What if's: Terence Young directing Goldfinger

A true what if...what if Terence Young had stayed on for Goldfinger...
Obviously everything that has happened in the series over the years contributed to the longevity and any single change would very likely have ended it prematurely.
But...I figured a series of what if posts were in order...

I'm a huge Young fan and feel that when he left the series was never quite the same. Despite GF being a film for the ages and masterfully built upon by Guy Hamilton and Paul Dehn as the new blood in the production team...there is no denying the third film changed not only the tone but the entire flavor of the series forever. However when Young came back on TB it still wasn't the same as DN and FRWL as the Bondwagon had gotten to top speed and sparked the spy craze.
From GF onwards each film has had to find its side of the Young-Hamilton scale...the FRWL-GF balance, 007's yin and yang...



So...it's 1964 and Terence Young directs Goldfinger...how would it have turned out and what would it have meant for the rest of the series?
Discuss!

Maybe less flashy gadgets and more Bond relying on his wits. A few one-liners, Jack Lord as Felix (salary negotiated) but still a bitchin' Shirley Bassey song.

One difference could be how the Q scenes would have been played, though with lines such as "whatever you do don't touch it" and "I never joke about my work" I'm sure Young would have played with different ways to approach the scene and got close to what Hamilton achieved. 

I wonder if, by GF, the scripts were close to being shooting scripts, and how much involvement the director had at that point. Because gadgetry would have already been written in - not to mention gadgets would play no part in helping Bond escape the industrial laser, so using his wits would still play a big part in his survival. 

I'm not sure any single change would have ended the Bond series, since it was already building on the literary legacy. Tonally, the films may have shifted and stayed more focused. But Roald Dahl would come along and change things. Remember, it's the swinging 60s...

I may have misremembered, but didn't Young do some last minute work on Goldfinger?

I don't think Young had any time spent on GF at least not that I'm aware of.

Tonally I think things would have been a bit different but I think the difference would also have primarily been in the pacing and drive of the narrative. Starting with GF the series took on a more leisurely pace despite Peter Hunt's quick edits and the equal to DN short runtime of 111 minutes-the film feels longer-more luxurious perhaps but definitely longer.

I think the first thing to go would have been the rubber seagull prop or it would have been altered to come across as more serious.

After reflection GF should be more widely studied for the differences coming from Paul Dehn's writing. Since Hamilton came back on DAF and it wasn't quite the same there can definitely be something said for the more English feeling GF having something to do with being the only film Dehn wrote for. And it's definitely for sure that he had something to do with the switch to the atomic device as he was a nuclear alarmist and took over the POTA series wonderfully with its themes of nuclear annihilation.

I always want to put Guy Hamilton down in my head as being more workmanlike than Young was, but that's not quite fair. Hamilton put quite a lot of careful thought and effort into the films he made and was also honest enough after GF to tell B&S that he was burnt out creatively and wanted to do something else to recharge. (Which makes quite a lot of sense as a director.) I think the key difference is that while Young took the films and original stories seriously and always carried them across as such, Hamilton viewed them as lighter entertainments and not as straight dramas. Of course this is also a understandable and totally fine approach-just a different one that is more of a general cinematic technique and less of what Fleming wrote. Another difference is Hamilton seemed best when bouncing ideas off and with others such as Tom Mankiewicz or other team members and Young seemed to coordinate everyone's ideas with what Fleming put on the page.

From what I understand the primary factor behind Young not doing GF was profit participation and/or larger salary since the films were becoming more and more successful. Of course this was the same thing that was the last straw for Connery in '66-'67 and this stinginess carried over to promising Peter Hunt the director's chair for YOLT only to have it go to Lewis Gilbert instead. (Of course they should have said what they eventually wound up doing: Be the second unit director officially on YOLT since it's a huge production and you haven't directed before. Then if you do well you can direct the next one as you'll have better direct experience.) It seems strange that the occurrences happened due to the producer's good reputation but of course these things in terms of profit participation had only begun in Hollywood with Jimmy Stewart's 1950 Winchester '73/Harvey deal and were still looked upon by producers as hogwash.

Paul Dehn's contributions are definitely something I want to explore more. I wonder if he was asked back for TB and why and/or why not? And since he wasn't back for TB, which earned slightly less positive reviews than GF, why not get him back for YOLT to emulate the success of arguably the most critically acclaimed Bond film?

The duck would definitely had gone. I think smaller, lighter embellishments such as the gadgetry would have been toned down a little. But then, would GF have been as successful?

