it from SP, the film really isn't like any other CraigBond or any other Bond frankly. SP is just a mess when it shouldn't have been and I think this is the first instance where the Marvel or DC universe peg begins to stick. Thor and Loki anyone ? Who are Eon trying to kid? Blofeld is not James Bond's brother he never was and he never should be. By investing so much into that idea, the producers effectively wrote themselves into a corner. NTTD has a plot premise (nanobots) which could have succeeded so well as a Blofeld plot, but to do that you have to have the ugly-brother plot line as well and they'd done that. So, instead, like Bond always becoming a rogue agent, we get Madeleine's childhood trauma and her relationship with Safin becoming the lynch pin of the story. Except it's boring: we already saw the consequences of this last time out. To top it, Eon had to kill Blofeld, they had to kill Spectre, they didn't have to kill Felix, but they did, hell, they even killed off James Bond. ["Is that who it was? Just proves no one's indestructible." Even Connery must be turning in the Earth.]
The producers /writers had nothing else to give us. They couldn't reuse Spectre, they had Blofeld in prison, they had Bond in a settled relationship, at every step since Bond dropped the Algerian necklace in the snow in QOS, Eon has been trying to make CraigBond meaningful, but they haven't, they've made him dull and introspective. He doesn't even bed the ladies anymore. He kills more people, but that just gets boring as well. I can watch Jason Statham for that and he's more convincing.
CraigBond does stand alone. But I really wish he didn't.
Your proposition is based entirely around the statement that "The Bond universe of NTTD is just not the same as that of CR" but I'm not really seeing why you feel that..?
"To buy NTTD as a sequel to SP is a big ask." Is it? Why?
chrisno1 sez:
the mid section in London, a series of meetings and briefings where Bond acts superior to everyone at MI6, some overgrown arrogant sixth former whose just learnt the head boy's badge has been handed to a woman.
I didnt get that at all, but then I only saw it once. Bond seems to respect Nomi from the moment they meet, its just theyre working against each other. In those London scenes she's the one who's defensive about having taken his job, which makes for some nice bits of humour if you watch her face, such as when she's the one locked out of the meeting room. I actually wish they'd done more with that, those are her most interesting moments. Whereas when she requests Bond be given back his number, its a bit of a surrender that comes too quick, and she just does generic action moves after that.
Bond's bad attitude in those meeting scenes is directed to M, who absolutely indisputably has really eff'd up this time and needs someone to tell him so. The fact M himself is so defensive makes sense (imagine such a conversation with your own boss, especially five years after you'd quit). I quite like the character dynamics in these scenes, but I do have to see it again to be sure what I saw.
chrisno1 also sez:
...the producers effectively wrote themselves into a corner. NTTD has a plot premise (nanobots) which could have succeeded so well as a Blofeld plot ... To top it, Eon had to kill Blofeld, they had to kill Spectre ... They couldn't reuse Spectre, they had Blofeld in prison...
Linking three fragments from your post cuz they all relate to a big What If
The plot would have worked quite well with Blofeld secretly communicating to his SPECTRE agents from the secure cell, and running the whole operation in Japan right up til the final scene. If Bond hadn't killed him halfway through the movie. Safin needn't be a rival villain, he could have been a Number 2 type managing the operation on site like Emilio Largo while Blofeld ran it remotely from his prison cell. But other than the Japan location, we wouldnt really have any of the You Only Live Twice elements left, yet it might have been a tighter more satisfying plot.
Oh, I don't know. Well, the first point I do. Casino Royale is a different, more grounded, grittier film. It is to NTTD what Dr No is to YOLT. CR occupies the world of Jason Bourne generally speaking. I didn't quite buy it but there you go. The action is Fleminesque - he runs, he shoots, he gambles, he drives fast cars, he gets his balls knackered up... All in the book.
Some years ago, @Loeffelholz exploded with rage on this forum because I said that in QoS Daniel Craig's Bond had no right to be flying an aeroplane (you see, Loeffs, I have a retentive memory, I could be Blofeld to your Bond if I wanted to but I don't ). Now, what I meant by this was not that Craig is intrinsically inferior to Connery or Moore or Dalton or Brozzer, who in YOLT, OP, LTK and GE & TND all get to fly planes of varying sizes, but rather than one would hope that just two films in, Craig's Flemingesque Bond would still keep things grounded in Fleming's world. Don't forget, until TB Connery still does all the Fleming stuff, the scuba diving is all from the book, it's only in YOLT he gets his autogyro and in that film he does break away from the books really, it had to be done but he cuts loose.
I don't want to see Jason Bourne flying a plane in his films, it just wouldn't be the same character, it's not his skill set.
Generally, I agree with one US critic who opined that in the end the stuff Bond gets up to in NTTD is more comic strip superhero stuff than espionage caper.
