As you may have noticed if you're listening along, we record these several week's ahead, so we won't even be able to mention Sir Sean Connery's passing until the episode for Casino Royale.
@@verona8144 I know it's opinion, so all I can say is that you and I have very different ones. I love _The Rock_ , and it's a great film, but it's a mad dash from start to finish with very little downtime and lots of insanity. _Goldeneye_ is paced better, and had much more incredible stunts, in my opinion. _Octopus-y_ is fun and all, but the characters and motivations never really made sense to me in it. And the titular character was a lot less interesting than they wanted her to be. But again, it's subjective, so I'm glad you found so much to like about those movies, I just wish you could see all of the things I love about this film the way I do.
Another read of the plot hole mentioned: Oromov and Trevellyan were in it together, but Oromov was acting outside his authority within the USSR. The execution was for the soldiers’ benefit, who would think it odd if a foreign operative were spared and then, presumably, disappeared.
Oooh yeah, Omorov's soldiers would have thought it odd to spare an enemy and could have possibly turned on him if they had known. Good possible tie for the plot hole.
My assumption was that catching 006 was to lure Bond out of hiding, and that killing 006 was meant to trick Bond into making a rash move in revenge of his friend's death that would've made him easy to kill.
Yeah. It also leans in with all the "Stop, stop, let's watch" Oromov does during the Bond chase. Which, while technically perfectly reasonable for him to do, there's not really any reason for them to fire at him down the runway. Bond being killed (with a body as proof) would have probably been great for Oromov's career. But, Bond's not the objective, he's the distraction until the bomb goes off covering Trevellyan's escape.
I'll use my bizarre "first" to just say everyone involved with this podcast/series is killing it. Thank you all so much, it has been a joy to go through this series again and watch some silly movies. Next week the question is "Can Vincent Schiavelli steal an entire movie?"
Vehicles that crash, explode, or otherwise break after Bond goes near them: 1 - A soviet motorcycle, twice. 2 - A plane, but he fixes it. 3 - A collection of bicycles, just by his passing. 4 - Jack Wade's car. 5 - The Tiger helicopter. 6 - All the police cars in St Petersburg. 7 - The tank. 8 - The train. 9 - Jack Wade's loaner plane. 10 - Another helicopter. I'm with Natalia on this one, I wouldn't go with him on anything larger than a skateboard.
Back on the theme of things set up and paid off well, around 2:03:30 Natalya *totally* pwns Boris. He has been completely dismissive of her, constantly pointing out that she's "only a second level programmer" and calling her stupid. Then, again trying to insult her, points out she "only works on the guidance system" ... only. the. guidance. system. On cue, they find out she has used the guidance system of the satellite to put it into re-entry. A slightly faster burn and it wouldn't matter if Boris could override her codes because the satellite would be ash before it could fire. As it is, she's put a very short timer on their plans - they have to act now or lose out entirely. She doesn't say it, and I don't remember if her face says it, but you know she's thinking "who's stupid now?" It's a great little bit of revenge for all the times he's dismissed her as useless.
I love that bit. She's playing it down after they catch her, but when they realise what she's done she gets this lovely little smile; the smile of someone who's been underestimated in her favour. Then to top it off Boris proves all talk, being entirely unable to break her codes. The whole scheme was foiled the moment she hit the enter key, and everything after that point is just buying time, escaping, and killing Trevelyan.
I recently got a job that involves an hour of me driving twice a day and I thought "Hey, I can watch podcasts in the car to pass the time!" But I still have to watch this one on youtube because Matt Griffiths editing gags are too good to miss.
The commonly-held conceit is "The FIRST season of TNG was iffy as they tried to find their feet, and then the REST were ALL awesome" - it's not fun to have your easy beliefs picked apart.
"DON'T TOUCH THAT! ...That's my lunch!" is by far my favorite line of any Bond movie ever. It made me laugh when I first watched it in the 90s and it's only gotten funnier to me with time. Desmond Llewelyn's posture and delivery during that moment was absolutely perfect and I will fight anyone who says this wasn't a great moment.
The only catch is - it's only funny because of the build up of years of previous Q briefings where Q yells at Bond to not touch something because it's exceptionally dangerous. It's by far the best joke, but only as a subversion of the existing 'pattern' we expect.
@@empath69 I mean, this was the first Bond movie I ever watched and even back then I thought this joke was hilarious. Knowing past movies can help, but there's enough buildup in the scene itself that you don't actually need to have watched previous movies get it. So no, it's not the best "as a subversion." It's the best because it's just a really good joke
In the last episode, it was joked that if Twitter had been around at the time there would have been a "Robert Daddy" hashtag. I posit that if Twitter had been around in 1995, there would have been a *lot* of people asking to be crushed between Xenia's thighs.
One fun fact about the Sharpe series - In Sharpe's Eagle (1993), Sean Bean's character, Richard Sharpe, kills Lieutenant Barry, who is played by one Daniel Craig.
I also care about equilibrium. Without it, how would I know that Christian Bale and Taye Diggs can do gun-katta with such precision while balancing their anti-corporate themes with their own work? Also, what's this about a movie?
That movie is so over-the-top Matrix hype cashgrab and Fahrenheit 451 meets 1984 plot. I love it. I watch it maybe once a year just to relish in the cheesiness of Sean Bean reading poetry and Christian Bale harboring puppies like they're asylum seekers. It's so bad its good.
This was my first Bond movie, and I'm really glad it still holds up. A few things: 1. In the pre-title, Ourumov was also creating a show for his soldiers to cover up his working with Trevelyan. Even if Bond died, Orumov and Trevelyan were working together in secret from both governments. 2. IIRC, In one of the official strategy guides for the game (or in one of the DVD extras), there was a description that one of the motives for the production creating such an extensive set for St. Petersburg chase scene at Pinewood was that their crew that went to Russia kept having equipment stolen and they couldn't afford to keep shooting there. It may be apocryphal. 3. I think the liquid nitrogen tanks in the Control Room would be for cooling whatever supercomputers they're using to run the scheme. As for the other liquid, it could be fuel for running generators or maybe hydraulic oil to raise and lower the dish, maybe. Edit: 4. As for the helicopter pilot, I think he made off like a king. He got a free helicopter.
The really interesting thing chronologically around the nine years is that nine years before GoldenEye is the period between AVTAK and The Living Daylights (late '85 into '86). So you could almost retcon the changes in Dalton's portrayal as Bond's trauma over Trevelyan.
I went down a huge TV tropes rathole on this. Basically if you prescribe to the Casino Royale theory of Bond identity then Bondsnan retired after Alec's death and only came back after Bondton had his license to kill revoked and a new M took over. Or if you like the Agent with a thousand faces idea then Bond was frustrated with being unable to pursue Ouramov because he was a too important to murk and that's why he went off like a rocket when poor ol' Feelix got the Box Network executive treatment.
An alternate explanation for the "plot hole" discussed at 1:31:16 is simply that the double cross wasn't known by the low ranking USSR gunmen and therefore the whole fake shooting was expected to filter back to England. It also explains why the general was so mad at the soldiers opening fire because the plan was for only him to shoot. and it also also explains how Sean Bean was planning around the 6 minute timer expecting to be perhaps on the ground for a bit and then sneak away. I generally don't expect the secret plan involving spies to be shared amongst the common rank soldiers. Edit: heck, it also explains why the general told his men to hold off when James Bond was escaping towards the plane because the story of Bean's death would be even more believed if James delivered it so it was a win-win that he could play off as not expecting bond to succeed. Especially if he still thought there were three minutes to get to and disarm the bomb.
