Nobody Errs It Better: Petty Nitpicks and James Bond

My wife and I have been doing our best to train and teach our children.  Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail, but we don’t give up easily.  We encourage, we enable, we chastise, we correct.  Parenting is a full-time job.  If you don’t believe me, just ask Ward Cleaver or Herman Munster; they know the challenges.

In the all-important area of pop culture, my bride and I have done what we could to plunge the kids into what we like, while making sure that their own developing interests are allowed to grow.  Well, they are allowed to grow unless:

1. their interests aren’t ours,
2. their interests come into conflict with ours, and/or
3. their interests bring about unwanted attention of the authorities compared to ours.

Fortunately, something that has taken root during the children’s formative years has been interest in James Bond.

As early as possible, I showed incredible stunt sequences and vehicle chases to the children.  They were taken on a worldwide spree of special effects wonder.  Now they believe that every Aston Martin is equipped with oil slicks and rockets, every horse trailer hides a folding mini-jet, and every crash ends with a horrific volcanic eruption of combustible fuel.  Ah, I couldn’t be prouder.

Well, that’s not true.  I was even prouder when my daughter wanted to watch a Bond movie the other day.  She chose 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies, a film I saw three times in the theater back then, and we were ready to go.  It is one of Pierce Brosnan’s Bond outings, with plenty of fun, charm, action, explosions, and Jonathan Pryce literally turning into a Virginia ham before our very eyes. The film still plays like gangbusters. 

However, this time around, I noticed an issue that I hadn’t cared about before.  For some reason, Bond decides to blatantly provoke Jonathan Pryce before he’s investigated anything yet.  Yes, the audience knows that Pryce is the bad guy, but Bond doesn’t, so Bond’s cover story is blown almost immediately.  (Now I’m all for Bond being a blunt instrument for Queen and country, but he should dig up something, anything, no matter how trivially small before going off to poke the bear.  Until that happens, follow the method taught in Road House: be nice until Dalton tells you not to be nice.  I mean Roger Moore had this approach figured out to a T.  Remember, his Bond was even offered delightful cucumber sandwiches by the megalomaniacal Hugo Drax for heaven’s sake!)

Now yes, this is a trivial detail, but diehard Bond fans can be prickly sticklers on some of this stuff.  And in the meantime, I remembered some other 007 film issues that were sprinkled throughout the series that I glossed over during the past 30+ years of watching Bond.  Of course, I had already devoted individual posts for each James Bond film several million years ago.  Perhaps now was the time to revisit some areas I didn’t cover earlier. (By the way, look at the title of this post. Wouldn’t Petty Nitpicks be a great character name? Sometimes my genius gets to the point of being considered inconsequential. Anyway…)

Bear in mind, this gets into being overwhelmingly critically microscopic about these movies, so if the average Bond viewer gets lost in the weeds, I understand.  Also, I’m sure there must have been other dieharder Bond aficionados who have pointed this plot stuff out elsewhere.  Being my usual self, I decided to do no research whatsoever, so rest assured that I still don’t know any answers to these issues.  I did spitball these ideas to my wife, whose reaction to my manic breathless takes on these topics was a combination of pity and more pity.  This means that I have no answers.  Then again, always remember that a solved mystery today only becomes a boring fact in the future.

So, shake up those vodka martinis, get your ejector seats ready, and bed down with some overdubbed exotic vixen because here we go into the world of Bond plot issues!

The Man with The Golden Gun (1974):

Yes, there are a few flaws with this film.  Well, there’s a lot of them.  But as I’ve looked at several of them ad nauseum in my original posting about this movie and as this year is the 50th Anniversary of this film, I’ll skip along as best as I can. Truth is that I’ve found a way to make the movie a bit shorter, which I know will please some Bond fans.  How exactly?  Well, I’m glad I asked myself that question of myself.  Here’s a bit of a plot recap first.

A golden bullet has been sent to MI6 with “007” carved into it.  Legendary assassin-for-hire Francisco Scaramanga is the only person known to use golden bullets because he uses them in his golden gun to kill targets for one million dollars per hit.  His CIA-verified fingerprints are on the bullet as well.  M believes that Scaramanga is sending his calling card to warn Bond that he is coming after him. Therefore Bond and whatever mission he’s on would be in jeopardy.  Bond decides to be proactive, going after Scaramanga instead.  Bond is informed by Moneypenny that 002 was believed killed by Scaramanga in Beirut a few years earlier but no bullet was ever recovered, it was never proven.  Moneypenny also says that 002 was with a cabaret dancer named Saida when he was shot.  This leads Bond to go to Beirut to investigate.

