Difference in Daftness

“I always enjoy Bond movies but of course they are daft, and you need very intelligent actors to play them with just the right twinkle in the eye.” — The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw in a 10.16 post.

They weren’t always this way. Bond films didn’t start sipping the crazy water until Goldfinger. The first two, Dr. No and From Russia With Love, were tongue-in-cheeky with a light, self-amused attitude, but they didn’t stand on a rooftop and shout “look how batshit ludicrous we can be!” That attitude started to creep in with Goldfinger, gained traction with Thunderball and then went full-tilt boogie with You Only Live Twice.

Back to Bradshaw: “But the promotional machine insists that these intelligent people pretend to be glassy-eyed devotees in the cult of Bond and all its luxury-brand sponsors, for the benefit of journalists and hype-merchants who are themselves pretending. Perhaps the Bond cast will just freak out, en masse, on the red carpet and start screaming their hatred of Bond — like 12-year-old piano prodigies forced to practice 17 hours a day who end up deliberately smashing their fingers in a car door.”