I was going to mention that, but honestly, Runway was probably the most forgettable mission in the game. Which really says something about the quality of the game, as it wasn't a bad mission either.
Question: were there 2 or 3 bonus levels? I remember Aztec temple (spy who loved me) which featured baron samedi and the golden gun for some reason. And I remember the moon raker level, but I feel like there’s another one...
The thing that struck me most on my last rewatch was just how much agency the female characters (finally!) had in this film outside of Bond. Other than the therapist (?), of course. Moneypenny finally has a life outside of MI6, M totally owns Bond, even though he was right and she was wrong. Xenia is in complete psychopathic control or every scene she's in (and may represent a dark reflection of Bond himself). And Natalya is absolutely vital to the plot, capable of subterfuge on her own (but is still vulnerable and human), and she is the one who initiates a sexual relationship with Bond, fully knowing his past. She even gets one over on Boris and destroys the satellite single-handed through the use of the guidance system he denigrated. It was a really welcome change, and I'd wished Natalya had stuck around for more Bond films, even if she was just in the background.
I didn't actively notice it when I saw it last time, but this plot summary really highlights how much stuff Natalya actually does. I wonder how well Wai Lin holds up to my memory.
This might be one of the greatest strengths of the Brosnan era in general: (most of) the women are aces. Even (...sigh...) Christmas Jones holds her own.
@@Vyolynce The villain in _The World is Not Enough_ is so great, she makes up for Christmas Jones being a little less than fully developed. Like, she did a great job in the pipeline, and they reestablished that Bond doesn't know how to defuse a nuclear weapon (either he's forgotten since the last time, or the technology just keeps changing). But in the submarine reactor fight, SHE should have been the one to reapply the hoses and stop the reactor meltdown. I mean, how did Bond know how Russian submarine reactors work? And she had literally nothing to do in that fight, except get knocked on the head and pass out. Sorry, I just watched it the other day, and that still bothers me.
Fun fact - "Vokzal" is the Russian word for railway station. Because when a delegation from Tsarist Russia came on a fact-finding mission to see London's railways, they were taken to Vauxhall sttation and the name kind of stuck.
I just read an alternative explanation which is that the St Petersburg pleasure gardens were named after Vauxhall gardens and also happened to be the destination of the first Russian railway.
"I love how underfunded the CIA is in these movies" Ah, I see, so the movies take place in an alternate universe where the CIA DIDN'T get into drug smuggling, got it.
See, this is actually another indication of how the world is changing - the traditional "US-vs-USSR Cold War" has quieted down and there's a lot less interest in Russia so there's no NEED to spend massive budgets on agents stationed there, and this results in Jack Wade operating on a shoestring - he's got a quiet, backwater posting. Nothing interesting is going to happen in St. Petersburg for another...20ish years?
This podcast is a delight. I'm french, I love the Bond franchise since my childhood and I've learned so many things thanks to you guys. Thanks again. From Paris with love.
@@kuznickic11) already referenced in Octopussy, and 2) "at least one"? Your headcanon of multiple movies in the same property given identical titles sounds needlessly confusing.
I always took the theme song from Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean) feeling like he was in Bond's shadow his entire life... seems pretty directly related to the movie imo
M as a lady (by extension a mother figure for Bond) actually works from a Fleming perspective, when you consider that he referred to his mother (in letters and such) as "M".
I think Joe Don Baker was cast in Goldeneye (despite being in Living Daylights) is because he had worked with Martin Campbell before in the TV miniseries Edge of Darkness, the Director seemed to really like the actor. His character in Edge of Darkness also had a "thing" with plants.
Skyfall just seems worse and worse each time I rewatch it. Pretentious, often very boring, Bond seems like some Russian henchman, not 007, Q is an annoyingly overacted twerp with lame dialogue, Bardem's villain is surprisingly bland with a completely pointless affectation of false teeth, Bond takes advantage of a woman who he just learned was forced into prostitution from a young age (topped in the subsequent movie when Craig Bond blatantly r*pes a woman whose husband he just murdered) and YET AGAIN they were doing the whole "Ooh, he's not quite Bond yet... wait for it.. wait for it.. Ok, NOW he's Bond (at the end of the movie)". It's all just style over any substance and no fun at all. Sadly, since showing a lot of promise in Casino Royale, Craig's Bond has just become seriously tiresome and insanely repetitive. It's literally the exact same plot every movie too.
As a self-proclaimed vulture: I think it would be really interesting if you could release a supplement to this episode covering the video game and its relationship to the film. I'm not expecting anything near as long as the regular episodes, even a condensed 10 minute episode covering some of the more interesting bits would be fascinating to tune into, but please don't overwhelm yourselves with work!
1:01:00 re: EMP and explosions. Maybe not as "cinematically" as in the movie, but an EMP would induce large currents, particularly in power lines etc. It's feasible for that to cause a fire/explosion.
I think the growth and character arcs in Goldeneye were more focused on M and the MI-6 organization in the post cold war environment. Bond is a relic now and nobody knows how to use him. Goldeneye serves to show the 00 program still has relevance and M learns of just what Bond is capable.
BTW... in movie Mrs. Doubtfire where Robin Williams and Pierce Brosnan are in the film. There is a scene where Robin Williams impersonates James Bond... but he was impersonating Dalton's Bond because Pierce was not cast as Bond at the time of filming. Then two years later... GoldenEye is out.
The beach scene was just the producers trying to say: "See, James Bond can evolve into the 90s". It was pretty much ignored in other subsequent movies as they found out nobody much cares. Those who love Bond don't care and those who don't never will like him no matter what you do.
I think the audiences and Bond fans were willing to see a three dimensional Bond back then. The problem is the producers were terrified of actually taking Bond beyond two dimensions. The World is Not Enough was obviously an attempt to duplicate On Her Majesty's Secret Service but it was ultimately a half assed effort.
This will still be my absolute favorite James Bond movie, and not just cause of the video game. Everything to bring this franchise back really knocked it out of the park.
Love hearing you guys talking about Vauxhall. Not at all a glamorous place. I changed at Vauxhall on my morning commute every day for 4 years. The MI6 building looms over the train station. Whenever you're passing through Vauxhall on the train into London at the weekend, at least one person on the carriage is telling their kid 'that's where James Bond works'.
This was the first Bond movie that I got to see in the theater. I always loved License to Kill but my folks did not take me or my brother and sister to see it despite it not having anything noticeably objectionable. But, I got to see this with my folks and a few of their friends. So, special place in my heart.
If you cross your eyes while looking at the screen w Graham and Matt, you see them overlayed and it's pretty crazy. Just not too long you'll smoosh your eyes up.
I was waiting for this week very excitedly as Goldeneye is one of the most compete James Bond films ever. Its no longer the "Best" Bond film but wow does it showcase everything that makes generations love this character. Next Week I cannot wait for the review of Tomorrow Never Dies, which I have always said to be one of the most underrated Bond films thanks to its villain and how the plot of his villainy is something that has becoming more and more hauntingly relevant as time has advanced, being the manipulation of media.
Regarding the opening and the potential plot-hole, here's how I'd rationalized it: Plan A: Bond is killed. He works with the General to sell the supplies of chemical weapons. Plan B: Alex knows Bond is REALLY good at his job, and could still escape the trap, so faking his own death is insurance. Bond escapes, then Alex (alive) deactivates the bombs, and Plan A continues. Because Bond shortened the timers, Alex got up smugly after everyone was chasing Bond, walked to the timers, saw they were about to explode, crapped his pants, and booked it, getting cooked in the blast.
