The reason for the use of the AMC was that was what the Stuntman used when he did this stunt in shows across the country. This wasn't Hollywood Special F/X. He really did it...
James threw the Thai boy out of the boat so he wouldn't be in danger. Bond's opponents wouldn't think twice about killing an innocent civilian (of any age) as collateral damage in their attempts to kill James Bond.
James threw the boy overboard, because he was a nuisance and a restraint to him. Anyone back then would have done so. Furthermore, the kid knowing to tune the engine was a joke on Bond, but Bond throwing the kid overboard instead of keeping his promise was a joke on the kid that topped the first one by far.
No, Sir Roger didn’t approve of that scene because in filming TMWTGG he saw the abject poverty that many people in the world lived in and did tremendous work for UNICEF in the remainder of his career and beyond as a result. I know there’s a lot of justified scepticism when it comes to Hollywood stars with their supposed philanthropy, but let’s please recognise the W in the work that Roger Moore’s efforts as a consequence of this film
Huge Bond fan here. Nice video. I actually noticed another theme while you were showing scenes from the movie- There's the mafia men who you think are real, but turn out to be fake, there's Ms. Anders siting the crowd you think is alive but she's dead, the 2 sumo who you think are statues but are real, knickknack disguised as a statue... and the big payoff- Bond replacing the statue of himself and faking out Scaramanga.
I actually got drunk at that very same bar in Hong Kong that you see in like the first 5 minutes of the movie. It was called The Bottoms Up and if you could finish the house specialty drink - Bottoms Up, you get to keep the glass. Walking afterward seemed difficult for my fellow Marines that tried. I just stuck to my usual, Scotch. They had all the walls lined with photo/poster size pictures on the wall. That was in 1982. Semper fi!
Thanks for sharing (and your service). I have this affinity for Bond films and real life locations. For me, I've been inside the locale used as the Ninja training school in You Only Live Twice.
Thank you! I enjoy this film because I was in Hong Kong on several extended trips in the late 80's, and feel like I'm "in" the film during the Hong Kong portions, including the times I drank at the Bottoms Up club. I'm not sure if the scene where Scaramanga shoots the scientist is a sond stage, but even that scene feels like the Hong Kong streets with the prominent camera shop, they were so plentiful.
As soon as you said it the broken deals theme clicked for me. And the pushing the kid into the water got him out of harm's way and the kid wouldn't be suspected of being Bond's ally and injured by the gang.
the tourist was a callback, not a gag: he was in the previous Bond film so the dunking and car jump were in-jokes to him going into the bayou and of Bond jumping over his cruiser in the previous movie
Moore was my Bond growing up. This was the 2nd Bond film I saw with my Dad. I was 6 when we saw Live and Let Die and just 7 when we saw this one. It ranks near the bottom on many Bond lists but it's in my top 10 maybe even top 5. A lot of it comes from being a kid but even as an adult I enjoy the different nature of this Bond adventure. I quickly caught up on all the previous Bond movies with the ABC Sunday night movies that played all the Bond movies for years. There were no VCRs so I'd watch all of them each year and loved all the Connery classics. Poor Roger stayed on way to late and even though A View to a Kill was a good send off for him with Christopher Walken as the villian Moore was just too damn old. In hindsight Moonraker should he been his last Bond movie imo. Loved your insights and hope u do more Bond including one on Lazenby's excellent solo film. If he wasn't such a jerk he would have been a really good Bond but if that would.have happened we never would have gotten any Roger Moore Bond films so it all worked out in the end.
And then there's the little laugh we have as what Scaramanga's wearing (5:01) anticipates the show in which Hervé Villechaize is going to star before long.
The true theme of this film is 'Deception'. There are numerous examples of when things are not as they seem; the 'funhouse', the waxwork figure of Bond, the Golden Gun itself, Scaramanga's flying car, the third nipple disguise, Andrea Anders' duplicity, the sunken ship Mi6 headquarters... etc. Take note of how many shots in the film are reflections in mirrors or surfaces - representing the theme of things not being as they appear to be.