In Beirut or in a cheaply dressed set at Pinewood that is supposed to pass for Beirut, Bond finds Saida, the cabaret dancer.  Turns out that after the golden bullet went through 002, the dancer found it, and placed it in her belly button as a lucky charm.  Just when Bond is trying to get the bullet out of her belly button by kissing/sucking it off her abdomen, some guys burst into the room to beat up Bond.  These guys say nothing, they don’t mention if they are working for Scaramanga or not or if they own the club that the lady dances in or not or if they just don’t like Roger’s suit or not.  We never know their motives beyond being a plot contrivance to get Bond to accidentally swallow the bullet.  And humor ensues, I guess. 

Bond then beats up the guys and leaves to get to the nearest pharmacy.  Bond gives the bullet to Q and the Guy Who Isn’t a Hotel Inspector from Fawlty Towers. After examining the bullet, they determine who the firearms/ammunition maker is and Bond decides to pay him a visit.  This encounter provides a new lead for Bond to get to Scaramanga before he gets to him.

This is all well and good.  And yet, it isn’t.  Remember, why does Bond go to Beirut in the first place?  Well, he’s going to talk with the cabaret dancer who was with 002 when he was killed even though it’s a longshot at best, right?  That Bond not only finds her but also manages to find the actual spent bullet that Scaramanga used borders on the miraculous.  But that’s Bond, right?  He does work miracles sometimes!  Hah, nobody does it better, amirite?  Except…

Except that Bond never needed to go to Beirut.  Yes, he didn’t even know that the bullet still existed or that the cabaret dancer would even know anything. Regardless, he didn’t even need to book the flight to Lebanon. That whole scene is complete balderdash and utter poppycock because after all, MI6 already has a golden bullet that was sent in with “007” etched into it and everything! 

Why couldn’t Q and the non-hotel inspector just examine that first bullet that was sent to MI6?  Then Bond could get on his way quickly to point a rifle at the groin of Scaramanga’s ammo manufacturer ASAP and he wouldn’t even have to get to Beirut to do it!  (By the by, if you’ve made it this far and still want to make the movie shorter: simply cut the entire Beirut cabaret dancer/backstage fight scene out of the movie. You wouldn’t miss a thing aside from some of Roger’s banter, which is better in other scenes anyway.) 

By the way, before I leave this film, why does Moneypenny of all people happen to remember the name of the sleazy cabaret dancer who at best was a random witness to 002’s shooting from five years ago?  Was she conducting her own clandestine investigation on 002’s murder on her own time? Or is she surprisingly hip to the nightclub entertainment rosters of 1970s Beirut? Possibly both?

By another way, who paid Scaramanga a million dollars to kill 002?  What exactly was 002 investigating in 1969?  He must have been pretty good if some criminal organization or sketchy government was going to cough up a cool million to have Scaramanga whack him, right?  Seems like a lot of trouble to go to and I would love to give you the answers, yet none of these questions are ever followed up on in the movie. But at least there’s a slide whistle, a redneck sheriff, and a midget henchman to distract us all.  Come to think of it, that sounds like a blast!  What I wouldn’t give for it to be 1974 again.

Goldfinger (1964):

Yes, that’s right. Even during the 60th Anniversary year of the 007 film that launched James Bond into the stratosphere, there is an issue to investigate. Towards the end of the movie, Bond is recaptured by Goldfinger, who has hijacked the jet that Bond was using to get to the White House.  It appears that Bond’s time is up.  He struggles with Goldfinger on the plane and when Goldfinger’s gun goes off, it shoots out a plane window.  The cabin immediately depressurizes and the formidable Goldfinger is sucked out of the teeny plane window. 

Bond rushes to the cockpit, sees Pussy Galore trying to correct the flight path of the rapidly descending jet.  He and Pussy parachute to safety and correctly decide they would rather canoodle instead of being rescued right away.  So that’s the end of Goldfinger.  James Bond will return in…hold on a minute!  Go back a bit in the movie.  Now hit the pause button.  There!  No, over there!  Behind Goldfinger’s left shoulder!  There he is again for second!

