Casino Royale was first published on April 13, 1953, only thirty-three days before Pierce Brosnan was born in Ireland. At this point, we all probably know about Brosnan’s long and winding road to becoming the fifth official Bond actor: his experience watching Goldfinger aged 11, how he lost the role in 1986 during his Remington Steele time, his marriage with For Your Eyes Only actress Cassandra Harris, and other things. But considering we have celebrated the 70th anniversary of both Brosnan and the literary Bond, let’s look at what a big screen adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first novel could have been with the fifth Bond actor.
As a kid, when I was barely discovering what James Bond was –I say "what" instead of "who", because I'm referring to the phenomenon, not just the character–, I remember many adults speaking a great deal about Sean Connery or Roger Moore, just when these two actors were about to turn 70. Today... it is my Bond who celebrates its 70th birthday. So, in the name of the generation who grew up seeing him walking through the gunbarrel (or at least many of them), I wanted to dedicate a few words to the legendary Pierce Brosnan.
Dear Pierce, your legacy speaks for youself. As 007, you have resurrected a character that few people thought would have a leg to step on in the 90s and in a couple of years we were toasting for the new millennium with your first three films on the shelf, hoping for the fourth to come soon. While everyone was talking about Dragon Ball Z, we were talking about James Bond. When everyone was into laser sabres or galaxies far and away, we were urging our parents to buy us a suit or a tuxedo and took a sip of soda pretending it was a vodka martini shaken, not stirred. When in adulthood things didn't go as we wanted, we remembered the challenges you had to face, and we learned to rise victorious. We have learned of your strengths and your humility. You were, and still are, a role model for more people than you could ever imagine. For different reasons, we were left without the chance to see you as Bond for a fifth time. We also think you deserved a more dignified farewell of the role, and we are not referring to the quality of your final film, but to things that have to do with the institutional side of the question. But time will never erase the impact your great legacy leaves on all of us.
You have taught us to never surrender – as Bond, and as a man.
There are plenty of reasons to like or dislike Die Another Day, Pierce Brosnan’s unexpected and involuntary swan song to the franchise. Scroll into a couple of forums and you’ll find all the reasons to dislike it, most of the justifications use the words “invisible car” or “CGI” quite a lot. This is why, as if my books Beyond The Ice: The Case For and Against Die Another Day and a couple of articles weren’t enough, I have decided to write this article. Let’s be honest – the most obvious excuse is the 20th anniversary this week.
I will start by saying that the Lee Tamahori film went up and down in my rankings. I remember loving it when I first saw it on the big screen (January 2003 in my native Argentina) and then disliking it quite a lot as it reached home video. Yes, the slow-motion effects and speed ramps felt a bit too much for Bond’s subtlety, and then there’s the overload of CGI. Yet again, in hindsight, I feel all of these tropes were very characteristic of the productions released during the first lustrum of the new millennium, films like Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) and Swordfish (2001). In almost every big action film I can recall Hollywood toying with computer-generated graphics and rubbing all these new technologies in the audience’s face, perhaps as a way to make it very clear that we were in a new millennium and there’s more technology out there than your Compaq Presario 2100 PC or your Nokia 3310 cell phone.
Once upon a time, 20 ARS (Argentine pesos) had the same value as 20 USD (US dollars). It was back then when I urged my dad to take them from everywhere he could and rent me the Nintendo 64 with GoldenEye 007. It didn't happen every day, but whenever it happened –generally some Fridays–, it was the beginning of a glorious weekend.
In the blink of an eye, I became an adult. I have the N64, a boxed copy of the game and 20 pesos of spare, because the currency of my country has painfully lost its value way too much in the past three lustrums. Dad is sadly not among us anymore and Monday will see the sixth anniversary of his passing, but among many things... a part of him lives on whenever I turn the console on and I'm as excited as two decades ago.
And so, GoldenEye 007 turns 25. I want to congratulate everyone involved in the game for giving us a beautiful childhood and memories I'd love to relive. Here's a toast to the people who made us feel like James Bond for a little while. Here's to the objectives completed, the silenced PP7s and the Remote Mines. Here's to cheating Oddjobs and the bunker cells. Here's to Natalya's disturbed quiteness in Control. to Boris invincibility and to Dr Doak and his decoder. Here's to the Baron's last laugh!
