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Rewatching the James Bond films chronologically. It’s 1995 now, and Pierce Hawthorne, um, I mean Brosnan has taken the role, kicking off a new era in Goldeneye.

Blond blurb: Bond was betrayed years ago in the USSR by fellow agent 006, Alec Trevelyan. In the present, there’s no more Cold War, but there are still evil plots brewing. But wait, Trevelyan is still alive, part of a separatist group planning to use leftover Soviet nuclear tech for nefarious means.

Bond background: There’s some serious tension between Bond and the new M, played by Judy Dench. The scene where she rips into Bond about his cavalier attitude is a highlight, showing how much the world has changed around Bond. Being betrayed by his former friend weighs heavily on Bond. When asked how he can be so unemotional about it, he answers, “It’s what keeps me alive.” Also, we learn that Bond is an orphan, after his parents were killed in a climbing accident when he was young.

Bond baddies: Sean Bean plays Trevelyan with his famous ice-cold stare. Trevelyan is depicted as what might happen if Bond were to turn to crime, and he tries to call Bond out on his loyalty to an outdated system. Russian general Ourumov also brings a lot of intensity to his scenes. Robbie Coltraine shows up as a former Russian official turned Russian gangster, and he’s actually really funny.

Bond babes: The love interest is computer expert Natalya Simonova. She’s fine, but she gets upstaged in a big way by Famke Jansen as the bad girl, Xenia Onatopp. Jansen steals the entire movie, and you can see her becoming a movie star right before your eyes.

Bond best brains: Bond’s car has a built in fax machine. The ‘90s!!! The trip through Q’s workshop is especially Three Stooges-ish, with slapstick gags left and right. Bond gets a belt with a retractable grappling wire, a grenade disguised as a pen, and a BMW equipped with stinger missiles.

Bond bash-ups: The opening scene has Bond acting all nice and slick as he infiltrates a Russian base. Then he’s all slick in a car chase with Onatopp, and he somehow remains slick while trashing half of Moscow in a tank. Along the way, there are some truly impressive pyrotechnics when a Russian base is destroyed by a satellite. The finale takes place at a giant satellite dish improbably hidden in a lake, with more gunfights and explosions and a great final bad guy fall.

Bond bygones: The ‘90s were the decade of retro, when nostalgia for decades earlier riddled the pop culture landscape. As such, each Bond film from here on out has callbacks to previous films in the series. Goldeneye is especially notable in this respect, as the filmmakers strived to include as many “Bond-isms” possible. I must admit, there are a few times when the movie feels a little more set in the ‘60s then the present.

Bond baggage: The fall of the Soviet Union is a big impetus to the plot. Alan Cumming plays a wacky computer hacker who speaks in a lot of early internet jargon, and Miss Moneypenny makes a joke (or perhaps she’s not joking?) about suing Bond for sexual harassment.

Bond babble: Despite my jokes about ‘90s trappings, there’s actually a somewhat timeless feeling to Goldeneye. They set out to make a “pure” James Bond movie, and I say they succeeded. The movie’s great fun, and one of my favorites.

Next week: This… is… CNN.

****

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Rewatching the James Bond films chronologically. Here’s a detour: In 1991, we had the animated series James Bond Jr., which ran in syndication for 65 episodes. Yes, this is canon:

Blond blurb: Teenage James Bond Jr. (hereafter named “Junior”) attends boarding school at the prestigious Warfield Academy, alongside his friends IQ, grandson of Q, and Gordon Leiter, son of CIA agent Felix Leiter. Armed with IQ’s gadgets and Leiter’s muscle, Junior often skips class to travel around the globe and fight evil. There’s also the headmaster’s daughter Tracy, boy-crazy nerd girl Phoebe, and snobby rich kid Noseworthy, who all get swept up in Junior’s adventures as well.

Bond background: Despite his name, Junior is not the son but the nephew of James Bond. Many have speculated that this means Bond has a brother, also named “James Bond.” As far as I can tell, Junior is not an agent in any sort of official capacity. Instead, he just happens to find his way into trouble, and then saves the day. This is kind of like what we’ve seen in the movies, where Bond accidentally uncovers fiendish plots when he’s supposed to be on holiday.

Bond baddies: The many villains work for S.C.U.M., some sort of offshoot of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. They’re led by Scumlord, a shadowy man whose face we never fully see. He’s quite obviously supposed to be Blofeld, as he pets a small white dog instead of a white cat. A lot of villains from the movies make appearances. Jaws and Nick Nack are teamed up to do the “bumbling henchmen” thing, Goldfinger is here, not only with Oddjob but also with his teen daughter, Goldie. Dr. No shows up too, with green skin for some reason.