Yeah, who is that guy?  Presumably it is one of Goldfinger’s Korean henchpeople who had helped in the Fort Knox assault, but who is he?  Why is he there?  Is he busy preparing some overpriced cocktails for Goldfinger and Bond and serving little bags of pretzels?  Given the swivel chairs, it doesn’t look like the jet even has a safety reason to remind folks to put their trays in an upright and locked position.  Who is this guy?  Even more mysterious is that he plays no role in the fight Bond has with Goldfinger.  You’d think he’d jump in to help his boss as he and Bond fight over the gun. 

And yet somehow, despite never being fully shown or even acknowledged, presumably this same guy somehow ends up unconscious/dead/napping on the floor of the jet as well?!  When they cut to a shot of Sean walking towards the cockpit, you clearly see one of Goldfinger’s uniformed Korean staff on the ground.  Bond never hit him as he never came out during the fight; we’ve never even seen this guy.  Presumably, he simply fainted when he saw Sean Connery was on the flight.  (I would have probably done the same thing under those circumstances; it is Sean Connery we’re talking about here.)  Perhaps Bond just thought this was an oddly shaped throw rug on the floor of the plane.  Furthermore, this random guy certainly didn’t make it off the plane to just sit under a tree while Bond and Pussy were making out under the parachute. 

There must be some cut footage somewhere from the end of Goldfinger.  Perhaps after Goldfinger was sucked out harder than a member of Congress, there was a knock-down drag-out fight between Bond and this random dude.  Maybe he just happened to be a martial arts master, fighting Bond to within an inch of his life!  I bet this fight was spectacular with some primo stunt arranging amidst a crashing jet with Sean never looking better despite getting his ass handed to him by this random guy! 

But I’m sure it would have gotten cut out anyway, since a fight like this would have come too near the end of the movie.  Maybe they liked the idea of fighting on a doomed craft and used that for the end of Thunderball instead? And despite all that flowery postulation, in the end, who the hell was this random Goldfinger henchguy?!  I bet that actor spent the rest of his life claiming he was in the biggest Bond of all, and no one ever saw him.  Well, until I did, I guess. You’re welcome, Mr. Guy Blinknyoullmissme.

 

Spectre (2015):

Okay, Spectre isn’t one of my favorite outings for 007.  I’ve made that abundantly clear in an earlier rambling discourse about the film on this very rambling platform.  In fact, given the intervening years since I wrote that post, I might put Spectre at an even lower rank amongst its brethren in the James Bond film catalog.  (Yes, this means that if given the choice, I would joyfully rather pop in A View to a Kill instead of Spectre because at least the title song is better by several thousand country miles, Patrick Macnee is a delight, and Roger otherwise looks like he’s having a good time, despite his face being pulled taut. Hell, a Beach Boys cover song could only improve Spectre, and that’s embarrassing.) 

So just when I thought that I couldn’t like the film even less, the release of the endless No Time to Die made Spectre retroactively even worse.  You see, at the end of Spectre, James Bond finally has the lead bad guy, Mr. Ernst Stavro Blofeld, dead to rights, holding him at gunpoint on a bridge in London.  (For those of you playing along at home, Blofeld in Spectre has been retconned into being the actual bad guy behind the bad guy in Skyfall, as well as also being behind the bad guy in Quantum of Solace who was behind the bad guy in Casino Royale.  Yeah, it is a sloppy unnecessary mess of a story nuisance indeed.  Plus, how can a criminal organization exist with such deep and endless levels of bureaucracy, again outside of Congress?  (Hah, that’s two!)  The SPECTRE data entry corps alone must be at least 300 strong.  And this rebooted SPECTRE doesn’t even have staff in different colored jumpsuits to properly denote rank and position! It’s probably for the best. This SPECTRE could have a space shuttle, a pool full of piranhas, and a hollowed-out volcano and somehow make it boring.)

So this Blofeld ultimately has been determined by EON Productions to be the retconned guiding force of all the misery Bond has experienced since 2006.  And now Bond, who is licensed to kill mind you, has Blofeld in his sights, ready to pull the trigger at point blank range to end this nonsense because he’s licensed to kill so that means Bond can kill because he has a license to kill.  And yet, Bond decides to not kill Blofeld and instead turns him over to be arrested.  As Bond had unconvincingly fallen for a dull lady with whom he shares no real onscreen chemistry, not killing Blofeld is supposedly Bond’s act of maturity, growing beyond killing to solve issues.  Bond then takes off with this dull lady, since she had his balls packed in her handbag already, and everything is supposed to be hunky dory.  Cue the James Bond theme and…hooray?

