For Your Eyes Only: 007 Cut

Nostromo777 makes a good Bond film better!

The narrative is improved with a tighter plot. The music is remarkably improved by replacing Conti's (badly dated) score for a selection of Barry's 007 scores. Some of the musical cues will be recognizable to Bond fans, which could distract you momentarily. But it's worth it when you compare this edit to the original!

The sound replacement work is such an accomplishment that that alone already merits checking out this edit!

There is a little scene envolving a secondary character that seemed a bit out of place, and a couple of frames that sliped the cut.
These are all small things, and don't detract from the enjoyment and the quality of the fanedit.

It's a tighter and straight to the point movie. Closer to the tone of the books. Without all the cheesyness and absurd gadgetry (they were fun back then, but aged poorly). All the small cuts that made averything more fluid, lean with great pace.
Also the change in the soundtrack makes a difference. Watching a Bond movie and listen to John barry instead of somebody else's music.

Congratulations are in order!

p.s. Another fanedit that replaces the original ;)

It seems like most people regard The Spy Who Loved Me as Roger Moore's best outing as 007. I disagree. For Your Eyes Only is his best in my opinion, and this edit of it only makes it better. But let me start with the negatives: the cutting seems quite jumpy at times, especially in the very first scenes onboard the ship which sinks. I understand the idea was to tighten almost every single scene in the movie, but it takes some getting used to. Between cuts there would sometimes be a split second of an odd frame. The audio during some dialogue is very low compared to the music in other scenes. And I think the traditional Bond theme may pop up once too often---it is hard to know if these were actually variations of the Bond theme that were just too close to identical for me to tell.
OK, that was all the "bad" stuff. Forget all that, because it barely detracts at all from this great edit of a 007 spy thriller. I would scarcely call many 007 movies spy thrillers, especially the Moore era ones, but this one is. Removing bits of the annoying ice skater girl helped a lot. The music throughout was very cool---using some of the Thunderball music during underwater scenes was perfect. And, indeed, the classic James Bond theme was very welcome during some scenes. I was worried that all the humor would be removed, but what remained was ideal. The Craig era could really learn a lot from the music in this edit. Actually, the Brosnon era could have as well. This cut achieved what the best of the Connery era achieved--when it ended, the music was echoing in your head and you felt like putting on a nice suit and driving really fast and dangerously. It reminded me of that feeling of wanting to be James Bond because he was the coolest guy on earth with his own personal theme song! (Indiana Jones may be the only other character in history with as great a theme song). The narrative and enjoyment level here is perfect. It isn't my "go to" version because the file size is prohibitively humongous so I had to delete immediately after watching, but if not for that, this is the version I prefer. It is the best cut of Roger Moore's best Bond outing. It is easily the most realistic Bond since Goldfinger and until The Living Daylights (and finally again with Casino Royale). This is THE essential Moore era Bond and the ideal (if very slightly flawed) edit of For Your Eyes Only. Highly recommend! (Especially if you have the 18Gb to spare on your hard drive!)

A massive improvement!

Working my way through the Bond blu rays in chronological order, I checked for a fan-edit in desperation, hoping that somebody out there had removed most of Bibi and replaced the chronic score with John Barry cues (like the Never Say Never Again edit)...

And Here It Is!! Plus the dreadful opening sequence with Blofeld and the dated Thatcher 'comedy' scene at the end have gone. This is so much better and my go-to version to watch from now on.

Bibi is actually fairly tolerable in much smaller doses. The colour grading helped massively. Even the 2CV chase seems more Bond-like.

Not that it matters, but if I was being really ungrateful and picky:

Sometimes the sound mix of this edit is off, with the music being too quiet or the vocal track levels varying in volume between scenes.

It seemed a little short for a Bond movie.
I personally quite like the edited out banana nose identigraph scene, the bike through the window stunt and the submersible vehicle battle (although the button controls are a bit rubbish).

I'd have also liked to have seen M redubbed by someone like Peter Marinker, to give him a less irritating voice. I don't know why it wasn't done at the time - looping vocal performances is hardly unheard of in these films.

Sheena Easton's face could ideally do with being removed from the opening credits.