Released in December 1997, Pierce Brosnan’s second James Bond outing Tomorrow Never Dies dealt with the use of mass media and technology as deadly weapons. The plot was less political, intricate and suspenseful than Brosnan’s Bond debut GoldenEye in 1995. Nevertheless, Roger Spottiswoode’s film is an intense, dynamic and highly entertaining production that follows the 007 formula quite closely and adapts it to the late 1990s.
Nintendo 64’s popular video game GoldenEye 007 was separated from its source film by almost two years. The film, released in November 1995 and putting a rotund end to the rumours that assured James Bond didn’t have a chance in a post-Cold War setting, instantly established Pierce Brosnan as the Bond of the new millennium and generated a new era of Bondmania almost comparable to the days of Goldfinger and Thunderball in the mid-1960s. The video game missed the chance to take advantage of both the theatrical release date and the home video launch in May 1996, coming to stores in North America on August 25, 1997, not much time before Tomorrow Never Dies, Brosnan’s second Bond outing.
Facts, anecdotes and funny stories regarding the development of GoldenEye 007 can be easily found everywhere these days thanks to the Internet and, mostly, social media: people who worked in the game are easily reachable on Twitter, and have offered interviews to many outlets (whether if you are IGN or just another podcast host) and replied to inquiring followers. If that is not enough, from time to time a YouTube user posts a video of an event celebrating Nintendo 64’s golden cartridge in around 2007 or you can easily find scans of old video game magazines where the team has been interviewed. Bottom line: there is little to discover regarding this game now, and in every interview, you feel the team is asked the same questions over and over.
The popularity of secret agents reached a new height in the late 1990s thanks to the success of Pierce Brosnan’s first three James Bond films –GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, released in 1995, 1997 and 1999, respectively– and the 1996 film version of Mission: Impossible starring Tom Cruise. Not only the aforementioned films were a critical and financial success and revamped a phenomenon that began in the 1960s, but that effect was increased by its video game versions.
Made by a team of people who had little to no experience in the world of video games, GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64 solidified the resurgence of the cinematic James Bond with its source film from 1995, Pierce Brosnan’s debut in the role directed by Martin Campbell. It was also the door to the incredible world of 007 for many 90s kids: not only the game would take you to rent or buy the GoldenEye VHS tape, but using a magnetic watch throughout the Bunker II mission or facing off Baron Samedi and Jaws in the unlockable bonus stages would take you to revisit old movies of the Roger Moore era such as Moonraker or Live And Let Die.
Another Liam Neeson film takes us to the inevitable “Do we need yet another Liam Neeson action flick?” question. I don’t dare to answer that question because, while I am well aware that theatres have been bombarded with these kinds of productions lately, I can’t say I don’t enjoy them although I never saw anything out of this world with them. Until now.
The fact that Memory is directed by the man behind GoldenEye (1995) and Casino Royale (2006) makes it special, along with the fact that the Irish actor is not playing just another action hero but an Alzheimer’s sufferer, which gives an interesting twist to a story Dario Scardapane has adapted from the 2003 Belgian production The Memory of a Killer, itself based on the 1985 book by Jef Geeraerts.
Not so long ago I went to buy a couple of DVDs at a store I haven’t been to for a long time, and the manager, who knows I’m a James Bond fan and I have in fact bought him a couple of stuff some years ago made me the inevitable question: “What do you think about the latest film?” Inadvertently, he asked me something whose answer makes me get into trouble with many people because if you have been a Bond fan for almost 25 years, the ending of No Time To Die will not leave you indifferent, as many reviewers have pointed out.
The physical beauty of the James Bond girls always comes up whenever we discuss the 60-year-old franchise. Apart from the gun barrel sequence, the 007 gun logo, the tuxedo and the silenced Walther PPK, probably two of the most iconic images associated with the saga are related to women: Ursula Andress coming out of the water in a white bikini and a belt holding a hunting knife, or Shirley Eaton’s dead body painted in gold, originated in Dr No (1962) and Goldfinger (1964), are continually bought back in magazines or TV sketches and cartoons parodying the saga.
