Remember newspapers? They used to be a thing. Incidentally, this is also the first Bond film not based on a Fleming novel. In the film, Bond has to stop his former friend and fellow Double-O agent Alec Trevelyan ( Sean Bean) from wiping out London with an EMP satellite. GoldenEye smartly tackled these issues head-on, giving us a more modern Bond who reports to the series’ first female M, played by Judi Dench. The Soviet Empire had collapsed, and sexual politics had evolved past the prehistoric treatment of women in Connery’s era. (The rights to the Blofeld character were wrapped up in a legal dispute at the time, hence this impressively petty display.) For Your Eyes Only stands above the rest with a frantic chase on a biathlon course and some ice-hockey action to boot! Meanwhile, an unnamed villain clearly intended to be Blofeld is unceremoniously killed by Bond in a humiliating fashion during the pre-title sequence. Kiel returns as Jaws for the second and final time, exiting the franchise in an escape pod with a bottle of champagne and his new girlfriend Dolly ( Blanche Ravalec).īond movies love winter sporting events – skiing, bobsledding, and snowboarding are all fair game in these things. Star Wars was all the rage, you see, so EON concocted a Bond film that ends with a finale aboard an orbiting Space Shuttle that’s a stretch even for Bond movies. Moonraker was not-so-affectionately dubbed “Bond in Space” by fans and critics at the time of its release. The Man with the Golden Gun also features Maud Adams as love interest Andrea Anders Adams would go on to appear as different characters in two more Bond films starring Moore, including playing the title role in Octopussy. This film also features one of the franchise’s most popular theme songs (“Live and Let Die” by Paul McCartney) and the voodoo occultist Baron Samedi ( Geoffrey Holder), one of Bond’s most iconic adversaries.īond tries to track down a secret device that can weaponize solar power while avoiding a megalomaniacal assassin named Scaramanga ( Christopher Lee) who has a golden bullet with Bond’s name on it. Live and Let Die finds Bond on an adventure in New Orleans and the Caribbean that was partially inspired by the blaxploitation films that were popular at the time. The Moore Bonds are known for being lighter and more humorous than the previous installments, and they were also quick to jump on current cinematic trends. When Connery departed for the second time, EON recast Bond with Roger Moore, the star of the 1960s British spy TV series The Saint. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is out of continuity with the Connery films – Blofeld doesn’t even recognize Bond at first – but it introduces one key concept to the ongoing Bond universe: Bond gets married … to Diana Rigg! Their union ends in tragedy, but Bond’s wife, Countess Tracy di Vicenzo, is occasionally referenced in later films. Bond again squares off against Blofeld (now played by Telly Savalas) in a trippy plot about brainwashed women programmed to unknowingly engage in biological warfare at Blofeld’s command. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service might be even more of a stand-alone piece than normal as Lazenby would never return to the franchise. Lazenby’s most notable contribution to the franchise might be the fact that he’s the only actor born outside the British Isles to play the character so far. He stepped in after Connery vacated the role following You Only Live Twice, only to be replaced by a returning Connery two years later. “Era” might be a strong word, as Lazenby, an Australian model and commercial actor with zero previous film credits, only appeared in one Bond film. Still, if Connery is your favorite Bond and you’re a true completionist, it’s easy to argue for its inclusion as you go through the franchise. Instead, it’s a loose remake of Thunderball, produced by McClory who continued to hold the film rights to that movie’s screenplay. It wasn’t produced by EON and isn’t counted as part of the official Bond series. Never Say Never Again is an outlier in the James Bond film universe. Following Diamonds Are Forever, Connery once again stepped away from playing Bond until. This is yet another movie where Bond faces off against Blofeld, who is now played by Charles Gray and is using plastic surgery to create a bunch of look-alike decoys of himself. Still, this movie offers the first true appearance of his longtime nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofield (played by the great Donald Pleasence), the SPECTRE leader who at this point had only been teased in previous installments.Ĭonnery retired from playing Bond after YOLT, but when George Lazenby, the actor who succeeded him, left after a single film, EON lured Connery back. A lot of things from the Connery Bonds have not aged so well, including the rampant misogyny, but Bond disguising himself as a Japanese man in You Only Live Twice might have aged the worst.
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