The Most Bondian Moments #17-21

Holy crap, that was a big-ass storm last Thursday night. We don’t get typhoons, hurricanes or tornadoes here in lush Western Washington, where the weather is usually pretty mild, but every four or five years we get a monster snowstorm or windstorm like the one that ripped through the Northwest last night. There were trees down all over the place, our main interstate was flooded in spots, over a million people lost power and six people died, including one poor woman who was trapped by flood water in her basement. We didn't get power until Sunday.

Such is the power of Thor.

So let’s wrap up this James Bond stuff. I appreciate everyone’s patience with me recently as I deviated from the usual Dave’s Long Box format. I think I’ve got the Bond thing worked out of my system now and we can return to mocking stupid comics and occasionally exalting good comics.

But first…

…let’s finish up the Most Bondian Moment posts by looking at the coolest moments from the least cool Bond movies, IMHO.

17. Die Another Day

This movie does not make the bottom of my list, despite the invisible car and the blasphemous iceberg tidal wave surfing scene near the end of the film. No, I don’t love this movie, but it has a few nice moments.

There’s a great scene at the beginning where Bond and a couple other agents infiltrate North Korea by surfing in on some monster waves at night. As I understand it, they filmed the scene at the famous surfing spot “Jaws” on Maui, home of some huge-ass waves. The agents sneak on to the beach and Bond opens up a hatch in his surfboard to reveal some gadgets. It’s an atmospheric, well-shot scene that sets the tone of the opening sequence and feels very Bondian. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn’t live up to the promise of those first moments…

The other scene I enjoyed was Bond’s sword fight with at the gentleman’s fencing club, Blades, which was the name of a gambling club in Fleming's novel Moonraker. In this scene Bond shows up and basically picks a fight with Gustav Graves, the diamond mogul and villain of the film. What starts out as a fencing match turns into a full-on sword fight/brawl with the two combatants tearing up the club in the process.

After this scene, the movie goes straight into the proverbial toilet and clogs it up and it overflows and stinks up the whole bathroom and there is poo everywhere. Proverbially speaking of course.

18. Moonraker

I mentioned previously that the scene where Dobermans hunt down Drax's unlucky assistant is probably the most Bondian part of Moonraker.

In the interest of not repeating myself, I will declare the boat chase on the Brazilian river as 85% Bondian. It's briefer and more exciting than the overrated boat chase in Live and Let Die. Bond's tricked out boat has a hang glider that unfolds from the roof, which comes in handy when the river tumbles over a huge waterfall. It's as if the engineers in Q Branch knew that some day, this boat may have to go over a waterfall - it could happen - so they threw in the hang glider. And they were right, weren't they? These were the same Q Branch guys who make Bond go skiing with a parachute on his back.

19. The Man with the Golden Gun

I'm at a loss. I guess I like Bond's seaplane at the end. Does that count?

20. Diamonds are Forever

Man, I do not like this movie. There is a cool scene where Sean Connery walks out on to the top of an exterior elevator and casually rides up the side of a high rise in Vegas. I liked that part. Alas, I don't have an image of that scene, so let's move on.

21. A View to a Kill

While this movie has to be acknowledged as the most embarassing James Bond movie. An aging Roger Moore gives it one last go, bedding both Tanya Roberts and Grace Jones and generally looking winded. I don't need to see a sixty-something year old dude in the shower with Tanya Roberts; there are websites for things like that.

The meandering, yawning plot involves Max Zorin, a maniacal Nazi industrialist (Christopher Walken) who flies around in a blimp and tries to destroy Silicon Valley in order to corner the market on silicon chips. Oh and he produces horse steroids, the cad. As you might imagine, Walken is the best part of the movie - he's cheerfully demented and his line delivery is quirky gold.

Here's the set up for the film's most Bondian moment, supplied by Walken. In order to wipe out Silicon Valley - and let me see if I get this right - Zorin intends to pump sea water into a fault line and trigger a huge earthquake. He plants a huge bomb in his own mine that will trigger the flood. Zorin and some henchmen stand above the flooding mine on a walkway as the miners try to escape, scrambling up ladders. Zorin has brought along some machine guns for the occasion, and he laughs as they spray his own employees below with bullets. He just looks so damn happy as he shoots them. It's the highlight of the film for me, and one of the more psychotic things a Bond villain has ever done.

THE END

Thus ends our look at the most Bondian moments in the franchise's history. As is usually the case, this theme ran longer than intended, thanks in part to that damn storm, and I thank everyone for their indulgence.

We now return to our regular comics-related content, and forge onwards to excellence!

To the future!