DIE ANOTHER DAY - Appreciation thread

Pros:
Brosnan's best performance
Rosamund Pike
Toby Stephens
Rick Yune
Kenneth Tsang
A fairly interesting, if fantastical, plot
Dynamite action sequences on the Iceland glaciers and the hovercraft chase through the DMZ
Daniel Kleinmann managing to turn in a brilliant set of titles matched to the beat of a rather pedestrian Madonna tune

Cons:
Berry's performance uneven at times
Too reliant on special f/x (and done poorly)
Madonna's song

Pictured below: Rosamund Pike putting her back into this deleted scene:

One time I did enjoy it and that was in theaters. Kind of like how I enjoyed the Star Wars prequels (hey, David Tattersall) and like when their DVDs came out I slowly realized through a viewing or two that it's... really not good. I can't even enjoy it on an absurd level like Batman & Robin and most fans say this is the B&R of the Bond flicks. But one time I did enjoy it. Was it being sucked into the hype? I dunno, but I had a blast at the time either way.

Die Another Day deserves appreciation because if it wasn't for it's absurdity, the franchise wouldn't have gone in the direction it did afterward. Much like Moonraker and You Only Live Twice lead to some of the better films of the franchise.

Tubes wrote:

Much like Moonraker and You Only Live Twice lead to some of the better films of the franchise.

MOONRAKER and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE *are* some of the better films of the franchise.

Great thread.

As the poll option says, "the bad reputation is revisionist history. Some forget that audiences loved it and it was a big hit." I was at cinema screenings of DIE ANOTHER DAY where audiences were really into it, laughing and applauding.

There are many things I love about DIE ANOTHER DAY, and with the benefit of hindsight (and also factoring in the two subsequent Craig films) it seems the least pretentious and most unashamedly "pure entertainment" Bond outing since A VIEW TO A KILL. And its sense of fun certainly came as a welcome relief after the joylessness and heavyhandedness of THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH.

I also love that it's a globetrotting epic - there's a real sense of a vast canvas here, to an extent perhaps not seen since THE SPY WHO LOVED ME or MOONRAKER. Okay, so most of the exotic locations are faked, but they're faked very well, or at least the heavily-armed border between the two Koreas is - a few months before DIE ANOTHER DAY opened, I visited that area while holidaying in South Korea (you can't just go there by yourself, but they do escorted group day trips from Seoul and I thoroughly recommend it), and when I saw it recreated onscreen in this Bond film I was stunned by how convincing a job the production designers had done.

The bearded Bond in captivity for many months thing was also very cool and at the time seemed fairly shocking.

Harmsway wrote:

Tubes wrote:

Much like Moonraker and You Only Live Twice lead to some of the better films of the franchise.

MOONRAKER and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE *were* some of the better films of the franchise.

I saw DAD last night. Have to say, the film is very entertaining and almost never lets up. Unlike MOONRAKER, though, there really aren't a lot of throwaway gags or outrageous comedy bits. As far as humor goes the film is fairly restrained. There are two or three scenes that get dangerously close to crossing over into "camp", but then Tamahori pulls back rather quickly.

The movie is pure male fantasy wish fulfillment of the highest order. It's easy to forget that this movie was a big hit when it came out, and earned $520,000,000 in adjusted 2010 dollars at the theaters alone. There was no hand-wringing or soul-searching among the audiences that saw DAD except for the core fan-base; just a lot of happy, satisfied ticket buyers.

Loomis wrote:

The bearded Bond in captivity for many months thing was also very cool and at the time seemed fairly shocking.

And utterly pointless given what happens afterward.

It had a great premise going with Bond searching for the mole that sold him out but then it somehow got lost along the way.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

I saw DAD last night. Have to say, the film is very entertaining and almost never lets up. Unlike MOONRAKER, though, there really aren't a lot of throwaway gags or outrageous comedy bits. As far as humor goes the film is fairly restrained. There are two or three scenes that get dangerously close to crossing over into "camp", but then Tamahori pulls back rather quickly.

