The Assassin ( 2015 )
This film got a lot of critical acclaim, and won a lot of awards. Amazon kept suggesting it, so I bought it. Unfortunately it is one of those mvies that got it's critical acclaim by being an arthouse film. With a running time of 1 hour 45 minutes, most of it is long long establishing shots. In bad movies we would call this padding. In this movie I suppose it is supposed to be atmosphere? The story is a bit hard to follow. I think I got about half f it. There are fights, but not a lot. This is a film where footage of characters silently walking from one end of a field to another is longer than any of the fight scenes. I guess I can understand why some critics have called it a masterpiece, and why it would earn Hou Hsao-Hsien the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival. But it is not something for anyone looking for an action film.
The Spy Who Loved Me ( 1977 )
Had United Artists not bought a 50% stake in Danjaq S.A., the parent company of Eon Productions, then it is unlikely there would have been a next James Bond film. The Man With The Golden Gun had been a franchise killer, being universally panned by critics and underperforming at the box office. Most studios would have decided to cancel the series. Instead, they were convinced by producer Albert Broccoli to double the budget of the past Bond films, and to build Bond it's own massive soundstage for Eon to build the bases for villains in. No more faking the size of an underground base with optical trickery. United Artists was willing to do this, but let Eon know that the studio had another franchise waiting in the wings to replace the Bond series, the Pink Panther which had officially graduated from a couple of sequels featuring the Crusoe character to a full fledged franchise, and starring former Bond ( sort of ) Peter Sellers. If the next Bond film was not a blockbuster hit, then that would be it for the series.
Broccoli had more than that to worry about. His partner, Harry Saltzman, was no longer attached to the series, so for the first time Broccoli would be producing a Bond film by himself. With two novels left to adapt, Saltzman had decided to announce The Spy Who Loved Me would be the next Bond film. Eon's contract with the Fleming estate specifically forbade Eon from adapting the novel, but allowed them to use the title of the novel for an original Bond story. ( Fleming was very displeased with how the novel turned out, and if not for obligations to his publisher, would have preferred it never seen print. He was reluctant to include it in the film rights sold to Eon, but they convinced him to do it, fearing a rival producer could obtain the rights at a later date. He agreed on condition that they could only use the title and not the contents. ) The reason why Saltzman picked the novel for the next Bond film was because it was the last of the two Bond novels left to adapt, and if they did Moonraker first, it would be too tempting to end the struggling series with all the novels they could legally adapt having been turned into movies. Having one novel left was incentive not to give up. But it also meant that Broccoli had to come up with an entire original plot.
There was one problem Saltzman had created that Broccoli knew he could easily remedy. Saltzman was contacted by a young director by the name of Steven Spielberg who was eager to direct a James Bond movie. At the time he was in post production of a major motion picture called Jaws, so Saltzman agreed to a meeting just prior to selling his share of Danjaq to United Artists. Broccoli didn't want a new director who was unfamiliar with the Bond franchise, especially an American. He wanted one of the previous directors from the series. And the only one available was Lewis Gilbert who had directed You Only Live Twice, which Broccoli thought was a perfect fit as that film also ignored the source novel and instead had an original plot.
Broccoli and his writers began brainstorming what the plot of the next film would be. Broccoli wanted the best elements from all the past Bond films. One of those elements was SPECTRE and its leader Ernst Blofeld. Initial thoughts were to give Blofeld a machine capable of causing natural disasters, to capitalize on the popularity of disaster movies. But then Spielberg's movie became the biggest box office hit of all time, and Broccoli wanted the next Bond film to take place in the sea and have Blofeld feeding his enemies to sharks. Wanting to use a henchman from the novel called Sol Horror who had steel teeth, Broccoli decided it he could do it without violating the agreement with the Fleming estate as long as the characters name was changed. Naturally the characters new name would be Jaws.
They eventually had a script that was basically a remake of the film version of You Only Live Twice replacing captured spacecraft with captured nuclear submarines, but for the same reason, that SPECTRE was being paid to instigate a world war between the United States and Russia. They were nearing completion of post production when Broccoli learned Kevin McClory, who owned right to the character Blofeld and organization SPECTRE, didn't want to lend either to Eon. The film ended up delayed for nearly a year as Eon and McClory negotiated over allowing SPECTRE and Blofeld to be used. Eventually realizing McClory was no going to give them Blofeld no matter what was offered, and ordered the script rewritten with a new villain called Karl Stromberg. Production was postponed so long that Broccoli was already reading treatments for Moonraker, which was going to follow the plot of the novel where the Moonraker was a nuclear missile the villain, a former Nazi commander, was firing at London out of retaliation for Germany's defeat in the second World War. In the treatment the stakes were raised so that the villain was using the missile to trigger a nuclear war between the United States and Russia, killing everyone on the surface while he and people he deems genetically superior survive in his massive bunkers. Broccoli decided to use that as the motive for Stromberg to cause WWIII, so that he and genetically superior humans could survive in his underwater cities. So basically the plot for this movie was stolen from past Bond films, and a future Bond film.
It didn't really matter. All Broccoli cared about was having Bond travel from one exotic place to another, and going from one action scene to the next. And since this time around the Bond film would not be using anything from its source novel, it was nothing but formula, filled with bits you recognize from past Bond films. For example, Stromberg killing his assistant by dropping her through a trap door into a shark tank is very reminiscent of Blofeld dispatching henchwoman Helga Brandt by dropping her via a collapsing bridge into a pool of piranhas. At least Helga got a lot of scenes before Blofeld killed her for failing to kill Bond. Not only didn't the assistant get any lines ( other than AAAAAAH! ) but Eon never even bothered to give her a name. She just exists just to fulfil a Bond movie trope.
So far On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the Bond film with the most action scenes. But this movie showed signs that Broccoli was willing to increase the action content. While the obligatory chase scenes are mostly lumped at the midpoint of the film, and the obligatory battle between an army of henchmen and Bond's army takes place near the end, this is the first Bond film to have a substantial action scene in the film's cold opening. The second ski chase in the Bond series, which has impressive stunts and culminates with the most famous stunt in the entire series where Bond skis off of a cliff and seems to be falling to his death. ( If you haven't seen this film, then no spoilers as to How Bond gets out of that situation. ) It has one of the best theme songs in the series, and for the first time Broccoli allowed for a theme song that didn't have the name of the film as it's title. Nobody Does It Better became such a big hit that I didn't realize it was the theme song for this movie until I watched it on it's first network television broadcast. This was also the first Bond film to use Eon's brand new Bond soundstage where the set for the interior of Stromberg's massive submarine eating tanker was built. Oh, and to top all previous Bond film, Broccoli gave the villain two bases to destroy in the third act.
A lot of Bond fans consider this close to if not the best of the original series films. I wouldn't go that far. While it is a vast improvement over the previous film, I don't think it would even be in my top ten favorites.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1763390 times)
