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GoldenEye
1995 · Film · 130 min
Part of James Bond Collection
Directed by Martin Campbell
When a powerful secret defense system is stolen, James Bond is assigned to stop a Russian crime syndicate from using it.
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34 comments on Hacker News
It feels like 1990s movies were the heaviest on computers/gadgets. Jurassic Park has a programmer as a main character, GoldenEye has two.
That game was based on the later Bond movie of the same name, not an attempt to cash in on Goldeneye's success with an unrelated game.
There's far less interest in this than you'd expect. The Arecibo Telescope [1] was as famous as they come and was the largest single aperture telescope (> 300m) until 2016 when China surpassed it with FAST, which is just real life having some artistic foreshadowing. Opened in 1963, it was iconic and show up in various major movies like James Bond Goldeneye, Species, and contact. Yet it was nonetheless left to rot for a lack of interest in paying the low millions of dollars it'd cost to maintain it, all the while we spend trillions of dollars on wars half-way around the world.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Telescope
> There’s a reason James Bond wears expensive watches and that reason is product placement.
Only since Goldeneye when Omega started paying for product placement. Bond had worn Rolex since the original novels, which were written before their big pivot to luxury, so him wearing expensive Rolexes in later films was more of a historical accident. Rolex never actually paid a cent to appear on screen.
Moreover, there are almost zero examples of Eon films where the Eon ideas were good.
The films are pretty straight-ahead adaptations of Fleming novels through _Live and Let Die_. After that, they were out of books they had rights to, and the films take a serious plunge in terms of actual quality. For my money, the only genuinely watchable non-adaptation example after LALD is _Goldeneye_.
I mean, note the huge jump in quality when Craig came on when they finally DID have a Fleming novel they could work from again, right?
There is a decline in big mind blowing conceptual shifts in media, like we experienced in Star Wars after decades of Spaghetti Westerns. Social and conceptual shifts are happening in real time, out in the world now. The big media build up to change has been reduced signficantly.
Goldeneye could have been more thrilling if the trailers withheld the reveal of Alec Trevalyn as the bad guy.
1995 was a year where most people couldn't look up movie information on the internet... going into the movie theatre blind, it would have been awesome to get the secret revealed on the big screen.
I've never really been a bond fan, but of course the craig era eschews much of the almost 100% of the camp of previous generations. Except (and you'll need to pardon me, i've seen each of these movies at most once and they don't really stick in my brain at all) maybe the villan who's face had been eaten by acid or something, it's not jawz or oddjob levels of camp but it's getting there.
Earlier bonds i've seen a few here and there but missed many. Like I've seen moonraker, but never thunderball, view to a kill but not goldeneye, octopussy but not never say never again. I couldn't tell you what any of the plots were (other than i'm pretty sure they go to a moon base in moonraker) or which villan goes with which film. Bond, to me, has always been kind of a mystery to me, how do these terrible films keep getting made?
I will also say that 'yes' to thor rangnarok, no to 'love and thunder' which i thought got mired in too many plots and had too many inappropriately timed jokes. Like do the Jane arc or do the Gor arc, but if you do either right they don't both fit in the film. So instead they opted to do a half assed version of each.
Bond does feel sterile, dated and out of place. I've long argued that its cultural relevance died off after the end of the cold war. Goldeneye took advantage of that setting but subsequent movies did not.
Watching a Bond film feels like the cinematic equivalent of reading a SkyMall catalog. They should shelve the franchise for a decade or two and bring it back recontextualized around whatever geopolitical realities are fresh at that time.
Fair assumption, although Goldeneye is easily one of the best Bond movies, if not the best. Personally I remember more about that movie than I do about the whole rest of the franchise combined.
I became aware of her as a teen seeing Goldeneye in the theaters. I remember it as one of the times where you think to yourself, I must find this song. (It was much harder back in the day, fortunately, the Bond movies always make a big deal of who is singing the theme). As far a Bond themes go, it's second only to Duran Duran's view to a kill. In any case, I'm glad that led me to her incredible voice and catalogue.
