Arnold's best end credits Bond theme?

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH:


CASINO ROYALE:


QUANTUM OF SOLACE:

I voted QOS. I much as I've come to dislike the movie as a whole, Arnold's soundtrack is great overall, and this continues in the end credits. The Bond theme is well used, and merges very nicely into that neat "End, Crawl" piece.

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, by far. It's edgy, menacing, and contemporary (like with what Serra did for GE), with some neat rhythmic permutations. Love the break, from 0:48 onwards.

The other two versions are utterly pansified, dated, and dull. Trying too much to sound like 60s Barry, yet with none of the later's balls, command of orchestration, or the grit of analogue recording facilities. Arnold's best with his electronic grooves.

I like this cue from the TWINE end credits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hspGv0ChzM&t=1m54s

I think it pops up during the boat chase, but didn't work as well.

Shameless rip-off of Hamlisch's Bond 77, but I dig it anyway, especially that funky sub-harmonic sinewave bass.

Hmm, it's a toss up between TWINE's and QOS's. TWINE, at one stage, has a bit too much electronica for my tastes, but the intertwining Garbage theme is awesome and the rendition of the Bond theme itself is great. The QOS's theme is much more interesting than CR's. And I love the drum fills - adds balls to this rendition. 8)

TWINE.

A stirling send off for the 20th century. 8)

Are we counting the unused end credits from Arnold's DIE ANOTHER DAY score?

I actually think Arnold's best versions of the Bond theme tend to crop up inside his scores. I don't *really* love any of the end titles cues.

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH credits cue is a less-compelling rendition of "Come In, 007 / Your Time is Up," which does have a pretty great version of the Bond theme, but the way Arnold mixes it for the end credits kinda ruins it. (This is also true of DIE ANOTHER DAY's "Hovercraft Chase" vs. the unused end credits cue for that film.)

CASINO ROYALE and QUANTUM OF SOLACE have the same kind of meat-and-potatoes Bond theme that Arnold gave us in TOMORROW NEVER DIES in cues like "Company Car." They're not bad, per se, but Sharky's right that they don't have any edge or personality.

I think my favorite Arnold rendition of the Bond theme is from an unreleased cue in TOMORROW NEVER DIES, "Countdown to Launch," which plays when Bond highjacks the rocket launcher inside the stealth. For it, Arnold forgoes his go-to orchestration which has usually characterized its appearances in the score. Alas, I can't find a good YouTube version of it.

Harmsway wrote:

THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH credits cue is a less-compelling rendition of "Come In, 007 / Your Time is Up," which does have a pretty great version of the Bond theme, but the way Arnold mixes it for the end credits kinda ruins it.

I'm not sure agree here. I find the boat chase rendition a bit dull and lacking in character, in comparison. For me it never reaches the excitement of about 1:23 to 1:48 of the end credits, with the gated 16th note trance-style filtered chords building up to the outbursts of the seriously menacing take on the Bond theme at 1:37, followed by that funky syncopated groove.

Though to be honest, personal favourite takes in TWINE are in Caviar Factory, and the unreleased Kazakhstan cue.



@ 2:03 to 2:45 and 3:!2 to the end.

Tasteless as those synth screams might be, I can't help sniggering like a schoolboy.



Love those tablas and that bone/tuba figure at the end of every two bars.

We're on completely different pages here, Sharky. That "funky syncopated groove" you mention from Arnold's TWINE end credits is emblematic of everything I dislike about his use of electronic elements in his scores, and the "Caviar Factory" cue is the one cue from TWINE that I loathe.

TBH, I only like the interpolations of the Bond theme from that, not much else.

I don't believe this! We are on the same page Sharky. In reference to Caviar Factory, anyway. From about 1.20 the track is rubbish until the Bond theme. But I like the start a bit.

I do agree with Harms though that Come In OO7... is better than the end credits.

It may be smothered in techno, but it's nice to hark back to a time when the Bond Theme actually made an appearance in Bond films (and not just in the end credits). A time when the franchise still had the confidence to be true to itself.

CJB wrote:

It may be smothered in techno, but it's nice to hark back to a time when the Bond Theme actually made an appearance in Bond films (and not just in the end credits). A time when the franchise still had the confidence to be true to itself.