The film pulls back too much IMO. Unlike MOONRAKER, this one often takes itself too seriously for its own good to be a fun flick it also tries to be. It can't have it both ways. That's why THE SPY WHO LOVED ME fails in some regards with the poorly executed subplot of triple x wanting to kill Bond for revenge.

Makeshift Python wrote:

Loomis wrote:

The bearded Bond in captivity for many months thing was also very cool and at the time seemed fairly shocking.

And utterly pointless given what happens afterward.

Utterly pointless? I guess that depends on how serious you require your Bond films to be. Me, I'll like "serious" Bond and I also like "goofy" Bond - as long as I find the film in question entertaining enough, I'm easy. I guess DIE ANOTHER DAY is a bit of both - it's goofy for much of the time (to put it mildly), but there are also a couple of moments when it seems to try to be serious, but, hey, it's all entertaining and so it's all good.

As Grav says, DIE ANOTHER DAY is "is pure male fantasy wish fulfillment of the highest order." It does what it says on the tin. It works. (And even the bits that don't work are endearingly awful, e.g. the poor CGI. I remember seeing the glacier surfing on the big screen before it was changed in later prints and it looked even worse than it does now, but, hey, it gave me a good chuckle so I don't mind it. Sometimes a Bond movie is just as lovable for its flaws.)

The worst thing about DIE ANOTHER DAY is the dialogue. And it also has a fairly lame climax with the airplane. Wish they'd stuck to the original idea with Moon's giant indoor beach at his Korean hideaway.

But yeah, DIE ANOTHER DAY ain't all that horrid, and I suspect the Bond fanbase will come around to it a bit more the further away we get from it. I've come to enjoy the sheer absurdity of having Bond pull a Derek Flint and stop his pulse, which is Bond at his most superhuman (later to be affirmed with the less-lovable wave-surfing moment). It somehow feels right for a film that exists to celebrate the Bond franchise to push Bond to his most movieBond-ish, and the film gets a lot of the pieces right (one bit it doesn't is that SuperBond should probably have escaped from his North Korean prison with a super-cool bit of trickery, though props to the film for the silly-cool "Tell it to the concierge" line). There's plenty about DIE ANOTHER DAY that really does scream BOND! at a high volume in a way that few films have since the days of Rog, including Bond's one-night stay in Hong Kong to the swordfight.

We also have plenty of wonderfully weird throwaway elements, like Zao's diamond face and a dream machine, and for me, a guy who likes my Bond straight-up weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeird (I sometimes think that my favorite Bond film might have emerged had THE SPY WHO LOVED ME used Anthony Burgess' tripped-out screenplay with John Boorman as director), I can dig it.

I agree with Python. If you're going to do something "heavy" like having Bond spend 14 months in torturous capitivity, you can't just drop it all five minutes after he's been released. You end up with an inconsistent mess.

Anyway, I retain most of my aversion to DAD. As was the case when I first saw it in theatres, I think it's poorly written, poorly acted and the plot is total shyte. It tries to be both serious and jovial and ends up being ridiculous.

Ah, just remembered that this was an appreciation thread. Well, I will say that DAD has its moments of mindless fun. Being the giddy schoolboy that I was when the film first came out, I really enjoyed the PTS. The surfing (done for real - no bloody CGI!), Bond and his fellow agents doing their thing, Moon kickboxing the shit out of that guy, the hovercraft chase. 'Twas all good fun. The battle on ice between Bond and Zao was quite fun too (sans the invisibility).

Loomis wrote:

Makeshift Python wrote:

Loomis wrote:

The bearded Bond in captivity for many months thing was also very cool and at the time seemed fairly shocking.

And utterly pointless given what happens afterward.