Bond babes: The show provided a lot of one-time love interests for Junior, with appropriately Bondian names — Lotta DeNiro, Marci Beacoup, Bunny Slope, Hayley Comet, and Terri Firmer, for example. But, really, Tracy tags along on every one of Junior’s adventures, and always seems to be jealous whenever he flirts with the other girls. The writers clearly set her up as “the one” for Junior.

Bond best brains: Each episode has IQ giving Junior a gadget in the first act, which comes into play in the third act. These are usually some weird-looking device, or something built into Junior’s watch. There’s very little of the fun things-that-look-like-other-things gadgets we see in the films. Also, Junior starts out the series driving the classic Aston Martin from Goldfinger, but when it’s destroyed, he gets a brand new red Aston Martin convertible, which we’re told is a gift from his famous uncle.

Bond bash-ups: Because it’s made for kids, there’s no fighting or gunplay, so most action scenes are chases and escapes. Typically, Junior has to climb and jump around a bunch of obstacles to get to a computer to throw a switch to make something blow up. This really isn’t the show to watch for awesome action.

Bond baggage: The executive producer for James Bond Jr. was Fred Wolf, who was producing the megapopular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon at the same time, and a lot of characters in both shows are the same stock types. IQ and Leiter are Donatello and Michelangelo, Jaws and Nick Nack are Rocksteady and Bebop, and Tracy, Phoebe and Noseworthy are April O’Neil and her coworkers Irma and Vernon.

Bond babble: I love late ‘80s/early ‘90s TV cartoons, but this is… not the best. Kind of boring and unimaginative, with each episode following more or less the same formula. If it didn’t have the novelty of the Bond name attached, I doubt it would have ever made it to air.

Next week: Hawthorne wipes.

****

Want more? Check out my book, CINE HIGH, now available for the Kindle and the free Kindle app.

Rewatching the James Bond films chronologically. For Timothy Dalton fans, 1989’s License to Kill is THE ONE — the serious, edgy Bond that everyone wanted after the jokiness of the Moore years. Is it really as great as the Daltonites say?

Blond blurb: Bond and his CIA pal Felix Leiter catch Cuban drug lord Sanchez on the eve of Felix’s wedding. Sanchez escapes custody and enacts bloody revenge against Felix. When Bond investigates without permission, his license to kill is revoked. Now, he’s gone rogue, hunting down the bad guys on his own.

Bond background: We’ve seen Bond’s many romantic conquests, but this movie explores his friendships. Although Bond and Felix have been kept it mostly professional in past films, there’s a real sense in this one that they’ve grown close. (Bond’s tragically short marriage from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service gets a mention.) This, of course, adds to Bond’s bloodlust once he’s out for revenge.

Speaking of which, the whole idea of Bond going rogue is never really explored as much as it could have been. I kept expecting him to be dodging his fellow English agents while pursuing Sanchez, but it never happened. At the end, Bond gets his job back without any real consequence for killing without a license.

Bond baddies: The always-cool Robert Davi plays Sanchez. No opera singing this time, though. Yes, that is a young Benecio Del Toro as his henchthug, Dario.

Bond babes: You’d think there wouldn’t be time for lovin’ with all this revenge business going on, but Bond still finds room to woo one of Felix’s contacts, Pam Bouvier (insert Patty and Selma joke here). She and Bond have the Moonlighting-style banter going on as they track down the villains. Bond later gets close to Sanchez’s girlfriend, Lupe, who wants the abusive Sanchez out of her life.

Bond best brains: Although Bond’s gone rogue, Q still shows up to help him, with a gun disguised as a camera and plastic explosives disguised as toothpaste. Also, to sneak aboard an enemy’s boat, Bond has a convenient mini-sub thing that’s disguised as a manta ray, to throw off the bad guys’ radar. Did Bond just happen to have one of those lying around?

Bond bash-ups: Lots of action in this one. We begin with a confusing helicopter versus airplane chase that ends with Bond and Felix suavely parachuting into the wedding. Then there’s a fight and shootout inside an aquarium, complete with a shark tank and strategically placed electric eels. A big set piece in the middle of the movie starts with Bond deep sea diving, then involved in a water-skiing chase, and then in the air, fighting a guy inside a small plane. A hilarious barroom brawl uses a stuffed swordfish a weapon, and there’s a somewhat random rooftop fight with some ninjas. It ends with a tanker truck chase that feels more like The Road Warrior than a Bond movie, but it features more great stunts and pyrotechnics.

Bond baggage: Everett McGill of Twin Peaks not only appears in this movie less than one year before Peaks, but his character in both is named Ed! I didn’t know the Bookhouse Boys had contacts with MI6. Kidding aside, he’s actually really good in the role of a traitorous agent.

