Am I being hypocritical on this entry, for this reason?

I like some elements of the movie such as the villains and the Bond girl was kind of of good, kind of not, and it did have some really good stand out moments.

But the problem that bothers me is that it feels like a complete rehash of Goldfinger. Not only is the villain's plan strikingly similar, but they make it even more blatantly obvious by having discuss his plan with a bunch of shareholders, in a room with a model of the whole thing, and one of the shareholders wants out, after hearing the plan, so the villain has him killed. And instead of Bond overhearing Operation Grand Slam, he hears Operation Main Strike. Way too much like Goldfinger I feel.

The movie even copies things from other Bond movies such as the villain using the exact same line to his henchman he did one Bond movie ago, "Go Get Him... Go!" Just like in Octopussy. Or how the car chase, involves police that keep screwing up like in DAF or LALD, with a cop is a watered down version of Sheriff Pepper, as if the movie bankrupt of having more new ideas.

However, I feel maybe I am being hypocritical on this one perhaps, because other Bond movies copy other ones, such as TSWLM and MR copying a lot of elements out of YOLT, right down to the henchwoman being killed off for failure or betrayal in each movie... And yet I like TSWLM and MR a lot better than YOLT and feel they surpass it, yet I am completely bothered by AVTAK copying so much out of Goldfinger and the one Octopussy line, which came off as blatantly copied.

So am I being double standard-ish about my opinion on AVTAK perhaps?

I'd say probably, because I'm part AVTAK defender and part c*nt.

Yep I know you're a big AVTAK fan :). Another thing that bothered me about the movie was the ending, as it ended with Bond caught with a woman again, which we have seen so many times before that, as well as a bomb timer which was also used in the previous entry.

A lot of these are conventions of the Bond film though.

Bond has been caught with the girl in:

DN
YOLT
TSWLM
MR
AVTAK
GE
TWINE
(Daniel Craig isn't allowed women)

And the ticking bomb is a convention of the action/adventure/spy genre in general, but in Bond, it's been seen in:

GF
TB (that's the entire film, really)
OHMSS
FYEO
OP
AVTAK
TLD
TND
TWINE
SP

Was the ticking time bomb in Twine though, cause I thought the bomb going off was dependent on Renard sticking the steal rod in the hole. So it wasn't a ticking time bomb therefore, was it?

The pipeline scene, where Bond and Christmas race to defuse the bomb, before Bond decides to "kill" them.

Oh right. Well perhaps I am being too hard on a lot of the redoings, but the one that bothers me is the Goldfinger rehash. If they hadn't have had the scene where Zorin shows all the businessmen the model and then kills one of them for wanting out, than I wouldn't feel that the filmmakers were being so blatantly obvious about it.

Just redo the Goldfinger plot if you want to, but don't have the exact same type of businessmen scene! It feels like the filmmakers are trying to remind us by shoving it in our faces, where as I guess TSWLM and MR, didn't try to do that when copying YOLT, unless I am wrong?

ironpony wrote:

Oh right.  Well perhaps I am being too hard on a lot of the redoings, but the one that bothers me is the Goldfinger rehash.  If they hadn't have had the scene where Zorin shows all the businessmen the model and then kills one of them for wanting out, than I wouldn't feel that the filmmakers were being so blatantly obvious about it.  

Just redo the Goldfinger plot if you want to, but don't have the exact same type of businessmen scene!  It feels like the filmmakers are trying to remind us by shoving it in our faces, where as I guess TSWLM and MR, didn't try to do that when copying YOLT, unless I am wrong?

The similarities between YOLT and TSWLM and again with TSWLM and MR are very obvious - more so than GF and AVTAK in my opinion, probably helped by the 21 year difference between the films.

I also really like the businessmen briefing scene in AVTAK, mostly for Walken's "Does anyone else wanna drop out?", so you won't find agreement from me.

Many have brought up the GF plot similarity but I must be honest that until they did I never really paid it any attention and still to this day do not.
It's not like the case of YOLT being remade as TSWLM which was then essentially remade as MR.

The biggest difference with AVTAK is tonality which is its saving grace I think. Here we have the emerging dark sensibility of the time period which meshes beautifully with the older Roger portraying an aging 007 that has to go up against a new breed of truly dark villain who has no qualms about mass murder.

The reason why it feels lackluster at times is the lack of truly exotic locales or grand adventure storytelling or even globetrotting. It feels very sedate and almost intentionally slower paced. That is a virtue but here it does seem as if the film tends to slog here and there and have a sense of drabness. Thus people immediately mark it as bad and move on which is totally incorrect as it is intelligent, made with quality and has many thematic elements that are unique to this one film and help transition to Daltonian magic.

Walken's performance also solves many problems as I feel it is his finest and one of the finest and most deeply nuanced in the series. What this pulls out of Roger's Bond is magical.

But ultimately...Bond and Steed united in AVTAK which automatically makes it a holy thing.

I too am a lifelong AVTAK defender. Since childhood there's always one film in the series people choose to beat up on. And it seems to jump around every few years. Usually it was TMWTGG then it was AVTAK then DAD then onto MR again.

Oh okay, I guess one of the reasons why AVTAK just feels like been there, done that a lot to me, compared to other Moore entries, is that during the Goldfinger similarities, they actually redo the scene where the villain shows off his plan in a model, and then one guy wants out, so they kill him.

It's not just redoing the same idea, they redid an actual specific scene, and that is the difference as to what makes it so much more obvious to me.