After how difficult 2019 and 2020 have been, I guess I should be thankful for a little more stable -yet not necessarily better- 2021. Didn't have the chance to write books outside the updated edition of A View To A Thrill: A Closer Look At The James Bond Trailers as I've been busy with another projects outside Bond. Anyway, I admit I didn't put too much passion on the latter as I had to include "No" Time To Die which, as many people know, has extremely disappointed me to the point of not buying anything related to the film and not watching it or any of the other Daniel Craig movies ever again - or Bond 26, unless it is explicitly indicated that the guy that killed himself in that film wasn't James Bond and an actor looking exactly like Ian Fleming described his hero is playing him.
So, how will I follow after this? Quite simply, I'll stop collecting after the Pierce Brosnan era. I'll keep what I have of Craig, but will sell what I have of "No" Time To Die.
As 2022 sees the 25th anniversary of Nintendo 64's GoldenEye 007 game, which was crucial to introduce me to James Bond, I'll go down that road with articles and maybe even a book. There's also the 20th anniversary of Die Another Day and the 25th of Tomorrow Never Dies. Much to my chagrin, I won't deal with the franchise's 60th anniversary unless I strictly talk about Dr No. I want to avoid the chance of talking about The Film That Shall Never Be Named at all costs, because, really, I have no mild or polite words to speak about it. It's not a matter of a "good" or "bad" film. It's insulting. And I'll leave it at that.
Probably many would think after vehemently standing against N,TTD my book sales dropped. Far from that, sales November and December went sky high and people thanked me for being a voice for those who have been disappointed by this film and era.
I also have an idea for a non-Bond project for 2023, maybe late 2022. But you'll hear in due time.
Nothing more to say, other than thanking my friends and those who bought my books. And to everyone that has been there through the difficult things I've been through since 2016.
May 2022 be a wonderful year for all of you - and never forget that the real James Bond never dies!
It's been almost three weeks since I watched No Time To Die. Of course, I followed other people's "advice" to watch it more than once so I could "like it or understand it better", because, naturally, it took me 10 watches of GoldenEye and beating the whole N64 game in 00 Agent mode to love both! (I'm being extremely sarcastic, by the way). Long story short: I watched it an additional three times after the premiere, mostly because a friend of mine had tickets of spare. I left the cinema before the final 45 minutes in the other showings except for the IMAX one because I went with him, mostly. The thing is... I didn't understand it better and with each showing, my disliking for this production grew every day more.
That said, I'm surprised to see many "fans" have liked it, but I'll do my best not to judge them. I'll speak about me, not them. For this thing bastardizes James Bond to an insulting point, so insulting that it makes the 1967 version of Casino Royale almost a "proper" Bond film. Well, in fact, three or four elements are taken straight from it: Bond is retired and brought back to active service, Bond has a daughter he ignores, the villain deals with a virus/germ that turns people into weapon, and... here comes da bomb (no pun intended): James Bond dies.
Yes. I'm not kidding. James Bond dies!
James Bond dies, but, before we get to that, let's go to the proper Dr No homage, which isn't the fact that Safin is Dr No. No, I'm not refering to the coloured dots during the main titles, or the fact that he "plays God", or that he's a scientist or that Jamaica is a location. The biggest homage made to the first James Bond film, that intruduced the gentleman spy with a licence to kill now turned into the misogynist assassin with a licence to die, is that... James Bond acts like a stupid policeman whose luck runs out! Precisely, the way Joseph Wiseman's character described our hero 59 years ago is the way he acts in this film: from vanishing during the bloodless gunbarrel sequence, to letting a valuable asset and person of interest go because he feels "betrayed" (no, she didn't sleep with a soccer player, she apparently sent Bond to a death-trap) and waiting five years before informing the headquarters that the dangerous terrorist he put in Belmarsh prison has apparently made an allegiance with his girlfriend to kill Bond and probably to turn our unsafe world even less safer than what it was. From being functional to Safin's plan by offing Blofeld off by a stupidity he makes, to peeling apples to a little girl he would later learn she's his daughter. From bowing down to a villain Sean Connery would have killed with a single slap, saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I apologize, I apologize, you're right, you're right" to allow that villain to ambush him, shoot him three times in the back (because you know, spies that have been retired for five years forget how to use stealth), infect him with a virus that would kill Madeleine and her daughter by simple touching them - a virus that conveniently has no cure. They could have forced the scientist who developed this virus to create an antidote, but the new 007 felt offended because he told her a racist comment and she kicked him over a railing to a pool of radioactive water. After all of that, Bond decides his life is crap because he wouldn't see the girls he ignored for five years and watches as a couple of missiles come to eviscerate him. James Bond, Her Majesty's Loyal Terrier, "the best they have", Commander James Bond 007, CMG RNVR, commits suicide. The end of the film features M toasting in his homage, reciting a passage from Jack London: "The proper function of a man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them, I shall use my time". In a similar situation, we could read the second sentence in You Only Live Twice, as everyone at MI6 tought Bond was dead but he had just lost his memory and was enjoying some sort of "married life" with Kissy Suzuki. There you go, we have FLEMING. Even if Fleming never killed James Bond, Mrs Broccoli who owns James Bond more than anyone else decides to do what the books, comics and video games never did: killing him. Because, unlike what the far superior 1995 motion picture GoldenEye tried to show us, Bond has no place in this world anymore. He's an assassin, everything he does is wrong, he's exactly like the villain, he's a man, he's straight, you know... he has to die. We move to Madeleine Swann taking over his place: driving the Aston Martin V8 and telling her daughter "the story of a man whose name was Bond... James Bond". Cue to Louis Armstrong's "We Have All The Time In The World" over the end credits.
