James Bond movie overview #3: Goldfinger (1964)
The third movie begins with Bond being a terrorist. He said he did it to stop some general from funding an army, but since we never see the general or his army this comes off as mean. The previous movies began by showing the bad guys doing bad things. They were showing us why we should expect the hero to go stop them.
This opening scene on the other hand has the exact opposite effect. Not only it has nothing to do with the main plot, it also makes Bond to seem like he is the villain. What has he done so far? Destroyed the Caribbean, caused a nuclear holocaust in Turkey, and now he ruined the military defenses of Latin America. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.
Not to mention the usual hypocrisy when it comes to gender politics. As soon as he renders a whole country defenseless, he goes to have sex with a gorgeous babe. Nothing unusual there, if he doesn’t destroy countries, he is having sex. The thing is, it was a trap. He manages to kill the assassin because he was a man, but he abandons the woman alive because she is a woman. The writer keeps telling you it’s fine to kill men and destroy countries, but never kill women because that is unthinkable. What a terrible way to start the movie.
At least the opening credits have improved even further. The projection gimmick is still there, but at least it’s on the woman, leaving the letters showing clearly on the side. It was a bit hard to read them in the previous movie, so this is a plus. Also, the music theme is very memorable, something I cannot say about “From Russia with Love.” I don’t even remember that one.
The first plot related scene shows Bond being a chauvinist. They are doing their best to make me hate him. He is basically pleasuring himself with a woman, and when an agent comes to discuss, he tells the woman to buzz off because men will talk. He even slaps her butt chicks to make her go away faster. He was always a womanizer in the previous movies, but never this forceful.
This movie begins the silly trend of the bad guys using ridiculous methods for killing people. There is an Asian guy who throws his hat as a chakram. Is there a reason he doesn’t simply shoot his opponents with a gun? None at all; it’s there just to be quirky and memorable. The most iconic scene has to do with a woman getting murdered with gold paint. Completely unnecessary and even incriminates the bad guy since everything related to gold is like his signature.
Bond is also given a signature, his Aston Martin car, which is full of weird gadgets. Such as the never seen before Global Positioning Signal, something everyone can use today with his cell phone. A big charm of the movies was the spy gadgets, many of which are commonplace today and that takes away most of the magic when watching them in current times. And let’s be honest, those gadgets didn’t help him at all in this movie. They defeated a lot of henchmen but he was still captured at the end.
Also, all these gimmicks were there to keep you distracted from realizing Bond was acting like a butthurt manchild. He said he wanted to avenge the death of the woman, insisted on taking the mission against Goldfinger, and then went on having sex with a dozen more in this movie alone without ever mentioning her again. He never cared about the woman, he did it all because they hurt his gigantic ego.
Bond is given gold to lure the bad guy and you instantly see how cartoonishly shallow is everything in this movie. From a one dimensional villain named after the thing he loves the most, funded by evil Chinese, and lured by Nazi gold. We are back to Dr. No level of writing. Remember how he was half-German and half-Chinese? It’s disappointing to see the budget being much bigger in the third film, while the script takes a nosedive. The first movie was still half-good as a detective mystery, the second still half-good as a spy flick. Goldfinger is completely absurd. They capture Bond and use a slowly moving laser instead of just shooting him. Hey, wait a second. A car full of gimmicks and bad guys who use unnecessarily complicated ways to kill the protagonist? James Bond has the same thematic depth as a typical Adam West Batman episode of the 60s.
Anyways, the movie comes down to Goldfinger constantly making terrible mistakes and looking closer to a comic relief sidekick instead of a main villain. He doesn’t kill Bond because he is told they will just bring in another agent to replace him. Yeah, this is not going to happen until his death is confirmed. If 008 would go after you for not being in contact with Bond, he would have done it already since you have kept him imprisoned for days. You can kill Bond, burn his body, and nothing will stand in your way.
He then makes this completely unnecessary presentation of his plan, where he makes the entire room to go transformer. Maps, and schematics, and long explanatory monologues that serve no purpose, since once he’s over he kills everyone in the room. It was just there to let the audience know his plan in the laziest way imaginable. He is also so stupid, he lets the most important person of his masterplan, to walk around with Bond, although he knows he has the supernatural power of making women to fall in love with him right away. And that person happens to be a woman. What the fuck are you doing Goldfinger? Why are you not simply killing Bond and instead self-sabotage yourself like that?
And if you think he is the only one being stupid, you are mistaken. The entire military of the United States is informed in time about Goldfinger’s plan and agrees to make it seem like 15000 people have fallen unconscious when he goes to rob the gold, only to get up and attack the evil Chinese soldiers once they are in Fort Nox. Who the fuck would agree to such an insane plan? For what purpose? So they can gun down the evil Chinese easier? How many soldiers did they lose because of this decision? How close were they to having a nuclear explosion inside Fort Nox because they thought it was smart to play dead? I couldn’t believe my own eyes. The previous movies had nothing remotely as absurd as this.
And I must point out how mishandled were the women in the movie. The first one is just there as lazy motivation for Bond to take the mission. The second is just there so the male audience won’t be bored with the sausage fest. She didn’t offer anything to the plot, she didn’t avenge the death of her sister, and she was quickly killed by the bad guys, proving how evil they are a second time. As for the third one, she is introduced too late in the story. There is no time to build a meaningful chemistry between Bond and her, and her change of heart happens out of screen. So although in theory they had a role in the plot, it was nowhere as well-handled as the one from “Russia with Love”.
Not even the final showdown made any sense. I’m supposed to believe this complete idiot doesn’t shoot Bond after he completely destroyed his operation and is somehow sucked out of an airplane window? The guy was 300 pounds, there is absolutely no way he could fit through that window. What’s the matter; did they ran out of money and couldn’t show the door opening and sucking him out? This is bullshit! There isn’t a single scene I liked. It’s an insult to my intelligence and a disgrace compared to the previous two movies. 1/10 and moving to Thunderball.