As for NTTD not being a sequel to SP, well, I don't know. On paper it is but it feels different. The pre-credits is the same world, sort of, in fact the action is mighty impressive, more so than SP. I must say, when it gets deadly gripping and serious It puts me on my mettle and then brings out the nitpicker in me. My mind races ahead thinking, well, that couldn't happen. SP did slow things down and look you in the eye, all that stuff in Rome at the funeral, I think some of it got nicked off an Italian film called The Great Beauty, well worth catching.
@chrisno1 references the Spectre gatecrashing but see how it contrasts. In SP, it really is an eerie, sinister scene. In NTTD, it seems from a different kind of film it's like that ghouls' intergalactic bar in Star Wars. It would be too absurd for something like Live and Let Die, it's more from the world of DAD to me. I know we're all meant to have the hots for - what's her name, Chris No 1 bangs on about her on his other thread - but all I think is, this is Bond heading into the lion's den, he's out of practice, his women carry a body count, it's a deadly serious movie - and here's this chit of a girl with three weeks' experience to assist. Her kung-fu sitlleto stuff really isn't convincing to me, the whole scene is silly and OTT, it doesn't feel like something out of Spectre, then again you have that weirdo Ash smiling the whole time, enough for me to walk out on the situation but not our hero who, let's not forget, is so exaggeratedly suspicious the whole time anyway.
Much of the action around this point belongs not to CR but more something Spielbergian like Craig's TinTin, or Raiders, or not even that but Crystal Skulls. The stuff with the plane and the sinking ship - someone in the aisle was heading back to their seat so when I looked up I didn't even see how Bond got out of the sinking ship and next scene is on a dinghy - where did that come from if it's sinking - with a massive liner bearing down on him. It all moves so fast in comparison to SP, as if doing a conman's shuffle with the cards.
Likewise the raid on the island, with Bond on the sci-fi plane with Nomi and boringly jibing at her whether she can fly it, it's like something out of DAD, not out of SP and certainly not CR. What NTTD lacks for me is charm, atmosphere and authenticity. IMO Spectre did have all that though I can't rationally account for stuff like the empty streets of Rome during the car chase, or the empty train carriages during the fight scene. It shouldn't be that different I know to Bond pitching up to Scaramanga's island but it feels all wrong. I suppose the final reel of Spectre was a bit Line of Duty (acclaimed UK police anti-corruption thriller that also got bogged down in a convoluted plot several series in) and NTTD ends in more traditional Bond fashion, but it really did seem off to me, I just didn't buy it.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
On a much shorter note, we can observe that Lazenby's OHMSS ought to follow on from Thunderball in a fan's marathon session not just because it accounts for Bond and Blofeld not recognising each other, not just because Lazenby's Bond seems roughly as young as Connery in TB but because it occupies very much Fleming's world of fast cars, punch ups and skiing.
That said, I would not do so because both films do seem a bit long-winded, a lot of snooping around hotel corridors and then sitting on the villain's doorstep for a large part of both movies.
No, I'd have OHMSS as the follow-on from FRWL in your viewing - I think that would work really well! One film is short, the other a bit long but tonally they're not far off at all, it's before the camp outlandishness kicked in.
It would make an excellent triple bill!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I struggle a bit with that: CR has a plot about a secret agent being sent to gamble a baddie to death in a sexy poker game with a tiny sci-fi tracker analysing his vital signs injected in his arm and an Aston Martin- I don’t think it’s massively realistic stuff and NTTD is not a massive tonal shift from that at all.
Erm, really? CR is basically Fleming's story tarted up and that's not outlandish. The tracker is the only thing amiss from that, not sure that's so implausible. On the other hand, nanobots and all that... the all-seeing eye from a secure cell, Rambo-style shoot-outs in the finale, ah well, each to their own.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Fleming’s CR and the film CR are mad. Slightly less sci-fi, sure, but a secret agent being sent on a gambling mission is pure, mad wish-fufillment fantasy.
Compared to that, a special forces-trained operative having a shoot out seems pretty down to Earth to me! 😄
I doubt you’ll mind many people in the general audience who think CR and NTTD are massively different. Look at the Iron Man films: started with a guy building a suit of armour in the desert and fighting his corrupt business partner; ended surrounded by gods, aliens, wizards, flying horses and monsters and fighting for the fate of the universe. If folks can accept that journey then a bionic eye in a series which started with a mini medical tracker implant is hardly a massive leap.
No, I suppose not - though I'd argue that something that starts off as comic book superhero stuff is likely to go anywhere.
Wasn't the Fleming CR plot based on a real-life event, or was that one of those tabloid stories they bung out every so often, along the lines of 'the real James Bond'? I don't think it's that mad per se - I mean the Conservative Govt has been accused of enforcing swingeing local govt cuts to hit poorer, Labour-led local authorities the most, a kind of extortion racket which arguably led to the election of a Tory MP for Hartlepool. Isn't the UK trying to do the same thing to Iran? I admit the film doesn't deal with it too convincingly imo because Bond's gambling habit and prowess is not foreshadowed. But the State is often about pinpointing a person's weakness - a vice being prostitutes, or gambling, or gold (!) or drug addiction, to exert leverage in any of those areas seems sensible, I mean didn't the CIA try to kill Castro's beard at one point, or is that another one of stories?