I'm so glad this edit didn't choose to replace the original song with the alternate one.

Anyway, only minor gripes. Thanks for saving the film.

Version viewed: FYEOv4.1c.H265.mkv

This “For Your Eyes Only” edit is called the “007 Cut”, but could have been subtitled the “For Your Ears As Well” cut [although yes, that does sound stupid!].
JOHN BARRY MUSIC. Nothing else needs to be said. But I will anyway…

If you don’t know, the aim of this edit is to present a more serious version of “For Your Eyes Only”. Much silliness is cut, and the ill-fitting Bill Conti score is removed. Starting the pre-titles with the spy ship sequence works well, it feels like a classic Bond opening. However, the whole pre-titles sequence of the St Georges, the minister briefing, the Gogol scene, and the Melina family killing does feel overlong to me, and I suspect that is because Bond does not appear at all. The Melina sequence ends on an eyes CU, so links to the title song, but IMO concluding the pre-titles with Bond at Tracy’s grave could have been a nice intro for him [not necessarily including the whole Blofeld/remote-control continuation of the scene, just the helicopter take-off then into the titles] and helped set up the more serious tone of the movie.

The removal of the helicopter sequence brings me to another aspect of the edit. Extraneous actions scenes are cut [motorbikes at the flower shop, thugs on the ice rink, submarine attack, etc] to bring the movie into a more restrained place. The obvious parallel would be “From Russia With Love”, but unfortunately “For Your Eyes Only” lacks all the elements that let FRWL get away with stretches of no action. There’s no SPECTRE, no Klebb, no mysterious No.1, no M, no Grant, no Kerim Bey, no Tatiana, etc. FYEO with many of the action beats cut out is a fairly dull movie IMO, particularly in the first half. [Rather incongruously, the whole ski-jump sequence in the middle of the bike/ski chase is still in this edit. Snipping that could have tightened up the whole chase considerably, not to mention it is a very silly scene which doesn’t fit the serious tone. Why would Locque and his goons sneakily stalk Bond only to attack him in full view of everyone on a ski-ramp?! An attack which, even if they were lucky, might only leave him with a broken leg.] Removing the silliness is a double-edged sword too, because Roger Moore’s strength in the role was the humour. I wouldn’t argue that toning down Bibi was a mistake, but it means great Rog moments like “Put your clothes on and I’ll buy you an ice cream” are lost. Losing action beats and humour beats does leave the movie with something of an empty, aimless feel at times. Fortunately, the addition of alternate music peps it up a bit and gives it some Bond “soul”.

The music replacement is the standout feature of this edit. The tracks are mostly appropriate and well integrated. I know the Bond soundtracks very well as I listen to them often, so was prepared to be mentally recognising sources during viewing, but even so it is a very enjoyable viewing experience. Perhaps using tracks where the title song melody of another movie is prominent was a little too distracting (i.e. Diamonds Are Forever), I imagine even a casual viewer might feel a discontinuity at that moment. In addition to Barry scores, David Arnold’s “Bond, James Bond” is used, probably due to being a long presentation of the Bond theme. It sounds a touch more modern than the rest of the score but the edit just about gets away with it.

A few technical points…

Sound.
The sound mix is good, a few moments are a little odd, very minor though and probably my familiarity with the original scores is a factor. However, there is one scene where the sound very obviously has an error. The section where Melina and Bond discuss the fake telegram has the dialogue turned down way too low. This is not a case of “hmm, does that sounds a little softer?”; the voices are much, much quieter than the scenes which precede and follow, and you might wonder if you just accidentally leaned on your remote. IIRC, there isn’t even any music at this point.

Video.
A few times across the whole movie I noticed a single frame from a different shot flash up on a cut. After viewing, I remembered exactly where one seemed to be, so checked for it. When Q says he has set up a satellite link and the minister says “Good”, the next shot starts with a single frame of a different shot.

Grading.
The movie looks really good. Colour grading to me may as well be magic so I can’t critique it in any detail, and I’ll just emphasise the point; the movie looks really good.


TL;DR
Bond fans, watch - and listen - to this edit, you won’t regret it.