Die Another Day Review

[DixieKong]

I don't mind some fun and fantasy in Bond movies. I enjoy You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, and Moonraker. In the review of Moonraker I stated that I liked the film, and thought it's far more watchable than Die Another Day. I didn't get into too much detail at that time, but I will now for this review.

In Moonraker, I liked the title song and soundtrack by John Barry. There was some really cool action scenes and stunts, and nice locations. The sets by Ken Adam were great, and I quite enjoyed the final battle in space. I liked the villains Hugo Drax and Jaws, as well as some of the one-liners.

But as for Die Another Day, all I really found good was the sword fight between Bond and Graves. I've only watched this movie once when it was first released on DVD, and I haven't bothered to watch it since. The CGI effects were awful and overused. The space battle in Moonraker looks far superior than any of the CGI stuff they did in this film. And people can complain all they want about Moonraker's space lasers, but I still say it's far better than that robotic outfit and Nintendo Power Glove Gustav Graves was wearing. Most of the one-liners were pretty bad too. Roger Moore was far better with the campy humour. And Brosnan just looks like he's going with the motions in this film.

I've heard some Brosnan fans say that they consider the Bond game Everything Or Nothing, made by EA, to be a better swan song than Die Another Day. The game does have a cinematic experience, and features the voice talents of Pierce Brosnan, Judi Dench, John Cleese, Willem Dafoe, and others. It also features Jaws. The main villain is even a product of the cold and merciless Max Zorin. The story, characters, and adventure are all pretty good. So yes, even though it's a game, Everything Or Nothing is still a far better swan song than Die Another Day.

I honestly think that Die Another Day was overblown on purpose for the following reasons:

- Eon Productions gained the rights for Casino Royale in 1999 after Sony Pictures Entertainment exchanged them for MGM's rights to Spider-Man. This was also the same year of Brosnan's third Bond outing, The World Is Not Enough.

- Three years after The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day is released. Now there was a two year wait between GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies, and then another two year wait from Tomorrow Never Dies to the World Is Not Enough. It almost seems like they waited three years so that Die Another Day would fall on the 40th anniversary.

- Brosnan originally signed a deal for four films when he was cast for the role. This would be fulfilled with Die Another Day. Brosnan was also approaching 50 by this point.

- Finally, there's the nature of the Daniel Craig Bond films. They are so distant from the original series.

Now with all the points I just listed, it would seem that the outlandish nature and references to the previous films was done with the intention that Die Another Day would be the last film of the original series. It was like having one last big party before saying farewell to Brosnan and classic Bond before the reboot. While I can't actually prove that this is certain, it does seem very possible.

Although it may seem that the lousy quality was done intentionally, I'm not going to imply that it was. Due to the quality slowing dropping after GoldenEye, and the various poor decisions made, it was clear at this point that the producers had no idea what they were doing with the classic Bond formula. Which is probably why they decided to give up and abandon the classic Bond formula altogether.