The James Bond Franchise Needs From Russia With Love’s Formula

The James Bond Franchise Needs From Russia With Love’s Formula

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As early as From Russia With Love, the Bond franchise worked out how to balance humor and thrills, finding a tone that Bond 26 needs to revisit.

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The James Bond Franchise Needs From Russia With Love’s Formula

The second James Bond outing, 1963’s From Russia With Love, nailed the franchise’s appeal early—and the series should revisit this winning tone after No Time To Die ends Daniel Craig’s time as 007. Since Dr. No arrived in cinemas in 1962, the character of James Bond has starred in twenty-five official movie outings. However, despite the James Bond franchise lasting so long, many fans and critics alike believe that the series peaked as early as Bond’s second movie, 1963’s From Russia With Love.

Starring Sean Connery’s influential original James Bond, this Cold War-era thriller saw the suave super-spy tangle with the villainous group SPECTRE for the first time onscreen. From Russia With Love also marked the first appearance from the iconic 007 villain Blofeld, and set in stone a lot of what is now considered classic Bond tropes, from its thrilling chases to its double-crossing Bond girl love interest. However, From Russia With Love is also surprisingly dark, with a more measured pace than later, zanier franchise outings.

Soon after Connery left the role, Roger Moore brought an outright comic edge to Bond that was rejected by Timothy Dalton and later revived by Pierce Brosnan. In more recent movies, Daniel Craig’s 007 is less playful than ever, with the actor playing Bond as a Bourne-style tortured antihero. However, although From Russia With Love is famous for being comparatively gritty and dark, the movie pulls off the impressive trick of also being fun and campy at the same time—a balance that proves the franchise can do both at once. Per the Bond series producer Michael G Wilson in 2008 when he discussed plans for the franchise, “We always start out trying to make another From Russia with Love and end up with another Thunderball.’ So what did this outing get so right, and what can the next Bond movie learn from From Russia With Love?

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From Russia With Love Was Darker The Expected

The James Bond Franchise Needs From Russia With Love’s Formula

From Russia With Love director Terrence Young was fresh off Dr. No when he helmed the movie, and the outing has a palpably darker tone than its predecessor. This never gets in the way of the fun (unlike recent, aggressively grounded 007 outings), but this edge ensures that Bond never seems superhuman. The legendary Bond villain Blofeld technically makes his first appearance in this outing, for example, but vitally he is still kept offscreen during the character’s brief cameo in From Russia with Love. Bond never even gets to see, let alone fight or kill, the enemy who is ultimately pulling the strings at the highest rung of SPECTRE’s command. As a result, 007 can pull off all manner of impressive stunts during the action of From Russia With Love while still seeming fallible and human, as there is a bigger-picture villain who evades even his grasp.

Paranoia Kept From Russia With Love Feeling Fresh

The James Bond Franchise Needs From Russia With Love’s Formula

Toning down the Cold War angle of Fleming’s source novel meant turning the villains of the movie into SPECTRE rather than standard-issue Russian baddies, a choice that improved the franchise’s approach to antagonists going forward by forcing the creators to come up with memorable henchmen. From Russia With Love’s villains for Bond weren’t cartoony stereotypes, but a more insidious sort of threat who balanced over-the-top touches with a genuine threat. Rosa Klebb is one of the less over-the-top Bond villains and a rare female villain that the series depicts as a genuine threat (razor-tipped shoes and all), as opposed to the cartoony sexpot villainesses of later outings like Goldeneye’s Xenia Onatopp.

Meanwhile, as a result of the atmospheric, slow-burn pacing, From Russia With Love has a paranoia-inducing tone wherein anyone could be a double agent. When 007 is being lowered into a vat of piranha, the villain responsible tends to be the scar-faced, cat-stroking evil genius cackling in his swivel chair. In contrast, Bond’s slow search of his hotel room to find any bugs placed there by SPECTRE agents is a rare and disquieting moment of serious espionage that manages to feel more believable and discomfiting than anything from Daniel Craig’s more explicitly brutally and dark Bond debut Casino Royale.

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From Russia With Love Was The First Tongue-In-Cheek Bond

With moments like 007 scouring his room for a wiretap and a plot that centers around one of Bond’s love interests being hired to surreptitiously film their sexual encounter and use it to ruin the spy’s reputation, viewers could be forgiven for wondering whether there are any moments of levity in From Russia With Love. However, despite these dour details, the second Bond movie is filled with absurd moments like Bond using a periscope to spy on Russian agents and inspired visual gags like a spy emerging from a poster’s mouth as he climbs out a window. Crucially, though, From Russia With Love gave the Bond series a sense of humor that didn’t rely on characters acknowledging the silliness of proceedings. The Bond franchise needs to be fun again when Craig leaves the role, but the most obvious issue with campy misfires like Die Another Day is that the movie’s cast is in on the joke in a way that deflates tension and leaves proceedings feeling flat and listless.

However, while From Russia With Love’s throwaway gags mentioned above stopped the darker moments from overwhelming the story, they were also only there for the audience and allow the characters to continue taking proceedings seriously. The very premise of a secret agent going up against an international cabal of nefarious villains later is inherently pretty silly, and having Bond offer a knowing wink makes later outings of the franchise too over-the-top for viewers to get invested in. Moreover, later, lesser outings like Diamonds Are Forever saw Bond winking to the camera and offering sly asides to the audience, but still featured brutal fight sequences and violent killings that jarred with their playful, seemingly light-hearted tone. From Russia With Love, in contrast, made it clear that the audience need not take things too seriously, but Bond’s life and the lives of his colleagues were in real jeopardy throughout the movie’s runtime. This tongue-in-cheek tonal balance will be hard for future James Bond movies to recapture, but it is the reason From Russia With Love remains so well-remembered by franchise fans to this day.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/bond-26-from-russia-with-love-tone-dark-fun-balance/

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