Utterly pointless? I guess that depends on how serious you require your Bond films to be. Me, I'll like "serious" Bond and I also like "goofy" Bond - as long as I find the film in question entertaining enough, I'm easy. I guess DIE ANOTHER DAY is a bit of both - it's goofy for much of the time (to put it mildly), but there are also a couple of moments when it seems to try to be serious, but, hey, it's all entertaining and so it's all good.

As Grav says, DIE ANOTHER DAY is "is pure male fantasy wish fulfillment of the highest order." It does what it says on the tin. It works. (And even the bits that don't work are endearingly awful, e.g. the poor CGI. I remember seeing the glacier surfing on the big screen before it was changed in later prints and it looked even worse than it does now, but, hey, it gave me a good chuckle so I don't mind it. Sometimes a Bond movie is just as lovable for its flaws.)

Regarding the CGI...the overhead shot of Bond dangling off the iceberg and you see the waves below him about 500 ft. is quite good; very good actually. But the shot of the rocket-sled going over the cliff and slamming into the wall was an abomination and looked so cheap that it belonged in an Ed Wood movie and not a James Bond flick. While the f/x of the wave surfing were just *okay*, the whole scene was just totally unnecessary; they could have had Bond rip the parachute from the rocket sled and use it to gently come back down to earth. But what's worse, we've already seen an incredible stunt involving real waves at the very beginning of the film, so the fact that we now have CGI waves in this scene only serves to reinforce how the f/x pale in comparison to the real thing.

Regarding the camp factor....it got too close for comfort when Graves sheers off an ice wall, then turns to look at his Korean guests and says something like "Global warming....such a tragedy" and they then bow down to him :roll: The "Robo-suit" wasn't over-the-top, but it was certainly trying to reach the top so it could peek over.

Halle's best moments: emerging from the ocean...running...shooting...telling Zao she tried to kill him because "I thought it was the humane thing to do" and "Your Momma" when asked who sent her. She's pretty good acting street tough or confrontational and she looks great in a leather catsuit holding a gun. It's when she's given dialogue and scenes with Brosnan, Dench and Michael Madsen that try to establish her bonafides as a government agent that she tends to stumble. She's very good with the sexual puns and comebacks "Oh, I think I got the thrust of it", "So I left you in an explosive situation; you're a big boy, I figured you could handle yourself". She's also very Bond-like when she gives a somewhat flippant, sarcastic, yet sexy wave to Bond as she motors off away from Los Organos.

The plot raises a lot of questions: like, how did Graves manage to get a satellite up into space in less than one year of actually being Graves...but it's a Bond film and some of those questions tend to get swept under the rug.

I will say this about DAD: it was the perfect way and time for Brosnan to go. Rewatching his performance in DAD made me see that he'd really begun to look a bit older than at any other time in the series. He didn't look bad at all, but he looked....older and more mature, and that starts to become a problem in a film series where the lead actor is given a certain amount of leeway to get older but his leading ladies cannot. The age discrepancy had already begun to rear its ugly head in TWINE, and was really beginning to show in DAD. Probably best that he did not get a chance to overextend his welcome as has been the case in the past with some actors and actresses.

Not enough praise is given to Rick Yune. Though his character lacks the idiosyncratic methods of killing people that other henchmen have had that have come before him (deadly razor-brimmed hat; teeth of steel; specially reinforced headphone cords that can strangle a man to death; killing men between her toned, deadly thighs), he does still retain a significant presence with his pale, veiney skin, the diamonds permanently scarring his face, and his ice-cold blue, lifeless eyes make for a very creepy, spooky killer. The best thing the producers did for Yune was strip him away of his pretty-boy looks and put him in a bald cap, and special effects make-up. His pain in the laboratory looked real

Loomis wrote:

Makeshift Python wrote:

Loomis wrote:

The bearded Bond in captivity for many months thing was also very cool and at the time seemed fairly shocking.

And utterly pointless given what happens afterward.

