tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post8094564801080172264..comments2024-03-11T01:39:11.362-04:00Comments on At the Scene of the Crime: 007 Reloaded: The Man with the Golden GunPatrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-49391562375622116772013-03-08T10:48:18.624-05:002013-03-08T10:48:18.624-05:00Amis was apparently hired to help polish the book ...Amis was apparently hired to help polish the book up, but none of his suggestions were acted upon. A bit of a shame, really. This is an unpolished book but it has so many good ideas and such a good villain that even in its first-draft form, it's a good read.Patrickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-76921036879391089012013-03-08T10:47:03.219-05:002013-03-08T10:47:03.219-05:00Hm. I think we'll have to disagree here. Altho...Hm. I think we'll have to disagree here. Although you can definitely read Scaramanga as a typical thug, I don't think that's how he's intended to be read. GOLDEN GUN is essentially a first draft, and many of the details Fleming added during second drafts are absent. So it's a really unpolished work and far from Fleming's finest. This unpolished quality is what might lend the villain that rough, gangstery feel.<br /><br />But when you read conversations like the one Scaramanga and Bond have when Bond gets caught with Goodnight in his room, you get a real taste of a theatrical, OTT villain.Patrickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01844617192737950378noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-42395421860334743922013-03-08T04:48:01.600-05:002013-03-08T04:48:01.600-05:00I think you are dead right that they borrowed quit...I think you are dead right that they borrowed quite a lot from the book for the new SKYFALL movie (in fact they borrowed quite a lot from the aberrant film version too) - for a long time there was debate about how much of the book Fleming had completed before his early death and how much his widow and some of his friends (including maybe Kingslay Amis, who wrote the first official sequel, COLONEL SUN as 'Robert Markham') so one suspects that some of the weaknesses, apart from Fleming having probably written himself out a couple of books earlier - but it does have a great opening scene in particular along with the wonderfully named vilalin. Great review Patrick - well done on completing the corpus!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-499247432649483938.post-86229039260656289492013-03-07T15:50:02.687-05:002013-03-07T15:50:02.687-05:00I read "The Man with the Golden Gun" a f...I read "The Man with the Golden Gun" a few years ago, so I don't remember it all that well, but I do remember feeling just a bit unimpressed on a whole. It feels much less polished than some of the other Bond novels and I wonder if this book was perhaps a first draft which was to be revised later. <br /><br />However, what I must disagree most though about the book is the villain. I felt that Scaramanga was a just a tough thug. Granted, this was a few years ago and I listened to the story on audio-book and the narrator decided to make Scaramanga out to be a low-life hoodlum. This is probably where I get that view from. So it's for that reason that I think Christopher Lee did a brilliant job in the movie. He is by far the best thing about the film since he really does appear be the darker version of Roger Moore's Bond.Nick Cardillohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12941093024318184603noreply@blogger.com