"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."
Kissing and Horses.
I think people who like this movie are either diehard Bond fans or find a highly specific appeal in Bond's seemingly arbitrary goofiness.
When this movie begins with
jarringly bad speed ramping and Bond just generally sucking at putting up a fight, I was immediately put off. Bond sucks in every fistfight he gets into in this movie, and given the established fact that he needs all of his gadgets explained to him, supposedly every mission (because he has different ones in each movie, right?) it makes it seem as if his only purpose is to schmooze his way through enough pussy to see the Big Bad's master plan and merely be present for the climax.
He has a small handful of moments of cleverness and they honestly make up the best parts of the movie, but the rest feels boring, and at times absurd.
He lures a guard into his cell just by disappearing out of the extremely limited view of the window? That's weak.
Was I supposed to buy that an aerosol would drop all of those troops soundlessly and simultaneously
the moment the plane flew overhead? That was weak too.
Bond is strapped to a table, about to have his penis lasered off, and he manages to spook Goldfinger into letting him go on the grounds that he has the name of the guy's pseudo-heist plan and only the conspicuously non-specific implication that he knows what it even is? That was incredibly weak.
Pussy Galore had a change of heart? SUPER WEAK. Jeez, after
Dredd I think I'm going to name a new trope:
Schindler's Twist. It's when a hardass gets a heel-face-turn and there's absolutely no ****ing warning of it or indication as to what could have possibly have convinced the character to switch sides.
Bond says something to the effect "appealing to her maternal instinct". What, after that "he kills little girls" comment which you just had thrown back in your face? And literally nothing else?
I don't think the women in this movie can act very well either, two of them are supposed to being grimacing in their respective scenes, but they seriously look like they're on the verge of laughing.
It's also really obvious where the movie's budget went too. The movie's early and outdoor composite shots were a sacrifice in favor of a huge and highly elaborate transforming Villain Lair.
And to top it all off, all of Sean Connery's charm can't save this:
Alright, spare me a soapbox moment and let me say one thing on the topic of feminism.
It's really stupid. NOWADAYS, it's really stupid, it scarcely has a legitimate place in the modern world, at least where first world countries are concerned. Elsewhere? A far more credible discussion.
In the vein of criticizing modern third-wave feminism though I've heard people argue that "no, there is no double standard for men when it comes to sex", asserting that men who **** a lot of women are no less denigrated as sluts than women who **** a lot of men.
If you don't already find that concept silly, then let me formally present to you my counter-argument: James Bond, an over 60-year-old franchise that remains a multi-million dollar product to this day, one of the biggest signatures of which being the single-file-line of various girls he beds with little more than a wink and a smile every single movie.
They're literally called "Bond Girls", their identities inextricably exist only to reflect well on him.
Men like him because he's a power fantasy character and this power fantasy character specifically satisfies a masculine ideal, one in which the ease with which any given woman he has a passing interest in becomes like puddy in his hands.
The guy's a sex fiend (albeit not by
City Hunter standards), but that quality carries positive connotations that don't extend to women. There is no female Bond equivalent, female characters are routinely chaste and notoriously, as even
Return of the Living Dead demonstrates, and as
Scream will confirm, blatant demonstrations of assertive sexuality almost always guarantee your DEATH.
To say that there is no double standard in a world that dichotomizes it's longest running fictional franchises with male characters who kill in their stories and female characters trying not to be killed in their stories is ridiculous.
That's the whole reason I like Action Girls, I'm sick of the seeing the same divisive tropes again and again. Women have testosterone too.