“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die”
Once again, this one is gonna hurt.
Around this time, last year, I had the desire to begin watching the James Bond series. After taking advice some of my friends, from my hockey group on Facebook, I started the series with Dr. No, as that was the first movie released in the official Bond series. Immediately, I feel in love with the series, thanks to the focus on story as well as Sean Connery’s performance as James Bond, and 74 days later, would watch all 24 official films, and the 3 non official films. While I found that Casino Royale is probably the best made movie of the series, and Sir Roger Moore is the actor to ever play James Bond, something about the movie Goldfinger sticks out to me as my favorite film of the series.
Going into this movie, I had many questions. “Why is there a women made of gold ? Why does every gamer hate Oddjob ? and will I enjoy it ?” Thankfully, when my RC and I watched this one, we enjoyed it and had a rip roaring time. To answer why I enjoyed it, I think it gave me everything I wanted out of a Bond film. A great compelling story, some good action, a cool villain, and my favorite actor playing Bond. Plus, of course, that iconic line of “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”
For a movie made in the 1960’s, it obviously didn’t treat gender as well as it should have. For one thing, a main character is named “Pussy Galore.” Secondly, is the fact that it seems like Bond can always have his way and get what he wants from the women in the movies. Lastly, other than the one Masterson sister, no women are seen on the field, doing any of the actions. We see Ms Galore lead a squadron of all female pilots to drop gas on the solders, but other than that, no female agents, no female villains, the rest are just background characters, or used for sex.
Race was also miss represented in the film. While Goldlfinger himself was white and the gangsters were white, the bad guys were always Chinese or Korean. While the good guys were always white Americans or Englishmen. For a film that was preceded by one of more racial diversity on the side of heroes, there really is no excuse for this one.
I love this movie for the good times I had watching it and all of the things I enjoy about it that make it fun for me. However, when I think critically about it for this class, It has a lot of work to do. While it is a time piece, that can’t really fully excuse it. Thus it will never be a perfect movie. But to me, it is still good.