For cryin' out loud, it's been just *two* movies. Just *two*. People act as though two movies has suddenly been an eternity.

CASINO ROYALE kept the Bond theme toward the end for a direct purpose, and when it did finally show up, it made that Bond theme feel way cooler than it would have had it been sprinkled abundantly throughout the preceding hours. It was a refreshing change of pace after the overuse of the Bond theme during the Brosnan years. (Hell, after TOMORROW NEVER DIES, the Bond theme seemed pretty much exhausted.)

Admittedly, CASINO ROYALE's use of the Bond theme should have been a one-time deal. But QUANTUM was a complete trainwreck as far as creative decisions go, and QUANTUM didn't make much use of the Bond theme because it didn't make much of the Bond trademarks, period. That had more to do with Forster's approach than any behind-the-scenes vision of what QUANTUM OF SOLACE needed to be. (I largely suspect if you go to P&W's original draft for QUANTUM OF SOLACE, you'd find a superficially far more Bondian film than the one that got made.)

We'll see what SKYFALL does with the Bond theme, but given the "All the trademarks are back" approach from the cast and crew, I suspect we'll be getting plenty of the Bond theme, too.

To my mind, the James Bond Theme has never worked better than when played over the closing credits of CASINO ROYALE.

Not being musical, I can't comment on its arrangement, recording, etc., but its appearance at the end of CASINO ROYALE, after Craig's "Bond, James Bond", creates just about the biggest "Fuck yeah!" moment in the history of the series.

Harmsway wrote:

For cryin' out loud, it's been just *two* movies. Just *two*. People act as though two movies has suddenly been an eternity.

Well, if one considers DAD, whatever its faults, to be the last "traditional" Bond film then it's been a decade i.e. one-fifth of the film series' history. Not an eternity, but a long time nevertheless and heightened by the fact that the films are averaging three year gaps in the Noughties.

CJB wrote:

Not an eternity, but a long time nevertheless and heightened by the fact that the films are averaging three year gaps in the Noughties.

It's the way it feels in the moment. But twenty years from now, when folks are simply working their way through the Bond films--in whatever format will be in vogue at that time--they won't feel the gap of years between the films.

Loomis wrote:

To my mind, the James Bond Theme has never worked better than when played over the closing credits of CASINO ROYALE.

Not being musical, I can't comment on its arrangement, recording, etc., but its appearance at the end of CASINO ROYALE, after Craig's "Bond, James Bond", creates just about the biggest "Fuck yeah!" moment in the history of the series.

I like the idea of the James Bond theme over CASINO ROYALE's end credits a lot more than the execution. It sounds too much like Arnold''s Brosnan-era arrangement minus the breakbeats, with bongos laid on top.

Although it's not world's apart, I much prefer this version of theme Arnold did before he got the Bond gig. The intro alone has got way more punch to it, and it feels more like what it was originally meant to allude to - gunshots.

Sharky wrote:

It sounds too much like Arnold''s Brosnan-era arrangement minus the breakbeats, with bongos laid on top.

Well, that's more or less exactly what it is. But while the arrangement isn't novel, it works anyway, because the context makes it cool even if it isn't the best rendition of the Bond theme ever produced. (That said, I do wonder how it might have worked had they used the original, famous Monty Norman Orchestra version.)

Sharky wrote:

Although it's not world's apart, I much prefer this version of theme Arnold did before he got the Bond gig. The intro alone has got way more punch to it, and it feels more like what it was originally meant to allude to - gunshots.

I've never heard that version before. Did he do that for SHAKEN AND STIRRED?

That said, personally, the differences are too slight for me to strongly prefer it to the CASINO ROYALE/QUANTUM OF SOLACE versions. I actually think, overall, the QUANTUM OF SOLACE version is probably still my favorite of the three. (Though I do agree with you about the "gunshot" intro.)

Harmsway wrote:

I've never heard that version before. Did he do that for SHAKEN AND STIRRED?

I believe so.

I've been looking for that version for a while.

I don't like any of Arnold's Bond themes very much. TWINE's is practically video game music and QoS's is too thin-sounding. CR's is serviceable.

I don't see how CR's is any better than QOS's.

To each their own.