Yeah, Spectre has an ending that unsatisfactorily dumb.  It truly is.  And it is even dumber in the light of No Time to Die.  You see, Bond and that dull lady split up in the beginning of No Time to Die because Blofeld manages to get Bond to believe that she works for SPECTRE.  (And Bond falls for it because…this expensive 7-hour movie has to happen, I guess?)  Then time slowly passes and there’s now a different bad guy, who I’ll call Teddy Nercury, who uses nanobots who can be programmed to kill specific folks on a DNA level, which would have been a great evil plot…for Blofeld of all people, but I digress.

Instead, Teddy Nercury wants to use this tech for…killing off SPECTRE and Blofeld in a fit of revenge!  Yes, Teddy Nercury has his own reasons for wanting to kill Blofeld, so he schemes to have that dull lady use contrived reasons so she can get close to Blofeld to infect and kill him.  And ultimately because Bond got involved with the Teddy Nercury’s revenge antics, in the end it caused Bond to be infected with nanotechnology that is programmed to kill the dull lady and her daughter if Bond encountered them in person. So rather than inadvertently kill them, avoid them forever, or seek out a cure for himself, Bond decides to sacrifice his own life and the audience is supposed to be touched by this choice despite No Time to Die certainly not earning that sort of an emotional ending.  Oh sorry, spoilers. Anyway, how does the film Spectre figure into this mess? 

IF Bond had simply shot Blofeld dead on that bridge in London in Spectre, the following would have occurred:

1. That dull lady with whom Bond shares no onscreen chemistry with would have walked away with her life even though it was away from Bond.
2. That dull lady would never have had a daughter with Bond.
3. M would have shrugged and said, “Well done, 007.“
4. Teddy Nercury wouldn’t have sought revenge on Blofeld because he was dead already on the bridge.  (I’ll grant that he might just wipe out the SPECTRE remnants, but those would be unloved small potatoes.  MI6 probably wouldn’t even raise a curious eyebrow if SPECTRE bodies suddenly started piling up.)
5. Teddy Nercury never really would have had reason to bother infecting Bond with designer nanobots that would kill his daughter if he got close to her…because you see, Bond wouldn’t have a daughter.
6. We would not have had a seventeen-hour long movie that ends with us watching Bond foolishly sacrifice himself in a bombing run that destroyed the bad guy’s island fortress of evil.
7. James Bond would be alive and would return in another film without any issue beyond recasting 007 with someone that hopefully smiles at least once every other movie and uses a gadget laden car instead of running everywhere to solve problems.
8. My bladder would be healthier due to my not having to cross my legs to make it to the end of No Time to Die.   

So, Spectre can throw itself into being shelled and mortared and missiled into oblivion because this turd acted as the lead-in for the lengthy unfun No Time to Die.  (Ironically, despite the film’s title, there was plenty of time for Bond to die.  Return of the King ended earlier than that film, for crying out loud.)

As a side point, I’m acknowledging that Daniel Craig just isn’t Bond for me.  I don’t necessarily blame him entirely, but Craig does earn some finger pointing because he had a more active hand in crafting his 007 entries compared to his predecessors.  That being said, Craig’s Bonds seem to have bigger overall story issues instead of character portrayal issues.  I guess shoehorning in an overarching storyline when you didn’t intend to have one at the start takes its toll over five films. Well, that and a general and suffocating lack of fun.  Give me Roger and Christopher Walken and/or their stunt doubles fighting on the Golden Gate Bridge any day of the week and twice on Sunday compared to this one.

Do these little flaws and others like them mean that I hate or dislike any of the Bond movies?  Well, I mean, aside from Spectre?  No, I am a James Bond fan, taking the good with the bad.  I like some entries more than others and can find flaws in the better entries and can find gold in the weaker films.  There are strengths and weaknesses alike and what’s important is being able to recognize this, trying to improve, and treat challenges as learning experiences.  Man, I do sound like a parent, don’t I?  Yes, parenting is a full-time job indeed.  

And it turns out that my daughter now wants to watch The World Is Not Enough.  Onward with Pierce?  Onward we go!  Even though in that movie, they totally don’t pay off the Robert Carlyle character.  And here’s why!  First off, they…oh, never mind, I digress.  For now, at least.  Besides, good thing that the kids are older now, so I can ignore parenting for a bit so I can get away with writing something this long!