Remember when people whined at the homages in Die Another Day? That they were too blunt and a fan service checklist? Well, here they appropiate of the musical identity of a much superior James Bond film, eternally associated to the ill-fated marriage between Bond and countess Teresa "Tracy" Di Vicenzo, and subvert its meaning. The lack of originality of EON Productions has reached a point where they have to rip things from the series of films they tried to wipe out from our mind (just see Being James Bond, the Craig documentary where they barely mention "Roger and Pierce" and there's no other reference to the fact that 007 is a series of films dating from 1962!) only to subvert its meaning - just like they have successfully subverted everything James Bond is in this movie!
In No Time To Die, you don't see Fleming's Bond. Or Connery's Bond, Lazenby's Bond, Moore's Bond, Dalton's Bond or Brosnan's Bond. You don't even see Craig's Bond. The Bond you see... is a completely forged Bond. A fake Bond. It's like Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) all over again, the baccarat expert given Bond's name to play baccarat against Le Chiffre (Orson Welles) in the far superior 1967 spoof produced by Charles K Feldman.
Well, I made a much needed catharsis.
Now that I said that, I want to say the following: I don't care about the future of James Bond anymore. The character no longer represents what I loved in him and the Bond community is no longer my place. They can do anything, cast John Boyega, Idris Elba, Henry Golding, anyone in the role. I won't watch it. I'll stick with the films from 1962 to 2002 and pretend the last time we saw 007 was in Die Another Day. Making a bit of a stretch, I can still pretend Bond left with Madeleine Swann on the Aston Martin DB5 in SPECTRE, another far superior film to Time To Die (no, I didn't forget to write No). I placed Never Say Never Again next to Octopussy, by the way. There's nothing "unofficial" in that film for me now. And while Kevin McClory wasn't exactly a guy I liked and was a shit to Ian Fleming, I affirm that he loved James Bond much more than Barbara Broccoli and Daniel Craig ever did.
I will cover (No) Time To Die on the updated edition of A View To A Thrill: A Closer Look At The James Bond Trailers coming November. A promise made is a promise kept. I'll be as objective as I can, so don't expect this kind of language there - in fact, I rarely editorialized in the first edition. Then, I have another Bond book for 2022 and after that, I think I'll stop writing about the character save for some articles and mostly focused on the past. I'll try something different for my books, you will see.
I won't buy Time To Die on any home video format, I won't buy the soundtrack, I won't have any poster of that film hanging on my room and I won't give EON Productions my money nor support any of their projects. You know, all of this comes after they have unfairly sent a "cease and desist" notification forcing two very good friends of mine to cancel a freeware project that was recreating the N64 game GoldenEye for PC, when it didn't harm them in any way. They do that and then they kill James Bond! Do you really think I'll be proud to exhibit James Bond's open casket in the form of a Blu-ray disc next to films like Goldfinger, From Russia With Love, The Spy Who Loved Me, GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough? They don't deserve that.
