5/26/19 Goldeneye

Post date: May 26, 2019 2:07:14 PM

"GoldenEye" changes Bond actors again. This time it is Pierce Brosnan who was very popular in a detective comedy tv show at the time. He was suppose to take over from Roger Moore but he couldn't leave his tv show contract. When Dalton didn't come back for a third, Brosnan has his chance.

I am not sure whether I saw the whole movie or not, I stopped watching it at least once. I remember being disappointing in the obvious way the movie was written. It had potential for interesting character but squandered them for simplistically.

It is also notable for the first movie to star Judy Dench as Bond's boss "M". Her interpretation of the character is 180 degrees from Bernard Lee's interpretation. While Lee's "M" was a supporting character, Judy Dench's "M" is set up in the series as an antagonist.

One could see Lee's character was someone who came out of the OSS from world war II. He had to adjust from Russia being our ally to being our biggest threat. His character was someone who you felt had knew about the global situation and had the weight of the western world on him. He felt Bond was someone who was good at his job but fit into a larger plan. His role was to get keep the world safe no matter what.He was typically understated British upper class who didn't say more than he had to.

On the other hand, Judy Dench's "M" feels like she came up from the British bureaucracy. She was the undersecretary for some other department now she got promoted to leading the secret service. Her main goal is run everything by the book and stamp out rule breakers. This leads to many many confrontations between her and Bond. All of them go like "I know you have saved the world from a nuclear explosion but that was not acceptable you didn't follow the rules". One of the head scratching movements is when 61 year old M describes 42 year old Bond as a dinosaur. Dench's interpretation of "M" is my leading example of a bad boss.