This really fits for me. He knows how good Bond is so he has backup plans for his plans so that even if Bond does the in impossible escape (like he has a habit of doing) 006 is dead so he is still covered.
Definitely one of my favorite scenes in the film and you got the quote wrong Graham. (Don’t worry though 😉) Zukovsky: My knee aches...every single day! Twice as bad when it’s cold. Do you have any idea how long the winter lasts in this country? Tell him, Demetri. Demetri: Well it depends Zukovsky: silence!
I always wondered how he actually disconnected his ankles from the bungee while holding onto the pistol connected to the concrete at the bottom of the dam. And how he then managed to get from the bottom of a dam to the top of a mountain.
I spent best part of a day waiting outside the Odean Leicester Square, London for the World Premiere. Saw the whole cast arrive....& The Royals. The hype for this one was off the chart.
Same except I was about 8 when I first saw it. Gotta love Nana babysitting and not giving a single shit what we watched on tv. I think I wore out that vhs tape.
So for the record, 2020 has not killed Aricebo Observatory, though a cable break in August put a nasty hole in the dish and between that and all the goddamn hurricanes this year the facility's closed pending repairs.
And now I have to correct myself: The National Science Foundation just announced that due to safety concerns the famous Aricebo radio telescope will be decommissioned. Fuck. This. Year. Dude.
And I hate to tell you, but 2020 did kill Arecibo Observatory. Collapsed yesterday. Fortunately, no Sean Beans were completely skewered in the collapse of this observatory
This is the one I have been eagerly awaiting ever since you started this podcast, so glad it delivered! Also, you referenced it in this episode, but if you're looking for bonus/filler material, the Simpson's Hank Scorpio episode would be a hoot :-)
I love that, decades later (Dec 1 2020), the Arecibo Telescope was finally put out of commission by the suspended antenna collapsing into the dish and destroying the dish. Didn't explode, obviously, but it really did crumple into the dish!
Michael G. Wilson has cameos in most if not all of the films he worked on (e.g. he's on the tour boat in Octopussy), as well as being a soldier who falls to the ground in Goldfinger at Fort Knox.
I actually did the latter, but _not_ the former... As a young person in like 4th/5th grade somewhere right around the turn of the century, I heard from some classmates about this badass shooter title for the N64... The only gaming console in my family's household at the time. One day not too long after I happen to be tagging along with my Father and older brother at this local secondhand store he regularly frequented that specializes in CDs and videogames. I'm looking through the stack of bare used N64 cartridges.... And there it is. _Goldeneye_. For 15$. I run to my Father, beg him to buy it, and under the circumstances despite it probably not being a good parenting move overall (I can't have been older than 10 at the time) he relented. So there I am, a literal autistic preteen frolicking in the backseat of my Father's car, reveling in the throes of sheer unrepentant joy. I'm _so_ excited to play this new game we just got that despite suffering a very unfortunate accident _that same day_ at a corner market we stopped at on the way home after (I cut pretty deep straight into my left thumb with this hybrid knife/bottle opener tool a shopkeep foolishly lent me in order to pop open a soda myself) I don't even care. I just kept my thumb wrapped tightly in a napkin, muscled through the pain and went about playing it anyway. After being utterly mindblown on my first session, I ask my Father about the film the next time we're browsing a local movie rental store. He's never seen it specifically, but he's familiar enough with the franchise that he sort of understands there's a pop culture footprint I'd be missing out on if I saw just the Goldeneye film by itself. So we rent Dr. No that night, watch it together, and over the course of a few months (I believe the going rate was that I got to pick out one rental per week in addition to whatever he wanted) we saw the entire bond franchise up to/including tWiNE in chronological older. I've never rewatched the majority of those films (exceptions being Goldeneye itself and this one time I rewatched The Man With the Golden Gun with a friend because we knew Christopher Lee was in it and that's fucking awesome) so after stumbling upon the tWiNE episode of this podcast and subsequently checking this one out I believe I'm going to go through the rest!
This series is absolute gold, and you somehow combined my love of LRR, James Bond, and a subtle Trixie and Katya reference into one piece of content. Absolute chef's kiss to this whole thing!
To be fair, the "just let them go" thing doesn't work for Goldeneye like it would have for You Only Live Twice, because Bond and Natalya would probably have kept searching, and they needed to drain the lake above the satellite quite soon in order for their plan to work. Also I love the unique film-themed props from every episode, but Matt straight up has a whole Goldeneye key chilling on his desk. Ominous. :P
The real observatory in Puerto Rico is not made of concrete, but out of plastic sheets. You can walk under it and see the daylight shine through. It's actually quite fragile.
My explanation of why they “shot” Trevelyan, is that the capture was to get Bond to surrender, and when he didn’t, they “killed” him to try and get Bond angry and make a mistake.
Mine is that there are a lot of Russian soldiers there and Ourumov was concealing his links to Trevelyan from at least some of them as well as from Bond.
Semi-related, the 1985 Edge of Darkness series is absolutely incredible. Bob Peck (“Clever Girl...”) is a detective whose daughter is accidentally murdered in an attempted hit on him by an IRA hitman. Or is she? This leads him into a rabbit hole of nuclear espionage, ecological terrorism, and international conspiracy. It’s thrilling and clever and great, and kinda brutal. It also has Joe Don Baker, playing Joe Don Baker in it!
My favourite Bond film for a long time. Well done guys. Great review. Great to see you both give Goldeneye so much love. Graham's impression of the jarring Eric Serra score nearly killed me.
Far from being an early role for Minnie Driver, she was already a well established actress by then. Her cameo was a at her own request, always having wanted to be a 'Bond girl'. It was basically meant as a little joke.
I would love to hear your guys’ thoughts on some of the Bond video games that have come out over the years, but I also understand that would be a bit of a hellacious endeavor to make work on a podcast. Perhaps as a compromise of sorts, would you be interested in doing some streams of them, a la Talking Simulator?
@@OmegablueWolf That I recall playing it repeatedly and finding it quite enjoyable is also a point in its favor for playing on stream. ...I should dig out my Gamecube.
I have been looking forward to, and dreading this film coming up in your Rewatch. That fear, that a film you loved as a kid being seen with the critical eye of an adult. So I'm very happy for how you title this episode :) . I want to note two things about this film. It had a remix of the classic Bond theme early on that I did not care for, but when the tank burst through the wall, it did so to the classic Bond theme in all its glory, a wonderful added touch to a great scene. I also want to further point how good Judi Dench is, because when the Casino Royale - era games were being made, they did get Daniel Craig to voice Bond but it sounded like he phoned it in. Judi Dench's lines in the game, stood out because she did NOT phone it in, not even for a video game.
Annoyingly, I've caught up to when they are released now so I'm going to have to wait another week for the next one. They're all great and the fact that the episodes are getting longer can only be a good thing.
On the question of how to describe Brosnan's Bond, I think that he is basically the true balance of Bond. Not the best in any one category, but he has all the charm and calm of Moore, all the wit and drive of Connery, and all the action of Dalton. He is sort of the "ideal", but not the "perfect" James Bond, which I think really helped Bond resurge after all that time off in a way I don't think Craig's Bond ever really did. There was a little of everything you liked from the last Bonds here, and none of the worst parts (it's not overly goofy, or tonally dissident, or randomly brutal) and it doesn't hurt that his support cast is a mix of bomb-rockin' actors. Sean Bean and Judi Dench are high-tier performers who bring a life to their roles that could otherwise have stymied the return, and Desmond Llewelyn treats Brosnan's Bond like an old friend, helping bring creditability to the hand-off. There is no "gear change" when you enter Brosnan's Era, no matter which one you were just watching. At least, that is my take on it.