I also didn't like the ending, cause of all the times Bond is caught being intimate with a woman, this one is the least funniest and a bit cringy, and I felt the ending brings it down for me as well.

But I think that if they had just not have had the same scene where the one guy wants out, then that alone would have stuck out like such a sore thumb, and cutting it therefore, would have really improved the movie.

hegottheboot wrote:

Many have brought up the GF plot similarity but I must be honest that until they did I never really paid it any attention and still to this day do not.
It's not like the case of YOLT being remade as TSWLM which was then essentially remade as MR.

The biggest difference with AVTAK is tonality which is its saving grace I think. Here we have the emerging dark sensibility of the time period which meshes beautifully with the older Roger portraying an aging 007 that has to go up against a new breed of truly dark villain who has no qualms about mass murder.

The reason why it feels lackluster at times is the lack of truly exotic locales or grand adventure storytelling or even globetrotting. It feels very sedate and almost intentionally slower paced. That is a virtue but here it does seem as if the film tends to slog here and there and have a sense of drabness. Thus people immediately mark it as bad and move on which is totally incorrect as it is intelligent, made with quality and has many thematic elements that are unique to this one film and help transition to Daltonian magic.

Walken's performance also solves many problems as I feel it is his finest and one of the finest and most deeply nuanced in the series. What this pulls out of Roger's Bond is magical.

But ultimately...Bond and Steed united in AVTAK which automatically makes it a holy thing.

I too am a lifelong AVTAK defender. Since childhood there's always one film in the series people choose to beat up on. And it seems to jump around every few years. Usually it was TMWTGG then it was AVTAK then DAD then onto MR again.

Great post!

Your comment about Walken bringing out the best in Moore is spot on, and one of the reasons why his age doesn't get in the way for me. Moore's performance is so focused and much more moment-to-moment, and I'm sure it would have been a treat to work alongside such a dynamic actor as Walken.

FieldsMan wrote:

hegottheboot wrote:

Many have brought up the GF plot similarity but I must be honest that until they did I never really paid it any attention and still to this day do not.
It's not like the case of YOLT being remade as TSWLM which was then essentially remade as MR.

The biggest difference with AVTAK is tonality which is its saving grace I think. Here we have the emerging dark sensibility of the time period which meshes beautifully with the older Roger portraying an aging 007 that has to go up against a new breed of truly dark villain who has no qualms about mass murder.

The reason why it feels lackluster at times is the lack of truly exotic locales or grand adventure storytelling or even globetrotting. It feels very sedate and almost intentionally slower paced. That is a virtue but here it does seem as if the film tends to slog here and there and have a sense of drabness. Thus people immediately mark it as bad and move on which is totally incorrect as it is intelligent, made with quality and has many thematic elements that are unique to this one film and help transition to Daltonian magic.

Walken's performance also solves many problems as I feel it is his finest and one of the finest and most deeply nuanced in the series. What this pulls out of Roger's Bond is magical.

But ultimately...Bond and Steed united in AVTAK which automatically makes it a holy thing.

I too am a lifelong AVTAK defender. Since childhood there's always one film in the series people choose to beat up on. And it seems to jump around every few years. Usually it was TMWTGG then it was AVTAK then DAD then onto MR again.

Great post!

Your comment about Walken bringing out the best in Moore is spot on, and one of the reasons why his age doesn't get in the way for me. Moore's performance is so focused and much more moment-to-moment, and I'm sure it would have been a treat to work alongside such a dynamic actor as Walken.

The only time I thought Walkin brought anything out in Roger was during the scene when Bond discovered that Godfrey was dead. Was there any other times, he brought it out of Moore?

The City Hall sequence springs to mind. 

But the entire film comprises of Moore's best performance in my opinion.

Oh okay, I thought Moore's best performance was probably For Your Eyes Only, and I remember AVTAK being a decent performance nonetheless.  It's not his worst performance by any means, as I think his first two are, before he found his footing. I am watching it again soon as part of a Bond marathon with friends, so I will keep an eye out for it.

It's in practically all of their exchanges, from Bond posing as Smythe subtly provoking Zorin to City Hall especially when Bond utters "and I'm sure Herr Doctor Mortner will be proud of his creation."

Though I will say that personally I feel LALD is his best performance. I love his toughness and sophistication on display throughout that no one has ever equaled-his cool and suave-ness cannot be disturbed-even to a greater degree than Connery had. This was when they seemed to be trying to have him come across as tough and un-Sean like but before the nastiness inherent in TMWTGG. However what no one ever goes into on stupid Internet criticisms is that 007 is pissed off in that film because the world's greatest assassin whom no one knows suddenly apparently wants him dead and Bond refuses to play ball. If they had played that up more it would be seen as a proto-LTK in many ways. Thus the roughing up of Andrea is not unmotivated nastiness but important self-preservation that must be done before Scaramanga strikes.

Admittedly Roger's best dramatic scenes are probably admitting his killing of Barzov, a number of FYEO moments and confronting Orlov on the train...oh heck who am I kidding they're all great dramatic moments. No one else could ever give such gravitas in that way to all of those moments. From "You left this with Ferrara I believe." to "Women's lib. They're taking over the Teamsters."

Oh well I've watched the series again and coming back to this, I think the reason why I don't like AVTAK for copying a lot out of Goldfinger, is because it feels like it's not near as good as GF, and they don't really do anything to try to improve upon it.

Where as I like TSWLM even though it copies YOLT, because it improves on YOLT in every way.  So maybe that is why I love one, and and am on the fence about the other, even though they both copy past entries.