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Wasn't the antagonist of Goldeneye a former 00? Like 006, or some such.

Alexander "Alec" Trevelyan was 006 in GoldenEye, but also a double agent, and 009 was killed in the opening sequence to Octopussy.

Erik von Nein wrote:Wasn't the antagonist of Goldeneye a former 00? Like 006, or some such.

Yes. Trevelyan was 006. There are numerous references to other 00 agents in the books, movies, and the videogames (including GoldenEye in one of the briefings reminding Bond to be careful with mines). Several of them are prominent characters in the books, in their own right.

002 is killed in Thunderball, and 003 was found dead (off-screen) in View to a Kill.

I thought 003 was killed twice, I didn't realize it was 002 in Thunderball. I always thought it was an unlucky number.

Phantasee wrote:I thought 003 was killed twice, I didn't realize it was 002 in Thunderball. I always thought it was an unlucky number.

I think the numbers are recyclable. Though I think The Living Daylights had the biggest group of 00's on screen for the shortest amount of time in a Bond film.

How long does the Bond franchise will last?

Iosef Cross wrote:How long does the Bond franchise will last?

That is not dead which can eternal lie, and in strange aeons even death may die.

Iosef Cross wrote:How long does the Bond franchise will last?

Close to the heat death of the universe, I am sure. If necessary, we will leave recordings and a writer's bible for any passing alien spaceships around the galaxy. Ask a silly question...

In a more serious light, the series will continue for as long as it makes money. Once it starts losing money severely, it will get shelved, and then it will probably end if any revival efforts are failures.

EDIT: For example, consider the massive gap between Superman IV and Superman Returns, or Batman and Robin and Batman Begins. All the gaps in the Bond series have been primarily due to legal disputes, thus far.

Explosions, gadgets, guns and hot women all linked togather by a loose technothriller plot and exotic locations. How hard can it be to make a Bond movie ? As much as I liked Casino Royale for its depth I yearn for another movie like Goldeneye. I hope Bond comes back a few years later after the grimdark age of hollywood ends. If they made a sequel now it would be another Quantum of Solace like crapfest with boring plot and dull action scenes you cant see anyway due to poor lighting and shakeycam.

Darth Paxis wrote:Both the books and the movies have multiple 00's, AFAIK the only canonical evidence for the codename theory is Lazenby's quip at the beginning of OHMSS.

Sorry, I should have made myself clearer, is that I know there are multiple 00's, there are one or two mentioned in Live and Let Die I think and specifically in The Living Daylights when a couple of 00's are bumped off. I meant the 00 designation was an agents codename, not the actual proper name itself.

Hell, as I say, you're not meant to analyse these films. Moonraker provides a prime example. You're meant to believe 6 shuttles lifted off, especially within a short period of time of each other and no one saw them visually, or even a tracking station. I know the space station had a radar jammer but the shuttle were detected on Moonraker 6's scopes while the space station wasn't. More to the point how was such a structure built in the first place.

These films are meant to be just 'switch your brain off' action films. Maybe less so with the Craig films though, but the 'classic' bond films don't exactly bother with realism.

Sarevok wrote:Explosions, gadgets, guns and hot women all linked togather by a loose technothriller plot and exotic locations. How hard can it be to make a Bond movie ? As much as I liked Casino Royale for its depth I yearn for another movie like Goldeneye. I hope Bond comes back a few years later after the grimdark age of hollywood ends. If they made a sequel now it would be another Quantum of Solace like crapfest with boring plot and dull action scenes you cant see anyway due to poor lighting and shakeycam.

Ironically, given its ending, Quantum of Solace was a step towards the classic bond film: Bond girls, gadgets and an exploding villain lair. Pretty much the staple, worked into the more realistic confines of set up by Casino Royale.

If you take all of the movies at face value, the 00s are actually pretty terrible at their job.

^James Bond is a bit sucky as well, considering how often he gets captured and how many hot chicks die on his watch, sometimes relying on sheer luck and the incompetence/arrogance of his opposition to win the day.

With MGM imploding, EON could just be waiting them out before carrying on with the franchise with some other big media firm.

CaptHawkeye wrote:If you take all of the movies at face value, the 00s are actually pretty terrible at their job.

Yeah. 003 couldn't even kill Renard properly in TWINE.

Big Orange wrote:^James Bond is a bit sucky as well, considering how often he gets captured and how many hot chicks die on his watch, sometimes relying on sheer luck and the incompetence/arrogance of his opposition to win the day.

With MGM imploding, EON could just be waiting them out before carrying on with the franchise with some other big media firm.

Granted I have only seen four Bond films to date (Goldfinger, Die Another Day, Casino Royale, and Quantum of Solace), so I'm basing this on a fairly small sample, but since his missions often involve going into bases full of enemy soliders alone or with one or two other people, I think the fact that he survives at all is pretty damn impressive.

Of course, one could perhaps question the wisdom of some of his missions. But unless Bond is choosing his own assignments, its not really fair to blame him for that.

Granted I have only seen four Bond films to date (Goldfinger, Die Another Day, Casino Royale, and Quantum of Solace), so I'm basing this on a fairly small sample, but since his missions often involve going into bases full of enemy soliders alone or with one or two other people, I think the fact that he survives at all is pretty damn impressive.

Its not impressive when his survival depends on enemies incompetence and stupidity.