Bond bewilderment: Suddenly, Wayne Newton shows up. His character is running a phony telethon that’s a front for Sanchez’s drug empire. Seriously, Wayne Newton is in this.

Bond babble: Timothy Dalton comes to this movie with something to prove, playing Bond with a steely intensity. This “he will kill you if you look at him funny” version of Bond is clearly why Dalton’s fans have so embraced him in the role. The plot is kind of stock ‘80s action, all about drug smuggling and revenge, but I like that it’s (somewhat) more grounded and low-key than others in the series.

Next week: Nice mullet.

****

Want more? Check out my book, CINE HIGH, now available for the Kindle and the free Kindle app.

Rewatching the James Bond films chronologically. One of the reasons I’m doing these Bond blogs is to see whether the series holds up as a singular saga instead of just stand-alone films. The other reason I’m doing this is to rediscover the Timothy Dalton Bonds. The Dalton fans are a passionate, passionate bunch, often arguing that T-Daltz is the best Bond EVAH!!! Is that really the case? Is Dalton really as badass as the fans say? Let’s check out 1987’s The Living Daylights.

Blond blurb: When helping a Russian official defect, Bond refuses to kill a female sniper. He says it’s because she’s not a professional, and he investigates who she is. Meanwhile, the sinister General Pushkin is still after the defector, and has a plan involving weapons smuggling, diamond smuggling, and drug smuggling. But Pushkin’s not the real mastermind. He’s being bossed around by international arms dealer Whitaker, the one really pulling the strings.

Bond background: The opening scene has Bond and some of the other 00 agents in a training exercise that goes wrong. We know so little about the other 00s. We saw their backs briefly in Thunderball, and there have been fleeting references to them elsewhere, but this is the first time we’ve seen them in any real action. Are we to assume they’re off having crazy adventures like Bond is, or is Bond special somehow?

Bond babes: The mystery assassin a cellist, Mary, who’s not an assassin at all, but the defector’s lover. She eventually succumbs to Bond’s charms, of course, after learning the defection was staged. They try to play it both ways, in that she’s both an ordinary woman caught up in international intrigue, but also a tough girl with sniper rifle. She acts all innocent, but she can’t be if she’s shooting at people, stunt driving, and stunt horseback riding. Improbably, her cello features into the plot in key ways, making it like a character in the movie.

Bond baddies: We’ve got multiple villains in this one. MST3K’s favorite punching bag Joe Don Baker plays Whitaker, and the always great John Rhys-Davies plays Pushkin. The phony defector stays involved, and let’s not forget Necros, the ruthless Aryan who kills and murders his way through the whole movie.

Bond best brains: Lots of gadgets in this one. Bond’s keychain contains whistle-activated stun gas and explosives. Bond’s car is ‘roided up with missiles and an incredibly cheesy laser beam. The Russian defector gets out by riding a rocket through a Soviet pipeline into Vienna, where he’s greeted by Q. There’s another trip through Q’s wacky workshop, with the famous “ghetto blaster” gag.

Bond bash-ups: The opening has some great stunts with Bond hanging onto the top of a truck as it speeds around some narrow roads. A car chase takes us off the roads and out onto the ice. This leads to the movie’s hokiest scene, in which Bond and Mary escape skiing henchmen by sliding down a snowy mountainside on her cello case. Seriously? The big set piece has Bond dangling from a bomb that’s dangling off the back of an airplane, only to have him and Mary escape the airplane by parachuting a jeep out of it. It’s absurd in its incredulity. The final showdown between Whitaker and Bond is a one-on-one shootout in Whitaker’s war room, surrounded by all his models of famous battles. I guess this a metaphor, showing that his fight with Bond is playing out on the world stage? It’s an anticlimactic end after all the airplane craziness.

Bond baggage: The Cold War was winding down by 1987, but in this movie it’s still on in a big way, with a lot of paranoia about the KGB and the Soviets. Afghanistan rebels are shown fighting the Russians, making them “good guys.” This is something I don’t think we’re going to see much of in today’s action movies. Oh, and everyone’s calling each other on their giant Zack Morris cell phones.

Bond babble: Rumor has it that Dalton came into the series hoping to play a serious, edgier Bond. That makes sense, because underneath the charm and cool, Bond is dangerous and should be feared. So Dalton brings a lot of “he can kill you at any time” edginess to his performance. Unfortunately, the filmmakers still think they’re making a cartoon comedy Roger Moore movie, so there are still puns and slapstick. There a lot of fun parts, but the tone is way off. The good news is, we’re not done with Dalton yet.

Next week: Revocation.

****

Want more? Check out my book, CINE HIGH, now available for the Kindle and the free Kindle app.