Ok, it's silly. But I've got to admit I really enjoy the Bond movies. Not all of them, mind you, but quite a few. Spike TV is showing a marathon over the Christmas holiday of most of the films. The first four (Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball) are just fabulous. Especially in the uncut versions. I've never realized how much they were butchered by the networks in the TV releases (being way to young to see them first in the cinema).
With the advent of DVDs we can see everything the networks thought we were too delicate to view. Some scenes that are cut just make little sense in today's world. They seem most often to cut the pre-title scenes (a couple of minutes in most cases) and some of the more brutal violence. There are a couple of scenes in the earlier films where Bond kills someone in a very cold-blooded fashion. These just disappeared from the network broadcasts, making him seem a bit of a milksop compared to the character in Ian Fleming's books.
It feels like Brosnan has brought a bit of spine back to the role of Bond, and I've got to applaud the screenwriters for their contributions to this rennaissance. I do wish that they would cut down a bit on the high-tech gadgetry and concentrate more on the plot and character development, but I think that ever since the films got the "blockbuster" label we've been condemned to ever bigger budgets and ever more outlandish plots.
I've read all the original books and as the series of movies was extended their relationship to the books got weaker and weaker. In the late '60s they seemed to have lost the plot entirely (I think Lazenby's Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service was the last one close to the books).
No matter.. it's not as if Ian Fleming is around to write any more books. They remain pure escapism and we can do with more of that these days.
Posted by artandscience at December 26, 2003 09:17 PM