Utterly pointless? I guess that depends on how serious you require your Bond films to be. Me, I'll like "serious" Bond and I also like "goofy" Bond - as long as I find the film in question entertaining enough, I'm easy. I guess DIE ANOTHER DAY is a bit of both - it's goofy for much of the time (to put it mildly), but there are also a couple of moments when it seems to try to be serious, but, hey, it's all entertaining and so it's all good.

The shifting between goofy and serious stuff is a bit much for me. I prefer it either to go one way or another with a good measure. MR does that very well and I don't think that could have hurt DAD to tone down the stupid shit like Graves' daddy issues.

But I will agree it's better than TWINE, now that's what I consider the worst of the series.

Makeshift Python wrote:

Loomis wrote:

Makeshift Python wrote:

Loomis wrote:

The bearded Bond in captivity for many months thing was also very cool and at the time seemed fairly shocking.

And utterly pointless given what happens afterward.

Utterly pointless? I guess that depends on how serious you require your Bond films to be. Me, I'll like "serious" Bond and I also like "goofy" Bond - as long as I find the film in question entertaining enough, I'm easy. I guess DIE ANOTHER DAY is a bit of both - it's goofy for much of the time (to put it mildly), but there are also a couple of moments when it seems to try to be serious, but, hey, it's all entertaining and so it's all good.

The shifting between goofy and serious stuff is a bit much for me. I prefer it either to go one way or another with a good measure. MR does that very well and I don't think that could have hurt DAD to tone down the stupid shit like Graves' daddy issues.

But I will agree it's better than TWINE, now that's what I consider the worst of the series.

You bring up a good point. Tonally the movie shifts back and forth. One minute you think you're building up to a moving, emotional climax between General Moon (Kenneth Tsang) and Colonel Moon/Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) and then RoboGust attacks daddy with "the force" (not sure why Graves though he'd need electric bolts built into this system).

Kenneth Tsang brought a lot of honor and dignity to the role, but his death made audiences hate Gustav even more.

The GLADIATOR-style wailing on the soundtrack and the slow-mo is the icing on the cake for that super-awkward moment.

Thinking about it, I daresay David Arnold is largely responsible for the occasional sense that DIE ANOTHER DAY is taking itself more seriously than the material allows.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

Makeshift Python wrote:

Loomis wrote:

Makeshift Python wrote:

Loomis wrote:

The bearded Bond in captivity for many months thing was also very cool and at the time seemed fairly shocking.

And utterly pointless given what happens afterward.

Utterly pointless? I guess that depends on how serious you require your Bond films to be. Me, I'll like "serious" Bond and I also like "goofy" Bond - as long as I find the film in question entertaining enough, I'm easy. I guess DIE ANOTHER DAY is a bit of both - it's goofy for much of the time (to put it mildly), but there are also a couple of moments when it seems to try to be serious, but, hey, it's all entertaining and so it's all good.

The shifting between goofy and serious stuff is a bit much for me. I prefer it either to go one way or another with a good measure. MR does that very well and I don't think that could have hurt DAD to tone down the stupid shit like Graves' daddy issues.

But I will agree it's better than TWINE, now that's what I consider the worst of the series.

You bring up a good point. Tonally the movie shifts back and forth. One minute you think you're building up to a moving, emotional climax between General Moon (Kenneth Tsang) and Colonel Moon/Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens) and then RoboGust attacks daddy with "the force" (not sure why Graves though he'd need electric bolts built into this system).

And then right after the force shock is the score from Gladiator playing (???) Graves whispers to his father, an awful edit of his father's reaction to being shot, the devastated/regrettable look on Graves' face, the shot of his father falling in slow mo, then Graves' face again only he's smiling like he just won a free sandwich coupon. I just don't know what Tamahori is trying to achieve.