There's even the unusually strained relationship between M and Q while they are on the Queen Elizabeth. M had probably been short on patience with Q before, but never just told him to "shut up." Just the sight of the Queen Elizabeth in its decrepit, burned-out, capsized state (after a fire that might have been part of an insurance fraud) is unusually dark for a Bond film - it seems to imply bad things lie ahead for Her Majesty.
Give me a break. Broken promises? You mean double crossing? In a spy movie - no way, never! Hey, did some kind of bot cobble this video together. Ai is getting good but it is still not completely unconcealable.
I agree that this Bond movie was .......odd and almost surreal at times. Very good analysis of the underlying themes. I totally missed the "broken promises" layer of the plot.
Isn't it kinda the running gag of all JB films? Broken deals...cross and double cross. Off the top of my head, The Spy Who Loved Me; Stromberg kills the scientists in the helicopter, girl helper tries to double cross Stromberg and gets fed to the shark, Sandor hangs on to Bonds tie until he get's the info, XXX and Bond deal and double deal...it's a Bond thing.
It's true. The spy game is essentially a series of betrayals. One of my favorite examples is Goldfinger, in which the villain Goldfinger summons all the criminals who had aided his operations to explain that, with further assistance, he would rob Fort Knox and they would be entitled to a percentage of the loot. One guy drops out, who is killed, but the rest of the gangsters are killed anyway. I assume Goldfinger doesn't want to leave any loose ends...but why bother with the elaborate presentation if he is just going to kill them anyway? In a View to a Kill, Zorin similarly kills a would-be investor who declines Zorin's offer, and later he betrays and murders a whole bunch of his own workers during the final stage of his plan. Off the top of my head I can think of more examples from Diamonds are Forever, You Only Live Twice, Goldeneye, License to Kill, and Living Daylights.
@@kev3d Goldfinger - then Pussy betrays Goldfinger because she gave JB some. Goldfinger betrays the Asian physicist by shooting him. Only Oddjob stayed true to the end. View: The Grace Jones betrayed Zorin with the bomb. Agreed. All of them.
Bad info on the Hornet. My friend almost bought one back then. Fuel mileage was 16.5 mpg, considerably higher than the 11 you state. And yes, 16.5 was good for that time, especially for a sporty performance vehicle.
Yeah it's 17.6 mpg average for the 232 V6 which is what was used in the movie but he's assuming it was a 360 but since he doesn't even understand what a running gag is it's not surprising.
The "proper" books were all set in the 50's and 60's, some weren't filmed until decades after but always had a contemporary setting. Honestly they ought to just take the bond movies back to the Cold War.
I watched Moonraker last night. I had the subtitles on , and I happened to notice the blasphemous remark made by the two 'scientists' when they realise they are in deathly trouble when the small glass container of poison hits the floor and breaks open. I'm surprised that such a movie would allow such language....
On a superficial level, The Man With the Golden Gun looks like the Bond film that almost isn't: a low effort entry with a halfbaked script, uncertain tone, and comparative lack of action and spectacle. And yet I always enjoy it, and I find something oddly moody and mysterious about it. Barry's score is underrated, Britt Eckland's hilarious comic turn as a dingbat Bond girl misunderstood, and Lee and Adams are, as most people agree, really good. As for Roger Moore, this is at times his most icy portrayal of Bond. And despite the many comic touches or lapses of logic that rub people the wrong way, there are many subtle and quiet moments of suspense (something about watching that cloud pass across the sun always gets me, it's surreally Hitchcockean) that I don't get from other Bond films. Guy Hamilton had his unique approach to these films, it includes a lot of campy humor but also his own weird kind of poetry. I can easily believe he would pick up on this neat little trope about bad deals and work with it as a conscious trope throughout the film. It's very much the kind of mordant British humor that his four Bond films seem suffused with. This gives me a good excuse to go back and enjoy this underappreciated gem once more!
5:38 - I think it is junk... sorry, the boat is a junk and then it works to ansewer your question. Your video is a good analysis, something I never thought of. I don't mind the puns, and jokes, they were not out of place in the movie.