Who do you think to are to do that? Someone who values his money. Who do you think to are to tell EON what they have to do? Someone who has been supporting for 23 years, telling people who watched Dragon Ball Z and the Marvel movies that I preferred James Bond over them, and that the character is not "someone from the past", but he is still a hero for our days. The one that represents what a man always aspires to become. Ha, ha, ha... do you think Barbara will cry if you don't give her money? She won't, that's for sure. But I don't care. I'm content with knowing she won't have my money. It's like it happens in The Great Escape: the prison camp manager is convinced that their escape plan won't succeed, but Richard Attenborough insists that he's simply happy to have one or two people running away from the prison. The same applies here: even ifBarbara gets millions of dollars and can live for two entire years without working, I won't contribute to that. I won't financially support my hero's death.
It all narrows down to another of my favourite movies (and far superior to the first unofficial EON-produced Bond film, although that's an undertsatement): Clear And Present Danger. I'll leave you the clip.
I'm perfectly aware that I may be losing followers and potential buyers for this blog entry. I'm even ready to see very few people buying A View To A Thrill or any other of my books (well, who knows. For every bold decision you take, you lose three friends and win another three), but if there's something both my parents taught me is to put values and principles over all the money in the world.
If you are happy to celebrate the humilliation and death of James Bond, good for you. But I won't.
Read my No Time To Die review here (MODERATE SPOILERS): https://goldeneyedossier.wixsite.com/bond/post/no-time-to-die-the-final-insult
Lean mi crítica de Sin Tiempo Para Morir en español (SPOILERS MODERADOS): https://bondenargentina.tumblr.com/post/663851759314321408/sin-tiempo-para-morir-007-con-licencia-para
It was 20 years ago today that two hijacked Boeing 747 commercial
aeroplanes caused a macabre terrorist attack in the heart of New York
City, but watching the images all over again still chills anyone in any
part of this world. The terrorist attacks that took place in the morning
of September 11, 2001, didn't just change the politics and social mood
of the United States of America. It changed the whole world and
particularly the Western hemisphere: anyone who grew up in the late
1990s and early 2000s surely remembers how afraid we were of going to
McDonald's or walking next to the US Embassy in the days that followed
9/11.
WARNING: POTENTIAL SPOILERS CONTAINED IN THIS ARTICLE!
As many social media users point out, the next two weeks will determine if the upcoming James Bond film No Time To Die
becomes a great movie or a great meme. On August 24, during the
CinemaCon event in Las Vegas, MGM’s Michael De Luca screened nine unseen
minutes of the pre-credits sequence of the film and assured attendants
that the film will be released for good on October 8 in the United
States and a week earlier worldwide, on September 30.
Is Martin Campbell doing yet another “revenge” movie after we saw Mel Gibson and Jackie Chan avenging their daughters’ death in Edge of Darkness (2010) and The Foreigner (2017)? The most apparent answer is “yes” and the trailers will make you think that way.
Mr.
Campbell himself told a Reddit user some weeks ago that Maggie Q’s
motivation is avenging a loved one during an AMA session. But the truth
is… The Protégé is a little more than a simple revenge story, at least a less evident and blunt one than the aforementioned productions.
The title pretty much says it all - I want to wish a happy silver
anniversary to the "most powerful fun machine on Earth", the Nintendo
64. I've never been what you may call a gamer, but I loved video games
as a kid and many times fantasized with owning this console when I saw
Super Mario 64 promoted at every toy store in Argentina, in the days
when I had the old Famicom. This console introduced me to James Bond as
well, thanks to the GoldenEye 007 game, which prompted me to watch the
film on TV. It was a matter of time before my dad rented me the console
with both games and, whenever he did, it was always the prelude of a
wonderful weekend. I have beautiful memories of Mario Kart 64, Cruisin' USA, Mortal Kombat Trilogy and Pilotwings 64, too.
It
wasn't until January 2011 until I could buy a second-handed N64 with
the GoldenEye 007 game (Player's Choice edition, with box and manual)
and I'm truly happy that I did, it was a way to relive the best days of
my childhood in the aftermath of an atrocious year like 2010 was in my
life. I stick to emulation to replay the other games lately for a matter
of definition and because original cartridges are quite expensive (at
least here, retro-gaming is an expensive business), but the simple sight
of a shelf with lots of N64 boxes really makes me feel good. Those were
the days when games were colorful, fun, rewarding and had a cover
artwork which was a feast for your eyes. I don't see that in modern
games, not even the Bond ones.
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