Die Another Day

When Die Another Day came out I thought it kind of sucked, but then I watched it again just recently and thought it was OK to pretty good, so maybe our standards were just way higher back in the early 2000s, which is an incredibly depressing thought because that was the era of Dude, Where's My Car. No matter. The 20th James Bond flick in the Eon Productions series was a hit but its reputation, like that of the Moore films, has become exaggerated over time so that you'd think it was pure Adam West Batman camp, when really it's just thinly sliced post-Matrix cheese.

Coldsteel here literally swishes his trenchcoat in slow motion in this scene and it's the funniest thing.

In fact the comparison with the Moore era is apt because films like Live and Let Die, The Man with the Golden Gun, and Moonraker were all largely inspired by other trends that were popular at the time (blaxploitation, kung fu movies and Star Wars respectively) and so too Die Another Day attempts to adapt just a hint of the style that made the Matrix films a hit, most notably in the bald, trenchcoated henchman Zao, the glowing "sleep mask" thing, the VR training sim, the baddy's scifi robocop suit and the amazingly awful techno-whatever theme song by Madonna.

Coolly, the naked dancers aren't entirely silhouetted in this sequence.

This is one of three major missteps in the film. The second, and most infamous, is the invisible car. To be wantonly fair, the Bond films have always had an eye toward near-future technology. Goldfinger's industrial laser didn't actually exist at the time the film was made, but they were fairly confident such things would be produced soon. Nonetheless the invisible car seemed too farfetched for audiences at the time, and rightly so, and it's a shame because it adds so little to the film it would have been better not to include it, especially since the car is visible for most of the chase scene because nobody wants to watch the baddies chase literally nothing around for twenty minutes, except me because that would have been hilarious.

le funny walk man shows off the invisible car. way out indeed.

The final misstep is the overreliance on forced nostalgia gags that make this one feel like a clip show. There's another diamond-based orbital superweapon, more bright red lasers and another use of the ejector seat (creative and fun though), and callbacks to gags from From Russia With Love, Thunderball and others. I think the writers thought this would seem witty and endearing, but it didn't.

REMAMBER JETPACC?

Nonetheless there are still charms to be found in Die Another Day, such as Bond going briefly awol and the catfight between Halle Berry's Jinx and Gone Girl, which reminds me of the catfight between Diane Lane and the Azn chick from Twin Peaks in the underrated 90s Judge Dredd, in which Josie calls Diane a "bitch" and she replies "Judge Bitch" and headbutts her in the face, which is my favourite thing of all time.

wh*te g*rls btfo, dogs can rest easy again

It sucks that this is how things had to end, but in a way they never really did, because apart from minor details most of these films can be viewed in any order and have no real continuity beyond occasional callbacks. If Bond were one person throughout the Eon series he would have been like 70 by now so this was never even really a series in the continuous sense since, like, You Only Live Twice. In a way that is the charm of Bond. He just saves the world from some goofy baddy every week. No fuss. No gay "universe" shit. If you don't like this one, well, there are twenty more. Now everything sucks.

Final ranking

1. Goldfinger =
2. You Only Live Twice =
3. The Spy Who Loved Me
4. Tomorrow Never Dies
5. The Living Daylights
6. Live and Let Die
7. Doctor No
8. GoldenEye
9. From Russia with Love
10. Thunderball
11. The Man with the Golden Gun
12. The World is Not Enough
13. Never Say Never Again
14. For Your Eyes Only
15. A View to a Kill
16. License to Kill
17. Octopussy
18. Diamonds are Forever
19. Moonraker
20. Die Another Day
21. [strictly bullshit below this line]
22. SPECTRE
23. Sky Fall
24. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
25. Quantum of Sausage
26. Casino Royale
27. ???? whatever they come out with next in currentyear+5

let me know if you agree with my ranking, and i'll change it to spite u