Nick Nack was a good henchman and Francisco was an interesting villain, but this movie does have a few huge plot issues. Like the fact that Francisco steals the solex device only just to attract Bond to his lair, but then somehow he already has all the facilities set up to actually make use of it for power generation in his lair. Or the fact that the intelligence agencies know the solex device works, but don't bother to try and recreate it.
“The Man with the Golden Gun” kicks ass and has a great theme song. It’s often ranked low and is disrespected, but undeservedly so!
The reason for the use of the AMC was that was what the Stuntman used when he did this stunt in shows across the country. This wasn't Hollywood Special F/X. He really did it...
James threw the Thai boy out of the boat so he wouldn't be in danger. Bond's opponents wouldn't think twice about killing an innocent civilian (of any age) as collateral damage in their attempts to kill James Bond.
At the end I was NOT expecting Bond to tie up Knick-Knack; I may have expected him to have thrown Knick-Knack overboard (to die).
James threw the boy overboard, because he was a nuisance and a restraint to him. Anyone back then would have done so.
Furthermore, the kid knowing to tune the engine was a joke on Bond, but Bond throwing the kid overboard instead of keeping his promise was a joke on the kid that topped the first one by far.
No, Sir Roger didn’t approve of that scene because in filming TMWTGG he saw the abject poverty that many people in the world lived in and did tremendous work for UNICEF in the remainder of his career and beyond as a result. I know there’s a lot of justified scepticism when it comes to Hollywood stars with their supposed philanthropy, but let’s please recognise the W in the work that Roger Moore’s efforts as a consequence of this film
Huge Bond fan here. Nice video. I actually noticed another theme while you were showing scenes from the movie- There's the mafia men who you think are real, but turn out to be fake, there's Ms. Anders siting the crowd you think is alive but she's dead, the 2 sumo who you think are statues but are real, knickknack disguised as a statue... and the big payoff- Bond replacing the statue of himself and faking out Scaramanga.
I actually got drunk at that very same bar in Hong Kong that you see in like the first 5 minutes of the movie. It was called The Bottoms Up and if you could finish the house specialty drink - Bottoms Up, you get to keep the glass. Walking afterward seemed difficult for my fellow Marines that tried. I just stuck to my usual, Scotch. They had all the walls lined with photo/poster size pictures on the wall. That was in 1982.
Semper fi!
Thanks for sharing (and your service). I have this affinity for Bond films and real life locations. For me, I've been inside the locale used as the Ninja training school in You Only Live Twice.
That's interesting. I wonder what was in that drink.
Thanks for your service.
I got the name of the drink wrong. It's called Pat's typhoon.
Thank you! I enjoy this film because I was in Hong Kong on several extended trips in the late 80's, and feel like I'm "in" the film during the Hong Kong portions, including the times I drank at the Bottoms Up club. I'm not sure if the scene where Scaramanga shoots the scientist is a sond stage, but even that scene feels like the Hong Kong streets with the prominent camera shop, they were so plentiful.
Just one drink? Musta been something extra in that 😂
As soon as you said it the broken deals theme clicked for me. And the pushing the kid into the water got him out of harm's way and the kid wouldn't be suspected of being Bond's ally and injured by the gang.
The running gag of broken promises and bad deals DID extend to Goodnight because, in the end, she still got "screwed."
the tourist was a callback, not a gag: he was in the previous Bond film so the dunking and car jump were in-jokes to him going into the bayou and of Bond jumping over his cruiser in the previous movie
They didn't complain about the price of a Big Mac because Macdonalds didn't exist in the UK at the time.
Yet, is a big complaint today in the US.
And the running gag of the names of products/ character names.. Hi Fat, Phu Yuck... or even the dumb slideflute during the car flip.
