Review Detail

The editor's stated intention is to bring this in line with other Bond films and essentially make it feel 'more Bond'. I think the result here is a really mixed bag in that respect, and also not any more enjoyable for me than the original (not very good) film...so I unfortunately can't recommend it.

I won't go into the many, many issues with the original movie (you can read a review I wrote here if you'd like to know: https://letterboxd.com/nottheacademy/film/never-say-never-again/) but I was hoping they'd be fixed in this film, at least somewhat. This movie could honestly do with a radical edit, and this isn't it. The main things changed here are the music choices... now some of the score replacements DO feel more 'Bond'...because they're from other Bond films. But many feel wildly wrong, and they almost all stick out like a sore thumb, whether matching Bond or not. All the Bond song remixes just scream "fanedit" to me, whereas I was looking for more subtle changes that would make me FORGET I wasn't watching a non-canon Bond film.

There are also some scenes which are edited with little tweaks here and there, and some of them (notably the beginning) actually make the scene less clear and slightly confusing. Some scenes are zoomed in on, pan & scan style, which is obvious and looks pretty bad. In fact, the quality of the video is really pretty bad throughout much of this, and the audio isn't blended in that well at many points.

I see that this worked for some people, and they got their Bond jollies, but sadly it was a chore for me. I felt every minute of the last 30 minutes of the film, and was kicking myself for not just rewatching Thunderball instead. I don't blame the editor for this just not being a very good movie to start, but I think there is room to cut this down a lot more, render the video better, and make more nuanced music replacements. I appreciate the effort here, but it just didn't work for me.