Remaking Dr. No

Wow, busy weekend. Let me catch my breath.

So many things I wanted to write about, and never found the time to get online and compose. Here's one: they had a James Bond marathon on Encore over the weekend, so I watched some of it. Saturday, I saw bits of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," "Diamonds Are Forever," and "Live and Let Die." Sunday was just a bit of "Dr. No." As we're watching, my coworker Trav tells me he thinks Pierce Brosnan makes a decent Bond, but he can't stand the Bond movies Brosnan has made. They've strayed from the classic Bond formula. Why not just remake the classic old Bonds, since it seems like half of all Hollywood product now is a remake?

Which got me thinking about "Dr. No." It's the first of the Bond features, and it shows. In one spot, an assassin tries to kill Bond by setting a tarantula loose in his room. Bond kills it with his shoe. Suspenseful, I guess, but blah. Later, there's a brief car chase, a couple of cars careening down curvy dirt roads (with cheesy tires-screeching-on-asphalt sound effects and no music). Bond manages to squeeze his little car past a crane that's clearing debris of some sort; his pursuers aren't so lucky and plunge off the cliff to their doom.

If that had been made in the 70's rather than the 60's, the car chase would have been a real action setpiece with spectacular stunts heralded by the rousing Bond theme, and Bond would have found some clever way to dispatch the spider. It would have been seriously cool.

If it were remade today, the car chase would probably feature something like 20 cars chasing Bond, and the tarantula sequence would have Bond fighting something like 50 CG tarantulas, all running and leaping flat-out, doing kung-fu in bullet time while Bond kills them by flinging toothpicks or something.

I really hope they don't remake any more Bond movies.