What I've read about Hamilton on Battle of Britain he certainly was a workmanlike director but also someone, as you say boot, tried a great deal with his films. I wonder what Superman would've been like had he directed it.

Or FYEO if Young had been coaxed back though I think by 1983, his magic has waned somewhat and the rapport with Moore would be lacking what he had with Connery.

FYEO would rival FRWL for the best Bond had Young - or Hunt, as I believe was the case - was brought back.

hegottheboot wrote:

I don't think Young had any time spent on GF at least not that I'm aware of.

Young claimed otherwise. Apparently, in Bondage there's an interview where he claimed he did a lot of preproductiopn on GF and then edited it:

Quote :

One of the big problems with Goldfinger was that Bond got captured and put in jail very early in the film. I went back and I did a little work on it with Peter Hunt, and what we did was try to take some of the scenes that came later, and put them before, so that he wasn't captured until about the fifth reel. In the films that we'd made to date, he got into the villains hands in the last reel or two of the picture, but certainly an hour had passed before he was in jeopardy. But in that one he was captured in the first thirty minutes. I thought it was a defect in the storyline.

http://debrief.commanderbond.net/topic/28459-did-terence-young-author-goldfinger/

A lot of Goldfinger's problems come down to the script. Bond basically falls arse backwards into various mistakes, escapes said situations thanks to gadgetry and the villain's hubris, and doesn't really make himself useful til the end. Having said that, audiences and critics have been eating up Goldfinger for over half a century.

I don't think the Young-directed Thunderball is massive departure tonally from Goldfinger. I suspect Young would've had Bond be a little more resourceful and a little less smug, but I can't envisage a radically different picture.

FieldsMan wrote:

FYEO would rival FRWL for the best Bond had Young - or Hunt, as I believe was the case - was brought back.

Hunt intrigues more. Not getting to do more films I think is a shame.

If Young had directed GF, then he would't have directed TB (remember he left before TB was completed to work on The Poppy is Also a Flower [another Fleming brainchild]). So the real question is:
What would TB directed by Guy Hamilton or Lewis Gilbert have looked like?
As for FYEO, possibly elsewhere in the same interview quoted above, Young said that he would only direct another Bond film if it were the last in the series - one where Bond realizes he's lost a step and only won by luck, and retires with a truly mature woman. So what might NSNA looked like (obviously without Kim Basinger)?

Or AVTAK, only Mayday survives and marries Bond. They open a Bed & Breakfast where the most popular menu item is Bond's quiche.

And her dildo.

Hilly KCMG wrote:

FieldsMan wrote:

FYEO would rival FRWL for the best Bond had Young - or Hunt, as I believe was the case - was brought back.

Hunt intrigues more. Not getting to do more films I think is a shame.

Yep, I could give or take Hamilton if it meant Hunt's return.

CJB wrote:

Hilly KCMG wrote:

And her dildo.

"Do you know what I'm sitting on?"

"I'm trying not to think about it."

AVTAK is an entirely different film now, particularly with May Day wearing a strap-on during their love scene.

How did I start this and we get to explosive dildos....

Back on topic.

I must've read that other forum before as it seemed to be familiar. I can see Young doing pre-production work on the general plot before dropping out or making some editing suggestions after viewing a rough cut at C&H's request. But that'd be about it as it's not as if Hamilton was out of the equation.

I think the biggest reasons why successive films are different from each man are the factors involved: TB had to utilize parts of the old 1961 Maibaum scripts, had Kevin McClory as producer calling shots that the others probably would have avoided, had to deal with the spycraze and topping GF, and had to deal with a more straightforward sotry originally intended as a screenplay that is duller when taken at face value...all this with a huge time pressure to meet the release date-one that takes its toll on Hunt's edit even after he got UA to push the release date back to December '65. Thus TB runs long and is far less tight than YOLT was two years later.
On Hamilton's side I had never quite realized just how much Dehn's writing voice must've come across in GF. I think that's the key difference in tone and why GF is so different to the rest of the series.


Oh god if Hunt had come back...wow...FYEO would be more remembered for sure. That said, John Glen is so darned underrated just as all Bond helmers are in the modern critical world.

FieldsMan wrote:

One difference could be how the Q scenes would have been played, though with lines such as "whatever you do don't touch it" and "I never joke about my work" I'm sure Young would have played with different ways to approach the scene and got close to what Hamilton achieved. 

I wonder if, by GF, the scripts were close to being shooting scripts, and how much involvement the director had at that point. Because gadgetry would have already been written in - not to mention gadgets would play no part in helping Bond escape the industrial laser, so using his wits would still play a big part in his survival. 

