007 Goldeneye write-up (the movie, not the game)
Jan 12, 2019 12:19:27 GMT -5
Post by anayo on Jan 12, 2019 12:19:27 GMT -5
Lately I posted about how Chibby inspired me to get a Windows 98 gaming PC up and running. Something else he inspired me to do was watch more movies on VHS. There’s still heaps of them for 99 cents at thrift stores. So far I’ve watched Stand by Me, The Blair Witch Project, Ghost Dog, and Jim Henson’s Muppet Video Treasures, all for the first time. My most recent watch was the 007 Goldeneye movie.
The Goldeneye Nintendo 64 game is one of those things I’m unqualified to talk about because I’m too in love with it. I got it for Christmas as a 9 year old. Here I am:
Those who prefer later FPS’s will balk at the awkward N64 controller, 20 fps frame rate, and origami mannequins with frozen JPEG facial expressions painted on their skulls. But in my mind, 007 Goldeneye will always be perfect. I was brainwashed into thinking that and it’s too late to convince me otherwise. Anyway, I was always curious about the Goldeneye movie. I just didn’t expect it to take 20 years for me to watch it.
Verdict: I don’t like the Goldeneye movie. If if you’re the sort to think, “OK so there’s car chases, gunfights, explosions, espionage, sex scenes, exotic locales, and cool clothes, but do I even care about the characters?” then this isn’t for you. Granted, Goldeneye is sitting around 70% on Rotten Tomatoes. Also, they were cranking out Bond films every 2 years back then, so it must have done OK in the box office. It’s just a “turn your brain off and enjoy the pretty pictures” kind of movie. So naturally that means I’m going to scrutinize a bunch of scenes that were never meant for close scrutiny.
1) Generals that go missing
One day Natalya is working at her job in a bunker in the middle of the snow-scorched Russian wilderness. Boris, the bespectacled computer whiz, makes a wisecrack about how his password is “ass” or “tits” or something. Natalya rolls her eyes. Then General Ouromov and Xenya show up and gun everyone down except for Natalya, who hides. The evil duo take control of the computers to aim the goldeneye satellite at their location, roasting everything with an EMP while Ouromov escapes in a magic EMP proof helicopter with the goldeneye key so he can use it for evil stuff later. Natalya survives, which sucks for Ouromov because he thought he killed all the witnesses.
Anyway I can’t speak for the Russian military in 1995 but I’ve heard from friends in the U.S. military from 2018 that generals literally have no spare time. Their entire schedule is plotted out for them and they’re on call 24/7. They also have an entourage of aids and lower ranking officers following them everywhere. So I’d be super interested to know what General Ouromov’s alibi was for when he went to Natalya’s workplace and made the Goldeneye blow up said workplace. I would venture to say a general officer just up and disappearing long enough to personally commit a heist might raise as many questions as a trigger happy death satellite. Especially if those two coincided with each other.
2) EMP-proof transistors
This movie has a magic EMP proof helicopter in it, because that’s what Gen. Ouromov uses to escape when he aims a space EMP gun at himself. The film has a big elaborate introduction to the chopper, with a guy lecturing the audience about what it does, how useful it is, how much RAM it has, how it slices and dices etc. Then Xenya literally murderfucks the pilot and steals it for Ouromov.
I know shotguns on the mantle in act 1 are supposed to go off in act 3, but this isn’t a shotgun. It’s a volcano. If someone invented EMP-proof transistors, the whole world would be scrambling to make EMP-proof satellites, computer servers, factory SCADA systems, and submarines. But Ouromov needed a getaway vehicle, which literally stops being a thing after he blows up Natalya’s workplace and the story moves onto something else. Cool.
3) Trevelyan is evil because plot
Trevelyan used to do Cold War espionage stuff with Bond. Then Ouromov shot him in the head. Then he learned that has parents were Lienz Cossacks, an anti-communist Russian faction whom the British stabbed in the back after World War II. Both his parents killed themselves before he was born, so learns about this well after his illustrious MI6 career. Trevelyan somehow survives getting shot in the head. He is also somehow still ambulatory and doesn't shake or speak with slurred sentences or anything. He also decides that because the British betrayed his parents in the late 1940's, now he hates England and wants to destroy western civilization. Cool.
4) Q
This scene is great:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDyut7gDXD8
It’s self-aware, tongue-in-cheek, and the punchline at the end got a big laugh from me. And at literally no other point is the movie like this. This part feels like it was written by someone else and stitched in. To be honest that’s how the whole movie feels. I get the impression there was a team of half a dozen writers individually commissioned for each part: bargain bin-Mission Impossible stunts, stoic discussions about Russian history (with borderline fourth-wall-breaking quips like, “You’re a mysogynstic dinosaur from the Cold War, Bond.”), and car chases that feel like a APR rate and corporate logo are about to materialize over the horizon.