Also, my justification for the betrayal is that Ourumov didn't want the RUSSIANS to know he was aiding a ex-00 turned criminal in escaping the British Intelligence. The first plan is the Ourumov pretends to shoot Alec (he knows his first round is a blank), then has his men legit shoot Bond, then they drag them both off to be searched and maybe have something done with them. Then, with their "bodies" taken care of, and the bombs removed, Ourumov gets Trevelyan out of the base, sets him up with Janus, and they start cashing in (presumably giving Ourumov a private KGB-style organization to let him knock around the failing Russian State and restart or potentially overheat the Cold War). However, that fails because Bond wastes a bunch of time using the barrels to escape outside. Panicked, Ourumov orders his men to give chase, leaving Alec to have to try to sneak away (because the bombs haven't been dealt with). However, he overestimates how long he has to get away, so he hides somewhere not too close, but not to far. Then the place blows up while he watches Bond escape, scarring him up and leading to him adopting the name Janus for spite as well as flavor.
The stunt in this film that always stuck in my mind is when they're fighting in the satellite dish, Alec shoots at Bond and he jumps doing a front flip down into a flight of stairs. That was always a HOLY CRAP moment
Arecibo Radio Telescope has been offline since a cable snapped in August and damaged the dish and it's still up for discussion if there will be funds to repair it. :( Being a radio telescope, the "dish" is actually a metal grille that's sparse enough to let light through to the plants growing underneath it, and would in *no way* hold water.
Michael G Wilson has been in 16 James bond films as a actor. He first appeared as a soldier in Goldfinger. He has appeared in The spy that loved me /Moonraker/For your eyes only /Octopussy/A view to a kill/License to kill/The living daylights/Goldeneye/Tomorrow never dies/The worlds not enough/Die another day/Casino Royale/ Quantum of solace/Skyfall/Specter
I've been looking forward to this episode since you started the podcast, and I was not disappointed. I've been playing through the game again and the "Natalya is dead" bit just slew me.
The reason why the rocket does not explode is because it was launched when the plane was too close and did not have time to arm. This explains why they tried to bring down the plane...it was very close and they assumed that Bond would notice the dish. Furthermore, while they MIGHT not have noticed the dish now, it was very close to the time when the dish needed to be brought out and they probably did not want to risk JB finding it when it was deployed and doing something to damage it (like sending a rocket in it or something).
Awesome video, peoples! I love the way the interactions between Boris and Natalya throughout the movie, their arcs and rivalry, mirrors the ones between Bond and 006. Boris and Natalya have such great (non romantic) chemistry on screen in the way she handles his smarm, the way they drive each other crazy, and how pissed she gets when she finds out he betrayed her. It's so satisfying how Natalya smirks at Boris as he fails to undo her hack job, loses all composure, and shrieks at her to help him. Like bond, she ultimately gets the win! It's such a great subplot in an already fantastic movie. :)
One thing I wanted to add here is the music in the scene in the control room near the end is INCREDIBLY tense during that whole build up as well. I know alot of the music for this movie was pretty rough but in this scene before they deal with the antennae and before the pen explosion is excellent 👍🏿 This one was my first bond movie too so I'm glad you guys are now at bond movies I've seen all of now. Love you guys and your fans. Have a great week.
Honestly disappointed that Graham did not identify the plane in the pre title scene as a Pilatus PC-6 Porter ... internet movie plane database! 👍 great episode once more!
The tank is also Soviet (the Wikipedia page has the exact model) and would’ve likely been “decommissioned” explaining why it’s at the archives. Surprised they didn’t mention that briefly.
As you may have noticed if you're listening along, we record these several week's ahead, so we won't even be able to mention Sir Sean Connery's passing until the episode for Casino Royale.
understandable
I hoped you guys’d address it in the comments or description since I figured this was recorded before it happened, so I was expecting it.
I didn't even know until I googled Highlander... 90 years...
@@DemoniacDeath Yeah, Roger Moore was older than Sean Connery. Replacing bond who was getting older with someone already older.
@@verona8144 I know it's opinion, so all I can say is that you and I have very different ones. I love _The Rock_ , and it's a great film, but it's a mad dash from start to finish with very little downtime and lots of insanity. _Goldeneye_ is paced better, and had much more incredible stunts, in my opinion. _Octopus-y_ is fun and all, but the characters and motivations never really made sense to me in it. And the titular character was a lot less interesting than they wanted her to be.
But again, it's subjective, so I'm glad you found so much to like about those movies, I just wish you could see all of the things I love about this film the way I do.
Judy Dench actually appearently got sufficiently hooked on D&D after Ridick that she now DM's campaigns for her grandchildren.
Please, tell me that is not an apocryphal anecdote, I need this to be real.
@@vitorafmonteiro it's true:)
Another read of the plot hole mentioned: Oromov and Trevellyan were in it together, but Oromov was acting outside his authority within the USSR. The execution was for the soldiers’ benefit, who would think it odd if a foreign operative were spared and then, presumably, disappeared.
^this.
Oooh yeah, Omorov's soldiers would have thought it odd to spare an enemy and could have possibly turned on him if they had known. Good possible tie for the plot hole.
My assumption was that catching 006 was to lure Bond out of hiding, and that killing 006 was meant to trick Bond into making a rash move in revenge of his friend's death that would've made him easy to kill.
This is what I was gonna say.
Yeah. It also leans in with all the "Stop, stop, let's watch" Oromov does during the Bond chase. Which, while technically perfectly reasonable for him to do, there's not really any reason for them to fire at him down the runway. Bond being killed (with a body as proof) would have probably been great for Oromov's career. But, Bond's not the objective, he's the distraction until the bomb goes off covering Trevellyan's escape.
I'll use my bizarre "first" to just say everyone involved with this podcast/series is killing it. Thank you all so much, it has been a joy to go through this series again and watch some silly movies. Next week the question is "Can Vincent Schiavelli steal an entire movie?"
He kinda can. At least he can steal a scene.
He easily walked away with Ghost.
TND is definitely a downgrade but god damn is it fun :P
Hi, happy Sunday. Thanks for following my profile. Always stay safe!
Vehicles that crash, explode, or otherwise break after Bond goes near them:
1 - A soviet motorcycle, twice.
2 - A plane, but he fixes it.
3 - A collection of bicycles, just by his passing.
4 - Jack Wade's car.
5 - The Tiger helicopter.
6 - All the police cars in St Petersburg.
7 - The tank.
8 - The train.
9 - Jack Wade's loaner plane.
10 - Another helicopter.
I'm with Natalia on this one, I wouldn't go with him on anything larger than a skateboard.
* Chrack's through skateboard *
I feel like Natalia and Q should meet, and commiserate over Bond's 'anti-green-thumb' for machinery and vehicles.
Back on the theme of things set up and paid off well, around 2:03:30 Natalya *totally* pwns Boris. He has been completely dismissive of her, constantly pointing out that she's "only a second level programmer" and calling her stupid. Then, again trying to insult her, points out she "only works on the guidance system" ... only. the. guidance. system. On cue, they find out she has used the guidance system of the satellite to put it into re-entry. A slightly faster burn and it wouldn't matter if Boris could override her codes because the satellite would be ash before it could fire. As it is, she's put a very short timer on their plans - they have to act now or lose out entirely. She doesn't say it, and I don't remember if her face says it, but you know she's thinking "who's stupid now?" It's a great little bit of revenge for all the times he's dismissed her as useless.