I think you forgot the only Bond movies who dealt with direct Soviet threats were :
- From Russia With Love (Rosa Klebb secretly works for SPECTRE but is a KGB operative so let's count it)
- Octopussy (vilain's a defector)
- The Living Daylights (defector also)
It's in Goldeneye that is created the idea that James Bond constantly fought the Soviets. I don't fault you for thinking that it's an easy thing to illustrate your point, but I like my James Bond and I like him because he's always fighting weirdo rich assholes, not the Soviets.
I mean it returns "i don't understand" in terms of context.
"Who played bond in that film Goldensomething?"
"I don't understand."
ChatGPT on the other hand returns "you're thinking of Goldeneye, where Bond was played by Pierce Brosnan"
Also featured as the centerpiece of a James Bond Movie (Goldeneye):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vovVkvQhYEE&ab_channel=ostinatoscope
One point regarding Goldeneye and fx generally. From a lay persons perspective Goldeneye has pretty snappy pacing so from memory some of the sets, such as the starting chemical plant explosion look a little fake, but the movie just chuggs along and and has a fairly good storyline that doesn't stall out.
I find I notice effects a lot more in movies when the story has flat spots. And as I learn more and more about visual story telling. All I think about when watching movies that go heavy on stunts and action "how does this progress the storyline".
As someone in the VFX industry myself (but as a software dev writing the tools the artists use), I'd argue those examples are generally useful work being done on the movie to make things "more real". Whether it's worth it, is going to be very opinionated.
However, I would say: I re-watched GoldenEye recently, and - maybe it was because I'm in the industry and notice these things more - but the blatantly different stunt men (especially landing the Cessna in Cuba: the man looked totally different compared to the actor who should have been flying!) compared to the actors did make me personally go "hang on a moment, who's that?"
Some of this stuff can now also be automated to a degree (not completely, it still requires artist input, and sometimes a lot), but it's not often Rotoing every frame like it used to be ten years or so ago.
Things I'd personally argue aren't worth artists having to work on, but I know they do, are things like skin wrinkle removal on leading actresses, removing mustaches on actors, etc. And the biggest issue is clients changing their mind at the last minute, often having previously signed off on lookdev or anim at the earlier stages, or just generally having to deal with bad set preparation because the 'talent''s time on set is 1000x times more important than the unseen artists, who then have to do loads of work to compensate for badly lit (very un-evenly lit) greenscreens or lighting on set, because the on-set VFX supe was likely ignore when he complained ("Oh, they can just fix it in post").
Good question, Like you mentioned, Sean Bean(very well known from goldeneye and LOTR), Lena Hedley was known for her terminator work, Peter Dinklage(Elf, Nip/Tuck), and lets not forget Natalie Dormer(playing Anne Boylen on the tudors, a popular TV series a few years before GOT). Basically if you watched popular scifi/historical shows/movies these characters(some) were well known.
I think I'd disagree with the assertion about Elijah Wood, Deep Impact was a pretty big film and he had a key role in that. He also had many other roles before that in some pretty notable films, especially The Faculty and heck, he was playing alongside Kevin Costner in 1994!
Perhaps I am just old, and a keen film watcher, but I wouldn't describe him as a lesser known actor at that point in his career.
Also, Sean Bean has long been a well known supporting actor. Anna Karenina, Goldeneye, Patriot Games, etc. But I would concede that he's very much more well known in the UK because of his TV roles, especially Sharpe which ran for 7 series. Again, not a lesser known actor if you're playing the bad guy in a Bond film.
There is a scene from the James Bond movie Goldeneye where this is show (although probably not realistically)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vln5TaRt5LU
GoldenEye. You got the classic Pierce Brosnan suave and you get Sean Bean as the villian. Was my first bond movie and I still love it. Great action pieces too.
They might be the best action movies, but I don't consider them the best Bond movies, bc they're so different than every other Bond movie. They're a different genre all together.
It's not that I don't like them, or even like them any less in general; I just have a hard time considering them to be Bond movies at all. They're so serious, even when being sarcastic and dry. They're not fun, and not something I probably would have been excited to binge watch as a kid, as the other ones are/were. I try hard to convince myself this is just temporal bias, but I'm less convinced the more I think about it.
