• Most new users don't bother reading our rules. Here's the one that is ignored almost immediately upon signup: DO NOT ASK FOR FANEDIT LINKS PUBLICLY. First, read the FAQ. Seriously. What you want is there. You can also send a message to the editor. If that doesn't work THEN post in the Trade & Request forum. Anywhere else and it will be deleted and an infraction will be issued.
  • If this is your first time here please read our FAQ and Rules pages. They have some useful information that will get us all off on the right foot, especially our Own the Source rule. If you do not understand any of these rules send a private message to one of our staff for further details.
  • Please read our Rules & Guidelines

James Bond

Dwight Fry

Well-known member
Faneditor
Messages
4,245
Reaction score
1,564
Trophy Points
123
You Only Live Twice (1967)
Another movie where I love almost everything. We start off in space with a giant mystery spacecraft that captures a whole American capsule, severing a spacewalking astronaut. Then we see Bond get "murdered" in bed with a lover, and I love that the guy who finds the body says it's how Bond would have wanted to go. After the excessive underwater scenes in Thunderball, I wasn't too excited to see Bond don a wetsuit, but thankfully it was just a couple of seconds this time around. I also really liked the wordplay with lox in both its senses as smoked salmon and liquid oxygen. I had forgotten that Donald Pleasance played Blofeld in his first "full" on screen appearance, that was a fun bonus! I had remembered him always having been played by Charles Grey, but confusingly Grey plays Dikko Henderson in this movie!
In my opinion YOLT is worse than the sum of its parts. Individually every scene works (with one major and highly embarrassing exception, I don't think I need to say which one) but it never comes together as a whole. It's all over the place. I still prefer this one over Thunderball for pure entertainment factor, though.

So I need to pick the marathon back up because my buddy I was watching it with bailed at Live and Let Die, so I might just pick it up from Sir Roger Moore's first one and go from there. I know that Sir Roger is many people's least favorite Bond, but I grew up with as the 'current' Bond so he'll still always be my favorite, goofiness and all.
It's always down to the one you first discovered. I was born in '78, in the middle of the Moore era, but grew up with the Connery ones on TV so it's Shcotland Forever for me.
 
Last edited:

asterixsmeagol

Well-known member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
2,010
Reaction score
924
Trophy Points
128
In my opinion YOLT is worse than the sum of its parts. Individually every scene works (with one major and highly embarrassing exception, I don't think I need to say which one)
Yeah, I realized in my summary I left out the one scene that made me say I liked almost everything but I think we can all guess which one it was.
 

L8wrtr

Well-known member
Faneditor
Messages
3,355
Reaction score
281
Trophy Points
108
Yeah, I realized in my summary I left out the one scene that made me say I liked almost everything but I think we can all guess which one it was.
Dammit. It's been so long that I actually DON'T know what it is! Breaking out the BD's tomorrow.
 

Dwight Fry

Well-known member
Faneditor
Messages
4,245
Reaction score
1,564
Trophy Points
123
Dammit. It's been so long that I actually DON'T know what it is! Breaking out the BD's tomorrow.
YouOnlyLiveTwiceJapanese.jpg
 

Dwight Fry

Well-known member
Faneditor
Messages
4,245
Reaction score
1,564
Trophy Points
123
And the sad thing is, it probably can't be fanedited out (unless something very creative and left field is thought of) because
the makers chose the scene to kill off the main tag-along Bond girl to that point and replace her with a different one up to the end. Sigh...
 

Darth Kermit

Well-known member
Messages
245
Reaction score
178
Trophy Points
58
So with the new movie coming out in 6 weeks, I started my marathon yesterday, watching 4 a week (and occasionally 5) to watch all 24 mainline, Casino Royale ‘67 and Never Say Never Again, by the time the new one comes out. I’ve only ever seen the Craig ones before, so this is my first time watching the other 20+2. Dr. No was last night, and it was pretty good, if a little odd. The villain and the second act felt anticlimactic, but the first act was great, so all in all a decent picture.
 

Racerx1969

Well-known member
Messages
265
Reaction score
148
Trophy Points
58
Dr. No, Goldfinger, Thunderball have always been my favorites. Thunderball does drag but ranger613's edit (Warhead Edition) helps that a lot. I also like the Craig movies--to me he captured the brutality of Bond's profession the others missed. The Moore films got too splastick for me; I'll tolerate them but they are the bottom of my list for this franchise.
 

Darth Kermit

Well-known member
Messages
245
Reaction score
178
Trophy Points
58
Yeah, I really love the more nuanced take with Craig and the way each film affects his character. It’s not so much a villain of the week type film as some of the series is, that I’m aware of. I may skip Casino 67, but I love David Niven and Peter Sellers (he’s in it right?), so I may still watch it. Unsure on that one.
 

Dwight Fry

Well-known member
Faneditor
Messages
4,245
Reaction score
1,564
Trophy Points
123
Yeah, I really love the more nuanced take with Craig and the way each film affects his character. It’s not so much a villain of the week type film as some of the series is, that I’m aware of. I may skip Casino 67, but I love David Niven and Peter Sellers (he’s in it right?), so I may still watch it. Unsure on that one.
I love CR '67 myself. But approach it as a zany 60s comedy/spoof, not as a proper Bond movie, which it is not.
 