I love that bit. She's playing it down after they catch her, but when they realise what she's done she gets this lovely little smile; the smile of someone who's been underestimated in her favour. Then to top it off Boris proves all talk, being entirely unable to break her codes.
The whole scheme was foiled the moment she hit the enter key, and everything after that point is just buying time, escaping, and killing Trevelyan.
That is a great line but not practical. As a fan of kerbal space program, it would take approx an hour from the initial retro-burn to burn up in atm.
I recently got a job that involves an hour of me driving twice a day and I thought "Hey, I can watch podcasts in the car to pass the time!" But I still have to watch this one on youtube because Matt Griffiths editing gags are too good to miss.
I just wanted to say... RIP SEAN CONNERY :( he was a great bond.
Hi, may his soul rest perfectly in peace. Stay safe!
I love Grahams shocked disbelief that "The Perfect Mate" could be season 5 of TNG.
The commonly-held conceit is "The FIRST season of TNG was iffy as they tried to find their feet, and then the REST were ALL awesome" - it's not fun to have your easy beliefs picked apart.
"DON'T TOUCH THAT! ...That's my lunch!" is by far my favorite line of any Bond movie ever. It made me laugh when I first watched it in the 90s and it's only gotten funnier to me with time. Desmond Llewelyn's posture and delivery during that moment was absolutely perfect and I will fight anyone who says this wasn't a great moment.
might very well be the best Q branch meeting of all time
Second only to "I think he's attempting re-entry sir" 😅
The only catch is - it's only funny because of the build up of years of previous Q briefings where Q yells at Bond to not touch something because it's exceptionally dangerous. It's by far the best joke, but only as a subversion of the existing 'pattern' we expect.
@@empath69 I mean, this was the first Bond movie I ever watched and even back then I thought this joke was hilarious. Knowing past movies can help, but there's enough buildup in the scene itself that you don't actually need to have watched previous movies get it. So no, it's not the best "as a subversion." It's the best because it's just a really good joke
In the last episode, it was joked that if Twitter had been around at the time there would have been a "Robert Daddy" hashtag. I posit that if Twitter had been around in 1995, there would have been a *lot* of people asking to be crushed between Xenia's thighs.
One fun fact about the Sharpe series - In Sharpe's Eagle (1993), Sean Bean's character, Richard Sharpe, kills Lieutenant Barry, who is played by one Daniel Craig.
*raises hand* I CARE ABOUT EQUILIBRIUM, THAT MOVIE'S A HOOT
saaaaame
I also care about equilibrium. Without it, how would I know that Christian Bale and Taye Diggs can do gun-katta with such precision while balancing their anti-corporate themes with their own work? Also, what's this about a movie?
That movie is so over-the-top Matrix hype cashgrab and Fahrenheit 451 meets 1984 plot. I love it. I watch it maybe once a year just to relish in the cheesiness of Sean Bean reading poetry and Christian Bale harboring puppies like they're asylum seekers. It's so bad its good.
Yeah, it's nuts, but it's great.
Equilibrium is AMAZING. It might actually be my favorite movie.
Explaining why Kung Fu works with gunfights? Yes.
This was my first Bond movie, and I'm really glad it still holds up.
A few things:
1. In the pre-title, Ourumov was also creating a show for his soldiers to cover up his working with Trevelyan. Even if Bond died, Orumov and Trevelyan were working together in secret from both governments.
2. IIRC, In one of the official strategy guides for the game (or in one of the DVD extras), there was a description that one of the motives for the production creating such an extensive set for St. Petersburg chase scene at Pinewood was that their crew that went to Russia kept having equipment stolen and they couldn't afford to keep shooting there. It may be apocryphal.
3. I think the liquid nitrogen tanks in the Control Room would be for cooling whatever supercomputers they're using to run the scheme. As for the other liquid, it could be fuel for running generators or maybe hydraulic oil to raise and lower the dish, maybe.
Edit: 4. As for the helicopter pilot, I think he made off like a king. He got a free helicopter.
Hi Good morning. It seems this is your favourite movie?
The really interesting thing chronologically around the nine years is that nine years before GoldenEye is the period between AVTAK and The Living Daylights (late '85 into '86). So you could almost retcon the changes in Dalton's portrayal as Bond's trauma over Trevelyan.
I went down a huge TV tropes rathole on this. Basically if you prescribe to the Casino Royale theory of Bond identity then Bondsnan retired after Alec's death and only came back after Bondton had his license to kill revoked and a new M took over.
Or if you like the Agent with a thousand faces idea then Bond was frustrated with being unable to pursue Ouramov because he was a too important to murk and that's why he went off like a rocket when poor ol' Feelix got the Box Network executive treatment.
An alternate explanation for the "plot hole" discussed at 1:31:16 is simply that the double cross wasn't known by the low ranking USSR gunmen and therefore the whole fake shooting was expected to filter back to England.
It also explains why the general was so mad at the soldiers opening fire because the plan was for only him to shoot.
and it also also explains how Sean Bean was planning around the 6 minute timer expecting to be perhaps on the ground for a bit and then sneak away.
I generally don't expect the secret plan involving spies to be shared amongst the common rank soldiers.
Edit: heck, it also explains why the general told his men to hold off when James Bond was escaping towards the plane because the story of Bean's death would be even more believed if James delivered it so it was a win-win that he could play off as not expecting bond to succeed. Especially if he still thought there were three minutes to get to and disarm the bomb.
The game had three (3!) missions dedicated just to the pre-title sequence: Dam, Facility, and Runway
I was going to mention that, but honestly, Runway was probably the most forgettable mission in the game.
Which really says something about the quality of the game, as it wasn't a bad mission either.
Literally just came here to point this out lol. Good call!
Question: were there 2 or 3 bonus levels? I remember Aztec temple (spy who loved me) which featured baron samedi and the golden gun for some reason. And I remember the moon raker level, but I feel like there’s another one...
@@girlhunter2102 There were 2 bonus levels. Aztec was the Moonraker level, and Egyptian was the Spy Who Loved Me/Baron Samedi/Golden Gun level.
@@joehahn9801 I remember watching Moonraker and being surprised at how much the Aztec level was actually from the movie.
The Q scene with the exploding pen, I always assumed Bond was about to say "The pen is mightier than the the sword"
I reckon you're right.
He actually jokes about that right before Q demonstrates it.
Bond: They always say the pen is mightier than the sword.
Q: Thanks to me they're right.
@@mocliamtoh573 damn it need to watch it again!
He was about to say and does say “The writings on the wall” which is that name of Sam Smith’s Bond song. Bond multiverse confirmed! Ooooh ahhhhh. 😂
The thing that struck me most on my last rewatch was just how much agency the female characters (finally!) had in this film outside of Bond. Other than the therapist (?), of course. Moneypenny finally has a life outside of MI6, M totally owns Bond, even though he was right and she was wrong. Xenia is in complete psychopathic control or every scene she's in (and may represent a dark reflection of Bond himself). And Natalya is absolutely vital to the plot, capable of subterfuge on her own (but is still vulnerable and human), and she is the one who initiates a sexual relationship with Bond, fully knowing his past. She even gets one over on Boris and destroys the satellite single-handed through the use of the guidance system he denigrated. It was a really welcome change, and I'd wished Natalya had stuck around for more Bond films, even if she was just in the background.
I didn't actively notice it when I saw it last time, but this plot summary really highlights how much stuff Natalya actually does.
I wonder how well Wai Lin holds up to my memory.
