Screen Vistas: BONDATHON: OCTOPUSSY

For a moment it didn’t look like Roger Moore would return. He reportedly didn’t like the violence of For Your Eyes Only and was negotiating his contracts film by film at this point. So Bond mastermind “Cubby” Broccoli was all set to recast the part with American actor James Brolin. This plan would have marked a huge change in the Bond series, but when it was announced that Sean Connery would be starring in a rival James Bond film Never Say Never Again, it was decided that it would be a bad time to introduce a new Bond to the official franchise and Moore was convinced to sign up again for Octopussy.

In East Berlin, there is a fancy dinner party at the residence of the British ambassador. The party will be interrupted by a clown crashing through the Ambassador’s glass doors. He falls dead, a fabergé egg clutched in his hand. This is a mystery too ridiculous for other detectives/super-spies. This looks like a job for Bond, James Bond. It turns out that the clown was Bond’s coworker 009, and while the egg is a fake, it’s drastically important to someone and it’s Bond’s job to find out who’s responsible, and why they’d make such a big deal over a fake egg.

There's lots of inns and outs in this one. Eventually Bond meets a smuggler named Octopussy (Maud Adams) and her all female army. There are all sorts of red herrings and a rogue Soviet general who wants to invade Europe, it's actually a lot more plot than we usually get in a Bond film, certainly more than For Your Eyes Only. The script by novelist George MacDonald Fraser feels like a proper International thriller with twists and title cards telling you where you are and everything. It's not John Le Carre, but it's nice to see them try.

Action scenes aren't bad. There are some nice gimmicks such as a mini-airplane, and the terrifyingly hilarious buzz-saw yo-yo. The standout set pieces include a car chase through the streets of Udaipur, India and a train sequence, both feel almost like direct responses to scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark but without the smooth freneticism of Spielberg. According to lore, Spielberg lobbied for years to direct a Bond film only to be turned down every time for in-house people. Spielberg moved on to beat the franchise at its own pulpy game with Raiders, it moved the genre forward, while the Bond films still look and feel like they could have been made in 1969. The competing Bond film from that year, Never Say Never Again (reviewed more thoroughly here), isn't the best Bond film, but at least it feels modern. Never also had Sean Connery who brought with him the energy and iconography of the best of Bond.

While we're on the subject of iconography, someone really needs to sit the Bond producers down and have a long talk with them about dress-up. Since Spy Who Loved Me, the Bonds have included a moment where 007 dresses up as other cinematic icons. Scenes like this these can be terrible, can make for some decent chuckles, but they also devalue the character. If an icon has to dress up as another icon, then he’s not really an icon. Every time we see Bond in a Clint Eastwood poncho or, as in this film, swinging from vines doing a Tarzan yell, it’s just saying that Bond isn’t a powerful enough icon to carry a film like this.

James Bond is supposed to be the ultimate fantasy symbol. He has the clothes we will never afford, takes the cars we will never drive to the places we will never go to meet the girls we will never have a shot with. Yet in the Roger Moore era, all those elements have been diluted to the point that late in Octopussy, we have James Bond literally dressing up as a clown.


Ladies!!!

Not only is he dressed as a clown, he's dressed as a clown while disarming an atomic warhead. This is, sadly, not the low point of the series (That is still Man With The Golden Gun), but it does signify that the producers care more about their little throw away jokes than character or tone. Bond doesn't need to be super serious, whimsy is fine. But I need to believe, on some level, that this character exists in a plausible world, otherwise the fantasy breaks down and the iconography breaks down.

Grade: C+

Enjoy these other Bondathon entries:

Dr. No

From Russia With Love

Goldfinger

Thunderball / Never Say Never Again