The Best Bond Movie: Connery

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Okay. This is the first of a series of 4 (with a possible fifth later) posts. My last thread on the Bond movies failed because the poll options were too small to allow for the 21 movies, so I had to make it a debate over who was the best Bond actor. Sean Connery won (quelle surprise) at 6 votes out of 17, with Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan tying at second with 4 votes each, Daniel Craig getting 2 votes, and Timothy Dalton 1 vote.

So, I wanted to see what was the most popular Bond film of all time. In order to do so, I have decided to split the polls into four categories:

Sean Connery: The official films he made with EON productions, along with Never Say Never Again, the 1983 remake of Thunderball headed by Kevin McClory.

Roger Moore: The Roger Moore films, obviously.

Pierce Brosnan: Obvious.

The other Bonds: Here, I put OHMSS, the single film to star George Lazenby, The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill, Timothy Dalton's Bond films, as well as Daniel Craig's current solitary outing in Casino Royale. While I am tempted to include the spoof version of Casino Royale featuring David Niven, or the original TV movie featuring Barry Nelsen as an American Bond, I will not do so.

So, in this thread, you vote for your favourite Connery films. They are, in order of release:

Dr No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball

You Only Live Twice

Diamonds Are Forever

Never Say Never Again

Oh, and just to liven things up a little bit, I'll add trivia every now and again about the various movies, as well as the novels they are based on.

Come on, ppl. It's GOLDFINGER FTW!! !

While Dr No is a fairly close adaptation of the novel, there are several key differences.

*Professor Dent wasn't in the novel, and because Dr No isn't said to be an expert in nuclear power, the whole radioactivity issue doesn't come up.

*M sends Bond (in the novel) to follow up Strangways' and Mary Trueblood's disappearance as a 'rest cure', because of the events in the previous novel, From Russia With Love. Bond was actually poisoned by Rosa Klebb, and this is the reason Bond is being forced to use a Walther PPK. MI6 has been brought in at the insistence of a bird-preservation society that Dr No has clashed with.

*Felix Leiter does not appear, and Quarrel is a previous acquaintance's of Bond's (as was Strangways) from Live and Let Die.

*The entire subplot about Bond going to Miss Taro's home and Dent's assassination attempt is out.

*A centipede instead of a spider is used in the novel.

*Honey Ryder is given a more visual entrance. When Bond first sees her, she is already out of the sea, and naked. She also has a broken nose, a relic of the rape alluded to later in the movie. Her parents merely died when she was young.

*Dr No's backstory is expanded, but his apperance is different to the film version. He also has nothing to do with SPECTRE, which hasn't been introduced in the Fleming novels yet. However, he also reveals that he has an interest in rocket/missile toppling, a plot point expanded upon for the film.

*Bond is forced to run an obstacle course designed by Dr No to measure and quantify endurance to pain. He then survives, against all odds, a battle against a giant squid. He then kills Dr No by burying him with guano.

From Russia With Love remains one of the most popular Bonds of all time, both novel and cinematic versions, but was also one of the most troubled ones during production. Pedro Armendariz (Kerim Bey) suffered from terminal cancer throughout much of the shoot, and died not long after finishing his scenes. The script was a mess, and many key scenes had footage missing. Various editing tricks had to be used, especially during the sequence where Rosa Klebb and Kronsteen converse with Blofeld.

Perhaps it was just the earlier script style and the fact that my brain cells are not open to endless almost-obvious plot developments, but I found Connery's movies difficult to understand.

I do think Connery was best suited for this role, though I enjoyed Craig the most.

Bond never seemed to boast about his upper-class knowledge in the novels. There is an interesting incident in the novel Moonraker when Bond, at the Blades club (at the behest of M, in order to catch the card-cheating Hugo Drax), puts a pinch of pepper into a glass of vodka. M wonders why, and Bond tells him that some vodka has certain dangerius impurities, and the pepper absorbs them.

Anyway, trivia time for Goldfinger.

In the original novel, Goldfinger's plot is to steal the gold from Fort Knox, and it was because of reader criticism that his plot was modified for the movie into something considerably more practical. Bond summarising the key figures of a heist is an address of this criticism, and it is revealed that Goldfinger will instead detonate a dirty bomb in the vaults, thus rendering the gold of Fort Knox useless for decades, and making Goldfinger's own private stock increase in value substantially.

The only Bond movie I saw was the new Casino Royale, and I hated it.

Were the old Bond movies better?

Meh.

Thunderball is perhaps the most hotly contested Bond title, legally speaking. It is the Bond story with perhaps the most amount of litigation surrounding it, and more details can be read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbal ... ontroversy

1.} Goldfinger
2.} Dr. No
3.} Thunderball

You Only Live Twice has very few of the original plot elements of the original, aside from Bond 'dying', his going undercover in an Ama fishing village, viewing training areas for Tanaka's men, and Blofeld having a lair in a volcanic area. The characters of 'Tiger' Tanaka, 'Kissy' Suzuki, 'Dikko' Henderson and Blofeld are the only ones to make the cut.

Roald Dahl, who was then better known as a short story author, was hired to write the screenplay, and it was probably his friendship with the by-then deceased Ian Fleming that helped him get the job.

Diamonds Are Forever take the characters of Tiffany Case, Wint and Kidd, and Shady Tree (who is changed almost beyond recognition from the novel), as well as Felix Leiter, the Las Vegas setting, the diamond smuggling sequences, and the final fight on board the Elizabeth II.

The original script involved Goldfinger's twin brother, but eventually, the makers returned to Blofeld.

The subplot of Blofeld imitating Willard Whyte came to producer 'Cubby' Broccoli in a dream, where he went to the apartment of his old friend Howard Hughes, only to find Hughes replaced by an impostor. Hughes also helped the team during production, helping them gain access to casinos, and protecting them after a burglary. Willard Whyte is based on Hughes.

OK, I will let this run overnight (my time, so for the next 10 hours or so from this post) and then lock the threads. A final thread will be posted with a final poll.

I know Goldfinger is generally considered to be the first Bond blockbuster but I'm voting Thunderball, for me this was the first movie that had all the hallmarks of what I think of a classic Bond film, the first film where all the elements worked well together.

From the "Not Many People Know This and Fewer Actually Care" files.

The Bond movies liked to make light hearted remarks about current events now and again, Spectre consulting on the Great Train Robbery (Thunderball) for example. But the first, funniest and most subtle was in Dr No.
While the film was in pre-production, a portrait of the Duke of Wellington by Goya was stolen from the National Portrait Gallery, it was a very high profile crime in it's day and the painting was never, AFAIK, recovered. Now fast forward to the scene where Bond's been captured by Dr No and the villain takes his guests up some steps to the dining room. The set dressers got hold a copy of Goya's painting and placed it prominently by the stairs, but they didn't tell Connery. Watch him as he goes up the steps, he spots the painting, does a classic double-(WTF!?)-take, but carries on with the scene like the true pro he is.

I know this. I heard about the background of that scene.