This might be one of the greatest strengths of the Brosnan era in general: (most of) the women are aces. Even (...sigh...) Christmas Jones holds her own.
@@Vyolynce The villain in _The World is Not Enough_ is so great, she makes up for Christmas Jones being a little less than fully developed. Like, she did a great job in the pipeline, and they reestablished that Bond doesn't know how to defuse a nuclear weapon (either he's forgotten since the last time, or the technology just keeps changing). But in the submarine reactor fight, SHE should have been the one to reapply the hoses and stop the reactor meltdown. I mean, how did Bond know how Russian submarine reactors work? And she had literally nothing to do in that fight, except get knocked on the head and pass out.
Sorry, I just watched it the other day, and that still bothers me.
I recall they were actually GOING to keep Natalya around for future movies, but for some reason didn't.
@@koristi_ wasn’t she an option for Paris Carver in TND?
Q’s response to Bond is pretty funny too: “Along with the rest of him!”
I've waited months for this! My first Bond ^.^
Pierce’s Bond was an almost perfect amalgamation of those who came before him.
I think he's closest to Dalton's Bond.
@@Xondar11223344 youre joking. Please tell me you are.
Fun fact - "Vokzal" is the Russian word for railway station. Because when a delegation from Tsarist Russia came on a fact-finding mission to see London's railways, they were taken to Vauxhall sttation and the name kind of stuck.
I just read an alternative explanation which is that the St Petersburg pleasure gardens were named after Vauxhall gardens and also happened to be the destination of the first Russian railway.
@@womble1981 That's also possible - the Russian name still comes form "Vauxhall" but with extra steps.
"I love how underfunded the CIA is in these movies" Ah, I see, so the movies take place in an alternate universe where the CIA DIDN'T get into drug smuggling, got it.
See, this is actually another indication of how the world is changing - the traditional "US-vs-USSR Cold War" has quieted down and there's a lot less interest in Russia so there's no NEED to spend massive budgets on agents stationed there, and this results in Jack Wade operating on a shoestring - he's got a quiet, backwater posting. Nothing interesting is going to happen in St. Petersburg for another...20ish years?
This podcast is a delight. I'm french, I love the Bond franchise since my childhood and I've learned so many things thanks to you guys. Thanks again.
From Paris with love.
I've always said Brosnan was basically a pastiche of his predecessors.
"So far Arecibo hasn't detected any alien life, but it's 2020, anything could happen."
Arecibo broke down yesterday. lol
I like to imagine there were two movies we didn’t get to see that happened between Licence to Kill and GoldenEye that would’ve been in 1991 and 1993.
pesky legal squabbles - robbing us of our continuity for the sake of their own wealth
Yes at least one of those would have been called Property of a Lady
@@kuznickic11) already referenced in Octopussy, and 2) "at least one"? Your headcanon of multiple movies in the same property given identical titles sounds needlessly confusing.
I always took the theme song from Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean) feeling like he was in Bond's shadow his entire life... seems pretty directly related to the movie imo
M as a lady (by extension a mother figure for Bond) actually works from a Fleming perspective, when you consider that he referred to his mother (in letters and such) as "M".
Doesn’t everyone do that?
I think Joe Don Baker was cast in Goldeneye (despite being in Living Daylights) is because he had worked with Martin Campbell before in the TV miniseries Edge of Darkness, the Director seemed to really like the actor. His character in Edge of Darkness also had a "thing" with plants.
I do love the payoff for Judi dench’s character in skyfall, during her trial in front of the defense ministry I believe.
Skyfall just seems worse and worse each time I rewatch it. Pretentious, often very boring, Bond seems like some Russian henchman, not 007, Q is an annoyingly overacted twerp with lame dialogue, Bardem's villain is surprisingly bland with a completely pointless affectation of false teeth, Bond takes advantage of a woman who he just learned was forced into prostitution from a young age (topped in the subsequent movie when Craig Bond blatantly r*pes a woman whose husband he just murdered) and YET AGAIN they were doing the whole "Ooh, he's not quite Bond yet... wait for it.. wait for it.. Ok, NOW he's Bond (at the end of the movie)". It's all just style over any substance and no fun at all.
Sadly, since showing a lot of promise in Casino Royale, Craig's Bond has just become seriously tiresome and insanely repetitive. It's literally the exact same plot every movie too.
As a self-proclaimed vulture: I think it would be really interesting if you could release a supplement to this episode covering the video game and its relationship to the film. I'm not expecting anything near as long as the regular episodes, even a condensed 10 minute episode covering some of the more interesting bits would be fascinating to tune into, but please don't overwhelm yourselves with work!
1:01:00 re: EMP and explosions. Maybe not as "cinematically" as in the movie, but an EMP would induce large currents, particularly in power lines etc. It's feasible for that to cause a fire/explosion.
I think the growth and character arcs in Goldeneye were more focused on M and the MI-6 organization in the post cold war environment. Bond is a relic now and nobody knows how to use him. Goldeneye serves to show the 00 program still has relevance and M learns of just what Bond is capable.
Which would go on to be the plot of almost every Craig movie to varying degrees of success
It isn't unrelated to the movie. The song can either describe Trevellyan's POV about Bond or Brosnan's longing for the role of James Bond.
Compared to tomorrow never dies onwards it really does feel more like the missing third Dalton movie sometimes imo
We’re into the ones that are younger than me now!
❤️❤️
BTW... in movie Mrs. Doubtfire where Robin Williams and Pierce Brosnan are in the film. There is a scene where Robin Williams impersonates James Bond... but he was impersonating Dalton's Bond because Pierce was not cast as Bond at the time of filming. Then two years later... GoldenEye is out.
The beach scene was just the producers trying to say: "See, James Bond can evolve into the 90s". It was pretty much ignored in other subsequent movies as they found out nobody much cares. Those who love Bond don't care and those who don't never will like him no matter what you do.
I think the audiences and Bond fans were willing to see a three dimensional Bond back then. The problem is the producers were terrified of actually taking Bond beyond two dimensions. The World is Not Enough was obviously an attempt to duplicate On Her Majesty's Secret Service but it was ultimately a half assed effort.
"We'll work with hitler."
"Not a good idea."
As a German, I can confirm.
"Look! James Bond Is Back!! And It's Weird". Imagine that on the posters!
🤗
This will still be my absolute favorite James Bond movie, and not just cause of the video game. Everything to bring this franchise back really knocked it out of the park.
The incredulous “Season 5??!!??!” from Graham is very *very* funny to me.
Love hearing you guys talking about Vauxhall. Not at all a glamorous place. I changed at Vauxhall on my morning commute every day for 4 years. The MI6 building looms over the train station.
Whenever you're passing through Vauxhall on the train into London at the weekend, at least one person on the carriage is telling their kid 'that's where James Bond works'.
Bond and Natalya do "Get Help." It's super-effective.
This was the first Bond movie that I got to see in the theater. I always loved License to Kill but my folks did not take me or my brother and sister to see it despite it not having anything noticeably objectionable. But, I got to see this with my folks and a few of their friends. So, special place in my heart.
Not gonna lie, been looking forward to this one from the very beginning.
PLEASE talk about the first Austin Powers movie now that there's room in the schedule
Arguably a superior remake of YOLT than the other Lewis Gilbert movies..
@@NCR5309 Um, no.
Oh yes, most definetly
Oh man, I wanna see them go through it now that you mention it
I certainly would love to see this just because every scene is an homage (parody) to a Bond film.