Anyway, here's a great website dedicated to him: http://s95358459.onlinehome.us/secondsphere/cruisingame/leegame.html

Pros:

The pre-title betrayal of Bond was done well. The surf scene used real waves and real surf-boards.
Bond reduced from ka-boom, ka-bam Super-Spy to a vagrant behind North Korean bars.
Opening titles were excellent and with stylized images of Bond's torture in North Korea.
M telling Bond like it is, he's more dispensable than her tampon if the situation warrants it.


Cons:
Another big space-gun in the sky.
Awful, awful fx...the para-surfing sequence, Jinx's freefall dive off the cliff, the helicopter which fell out the plane....all fake
We're supposed to accept that after over a year of beatings and tortures and no signs of weight loss whatsoever, Bond can safely jump overboard a boat that's detaining him and find the endurance to swim ashore to a Hong Kong hotel. He's back to top shape after shaving off his beard.
Invisible car - not even possible in 2011, save that shit for Tron, not 007.
Bond villains aren't supposed to look like Robocop.
While gene therapy can explain the transformation from Moon to Graves, it doesn't explain how he got taller.
Jinx - too corny at times with even cornier dialogue.
Jinx is badly cut on her torso during the sword fight on the plane. Yet, moments later, when she is with Bond with diamonds in her belly button, the cut is gone and she is scarless.

Neutral:
Title theme....although it stank it still made the US TOP 10...more airplay = more exposure.

I can appreciate the film made a shitload of money...but even back in 2002, I began to dislike what James Bond had become.

I'm not fussy and I'm not a critic - I just liked DAD.

I hear so many people say the film went wrong in the second half. What were you expecting? Would you have been more satisfied if the script had delivered exactly what you were expecting? Wouldn't you then be complaining that the script was predictable and contained no surprises?

And how could Purvis and Wade have predicted what each and every disparate fan and casual viewer was going to expect? I think they get too much venom spat their way, as does the director.

So Lee Tamahori used some camera tricks that no one had used in a Bond film before, instead of just churning out another John Glen product. One or two moments of imperfect CGI among so many seamless effects are not enough to put me off. Relax, he didn't kill the franchise. The fact that no such effects appeared in CR indicates that BB and MGW listen to criticism and act on it. Be assured that B23 won't resemble QoS stylistically either (unless Mendez is a closet Forster fan).

My obsession started the first time I saw DAF back in '71, so perhaps that explains my appreciation for the more fantastical films in the series (although I still find that MR pushes that envelope a bit too far). That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the more down-to-earth films for their own merits.

Lighten up. If you don't like a movie, don't watch it. You don't hear me going on about AVTAK (much).

Berry is the worst thing in DAD. She is very uncomfortable with her body and with a gun, which is unfortunate as they're two of the female field operative's most important tools.

The women are generally weak in DAD. For all the adolescent love of PIke she was an inexperienced actress back then and looked it. In complete contrast, this is Brosnan's most relaxed performance as Bond.

No, because the bad reputation is revisionist history. Some forget that audiences loved it and it was a big hit.


Pro:

Sword Fight. Best scene of the movie.
Gunbarrel scene. Great opening and like the twin scene.
Maintitle & Title song
Story in the maintitle.
Judi Dench as M
John Cleese promoted to Quatermaster
Rosamund Pike as Miranda Frost
Ice Palace car chase
Ice Palace as location
Iceland intro
Bond get the key/Q scene
Bond escape from M/Kiss of Death
Bond meeting with M.
Pierce Brosnan visit Hotel
Pierce Brosnan as James Bond with exeption of Cuba scene/Jinx meeting
No Bill Tanner. Atleast he isn't runed.
Bond get the truth
Bond said the title to tell Graves who he be.
Special Edition dvd/From Script to Screen future.

Neutral:

Madonna in the movie.
Invisible car
Zoa death. Don't like Zoa so i also don't mind the chacter die.
Colin Salon as Charles. For what he get.
Samantha Bond as Moneypenny
Toby Stephens
Rick Yune. Blame the chacter.
Jinx with exeption of Cuba Clinic & Bond meeting.
Hotel FRWL joke
VR
Lee Tamahori
P&W
Vic Armstrong
David Arnold
Lindy Hemming. Ugly dress from Jinx.
Release date delay till 9 January 2003.