I'm not sure any single change would have ended the Bond series, since it was already building on the literary legacy. Tonally, the films may have shifted and stayed more focused. But Roald Dahl would come along and change things. Remember, it's the swinging 60s...

On the blu ray special features, I recall Hamilton saying that Q not liking Bond's attitude, was his idea, so I guess it's a good thing that Hamilton took over for that alone.

Even today, the director has a big influence on franchise films, hence the recent row about the tone of The Last Jedi, and the sacking of Edgar Wright from Ant-Man and Michelle MacLaren from Wonder Woman.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Even today, the director has a big influence on franchise films, hence the recent row about the tone of The Last Jedi, and the sacking of Edgar Wright from Ant-Man and Michelle MacLaren from Wonder Woman.

I believe in both of those examples, the directors left because they felt early on they would not be able to realize their own vision for the project.
I'm still of the opinion that these Disney IP behemoths are better served by a reliable craftsman (e.g. Ron Howard who was brought in to finish the problem-plagued "Solo" production) than anyone with auteurish aspirations.
There were perhaps two scenes in "Iron Man 3" that reminded you of the fact you were even watching a Shane Black film.

CJB wrote:

Or AVTAK, only Mayday survives and marries Bond. They open a Bed & Breakfast where the most popular menu item is Bond's quiche.

*Almost falls out of high-backed leather-covered chair, spills glass of brandy, drops copy of The Times and monocle falls out*

Quiche for BREAKFAST? By Jove ... bacon and egg in it there may well be, but that's not the done thing old chap. Not the done thing AT ALL.

ironpony wrote:

FieldsMan wrote:

One difference could be how the Q scenes would have been played, though with lines such as "whatever you do don't touch it" and "I never joke about my work" I'm sure Young would have played with different ways to approach the scene and got close to what Hamilton achieved. 

I wonder if, by GF, the scripts were close to being shooting scripts, and how much involvement the director had at that point. Because gadgetry would have already been written in - not to mention gadgets would play no part in helping Bond escape the industrial laser, so using his wits would still play a big part in his survival. 

I'm not sure any single change would have ended the Bond series, since it was already building on the literary legacy. Tonally, the films may have shifted and stayed more focused. But Roald Dahl would come along and change things. Remember, it's the swinging 60s...

On the blu ray special features, I recall Hamilton saying that Q not liking Bond's attitude, was his idea, so I guess it's a good thing that Hamilton took over for that alone.

It was indeed Hamilton who invented the whole Bond-Q dynamic by giving Desmond that particular small direction. He was quite right to do so as otherwise the Q scenes would be rather dry and would stop the plot for five minutes.

Salomé wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

Even today, the director has a big influence on franchise films, hence the recent row about the tone of The Last Jedi, and the sacking of Edgar Wright from Ant-Man and Michelle MacLaren from Wonder Woman.

I believe in both of those examples, the directors left because they felt early on they would not be able to realize their own vision for the project.
I'm still of the opinion that these Disney IP behemoths are better served by a reliable craftsman (e.g. Ron Howard who was brought in to finish the problem-plagued "Solo" production) than anyone with auteurish aspirations.
There were perhaps two scenes in "Iron Man 3" that reminded you of the fact you were even watching a Shane Black film.

I loved those two bits and little else. The best moment for me was RDJ being knocked about and shouting at the the robot/automation: "Hey Westworld!"

What I couldn't understand was Johnson being allowed to write Last Jedi with no supervision. That made absolutely no sense. Yoou'd think they would want someone with experience but the reason why they haven't gone for more experienced technicians is that they feel that they cannot boss them around as much which is true. Ridley Scott has mentioned in several recent interviews that not only was he not interested in doing Star Wars or any other big tentpole, but also that the studios were too afraid of him doing one because he'd get the job done and make it his own way. (Of course this is the same person who threw away BR in favor of doing essentially an Alien remake soooo...)

Blunt Instrument wrote:

CJB wrote:

Or AVTAK, only Mayday survives and marries Bond. They open a Bed & Breakfast where the most popular menu item is Bond's quiche.

*Almost falls out of high-backed leather-covered chair, spills glass of brandy, drops copy of The Times and monocle falls out*

Quiche for BREAKFAST? By Jove ... bacon and egg in it there may well be, but that's not the done thing old chap. Not the done thing AT ALL.  

If the Yanks can do bite-sized chunks of sugar in milk and/or syrup-laden pancakes (flapjocks?) for breakfast, I think what is essentially a bacon and egg pie (quiche lorraine specifically) will catch on.