Darth Kermit

Well-known member
Messages
245
Reaction score
178
Trophy Points
58
Yeah, definitely. The plot synopsis certainly reads that way and I was under the impression that’s what it was, especially with the organization name SMERSH
 

TM2YC

Take Me To Your Cinema
Staff member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
14,869
Reaction score
2,379
Trophy Points
228
The final... final... final? trailer for NT2D has dropped and I love it:


I think I'm going to really like Lashana Lynch's character.
 

asterixsmeagol

Well-known member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
2,010
Reaction score
924
Trophy Points
128
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
George Lazenby's one and only outing as Bond gets off to a bad start with a weird new version of the Bond theme song, and things don't really improve from there. The very first scene on the beach gets into action right away, bu the choreography is terrible and mostly sped up footage. We end the scene with Bond turning to camera and saying "this never happened to the other fellow" before fading into dull opening credits and boring theme song, with some weird "previously on" playing through an hourglass. At this point we're 10 minutes in and I'm already bored. They keep throwing in little references to the previous movies like showing the Q gadgets, I guess to make sure the viewer knows it's the same continuity, but they all feel forced. The most confusing part of the movie is that Bond and Blofeld meet face to face, but neither seems to recognize the other. In the real world, neither is played by the same actor, so maybe this isn't too surprising, but after going to the effort of making sure we know this is all the same story from the Connery films, why don't they know each other? I mean, eventually Blofeld says he figured out Bond's disguise and breaks his glasses, but he wasn't even wearing them at the first meeting. At this point, the plot actually gets started and we hear about Blofeld's plan to spread pathogens, but 2/3 of the way through the movie and it's way too late. As I said, the movie is just boring. The only part of this movie that I remember having seen before is the skiing scene, which was well done, but which doesn't really seem to serve a purpose for the story. The highlight of the movie is Diana Rigg as the Bond girl (whose name I immediately forgot), but she is missing from most of the movie. Overall, this was the least enjoyable of the Eon-produced movies so far. I'm honestly surprised this didn't kill the franchise.

I don't really know why Lazenby only stuck around for one film, but apparently there was some animosity behind the scenes and he quit just before the premiere, eventually leading to Connery returning (the first time) for the next movie. I get a similar feeling to whatever happened with Christopher Eccleston on the set of Doctor Who.
 
Last edited:

L8wrtr

Well-known member
Faneditor
Messages
3,355
Reaction score
281
Trophy Points
108
Yeaaah... it's funny because this is often listed as some people's favorite Bond.. but I just don't get it.. This nearly killed my buddy and mine's original marathon (actually, it kind of did, we never recovered our momentum after this and he bowed out two films later with Moore's introduction. There really isn't much to add to your summary.. BORING and fairly nonsensical. I will say that I know that the movies are filmed out of order compared to the novels, so I know all of the appearances of Blofeld are jumbled, but I'm not enough of a Bond aficionado to know if this was the literary introduction of Blofeld or not.
 

Problem Eliminator

Well-known member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
306
Reaction score
33
Trophy Points
38
In the books, Blofeld first appears in Thunderball, then OHMSS, then You Only Live Twice. He and Bond meet for the first time when Bond is undercover in OHMSS.

Also sorry I just need to mention: the OHMSS titles song is boring? The dear departed John Barry is rolling in his grave 😋
 

Dwight Fry

Well-known member
Faneditor
Messages
4,245
Reaction score
1,564
Trophy Points
123
I'm quite fond of OHMSS myself. While I could have done without the self-referential stuff (Last Survivor's edit took care of that) I don't find it boring and appreciate that it departs from the formula, particularly towards the end. The highlight, of course, is Diana Rigg. One of the very best Bond girls in the whole series. If we have to believe that Bond is to fall in love for real, who can be better to make it believable than Emma Peel herself?

Also, the main theme is my favorite piece of Bond music ever!
 

asterixsmeagol

Well-known member
Donor
Faneditor
Messages
2,010
Reaction score
924
Trophy Points
128
The final... final... final? trailer for NT2D has dropped and I love it
The final US trailer is out as well. They both look excellent. Hopefully it's all been worth the wait!
 

L8wrtr

Well-known member
Faneditor
Messages
3,355
Reaction score
281
Trophy Points
108
So whether they set out to do this, or it was a wonderfully happy coincidence, Craig's Bond will truly stand as something unique in that it's the first cinematic Bond where the films of one actor form a full Bond narrative with a strong character arc. Prior to Craig's go at it, Bond existed as this sort of nebulous continued story of different actors across an impossibly long and blurred timeline, the character had no real beginning or end, just more and more adventures with sometimes recurring other characters and villains.

Seeing Bond have a beginning, middle and end where actions/choices from each film compound and come together in the final appearance by that actor.. I just hope that this film lives up to what their campaign is implying.

Personally I would love future Bond entries to fall into this line where they plan out a multiple-story map for the character. They don't have to literally have each one mapped, but select an actor, make a general path and then give films to do it. It would allow each one to be a 'what if' scenario using Bond as template to apply again and again and again, sort of the way WB has stumbled around Batman but with far less planning or nuance.
 
Top Bottom