We're immediately re-introduced to the awesome Blofeld, who tries to kill James Bond with a remotely controlled helicopter, cackling with glee, and who ... hey, wait a minute! Why don't we see Blofeld's face? We se Bond's nemesis sitting in a wheelchair, bald head filmed from the back, before he's dropped down a chimney, and... that's it?
We've gone through a few movies, several actors and face-changes, and indeed decades, where the closest thing to an arch enemy to Bond has been built up... and they finish him off as an afterthought, before the title sequence?
Hey - this is the guy who killed Bond's wife, you goddamned idiots! You don't do that! If all the other actors who portrayed him are busy, find a new damned Blofeld, and make a whole movie with him as a bad guy again before you let 007 finish him off properly in the end! Make it poetic, even - where it seems like Blofeld has escaped, but right at the end, Bond drives up to his parked car and kills the shit outta him, like how it happened with his wife?
Do I have to do all the thinking here!?
* As I boil in my own fury over the Blofeld outrage, Sheena Easton belts out what has to be the most godawful Bond tune in history. The only way I can stop myself from going mental, is picturing Sheena dancing in a pair of her righteous 80s pants.
Sheeeeeenaaaaaahhh.
(because I don't care enough about any image from the actual movie)
(because I don't care enough about any image from the actual movie)
* Speaking of things that are horribly dated - the mind-raping disco soundtrack really stands out in FYEO, and makes the viewer forget what actually happens on screen. Well, this viewer, at least.
When you do notice what's going on, the directing style is often so "creative" that it's cringeworthy. Dude - Bond movies are not the place to show off your flashy directing. Go to France or something.
(Now that's a thought! A French Bond counterpart! Double-ooh-la-la or something).
* In Moonraker, I noted that Roger Moore's face skin had started to vacate his skull. Now he's completely lost control over his chins.
This has to stop. 007 now looks like an unholy hybrid between the Live and Let Die-Bond and Jabba the Hutt.
And as if he weren't saggy enough solo, he still carries out his flirtatious shenanigans with Moneypenny, who's styled like it were the fifties and makes you think of a desperate grandma. The point of heavy flirting like this, is to direct your mind towards sex - and do you really want to picture those two banging away on the kitchen table, like a couple of hairy, flesh-colored sacks filled with pudding?
Thought not. Sorry if you read this just after eating.
* Of course - the old man still has his mid-life-crisis Bond car, the wonderful Lotus. Now in this movie, there's a scene where some bad guys try to break into it, despite the fact that it's marked as "burglar protected"... and it explodes! I hope to God this is a conscious effort to be funny. If not, it's so stupid, it truly boggles the mind. Either way: it ends up being over-the-top silly, as is the norm with the Moore movies.
The Lotus will later be replaced with a newer model, which Bond will use for... nothing whatsoever.
* At least, the Lotus farce ends up paving the way for the excellent 2CV chase. When your own, proper car has just exploded, it counts as a good enough justification for driving a 2CV.
This is just the right amount of humor for a Bond movie, and it's brilliantly done, too - just a good, proper car chase.
* There's a scene with skiing in it too, if you can believe it! This one is perhaps the most pathetic of them all, because it just tries too hard: Simply applying every other winter sport in the world to the ski chase, is not guaranteed to make it interesting.
The bobsleigh part is awesome, though - and that's because you can see that it's just an incredible, shit-meet-pants stunt, instead of crappy back projection or CGI.
In fact, it's good enough to almost make me forget that a bobsleigh chase, incredibly, has already been done in the Bond franchise.
* There's a scene with diving in it too, if you can believe it! It's as boring here as it was in the other Bond movies, but there's a really good mini-sub fight as well, that I bet James Cameron has seen.
* The otherwise anonymous bad guy in FYEO seems to be the only bad guy who's found the balance between a sadistic way of murder and a plain stupid one. Leaving 007 to be eaten by 'gators while you don't stay there and watch: stupid. Dragging 007 from your boat to be eaten by sharks and/or be beaten to a pulp against a reef: sadistic and not all too stupid.
Good for you, bad guy. But you're still not interesting enough that I'll bother looking up your name.
* Towards the end, there's a really intense climbing scene that'll have you on the edge of your seat. Cliffhanger, eat your 'roided heart out.
Sadly, the film's climactic raid against a mountaintop monastery can only be described as "meh". Whenever filmmakers seem to think that lots of gunfire automatically generates excitement, I get bored. Most of the mayhem is lost on me, as I'm too busy texting my Mom. I guess the bad guy gets killed or somethin'.
* There's a Maggie Thatcher-lookalike here, too, in a scene that tries so hard to be funny that it's embarrassing. It's even worse than that weird Gorbachev appearance in Rocky IV.
* And seriously - when Bond gets the girl in the end and Moore does his trademark suck-cheek kissing, I want to gouge my eyes out.
Roger Moore is about 54 at the time. His counterpart, Carol Bucket, is about 24. It shows. Bleurgh.
Have a look for yourself - if you're one of those people who's got no problem with this, you're also one of those people who's got an entire folder marked "grandpa porn" in your bookmarks.
* Final note: James Bond seems to win a lot whenever he gambles.
Is he really, really, reallyreally lucky, or does he cheat?
This is an interesting thought to me.
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