#18: Golden Eye (1995)
Just like Never Say Never Again was the remake of Thunderball, Golden Eye is the remake of Never Say Never Again. I don’t know what’s their beef with that movie but they keep remaking it without ever fixing the meaningless build-up. All three versions waste half the movie in Bond accidentally finding out about the plan of the bad guy. It makes even less sense in the latest one, since they are stealing a helicopter that is resilient to EMP, just for escaping a facility they plan to strike with EMP. Something they could have done with any vehicle if they had activated the weapon one minute later when they would be out of range. So yeah, all that was pointless.
At least they also kept the best part of the previous two versions, which is challenging Bond’s ideals. It works much better here, since after Dalton, Bond now has emotions and a personality. And unlike the Dalton movies, this Bond has a past for you to care about. The main villain is someone out of his past, what he faces now is a result of something he did earlier. It brings context into the conflict and makes you interested in seeing Bond winning. That’s something no previous movie bothered to have.
The main villain is Janus, the evil counterpart of Bond with a personal connection to him. Scaramanga had the same role in The Man with the Golden Gun but they didn’t know each other; there was no personal history between them. Although Janus lacks the charismatic presence of Scaramanga and Zorin, since he’s just a guy with a burned face, on paper he is the most interesting villain Bond has faced as of yet and deserves a spot in the tops.
Aside from all that, the plot wasn’t very interesting and most of it was coming down to the usual plot armor nonsense that plagues all the movies. And boy, did they waste Ourumov or what? He got all that build-up as someone important and was taken out in the lamest way imaginable. As a whole, Golden Eye is one of the most interesting movies in the franchise, opening theme included, but I give it a generous 5/10 since it’s not doing a good job with the writing.
///
#19: Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
Tomorrow Never Dies goes back to a sillier formula. There’s nothing to personally challenge Bond, so he’s once again a generic action hero. The main villain is this cartoony evil businessman who fabricates news and wants to control the world through social media. That’s something new, but it’s presented in such a juvenile way. I mean, a guy who films corpses for views? Who does that? (cough Logan Paul cough) A very gimmicky movie; you’re just going to be watching it for the spyshit they are using instead of the ridiculous plot or the forgettable characters. I give it a 2/10 just for the concept.
///
#20: The World is not Enough (1999)
The World is not Enough is one of the dullest movies in the franchise. Despite constantly trying to make it seem like the stakes are high, there is absolutely no tension in whatever is going on. -First they have this explosion in the spy base caused by money that came in contact with a pin. What the hell kind of chemistry was that? I didn’t even understand how it works, or why doesn’t everyone use it all the time if it’s that effective. This was supposed to show how dangerous this new villain is, since he achieved something nobody else did before. But I don’t care about the base; it’s just a building. -And then we are shown the face of the main villain. This guy looks like a third rate henchman. And he has a bullet stuck in his head that makes him not feel pain? What kind of cartoony shit is this? -And then he kidnaps M, the leader of the spies. Oh, boy, this guy is really dangerous because nobody else has managed to do that before. But I don’t care about M, she’s just a minor character without a backdrop. -And then the bad guy steals stuff from the superpowers and wants to detonate a bomb or some shit. That’s the same boring nonsense the cartoony villains were doing back in the 60s. You don’t make me care, movie!
There is one thing worthy in this mess, and its name is Elektra. She was kidnapped by the bland main villain and fell in love with him, thus becoming the mole that caused the explosion in the base, and the way M was kidnapped. The peculiar thing is how Bond explains her love as Stockholm syndrome. She was abused for so long by her kidnaper to the point she subconsciously came to feel sorry for him. Dude, this was such a mindfuck. It’s almost as if he was explaining why women were submissive housewives in the older Bond movies. They were treated like garbage by men to the point they loved being treated as garbage. Damn, chauvinism explained.
And wait, there is more. Remember how Bond never kills women because for some reason only bad guys are allowed to do that? Bond kills her, and I’m like “Dude, Bond just killed a woman standing two feet away from him.” Do you know what a subversion of expectations that was after 20 movies of never seeing that? So yeah, it’s an awful movie but that Elektra part left me going “Where am I, is this even real life?” 3/10 just for that.
///
#21: Die Another Day (2002)
Die Another Day is the final Brosnan movie and it’s not hard to see why. Those actions scenes were so ridiculous, people couldn’t take them seriously and the studio had to terminate the timeline. I mean, I love that scene where two cars are fighting with spyshit inside a melting palace, but the problem is, it looked like a freaking videogame! This entire movie is full of videogame battles. The stuff Bond is doing are plain impossible.
And yes, I know you will probably say that every Bond movie has impossible action scenes in it, but not to this ridiculous degree. And it feels even worse after a most unsettling tonal whiplash in the opening scene. Bond is captured and tortured for over a year. He is no longer a bland self-insert, he should be a broken man suffering from PTSD. And instead of that, he takes a bath and is back to his normal self, as if his body and mind were not devastated by a whole freaking year of torture. And then he goes out there to have these videogame battles like nothing of importance had happened. It destroyed all suspension of disbelief by doing that.
And I have to point out what a running joke facial damage had become at this point. In Golden Eye the bad guy had a burned face, in The World is not Enough, there was a bad guy with a bullet in his head, and now in this one there is a bad guy with diamonds stuck in his face, plus another bad guy who somehow did a surgery to change from Asian to Caucasian. In the meantime, Bond’s face is perfectly fine after 21 movies of constant beating. What are you doing movie? Why do you want me to hate you so much?
What’s even more insulting is how the bad guy tries to pass like another Janus. “Oh Bond, the two of us have a long history and now you will pay for your past mistakes.” Fuck you, you just met once, you have no history. You want more insult? There is another woman who betrays the spy agency. Unlike Elektra she had no good reason for doing it, she was just greedy. Boring.
So yeah, the only good thing about this film was that scene the two cars were fighting with spyshit. 2/10 for that, and next time we are entering the Craig movies.