February 17, 2026

GEORGE MF WASHINGTON: When Bigger Isn’t Better.

A few weeks ago there was a leak out of the Marvel camp that the opening sequence of the new “Avengers” movie promises to be the biggest action sequence of all time and that it will “blow people’s minds.” This is an entirely logical next step in the ongoing arms race that the studio blockbuster business has become, and I suppose we are all supposed to be duly excited by the prospect. But Hollywood would do well to remember that every arms race eventually metastasizes into self-parody.

* * * * * * * *

And though it occurs during a different sequence I want to point out one more fantastic stunt from “For Your Eyes Only” because it’s too good not to. Later in the film Bond and his Greek Ally Milos (Topol) raid a warehouse which is rigged to explode. At the end of the sequence (3:55), Bond’s stuntman emerges from the warehouse seconds before it blows up, the pressure wave knocking him flat and leaving us with the certainly that the poor bastard was hit by flying debris.

That’s real filmmaking, my friends, the kind you only get to try once… And it absolutely cannot be duplicated inside a computer.

“For Your Eyes Only” was released in 1981, the beginning of a decade full of movies that shot real action with real actors on, in and around real physical locations. Commando, Beverly Hills Cop, Cobra, Tango and Cash, 48 Hours, Top Gun, Predator, Rambo, Bloodsport, Terminator, Aliens, Above the Law, Lethal Weapon… we could name them by the dozens. What all these movies had in common was constrained budgets that did not allow for the kind of spectacle that can only be achieved through expensive special effects. The people who brought us the great action programmers of the 80’s operated more like Spielberg with his busted shark… they did the best they could with what they had available to them in the real world.

For Your Eyes Only is a perfect example of temporarily downsizing a franchise, a movie that worked surprisingly well as a contrast from the previous Bond outing, the bloated and campy Moonraker.  Wanting to compete with Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Hollywood’s then-burgeoning sci-fi obsession, Cubby Broccoli had Bond in a spacesuit, armed with a laser, sending him up to a giant zero-gravity space station on one of a fleet of Space Shuttles (a few years before the real NASA Space Shuttle first went into orbit), in a particularly silly mess. In contrast, Leonard Marltin gave For Your Eyes Only three stars, and wrote in his long-running TV Movies and Video Guide:

After years of space-age gadgetry, cartoon villains, female mannequins, and giants with steel teeth came this one-shot return to the old days of Ian Fleming minimalism. No other James Bond film has provoked so much debate among 007 fans (even us); judge for yourself. The chases and stuntwork are spectacular; debuting helmer Glen directed 2nd-unit on some earlier Bonds.

Will Hollywood get the message? Alas, probably not, now that it has the opportunity to incorporate cheap AI-driven special effects with paid screenwriters and the most expensive actors on the planet:

Posted at 10:35 am by Ed Driscoll