If you cross your eyes while looking at the screen w Graham and Matt, you see them overlayed and it's pretty crazy. Just not too long you'll smoosh your eyes up.
I was waiting for this week very excitedly as Goldeneye is one of the most compete James Bond films ever. Its no longer the "Best" Bond film but wow does it showcase everything that makes generations love this character. Next Week I cannot wait for the review of Tomorrow Never Dies, which I have always said to be one of the most underrated Bond films thanks to its villain and how the plot of his villainy is something that has becoming more and more hauntingly relevant as time has advanced, being the manipulation of media.
You lads never fail to cheer me up on a Monday :)
Regarding the opening and the potential plot-hole, here's how I'd rationalized it:
Plan A: Bond is killed. He works with the General to sell the supplies of chemical weapons.
Plan B: Alex knows Bond is REALLY good at his job, and could still escape the trap, so faking his own death is insurance. Bond escapes, then Alex (alive) deactivates the bombs, and Plan A continues.
Because Bond shortened the timers, Alex got up smugly after everyone was chasing Bond, walked to the timers, saw they were about to explode, crapped his pants, and booked it, getting cooked in the blast.
This really fits for me. He knows how good Bond is so he has backup plans for his plans so that even if Bond does the in impossible escape (like he has a habit of doing) 006 is dead so he is still covered.
Definitely one of my favorite scenes in the film and you got the quote wrong Graham. (Don’t worry though 😉)
Zukovsky: My knee aches...every single day! Twice as bad when it’s cold. Do you have any idea how long the winter lasts in this country? Tell him, Demetri.
Demetri: Well it depends
Zukovsky: silence!
I love how Zukovsky expects a cool retort from his man, but poor Demetri takes the question too literally.
I always wondered how he actually disconnected his ankles from the bungee while holding onto the pistol connected to the concrete at the bottom of the dam. And how he then managed to get from the bottom of a dam to the top of a mountain.
I spent best part of a day waiting outside the Odean Leicester Square, London for the World Premiere. Saw the whole cast arrive....& The Royals. The hype for this one was off the chart.
Love these podcasts! The chemistry between you two is GOLD! Hope you move on to other cinema/tv because this has been great.
The Onatop lines completely flew over my head when I watched this for the first time a few weeks ago.
From the Cradle to the Grave- YOUR GRAVE, JAMES!
RIP Sir Sean Connery!! Been waiting for this one too...definitely remember the video game and the 8 on 8 death matches.
No bond movie will ever be as great as this movie was to 16-year-old me.
Same except I was about 8 when I first saw it. Gotta love Nana babysitting and not giving a single shit what we watched on tv. I think I wore out that vhs tape.
That's how old I was when I saw The Living Daylights, so that holds a special place in my heart.
@@RighteousBrother Incidentally that's my number two behind Goldeneye. I really loved Timothy Dalton's take on Bond
So for the record, 2020 has not killed Aricebo Observatory, though a cable break in August put a nasty hole in the dish and between that and all the goddamn hurricanes this year the facility's closed pending repairs.
And now I have to correct myself: The National Science Foundation just announced that due to safety concerns the famous Aricebo radio telescope will be decommissioned.
Fuck. This. Year. Dude.
And I hate to tell you, but 2020 did kill Arecibo Observatory. Collapsed yesterday.
Fortunately, no Sean Beans were completely skewered in the collapse of this observatory
This was Pierce Brosnan best Bond movie.
Easily, and so different from the rest of his.
No shit! Hardly a high bar to surpass!
Graham wrestling with the Perfect Mate revelation made me cackle
This is the one I have been eagerly awaiting ever since you started this podcast, so glad it delivered! Also, you referenced it in this episode, but if you're looking for bonus/filler material, the Simpson's Hank Scorpio episode would be a hoot :-)
I love that, decades later (Dec 1 2020), the Arecibo Telescope was finally put out of commission by the suspended antenna collapsing into the dish and destroying the dish. Didn't explode, obviously, but it really did crumple into the dish!
Michael G. Wilson has cameos in most if not all of the films he worked on (e.g. he's on the tour boat in Octopussy), as well as being a soldier who falls to the ground in Goldfinger at Fort Knox.
I've been looking forward to this one. Who else here 1) saw Goldeneye as their first Bond movie and 2) played the N64 game before seeing the movie?
I actually did the latter, but _not_ the former...
As a young person in like 4th/5th grade somewhere right around the turn of the century, I heard from some classmates about this badass shooter title for the N64... The only gaming console in my family's household at the time. One day not too long after I happen to be tagging along with my Father and older brother at this local secondhand store he regularly frequented that specializes in CDs and videogames. I'm looking through the stack of bare used N64 cartridges.... And there it is. _Goldeneye_. For 15$. I run to my Father, beg him to buy it, and under the circumstances despite it probably not being a good parenting move overall (I can't have been older than 10 at the time) he relented.
So there I am, a literal autistic preteen frolicking in the backseat of my Father's car, reveling in the throes of sheer unrepentant joy. I'm _so_ excited to play this new game we just got that despite suffering a very unfortunate accident _that same day_ at a corner market we stopped at on the way home after (I cut pretty deep straight into my left thumb with this hybrid knife/bottle opener tool a shopkeep foolishly lent me in order to pop open a soda myself) I don't even care. I just kept my thumb wrapped tightly in a napkin, muscled through the pain and went about playing it anyway. After being utterly mindblown on my first session, I ask my Father about the film the next time we're browsing a local movie rental store. He's never seen it specifically, but he's familiar enough with the franchise that he sort of understands there's a pop culture footprint I'd be missing out on if I saw just the Goldeneye film by itself. So we rent Dr. No that night, watch it together, and over the course of a few months (I believe the going rate was that I got to pick out one rental per week in addition to whatever he wanted) we saw the entire bond franchise up to/including tWiNE in chronological older.
I've never rewatched the majority of those films (exceptions being Goldeneye itself and this one time I rewatched The Man With the Golden Gun with a friend because we knew Christopher Lee was in it and that's fucking awesome) so after stumbling upon the tWiNE episode of this podcast and subsequently checking this one out I believe I'm going to go through the rest!
Can't tell you how long I've been waiting for this one! Watched it again last night in preperation!
This series is absolute gold, and you somehow combined my love of LRR, James Bond, and a subtle Trixie and Katya reference into one piece of content. Absolute chef's kiss to this whole thing!
I think Editor Matt has a wildly different movie in mind for "Contact" than the one Graham references.
Not only did Dame Judi Dench play DnD with Vin Diesel, so did Karl Urban.
So excited for this one! I've been anxiously waiting for it. Goldeneye was what made me a Bond fan for life.
Aricebo "It's 2020, anything can happen." Big oofs there.
To be fair, the "just let them go" thing doesn't work for Goldeneye like it would have for You Only Live Twice, because Bond and Natalya would probably have kept searching, and they needed to drain the lake above the satellite quite soon in order for their plan to work.
Also I love the unique film-themed props from every episode, but Matt straight up has a whole Goldeneye key chilling on his desk. Ominous. :P
The real observatory in Puerto Rico is not made of concrete, but out of plastic sheets. You can walk under it and see the daylight shine through. It's actually quite fragile.
My explanation of why they “shot” Trevelyan, is that the capture was to get Bond to surrender, and when he didn’t, they “killed” him to try and get Bond angry and make a mistake.
Mine is that there are a lot of Russian soldiers there and Ourumov was concealing his links to Trevelyan from at least some of them as well as from Bond.
@@vitriolUK That’s a good one!
Ah the Brosnan era.
I cannot wait for Tomorrow never dies.
