"My god. It was like entering a museum of misogyny. I have truly never seen anything like it.
...
The entire final third of the film is based on Mary Goodnight's (Britt Ekland's) stupidity. If it wasn't for her, we could all go home half an hour early for a nice cup of tea. I can't begin to list all the idiotic things that she does, but here are a few: getting stuck in Scaramanga's boot (his car boot, but I wouldn't put it past her to actually get stuck in a shoe), nearly falling out of a plane mid-flight, blowing up an entire island by punching a man into a vat with a sign above that says 'Don't punch men into this vat or the island will explode', nearly killing Bond by accidentally pushing a red button with her bikini-clad bum - obviously, by now she is wearing a bikini, for NO REASON WHATSEVER. The bit where she flaps around in front of a computer console with a big lever on it that's labelled 'on / off', failing to switch it off, bleating "I don't understand! I don't see what I have to do! Help me James!" like some kind of proto-Crystal Maze contestant had me abandon the fried chicken for chewing on bits of my sofa. She also gives Roger Moore plenty of opportunities for leaning back against a 1970s sports car / evil supercomputer / dead henchman with a look of dismay mixed with long-suffering amusement on his face, saying lines like "Pah! Women!" and stroking the lapels of his safari suit. It's fully brilliant. And of course he shags her at the end."
Read it all. Enjoy and marvel. And then note the wise words of MediumRob in the comments on the nature of Bond books and films:
" [The Man With the Golden Gun] pales into insignificance compared with the offensiveness of the book "Goldfinger", which among other things has Bond beating up women, describing Koreans as no better than monkeys (or was it dogs), "curing" a lesbian (who was only a lesbian in the first place because her uncle raped her) by being a real man and then sleeping with her. Und so weiter."To which Stuggling Author adds:
"Ah yes, the toned-down, inoffensive subtlety of the Bond film adaptations..."and
"I love the thought of Fleming fans stomping out of the Bond films complaining that they're too tasteful and refined."
7 comments:
On a slightly related note, here's me hoping that the new Bond film would be, get this, "plot-driven", only to see the trailer recently and realise that it didn't touch on the plot at all, whatsoever, anywhere.
Oh, but there was an explosion that was really big.
Big explosion! What more could you expect!
PS that final shot of Craig in the casino in the trailer makes him look very very unattractive.
No, no. He's "Bond". You're supposed to go weak at the knees!
He's supposed to be kind of unattractive but in a manly way that makes him attractive.
In the books, he's only about 5'11" or something, isn't especially well built and has a scar on his cheek.
But it's his real man magnetism on his eyes (or something) that are supposed to draw the women too him.
My apologies for the typos. Doh!
I don't think I have ever gone weak for a Bond...
Bond was supposed to look 'like Hoagy Carmichael, with a cruel mouth.'
And here's a pic of Hoagy Carmichael, looking nothing like anyone who's played Bond (except maybe Timothy Dalton, at a pinch).
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