Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Somehow, GoldenEye is 30 years old and, like the world’s most unkillable super spy, it’s heading back to movie theatres this weekend. Alasdair Stuart assesses its impact:

If you’ve never seen it, honestly, it’s probably my favourite James Bond movie for a whole bunch of reasons. Here are the big ones:

M

This was Dame Judi Dench’s first appearance as M and she steals the show. Relentless, competent, principled and zero tolerance for 007’s smirking nonsense. It’s no wonder she was one of the few elements to carry across to the wildly different but also mostly excellent Daniel Craig era.

007

Brosnan is my second favourite Bond, after Craig. But what makes him that is that he could only be before Craig in the thematic evolution of the franchise. Brosnan has a hint of the cold war dinosaur to him, a little smug, a little sleazy at times and the rage is rarely far from the surface. That makes this story work all the better, with Bond faced not only with stiff competition, but someone who knows him very well.

006?!

‘For England, James’ Sean Bean, everybody! Embarking here on one of the first steps in his 30-year career of embracing the joy of being killed onscreen! Already a legendary character actor, this role was one of the things that catapulted him into the spotlight. Bean’s great too, every inch Bond’s equal but broken in a way Bond either doesn’t allow himself to be or simply cannot be. There’s some fun stuff too about whether or not Bond or Trevelyan are the broken toy, and the two men spark off each other in a way that 1663 pieces of fanfiction on AO3 picked up on.

The Action

The opening bungee jump into a firefight sets the tone for a delightfully inventive and crunchy set of action sequences. Come for the tank fight, stay for 006 and 007’s meaningful exchange of blows on the Arecibo Radio Telescope.

The Cast

Everyone shows up for work in this one. Izabella Scorupco and Famke Janssen are great as the two female leads, both bringing a welcome intelligence and agency to their roles. Scorupco, Janssen, and stunt double and former Gladiators’ star Eunice Huthart are fantastic too, combining real physical threat with throwing Bond’s exact level of horniness back at him.

Elsewhere Alan Cumming and Robbie Coltrane are great as a pair of dubious Russian criminals and Joe Don Baker, best known in this house for his stunning work in Edge of Darkness, is great as I Can’t Believe It’s Not Felix Leiter. Nice to see Baker on the good guys’ side too after his work as the villain in The Living Daylights.

The Director

Speaking as we were of Edge of Darkness, director Martin Campbell’s work on that was spectacular. He’s also directed the unfairly overlooked Cleaner with Daisy Ridley, The Legend of Zorro and Craig’s first Bond movie Casino Royale among others.

The Writers

Jeffrey Caine did excellent work on The Constant Gardener a few years later while co-writer Bruce Feirstein would put his stamp on this era with work on Tomorrow Never Dies and The World is Not Enough too.

The Theme

Even the music’s good! U2 split the scoring duties between GoldenEye and the first Mission: Impossible and did a great job with both. Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen Jr’s Mission: Impossible theme is a chugging bit of cheerfully grim electronica and Bono and The Edge’s sleek Tina Turner vehicle is a knife of a song that fits the tone perfectly.

GoldenEye’s a classic and that’s a word that gets thrown around a lot but in this instance is absolutely warranted. The movie that redefined Bond and even spawned one of the best video games of all time, it’s still a highlight for the series. If you’ve seen it already you know. If you haven’t, now’s the time. Not for England, but for yourself.

Check your local cinema listings or 007.com for screen times when GoldenEye returns to screens this weekend. Failing that, it’s available to rent or buy digitally or on disc.