Semi-related, the 1985 Edge of Darkness series is absolutely incredible. Bob Peck (“Clever Girl...”) is a detective whose daughter is accidentally murdered in an attempted hit on him by an IRA hitman. Or is she? This leads him into a rabbit hole of nuclear espionage, ecological terrorism, and international conspiracy.
It’s thrilling and clever and great, and kinda brutal. It also has Joe Don Baker, playing Joe Don Baker in it!
Yes, very dark, very well made and very tragic. The late Bob Peck was excellent, lost too soon.
My favourite Bond film for a long time. Well done guys. Great review. Great to see you both give Goldeneye so much love. Graham's impression of the jarring Eric Serra score nearly killed me.
Far from being an early role for Minnie Driver, she was already a well established actress by then. Her cameo was a at her own request, always having wanted to be a 'Bond girl'. It was basically meant as a little joke.
I would love to hear your guys’ thoughts on some of the Bond video games that have come out over the years, but I also understand that would be a bit of a hellacious endeavor to make work on a podcast. Perhaps as a compromise of sorts, would you be interested in doing some streams of them, a la Talking Simulator?
At the very least maybe Everything or nothing given it's effectively Brosnan's Last bond movie ?
@@OmegablueWolf That I recall playing it repeatedly and finding it quite enjoyable is also a point in its favor for playing on stream. ...I should dig out my Gamecube.
I would also like to see some bonus content of 007 video games.
The one we've all been waiting for! Huzzah! My first bond... such a great film. Or at least that's how I remember it
I have been looking forward to, and dreading this film coming up in your Rewatch. That fear, that a film you loved as a kid being seen with the critical eye of an adult. So I'm very happy for how you title this episode :) . I want to note two things about this film. It had a remix of the classic Bond theme early on that I did not care for, but when the tank burst through the wall, it did so to the classic Bond theme in all its glory, a wonderful added touch to a great scene. I also want to further point how good Judi Dench is, because when the Casino Royale - era games were being made, they did get Daniel Craig to voice Bond but it sounded like he phoned it in. Judi Dench's lines in the game, stood out because she did NOT phone it in, not even for a video game.
Annoyingly, I've caught up to when they are released now so I'm going to have to wait another week for the next one.
They're all great and the fact that the episodes are getting longer can only be a good thing.
The use of a Contact poster with Trixie and Katya is *chef's kiss*. Love it!
This is the first one that has made me go back and watch the film before listening to the podcast. I remember seeing this in the cinema.
On the question of how to describe Brosnan's Bond, I think that he is basically the true balance of Bond. Not the best in any one category, but he has all the charm and calm of Moore, all the wit and drive of Connery, and all the action of Dalton. He is sort of the "ideal", but not the "perfect" James Bond, which I think really helped Bond resurge after all that time off in a way I don't think Craig's Bond ever really did. There was a little of everything you liked from the last Bonds here, and none of the worst parts (it's not overly goofy, or tonally dissident, or randomly brutal) and it doesn't hurt that his support cast is a mix of bomb-rockin' actors. Sean Bean and Judi Dench are high-tier performers who bring a life to their roles that could otherwise have stymied the return, and Desmond Llewelyn treats Brosnan's Bond like an old friend, helping bring creditability to the hand-off. There is no "gear change" when you enter Brosnan's Era, no matter which one you were just watching. At least, that is my take on it.
Also, my justification for the betrayal is that Ourumov didn't want the RUSSIANS to know he was aiding a ex-00 turned criminal in escaping the British Intelligence. The first plan is the Ourumov pretends to shoot Alec (he knows his first round is a blank), then has his men legit shoot Bond, then they drag them both off to be searched and maybe have something done with them. Then, with their "bodies" taken care of, and the bombs removed, Ourumov gets Trevelyan out of the base, sets him up with Janus, and they start cashing in (presumably giving Ourumov a private KGB-style organization to let him knock around the failing Russian State and restart or potentially overheat the Cold War).
However, that fails because Bond wastes a bunch of time using the barrels to escape outside. Panicked, Ourumov orders his men to give chase, leaving Alec to have to try to sneak away (because the bombs haven't been dealt with). However, he overestimates how long he has to get away, so he hides somewhere not too close, but not to far. Then the place blows up while he watches Bond escape, scarring him up and leading to him adopting the name Janus for spite as well as flavor.
The stunt in this film that always stuck in my mind is when they're fighting in the satellite dish, Alec shoots at Bond and he jumps doing a front flip down into a flight of stairs. That was always a HOLY CRAP moment
Always loved that stunt. Thought I was the only one.
Arecibo Radio Telescope has been offline since a cable snapped in August and damaged the dish and it's still up for discussion if there will be funds to repair it. :(
Being a radio telescope, the "dish" is actually a metal grille that's sparse enough to let light through to the plants growing underneath it, and would in *no way* hold water.
Update, another cable snapped and Arecibo is officially being decommissioned :(
Michael G Wilson has been in 16 James bond films as a actor. He first appeared as a soldier in Goldfinger. He has appeared in The spy that loved me /Moonraker/For your eyes only /Octopussy/A view to a kill/License to kill/The living daylights/Goldeneye/Tomorrow never dies/The worlds not enough/Die another day/Casino Royale/ Quantum of solace/Skyfall/Specter
On balance, an EXTRA would be a more accurate/appropriate description. Wilson does have speaking lines in Tomorrow Never Dies, if memory serves.
I've been looking forward to this episode since you started the podcast, and I was not disappointed.
I've been playing through the game again and the "Natalya is dead" bit just slew me.
The reason why the rocket does not explode is because it was launched when the plane was too close and did not have time to arm. This explains why they tried to bring down the plane...it was very close and they assumed that Bond would notice the dish. Furthermore, while they MIGHT not have noticed the dish now, it was very close to the time when the dish needed to be brought out and they probably did not want to risk JB finding it when it was deployed and doing something to damage it (like sending a rocket in it or something).
Awesome video, peoples!
I love the way the interactions between Boris and Natalya throughout the movie, their arcs and rivalry, mirrors the ones between Bond and 006. Boris and Natalya have such great (non romantic) chemistry on screen in the way she handles his smarm, the way they drive each other crazy, and how pissed she gets when she finds out he betrayed her. It's so satisfying how Natalya smirks at Boris as he fails to undo her hack job, loses all composure, and shrieks at her to help him. Like bond, she ultimately gets the win! It's such a great subplot in an already fantastic movie. :)
One thing I wanted to add here is the music in the scene in the control room near the end is INCREDIBLY tense during that whole build up as well.
I know alot of the music for this movie was pretty rough but in this scene before they deal with the antennae and before the pen explosion is excellent 👍🏿
This one was my first bond movie too so I'm glad you guys are now at bond movies I've seen all of now.
Love you guys and your fans. Have a great week.
Not bad but if there is any incredible music it's The Severnaya Suite and the variation played during the beach scene.
"Brosnan wasn't the funny Bond"
Ahem. *Points to his Muppets Tonight appearance* 😝
So far in the rewatch I think this is my favorite
Listening in 2022 and the talk of potentially finishing the series after the release of no time to die is adorable.
Honestly disappointed that Graham did not identify the plane in the pre title scene as a Pilatus PC-6 Porter ... internet movie plane database! 👍 great episode once more!
The tank is also Soviet (the Wikipedia page has the exact model) and would’ve likely been “decommissioned” explaining why it’s at the archives. Surprised they didn’t mention that briefly.
Yes! I have literally been waiting for this all day, snacks at the ready let's go!!