I've heard the denouncements of Zorin’s psychopathic actions in the mines by several critics & viewers. I don’t get these whiney criticisms. Are Bond villains supposed to be nice guys or something? Zorin is a psycho pompous entrepreneur and this is what megalomaniacal whack jobs do!
shareIt's one of my favorite Bond moments. This guy is a proper lunatic. I was shocked as hell the first time I saw that unfold. Tonally, it does seem to come out of nowhere with the rest of his actions. So I see the criticism.
shareI see what you're saying, but earlier in the movie Zorin was specifically referred to as a "psychopath" who had orchestrated the murder or attempted murder of several people; moreover, his mad scheme of flooding Silicon Valley and murdering millions was shortly unveiled. So when he grabs a machine gun and starts slaughtering scores of mine workers it's not exactly out of character. It's what egomaniacal psychos do.
shareI personally didn’t have a problem with the uzi scene , like you said Bond villains shouldn’t be portrayed as nice guys. I think at the time however the Moore era was considered to be more campy and light hearted than the previous films and they felt the scene came out of nowhere and was tonally inconsistent with the rest of the film (especially when earlier in the film we had Bond snowboarding to California Girls) and what came before it. I disagree, it was well within Zorins character to do that.
shareI just wish one time I can enjoy a Bond film where everyone gets along with each other and no one gets killed
shareRoger Moore as James Bond always kind of struck me as that franchise's equivalent to Adam West as Batman. I suppose that it would be kind of like placing Adam West in something like Batman Returns (ironically, also featuring Christopher Walken as a villainous tycoon named Max), where you have scenes like Danny DeVito's Penguin spontaneously biting a man in the nose to the point in which he was literally gushing blood.
shareChristopher Walken at his finest hamming it up for a BOND movie
sharebond is pg. do many pg have this massacres?
shareGandhi was PG and depicted the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in great detail. And that wasn’t a fictional "massacre" either.
shareIs this why you're complaining about that scene? A mass machinegunning of innocents? These things happen in this kind of movie!
In real life it's horrible, so why encourage nutjobs to copy a movie's atrocities?
Especially in the US where idiots and extremists of all types walk around shooting guns?
They weren’t ‘innocents’, they were fulfilling Project Main Strike which would have killed millions of genuinely innocent people. Zorin decided it was cheaper to kill his staff than pay them.
You could say they were unsuspecting but hey - you get in bed with a psychopath, you get killed.
Were they aware of his plan? If they were, most of them would not have gone along with it.
There was a gigantic bomb in the middle of the mine, surrounded by tons of explosives… which they put there. Plus a temporary ‘office’ which had the whole plan outlined, including an animated display of the flooding.
Fair enough, I completely forgot about that (blushes).
The head foreman of his oil division was even on the blimp when Zorin demonstrated his plan to destroy Silicon Valley to the investors
shareOK, I get it. I'll choke if I swallow too much humble pie.
Is that Bob Conley the Texan oil guy? Never knew he was in Zorin’s presentation blimp, good spot.
He was also working in the power station that was pumping sea water. He didn’t get involved with pulverising that Russian agent with the propellor, but he’s clearly a major player in Project Main Strike and his men had to be in on it.
I suspect they were led to believe they would be transported to a safe distance well before the bomb went off, but Zorin had other plans for them…
Well, keep in mind that the PG rating back in 1985 was a lot different than what it is now. The PG-13 rating was barely a year old when A View to a Kill was released. If A View to a Kill came out now, there's no doubt in my mind, that it would be rated PG-13. The Living Daylights is the final Bond movie to get a PG rating. The darker and edgier Licence to Kill really gave the MPAA no choice but to get a PG-13 rating, and it could've gotten an R if it wasn't edited to the MPAA's liking.
shareAVTAK and The Living Daylights were both recently upgraded from PG to 12 in the UK (as was Diamonds Are Forever)
Licence To Kill was a cut 15 on release, and would have been an 18 if left uncut (the British censors are insane). It’s now an uncut 15.
Really? I always see AVTAK and TLD as PG rated.
The other day I was in my local HMV and was shocked to see that Lethal Weapon 1 and 2 were now a 15.
I'm no prude but with both having drug use/dealing, strong swearing, violence including torture, and nudity, I didn't expect that.
I’d say ‘15’ is right for Lethal 1 and 2, and Die Hard. Alien and Aliens dropped to 15, as did The Terminator years ago.
18 is reserved for really extreme stuff now, that you absolutely don’t want your kids to see.
PG means parental guidance suggested. If a man smiling while he machine guns 20 people is going to disturb children then maybe their parents should supervise them while watching it.
Also have you seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom?
I know that Roger Moore in particular, did not like that scene. I don't remember specifically what his issue with that was other than I suppose, that it was way too dark for the type of James Bond movie that he was trying to sell. Something like that would probably be more that home had Timothy Dalton already been around. I mean, that scene in A View to a Kill is pretty tame when compared to Licence to Kill some four years later.
shareRodge just found it ‘too violent’. Even Licence To Kill nor any of the ‘harder edged’ Bonds had something as sick as a villain machine-gunning hundreds of his own loyal workers. It’s particularly psychotic and savage, especially with Walken bursting out laughing as he unloads clip after clip, followed by casually remarking ‘good, right on schedule’ once he’s finished.
shareIt's not that it's too bloody or gory, it's who it's happening to. It's very rare to see innocent people being slaughtered like that in any type of mainstream action/adventure film. You don't even see the villain doing that kind of stuff in a Dirty Harry, Lethal Weapon or a Die Hard which have much stronger violence. You see innocents die of course but not the villain just gunning a load of them down and enjoying it. I think was his problem with it.
I don't find it disgusting or ruining my enjoyment, it just feels strange for a mainstream film, especially a Bond.
Agree accept that they weren’t ‘innocents’:
https://moviechat.org/tt0090264/A-View-to-a-Kill/5b8bfb1883020b00146c3c22/Zorin-wildly-slaughters-multitudes-of-mine-workers-wah-wah?reply=644dc67a6ef07c380553d23b