> That was EXACTLY THE MOMENT the familiar James
>Bond theme should have taken off. When I saw
>the movie with Dave, he told me he was
>*expecting* it at the time. But Serra, or
>director Martin Campbell, or *somebody* just
>completely screwed that up.

Absolutely, and I still totally expect it to hit at that moment every freaking time I watch that movie, and it NEVER DOES.

The thing with Bond movies is that they're formulaic. Sure, there are many movies in the series (including the most recent one) that play with our ideas of what a "Bond movie" should be, and work to somewhat break the formula. Sometimes (as in the most recent movie) it works well, and sometimes it doesn't.

One time that monkeying with the formula obviously *didn't* work well was this Goldeneye example. The thing is, the Bond theme (or at least, the loud, orchestral part of it) is so often used to tell the audience "Well, he's done it again, the rascal." It's used to perfect effect in the ski scene from TSWLM. Bond goes over the cliff, silence, silence, silence, how is he going to get out of this one? Parachute opens, theme hits, "Well, he's done it again, the rascal." It's a feeling of closure, of celebration, of knowing he was going to make it but not knowing how, and being quite pleased with how it worked out.

The counterpoint from Goldeneye misses this entirely. Yes, we can *see* that he's apparently "done it again", but it's almost like without the musical cue, there's no feeling of release, of knowing "for sure" that this is, indeed, the end of the scene and that we're supposed to be pumped now for the rest of the movie. I'm always kind of left wondering if maybe the plane is going to come down again and the chase will continue or something. Without the theme hitting, it's almost impossible to tell until the scene cuts.

-- Dave