Moore was my Bond growing up. This was the 2nd Bond film I saw with my Dad. I was 6 when we saw Live and Let Die and just 7 when we saw this one. It ranks near the bottom on many Bond lists but it's in my top 10 maybe even top 5. A lot of it comes from being a kid but even as an adult I enjoy the different nature of this Bond adventure. I quickly caught up on all the previous Bond movies with the ABC Sunday night movies that played all the Bond movies for years. There were no VCRs so I'd watch all of them each year and loved all the Connery classics. Poor Roger stayed on way to late and even though A View to a Kill was a good send off for him with Christopher Walken as the villian Moore was just too damn old. In hindsight Moonraker should he been his last Bond movie imo. Loved your insights and hope u do more Bond including one on Lazenby's excellent solo film. If he wasn't such a jerk he would have been a really good Bond but if that would.have happened we never would have gotten any Roger Moore Bond films so it all worked out in the end.
And then there's the little laugh we have as what Scaramanga's wearing (5:01) anticipates the show in which Hervé Villechaize is going to star before long.
Don't care what you say, it's great entertainment. And yeah, he saved the Thai boy for sure, plus it's good comedy.
One could say Bond did that to keep the kid out of harm's way.
Agreed! I always felt that he was removing the kid from danger and not being a "tool".
Everything I've read about Moore, going back well before the internet, it's not out of character for him to not like the scene with the boy.
The true theme of this film is 'Deception'. There are numerous examples of when things are not as they seem; the 'funhouse', the waxwork figure of Bond, the Golden Gun itself, Scaramanga's flying car, the third nipple disguise, Andrea Anders' duplicity, the sunken ship Mi6 headquarters... etc. Take note of how many shots in the film are reflections in mirrors or surfaces - representing the theme of things not being as they appear to be.
Good spot.
There's even the unusually strained relationship between M and Q while they are on the Queen Elizabeth. M had probably been short on patience with Q before, but never just told him to "shut up." Just the sight of the Queen Elizabeth in its decrepit, burned-out, capsized state (after a fire that might have been part of an insurance fraud) is unusually dark for a Bond film - it seems to imply bad things lie ahead for Her Majesty.
I don't know if running gag is 100% fitting but pointing out all this is incredible, I never noticed all of these broken deals and promises.
Give me a break. Broken promises? You mean double crossing? In a spy movie - no way, never! Hey, did some kind of bot cobble this video together. Ai is getting good but it is still not completely unconcealable.
I feel the longest running gag of this sort was with Moneypenny- not Goodnight
I agree that this Bond movie was .......odd and almost surreal at times. Very good analysis of the underlying themes. I totally missed the "broken promises" layer of the plot.
Isn't it kinda the running gag of all JB films? Broken deals...cross and double cross. Off the top of my head, The Spy Who Loved Me; Stromberg kills the scientists in the helicopter, girl helper tries to double cross Stromberg and gets fed to the shark, Sandor hangs on to Bonds tie until he get's the info, XXX and Bond deal and double deal...it's a Bond thing.
It's true. The spy game is essentially a series of betrayals. One of my favorite examples is Goldfinger, in which the villain Goldfinger summons all the criminals who had aided his operations to explain that, with further assistance, he would rob Fort Knox and they would be entitled to a percentage of the loot. One guy drops out, who is killed, but the rest of the gangsters are killed anyway. I assume Goldfinger doesn't want to leave any loose ends...but why bother with the elaborate presentation if he is just going to kill them anyway?
In a View to a Kill, Zorin similarly kills a would-be investor who declines Zorin's offer, and later he betrays and murders a whole bunch of his own workers during the final stage of his plan.
Off the top of my head I can think of more examples from Diamonds are Forever, You Only Live Twice, Goldeneye, License to Kill, and Living Daylights.
@@kev3d Goldfinger - then Pussy betrays Goldfinger because she gave JB some. Goldfinger betrays the Asian physicist by shooting him. Only Oddjob stayed true to the end.
View: The Grace Jones betrayed Zorin with the bomb.
Agreed. All of them.
Stromberg...Solex...was Ian Fleming tinkering with his carburettors while writing the Bond novels? 😂
@@elektro3000Must not have had good luck with them. They were cast in such a negative light. Solex agitator, wasn't it?
True. Fail to see the point the poster’s making here.