Sarevok wrote:

Granted I have only seen four Bond films to date (Goldfinger, Die Another Day, Casino Royale, and Quantum of Solace), so I'm basing this on a fairly small sample, but since his missions often involve going into bases full of enemy soliders alone or with one or two other people, I think the fact that he survives at all is pretty damn impressive.

Its not impressive when his survival depends on enemies incompetence and stupidity.

Everybody makes mistakes, evilcat. And you know what they say about trying to find good help these days.

Yeah but Bond enemies were so laughably bad they were a prime inspiration for the things not to do I were Evil Overlord list.

Sarevok wrote:Yeah but Bond enemies were so laughably bad they were a prime inspiration for the things not to do I were Evil Overlord list.

True.

That said, while Bond gets no credit for his enemies' stupidity, he also gets no blame for it. He's only incompetent if he makes stupid mistakes. Does he?

JME2 wrote:Yeah. 003 couldn't even kill Renard properly in TWINE.

Compared to the other 00x agents (apart from Bond, obviously), 003 was amazingly successful in his mission. It just so happens that when he shot Renard in the head, it happened to be one of those rare instances where the bullet actually had beneficial effects to its victim. Bad luck more than anything, really.

It's a shame that Bond 23 is getting kicked down the line, I heard the director Marc Forster had a final scene which was eventually cut at the end of QoS that basically laser guided where the next movie(s) were going to go with QUANTUM. The more time passes, the more likely it is that they just recast and another Power That Be builds a new arc. (The QoS badguy had a brief line at the opera about transferring money from their Siberian holdings, I assume that might have been a relevant location for the next movie. Bond's gotta be in Russia sometime!)

Actually, something QoS was criticized for but I welcomed was how "minor", comparatively, the antagonist's plan was. The guy was just a prick and the scheme tied into that, it was a nice breather after the Giant Space Laser/Korean Annihilation at the end of DAD. Oh yeah- and in comparison to the Star Trek reboot, I also like that they built this reboot's world slow enough that the final "gun cam" at the end of Quantum just means we've finished the traditional prologue.

I give thumbs up to Goldeneye and The World Is Not Enough, although the latter movie is partially crippled by how awful Denise Richards is. And I like a lot of what Goldeneye does/tries to do, but on repeat viewings the script gets a little flimsy. Like how the Arkhangelsk defection was supposed to go down without 006 getting shot by an accurate guard? And the jazzy elevator music. Oh, the jazzy music.

LMSx wrote:Actually, something QoS was criticized for but I welcomed was how "minor", comparatively, the antagonist's plan was. The guy was just a prick and the scheme tied into that, it was a nice breather after the Giant Space Laser/Korean Annihilation at the end of DAD.

Water is life, water is power (to paraphrase Malcolm McDowell from Tank Girl). I also though the plan wasn't that bad and Quantum doesn't want its evil schemes to provoke world powers into knocking on its door (if it stole nukes instead).

I give thumbs up to Goldeneye and The World Is Not Enough, although the latter movie is partially crippled by how awful Denise Richards is.

I loved the speed boat chase, but apparently that big, complex segment was put together by an action orientated production crew (the rest was assembled by a documentary maker).

And I like a lot of what Goldeneye does/tries to do, but on repeat viewings the script gets a little flimsy. Like how the Arkhangelsk defection was supposed to go down without 006 getting shot by an accurate guard? And the jazzy elevator music. Oh, the jazzy music.

Also how could Orumov (Trevelyan's main henchman) stage the faux shooting of Trevelyan if he used the same pistol to kill a guard seconds later who disobeyed his orders?

Alec was shot at an angle that was made to look like he took a hit in the face, but didn't. Bond wasn't going to wander up and check on how dead his comrade was, so it was irrelevant to do anything more than a superficially looking execution. The flaw in their plan was expecting Bond to give up and not set the timers for a shorter fuse than they'd planned.

The music was also a poor part of the film because they used Eric Serra who is a very eclectic composer and liked experimenting (his better scores are Leon and The Fifth Element). After the production crew found out what they'd gotten from him, it was too late to get the score rewritten by someone more traditional. I can't recall if John Barry had been approached or not, though it was a stupid move to restart the franchise and not keep one of the best aspects of previous films.

Yeah, that's a good explanation, but I also felt that MI6 sabotaging a Soviet facility seemed very reckless and potential for sparking WWIII (Cold War missions didn't work like that), while Bond chasing after that falling plane was the single most ridiculous thing to have happened in the entire Bond franchise (beating out that pigeon double taking in Moonraker).

Admiral Valdemar wrote:The music was also a poor part of the film because they used Eric Serra who is a very eclectic composer and liked experimenting (his better scores are Leon and The Fifth Element). After the production crew found out what they'd gotten from him, it was too late to get the score rewritten by someone more traditional. I can't recall if John Barry had been approached or not, though it was a stupid move to restart the franchise and not keep one of the best aspects of previous films.

John Barry had some pretty major disagreements with the Bond producers during production of The Living Daylights, and after that he basically told them to go fuck themselves and refused to ever work on another Bond movie, hence why we got Michael Kamen on Licence to Kill, and then Serra on Goldeneye. Fortunately he did eventually put his differences aside somewhat, and recommended David Arnold to the producers for the post-Goldeneye films.

I think Goldeneye actually did have part of its score redone by someone else, mainly in the tank chase though St. Petersburg, although there wasn't the time to have the film totally rescored from scratch.