For what it was at the time SC's Bond was very Flemming. If Dr. No had been released in 1989 It very well could have been as violent as LTK. It was 15 years of Moore that "softened" the audience.
Actually untrue. Moore was famous for not wanting to be too violent because "what about the kids?". LTK took the violence up about 10 notches. I knew Bond before I knew Santa but I still wasn't allowed to see LTK until I was older.
This is a BIG part of why I so dislike (relatively speaking) the Moore era. Moore's approach was so...bloodless. And I mean that in a general sense. Devoid of passion and energy on many levels. Everything contained and off-the-cuff.
In a weird way, it actually makes the more violent scenes in Moore's films stand out FAR more, even though they aren't really that extreme by comparison to the other films in the franchise.
Cases in point:
- The dispatching of Locque in FYEO.
- The death of Corinne Clery's character in AVTAK (attacked by dobermans).
Those two deaths strike me as particularly brutal and out of tone with the rest of Moore's era.
Bond movies aren't "for kids." So, my response to "What about the kids?" is "Leave them at home." Note: by "kids" I mean kids below about the age of, eh, 10 or so.
That said, even though I'm not a parent, I recognize that there's no single yardstick applicable to every child. It really is up to the parent to know what their kid can handle and what they can't.
Ever read any fairy tales when you were a kid? Hansel & Grettle were abandoned by their parents and then fattened so that they could be eaten until they burned a witch alive. The three little pigs, in every version I read as a kid the first two pigs are eaten. In little red riding hood Grandma is eaten and killed. The boy who cried wolf? Eaten when the wolf finally arrives. Hell, even in modern times Lion King was brutal in how Simba watched his father die and we saw a stark silhouette at the end of Tarzan of a man being hanged...
This doesn't traumatize kids because kids are able to distinguish between reality and fiction much better than most think. It's up to each parent to decide if their kids are ready for any given material but James Bond has been a father/son experience for 50 years. My grandmother took my father to see the Connery films when they first came out. The violence, right up until LTK, was always scaled back to a level that parents wouldn't feel like jerks for letting their kids watch it. Very little blood for instance. As for the sexuality it's always either implied or under the sheets. 99% of what we see is the little bit before and then the laying in bed afterwards. You'll notice too that people don't swear in Bond films. They're intended as family entertainment on the slightly mature end.
I think that's only really true starting around, oh, YOLT or so. Prior to that, the films were more "teens and up." They've returned to that sense in recent years, albeit without a lot of the stupid comedy that marked (or marred) the Moore and Brosnan eras.
I think, however, that part of the difference in stories and film is that stories are in your mind and are therefore more abstract. Films, on the other hand, remove the abstraction and -- to greater or lesser degrees -- force an audience to confront the reality of the situation (or not, as was often the case with Moore's era). So, on the issue of what a kid can and can't take and their ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy, I think it's a different challenge when you read them a bedtime story (particularly ones with anthropomorphic animals) and when they watch a movie and SEE the stuff happen. "And then the wolf ate Red Riding Hood's grandmother!" is a far cry from actually SEEING the wolf devour poor granny.
Then in LTK we see a man explode from pressure, a person ground in a cocaine grinder, a person eaten by a shark and then left to die... A stark difference from what came before.
LTK was FAR more graphic and gritty than any film in the franchise before it. I'd argue that it is more graphic than any in the franchise since then, actually. I have a hard time thinking of scenes that are as brutal as the ones in that film, with the possible exception of Vesper drowning in CR and the torture scene in that same film. Other than that, the franchise is violent but more of the guns-n-splosions variety rather than blood-n-guts.
Again, we should give kids more credit than we do. What's so objectionable about CR? When I was a kid and saw "sex" scenes I didn't even think about what was going on under the sheets, it was two people kissing. That's all we ever actually see in CR. The one scene that I can see is the "nutcracker". I skipped that. That's what, 2 mins?
I don't personally think there's anything in CR that is particularly graphically violent, but the subject matter and how they execute it is perhaps a bit more mature than what I'd expect a 9 year old to appreciate. The violence -- such as it is -- is a bit more...hmm...impactful and less cartoony than a lot of the other Bond films. The fights -- particularly the hand-to-hand sequences -- are far more visceral than "Judo chop!" scenes from previous entries. What violence you do see also has a serious impact on the characters. Look at Vesper's reaction to witnessing death first-hand. Compare that even to Jinx's reaction to the laser scene in DAD. All jokey-jokey when a guy just had his body cut into pieces.
To me, that's one of the key differences as far as how violence is handled from one film to another. It's not solely about the gore or the brutality. It's overall about the impact of the violence. You may never even see the hit in a particular scene, but the way it's constructed may be INCREDIBLY brutal or impactful even with implied violence.
Imagine, for example, the sequence in American History X with the curbing. I don't recall if you actually even see the hit itself, as much as the setup plus a close-cropped shot of Edward Norton grimacing as he executes the guy and some foley work. That, to me, is the difference between impactful, meaningful violence and violence that is sort of cartoony and off-the-cuff. Pick any of the "commando assault" sequences in the films (with the exception, perhaps, of Thunderball) and it's all bloodless cartoony violence. Most kids would have no problem with that.
Compare that, however, to the fight sequence in CR between Bond and the guy looking for his money, plus the aftermath with him and Vesper sitting in the shower. THAT I could see staying with a kid.