5) sceney
Seeing assets and models from the N64 game with live action detail and lighting was very surreal for me. I would recognize random things such as monitors hanging from the ceiling and steel doors. To be honest this random scavenger hunt was mainly what kept me watching. That and seeing how the flow of events matched and yet also diverged from the game. The YouTuber “minime” did most of the following legwork. I took these screenshots from his video:
It's weird because if this were made today in unreal engine or frostbite or whatever, the in-game sets would probably look pretty friggin' close to the movie.
The Goldeneye Nintendo 64 game is one of those things I’m unqualified to talk about because I’m too in love with it. I got it for Christmas as a 9 year old. Here I am:
Those who prefer later FPS’s will balk at the awkward N64 controller, 20 fps frame rate, and origami mannequins with frozen JPEG facial expressions painted on their skulls. But in my mind, 007 Goldeneye will always be perfect. I was brainwashed into thinking that and it’s too late to convince me otherwise. Anyway, I was always curious about the Goldeneye movie. I just didn’t expect it to take 20 years for me to watch it.
Verdict: I don’t like the Goldeneye movie. If if you’re the sort to think, “OK so there’s car chases, gunfights, explosions, espionage, sex scenes, exotic locales, and cool clothes, but do I even care about the characters?” then this isn’t for you. Granted, Goldeneye is sitting around 70% on Rotten Tomatoes. Also, they were cranking out Bond films every 2 years back then, so it must have done OK in the box office. It’s just a “turn your brain off and enjoy the pretty pictures” kind of movie. So naturally that means I’m going to scrutinize a bunch of scenes that were never meant for close scrutiny.
1) Generals that go missing
One day Natalya is working at her job in a bunker in the middle of the snow-scorched Russian wilderness. Boris, the bespectacled computer whiz, makes a wisecrack about how his password is “ass” or “tits” or something. Natalya rolls her eyes. Then General Ouromov and Xenya show up and gun everyone down except for Natalya, who hides. The evil duo take control of the computers to aim the goldeneye satellite at their location, roasting everything with an EMP while Ouromov escapes in a magic EMP proof helicopter with the goldeneye key so he can use it for evil stuff later. Natalya survives, which sucks for Ouromov because he thought he killed all the witnesses.
Anyway I can’t speak for the Russian military in 1995 but I’ve heard from friends in the U.S. military from 2018 that generals literally have no spare time. Their entire schedule is plotted out for them and they’re on call 24/7. They also have an entourage of aids and lower ranking officers following them everywhere. So I’d be super interested to know what General Ouromov’s alibi was for when he went to Natalya’s workplace and made the Goldeneye blow up said workplace. I would venture to say a general officer just up and disappearing long enough to personally commit a heist might raise as many questions as a trigger happy death satellite. Especially if those two coincided with each other.
2) EMP-proof transistors
This movie has a magic EMP proof helicopter in it, because that’s what Gen. Ouromov uses to escape when he aims a space EMP gun at himself. The film has a big elaborate introduction to the chopper, with a guy lecturing the audience about what it does, how useful it is, how much RAM it has, how it slices and dices etc. Then Xenya literally murderfucks the pilot and steals it for Ouromov.
I know shotguns on the mantle in act 1 are supposed to go off in act 3, but this isn’t a shotgun. It’s a volcano. If someone invented EMP-proof transistors, the whole world would be scrambling to make EMP-proof satellites, computer servers, factory SCADA systems, and submarines. But Ouromov needed a getaway vehicle, which literally stops being a thing after he blows up Natalya’s workplace and the story moves onto something else. Cool.
3) Trevelyan is evil because plot
Trevelyan used to do Cold War espionage stuff with Bond. Then Ouromov shot him in the head. Then he learned that has parents were Lienz Cossacks, an anti-communist Russian faction whom the British stabbed in the back after World War II. Both his parents killed themselves before he was born, so learns about this well after his illustrious MI6 career. Trevelyan somehow survives getting shot in the head. He is also somehow still ambulatory and doesn't shake or speak with slurred sentences or anything. He also decides that because the British betrayed his parents in the late 1940's, now he hates England and wants to destroy western civilization. Cool.
4) Q
This scene is great:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDyut7gDXD8
It’s self-aware, tongue-in-cheek, and the punchline at the end got a big laugh from me. And at literally no other point is the movie like this. This part feels like it was written by someone else and stitched in. To be honest that’s how the whole movie feels. I get the impression there was a team of half a dozen writers individually commissioned for each part: bargain bin-Mission Impossible stunts, stoic discussions about Russian history (with borderline fourth-wall-breaking quips like, “You’re a mysogynstic dinosaur from the Cold War, Bond.”), and car chases that feel like a APR rate and corporate logo are about to materialize over the horizon.
5) sceney
Seeing assets and models from the N64 game with live action detail and lighting was very surreal for me. I would recognize random things such as monitors hanging from the ceiling and steel doors. To be honest this random scavenger hunt was mainly what kept me watching. That and seeing how the flow of events matched and yet also diverged from the game. The YouTuber “minime” did most of the following legwork. I took these screenshots from his video:
It's weird because if this were made today in unreal engine or frostbite or whatever, the in-game sets would probably look pretty friggin' close to the movie.