And I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Goldeneye and Casino were directed by the same person.
I say this as someone who has 4 different actors in my top 5 Bond movie list, and none are Craig. So probably not a popular opinion- but also as someone who's never read any of the books, but seen every movie multiple times.
Then again, I also consider Brave Little Toaster to be a better version of Toy Story 3, for almost opposite reasons, while I still consider TS3 to be objectively the best Pixar-formula movie made. (Unless counting the first 10 mins of Up as it's own entity.)
Rowan Atkinson appears in "Never Say Never Again" as a character that is almost Mr. Bean. It's not really a cameo though.
Minnie Driver had a cameo in "Goldeneye", and Madonna had a small role in one of the Brosnan flicks. Richard Branson also appeared in one of the Brosnan films.
Other than that, it's mostly production folks:
https://www.007museum.com/Bond_cameos.htm
This dish was in the movie Goldeneye and apparently a lot of other films as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory
> I always assumed that the bottom of the dish was made out of concrete
Probably because you watched Goldeneye :). In that movie the dish looks like it's concrete:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtKJpr7N1qc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGmDAjRRNXs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp9tENRDVzA
Highly recommend watching 007 Goldeneye for a fictional take on this situation. Fantastic movie.
Aha, is this why there was a weird period in the 90s where scifi movies used satellites to reflect sun off to the ground to use as weapons (GoldenEye and the 1970s precursor, Diamonds are Forever), Batman and Robin (using satellites to heat up Mr Freeze)
Anyone seen Goldeneye recently? Great movie.
Goldeneye was a good bond film, but perhaps that's heavily influenced by the age you saw it at. I suspect I would still like goldeneye today, but perhaps not for the same reasons or as the same type of films I originally did.
If nothing else it did generate what I think is one of the seminal video games of the 90s. Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 was amazing in both its single player campaign and its multiplayer influence.
No doubt some of my affection for the film is this up in this, so I wonder how well others that didn't have this additional influence view it.
It'll always hold a special place in my heart for being in the James Bond movie Goldeneye.
Goldeneye from what has been told is an absolute legal nightmare for all involved
(Allegedly) it goes as such
- Nintendo owns the rights to publish Goldeneye as a "game" (which may be why there was that awful Wii "Goldeneye" game years ago)
- Rare (unsurprisingly) owns the source code. Rare of course is now owned by Microsoft
- MGM/United International Pictures owns the "Goldeneye" film in which the N64 game is based on. And probably needs to give the legal go ahead to both parties involved
It's hard to say if this specific case is just a "too hard basket" for Nintendo's lawyers. Or if Microsoft are playing hardball. It's unfortunate since Rare as a company is basically dead. All its talent having more or less moved on (see: Playtonic Studios "Yooka-Laylee" homage to Rare's platforming)
> where is [...] the spectacular but not unrealistic script, etc ?
It's much more realistic now, but that's part of the problem.
The Bond we remember is a remnant from the 60s (I know it's older), with that era of geopolitics, scifi (and sex-/racism), complete with razor frisbee hats, cyborgs, zero gravity laser battles, and a super villain dying through floating up to the ceiling and popping like a balloon.
I loved those movies too, and while I didn't like the direction at the time, GoldenEye was a perfect update to that genre (at the time). While I think Casino Royale was a great movie, it was not a great Bond movie.
I have yet to see the new one, but the first Kingsman movie is the best Bond movie since GoldenEye, by bringing the elements that make a Bond movie to modern filmmaking.
Different films. "The World Is Not Enough" had scenes filmed at Cruachan, "GoldenEye" was at Contra.
> ...25 sequels, but none of those films will be memorable.
* Back to the Future 2 * Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom * Army of Darkness * Goldeneye * Evil Dead 2 * Terminator 2 * Ghostbusters 2 * Captain America: Winter Soldier * Batman: The Dark Knight
Yeah, none of those sequels are memorable. We should stop making sequels and only make original films so we don't waste money on travesties such as these.
Arecibo Observatory was used as a filming location in the climax of the James Bond movie GoldenEye (1995):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory
I think they just finally saw the 007 movie Goldeneye.