You missed the biggest dissolve of all. The partnership between Broccoli, Saltzman. Also did I hear Holly Goodnight, her first name was Mary.
yeah, saying"Holly" was a Freudian slip.
Probably thinking Holly because of Dr. Holly Goodhead in Moonraker?
@@Witch_King_of_Angmaror Holly Golightly!
I wouldn't call this a running gag. A re-curing theme perhaps.
That was good!
Deals fell through in others, if not all of the Bond films, not just this one.
Chris Lee and Roger Moore skirting 'Carry On' humour with a full cast of prominent character actors... And 'gadgets'... What is there not to like?
I've always felt this film was a James Bond take on an Avengers episode.
Mr Bond, we're needed
I wonder, is gold really the best material to make a gun? Wouldn't it be too soft?
Bad info on the Hornet. My friend almost bought one back then. Fuel mileage was 16.5 mpg, considerably higher than the 11 you state. And yes, 16.5 was good for that time, especially for a sporty performance vehicle.
Yeah it's 17.6 mpg average for the 232 V6 which is what was used in the movie but he's assuming it was a 360 but since he doesn't even understand what a running gag is it's not surprising.
Good night
If you've read the books the movies make almost no sense.
"moonraker" springs to mind when reading that comment 😂
The "proper" books were all set in the 50's and 60's, some weren't filmed until decades after but always had a contemporary setting.
Honestly they ought to just take the bond movies back to the Cold War.
I watched Moonraker last night.
I had the subtitles on , and I happened to notice the blasphemous remark made by the two 'scientists' when they realise they are in deathly trouble when the small glass container of poison hits the floor and breaks open.
I'm surprised that such a movie would allow such language....
Seemingly Italian TV still restricts the use of such bestemmie.
Fletcher class
On a superficial level, The Man With the Golden Gun looks like the Bond film that almost isn't: a low effort entry with a halfbaked script, uncertain tone, and comparative lack of action and spectacle. And yet I always enjoy it, and I find something oddly moody and mysterious about it. Barry's score is underrated, Britt Eckland's hilarious comic turn as a dingbat Bond girl misunderstood, and Lee and Adams are, as most people agree, really good. As for Roger Moore, this is at times his most icy portrayal of Bond. And despite the many comic touches or lapses of logic that rub people the wrong way, there are many subtle and quiet moments of suspense (something about watching that cloud pass across the sun always gets me, it's surreally Hitchcockean) that I don't get from other Bond films. Guy Hamilton had his unique approach to these films, it includes a lot of campy humor but also his own weird kind of poetry. I can easily believe he would pick up on this neat little trope about bad deals and work with it as a conscious trope throughout the film. It's very much the kind of mordant British humor that his four Bond films seem suffused with. This gives me a good excuse to go back and enjoy this underappreciated gem once more!
I'm with you. I know it's cheap, filthy, and grimy. But it has Christopher Lee!
3:20 This must be the worst possible way of aiming a gun
5:38 - I think it is junk... sorry, the boat is a junk and then it works to ansewer your question.
Your video is a good analysis, something I never thought of. I don't mind the puns, and jokes, they were not out of place in the movie.
Roger Moore's portrayal of Bond was always rife with dry humor and puns. It wasn't limited to just this film.
Gag? No.
It's an emphasitic point! That's how you do humour in the most driest way possible! That's why it's Bond! That's English humour for you!
The movie starts and ends with a man, a woman and Nick Nack, although only one of the men had three nipples...
the running gag...ain't gonna reveal it but well its kinda grasping at straws, trying to find a common theme but the connections are weak
Nick Nack was a good henchman and Francisco was an interesting villain, but this movie does have a few huge plot issues.
Like the fact that Francisco steals the solex device only just to attract Bond to his lair, but then somehow he already has all the facilities set up to actually make use of it for power generation in his lair.
Or the fact that the intelligence agencies know the solex device works, but don't bother to try and recreate it.
The Bond films look very dated right after the Bourne trilogy came out. Bond was too unrealistic to even be called a spy.
It's an awful film tbh
What about Corseau?