It's odd though, what counts for authenticity in a film. Superman: The Movie aimed for it due to Richard Donner, and got it. The sequel? Just a bit less, hard to put your finger on it. The third, oh dear, out the window. But one can argue, it's a superhero movie, surely it can do anything really? Things I'll accept from Roger Moore in LALD I wouldn't from Connery in, say, Goldfinger. That said, Bond in Thunderball donning a scuba mask and joining the sub aqua Spectre crew without being recognised is too much for me, as is the water exhaust in the pre-credits (though not when I saw it as a kid.)
Roger Moore 1927-2017
No, I suppose not - though I'd argue that something that starts off as comic book superhero stuff is likely to go anywhere.
Yes and no: there weren’t even any superpowers in that first film though, let alone aliens or gods.
I get what you're saying about Moonraker and LALD, say, being in different worlds- do I believe that the guy on top of Golden Gate Bridge is the same one who inflated Mr Big? Not necessarily, no; there's no reason to think about it. So I agree there, but I don't have any trouble seeing Craig's Bond as the same guy all the way through.
napoleon plural sez:
Wasn't the Fleming CR plot based on a real-life event, or was that one of those tabloid stories they bung out every so often, along the lines of 'the real James Bond'?
This story is probably repeated in every Fleming biography, and in a few of his essays, but here it is in his own words from the 1964 CBC Interview:
Ian Fleming sez
Well actually, part of the main plot of my first book, Casino Royale, the gambling sequence, where Bond out-gambles a Russian agent, and bankrupts him. Stems from something that happened to me on the first time I went with my Director, Admiral Godfrey, to Washington in plain clothes before America came into the War.
And we took the long route down, the flying boat down, by Lisbon and Africa and then across to South America and up that way. And on our first night in Lisbon, we talked to some of our Secret Service chaps there, and of course they were interested in hearing our views, and we were interested in hearing theirs, because Lisbon was the great centre of German espionage. And they said, well if you want to see these agents of the Abwehr, as they call them, you will find most of them gambling at the casino at Estoril.
And I suddenly had the brilliant idea that I would take on these Germans, and strip them of their funds. Thus making a small dent in the secret treasury of the Abwehr. So I sat down at the table, and banco'd one of the Germans once, and lost, and I banco'd him again, and lost again, banco'd him for the third time and I was cleaned out.
So that wasn't a very successful exploit. But it was on the basis of this real life episode that I based the big gambling scene in Casino Royale.
'Really, @caractacus potts it is remarkable these tidbits of information you store away...'
Great stuff, still you have to wonder about Fleming, wasn't he involved to some extent with the now notorious Operation Dieppe, supposedly a rehearsal for D-Day but a wholly disastrous attempt to make inroads into the Nazi stronghold that killed thousands of Canadians, I think his mate the actor David Niven was on board for that one too. Mountbatten certainly was, and he skilful evaded blame for it, a fiasco. A recent book on the mission won plaudits in the reviews a few weeks ago.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Yes that casino story is a famous one, as you point out. As I say, it's wish-fufillment fantasy- quite silly stuff. He had a few plans in the war which were rejected for being a bit too fanciful; that's not to say that quite a few mad plans didn't go into action, and indeed work, in the war though.
Some years ago, @Loeffelholz exploded with rage on this forum because I said that in QoS Daniel Craig's Bond had no right to be flying an aeroplane (you see, Loeffs, I have a retentive memory, I could be Blofeld to your Bond if I wanted to but I don't ).
'Exploded with rage,' @Napoleon Plural? 😂 All right. Kudos to your self-proclaimed retentive memory, I suppose. I remember being annoyed (having a rather good memory myself), but if you remember it as an 'explosion of rage'...all right. 😒
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Well, @Loeffelholz I actually went looking for the post in the QoS archived forum, and guess what I found... an old post of mine!
https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/33662/roll-up-roll-up-its-the-qos-laughfest#latest
You and Barbel chip in on in the replies - but I reckon it's also right up the alley of Mad magazine fan @caractacus potts !
A few laughs in there I'd long forgotten about. Worth a read on a chilly November evening if I say so myself...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
That was pretty good! Even includes a cameo from the stewardess character from the short story, which alone makes your script better than the actual film.
and here I was Potts-splaining who Sergio Aragonés and Mort Drucker were, like some sort of schmuck, you were an expert on MAD magazine all this time!
😂😂😂 I remember that! Very funny, NP.
Not an expert, @caractacus potts - but I knew what I liked! 'The Lighter Side of Life' was another regular I recall...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
My one gripe?
Having a lead actor who gets more excited at playing a stormtrooper than being James Bond…