Con:

David Tattersal (Cinematopgraphy)
Christian Wagner (Editor)
Not survived time, rank it 18/22 now.
Falco/Madsen
Zoa/the switch with Bond.
CGI waves/Graves toy
Airplane scene and to easy escape
Jinx Cuba clinic
Jinx Bond meeting
Ice Palace party. In specialy the music
Some qoutes like You Momma and the sleeping is time spilling qoute from graves at the ice palace party.
Mr Kill/Laser fight
Kenneth Tsang. Haven't mist the guy if he not been in it.
Pierce Brosnan 4th and last outing as James Bond/the happings after it


P&W and the producers are stil be afraid or don't whant spend more money to give us a good villian lair/end scene. I think the hotel (Chili) at the end of QOS is better then whole cuba clinic scene but stil Goldeneye be the last good villian lair. The ice palace look like it be a biginning of the return of the villian lair but not happen.

This thread would bring a tear to dear old C. Bong's eye.

AMC Hornet wrote:

My obsession started the first time I saw DAF back in '71, so perhaps that explains my appreciation for the more fantastical films in the series (although I still find that MR pushes that envelope a bit too far). That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the more down-to-earth films for their own merits.

I prefer the more fantastic films as well. However, there are times looking at MR, OP, and DAD when I can see what the film could have been and feel a bit disappointed. For example, Octopussy is a nearly flawless movie that just needs the stunt-gags and the stunt-humor taken away. Remove the Tarzan yell and Bond putting on clown makeup (which would have taken 3 hours, not 3 minutes) and the film is a perfect 10.

The sped-up sequences in DAD weren't a particular favorite of mine either, but there really aren't any horrible jokes, other than some cringe-inducing lines by Bond and Jinx in the last scene. DAD's biggest flaws are generally in pushing itself too far into sci-fi territory.

And part of buying into the fantasy of James Bond is that it also needs to seem somewhat plausible; it doesn't have to be probable or realistic, but if you push the films too far into fantasy and sci-fi you lose the audience.

I've never bought for one second that Barbara and Michael truly needed to dump Brosnan in order take the series in a new direction; in fact, I wasn't all sure that it needed a new direction as much as a mid-course correction. However, Brosnan only had one more film in him, at most, before he would simply start to look too old for the role. This was the first time that Barbara and Michael had to make the choice to replace an actor as Bond before he got to the point where he was too old; Cubby let Connery and Moore get too long in the tooth. I think Barbara wanted Brosnan gone so she could replace him with a younger, harder, sexier James Bond (it's what husbands do with their wives all the time), and they just didn't wan to come out and say: "Right, mate. You're too old now. Off you go!"

Avarice wrote:

Berry is the worst thing in DAD. She is very uncomfortable with her body...

In what way? She was freshly out of Monster's Ball where she was quite graphic with that same body. Or did she just look stupid wearing that Daredevil type suit?

Avarice wrote:

The women are generally weak in DAD. For all the adolescent love of PIke she was an inexperienced actress back then and looked it. In complete contrast, this is Brosnan's most relaxed performance as Bond.

Sorry. I just don't see it. Berry's performance was flat at different times, other times it was feisty; but she was never as bad as Tanya Roberts. And as much as I loved Halle Berry at the time, she was completely overshadowed by Rosamund Pike who showed no signs of being a rookie actress. She was brilliant. Bloody brilliant.

I think what I love most about DIE ANOTHER DAY is what I'd call its "everything but the kitchen sink"ness. Is the film messy? Yes. Do certain elements not work? Yes. But it strikes me that Eon was really trying to give audiences as much bang for their buck as possible with this one, throwing in virtually every single possible element that anyone had ever enjoyed about Bond. It's a feast of Bond, a total all-you-can-eat blowout.