Friday, August 12, 2011

Day 36: Ninja Turtles, Shaken Not Stirred


 
When I got home from work today my wife was sitting on the couch watching GoldenEye. Why? Because she's awesome, that's why. More than that she listened to me quote the movie, discuss the finer points of Pierce Brosnan's James Bond and reminisce about playing the classic N64 game.

It's been years since I've seen GoldenEye so it inspired me to draw this picture. Michelangelo is Bond because, hey, why not? Donatello is Q for obvious reasons. Leonardo is M (not the Judy Dench version). Raphael is playing the part of the Russian military officer. I was going to have him as Bond, but he's already got red on so it seemed a perfect fit. Plus he's kind of an ass.

I've been a James Bond fan for a long time. When I was younger I used to love to rent old Bond movies from Blockbuster and I never passed up a chance to watch a Bond marathon over the holidays. I'm a fan of Sean Connery's Bond, but I also had an attachment to Roger Moore. The more that I think about it now I wonder if that wasn't just because he did Moonraker which was about space and featured one of my favorite villains, Jaws.

I also loved Pierce Brosnan's James Bond. If you watch him in GoldenEye he is everything a good James Bond should be. Smooth, in control, stylish and extremely capable of handling himself in a firefight. Brosnan gets a bad wrap from a lot of Bond fans, but I feel it's unjustified. He was a great Bond saddled with some bad scripts. GoldenEye, to me was a great Bond film, but it was all downhill after that. It also didn't help that he started to get a little old and jowl-y in the later films.

People seem to be split on Daniel Craig's Bond, partly because of the radically changed scripts and partly because he plays it so differently than any of the past Bonds. Personally I am a fan of "gritty reboots" in general and I loved Casino Royale. I really like Daniel Craig's quiet, calculating Bond. He's not as suave as the past James Bonds, but he seems much more physically capable and there's a feeling of real danger present in the last two movies that was never really in any of the other Bond movies. My only concern so far with the latest incarnation of James Bond is the rumors I've heard of the Olsen twins being the next "Bond Girls." No one wants to see that.

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After GoldenEye was over Die Another Day started. Right off the bat this movie is veering from cool spy movie to cartoon territory with a Surf Ninjas-like intro and a satellite contained within a knife handle. A little while into the movie they show a North Korean military officer working over a punching bag...

Em: I like how from 1995 to 2002 the standard bad guys go from being Russian to being North Korean.

Me: Yeah, a lot changed in that time period I guess.

*After beating on the punching bag vigorously for a few minutes he asks another officer to open the bag and a soldier falls out.*

Em: Hey! That's a good idea!

Me: What?! Seriously?

Em: Yeah, you can teach somebody a lesson and get a workout at the same time. It's a good idea.

Me: Whatever you say.

Who said Bond movies are just for guys?

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