A View to a Kill
Encyclopedia
A View to a Kill is the fourteenth spy film
of the James Bond
series
, and the seventh and last to star Roger Moore
as the fictional
MI6
agent James Bond
. Although the title is adapted from Ian Fleming
's short story "From a View to a Kill", the film is the fourth Bond film after The Spy Who Loved Me
, Moonraker
and Octopussy
to have an entirely original screenplay. In A View to a Kill, Bond is pitted against Max Zorin
, who plans to destroy California's Silicon Valley
.
The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli
and Michael G. Wilson
, who also wrote the screenplay with Richard Maibaum
. It was the third James Bond film to be directed by John Glen, and the last to feature Lois Maxwell
as Miss Moneypenny
.
Despite being a commercial success, with the Duran Duran
theme song
performing well in the charts and earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Song, A View to a Kill got a mixed reception by critics and was disliked by Roger Moore himself due to his age. Christopher Walken
, however, was praised for portraying a "classic Bond villain".
. He is ambushed but flees in a submarine built to resemble an iceberg
. Q
analyses the microchip, establishing it to be a copy of a microchip designed to withstand an electromagnetic pulse
made by government contractor Zorin Industries.
Bond visits Ascot Racecourse
to observe the company's owner, Max Zorin. Zorin's horse wins a race but proves hard to control. Sir Godfrey Tibbett, a horse trainer and MI6 agent, believes Zorin's horse was drugged, although tests proved negative. Through Tibbett, Bond meets French private detective Achille Aubergine and Aubergine informs Bond that Zorin is holding an horse sale later in the month. However, during their dinner at the Eiffel Tower
, Aubergine is assassinated by Zorin's mysterious bodyguard, May Day, who jumps off of the tower with a parachute. Bond chases, but fails to apprehend her.
Bond and Tibbett travel to Chantilly, France
to stay at Zorin's estate. Bond is puzzled by a woman who rebuffs him and finds out that Zorin has paid her a very large cheque. At night, Bond and Tibbett break into Zorin's laboratory and learn that he is implanting drug-releasing microchips in his horses. Their intrusion is discovered and May Day assassinates Tibbett. Zorin identifies Bond and tries to have him killed too, but 007 survives.
General Gogol
of the KGB
confronts Zorin for murdering Bond without permission as Zorin was trained and financed by the KGB, but he has now gone rogue
. Zorin unveils to a group of investors his plan to destroy Silicon Valley
to gain a monopoly in the microchip market.
007 goes to San Francisco
where he learns from CIA agent Chuck Lee that Zorin is the product of medical experimentation
with steroids performed by a Nazi, now Zorin's henchman Dr. Carl Mortner, who took refuge in the Soviet Union after World War II. He then investigates an oil rig owned by Zorin. While recording conversations there, he finds KGB agent Pola Ivanova trying to blow up the rig, but her partner is caught and murdered. Ivanova and Bond escape together. She tries to steal his recording, but then finds out that Bond had switched tapes. Bond tracks down the woman Zorin attempted to pay off, State Geologist Stacey Sutton, whose family oil company Zorin has been trying to buy. Posing as a journalist, he rescues her from Zorin henchmen and the two attempt to steal documents about Zorin's plans from the San Francisco City Hall
.
Zorin arrives and kills the chief Geologist with Bond's gun, then sets the building on fire in order to frame Bond for the murder and kill him. Bond and Sutton escape from the fire, but when the police try to arrest Bond, they escape in a fire engine.
Bond and Sutton then infiltrate Zorin's mine, discovering his plot to detonate explosives beneath the lakes along the Hayward Fault
and the San Andreas Fault
, which will cause them to flood. A larger bomb is also on site in the mine to destroy a "geological lock" that prevents the two faults from moving at the same time. Zorin and his security chief Scarpine flood the mines and murder the mine workers.
Sutton escapes while Bond fights May Day; when she realises Zorin abandoned her, she helps Bond remove the larger bomb, putting the device onto a handcar and pushing it out of the mine. May Day stays on the car to hold the faulty brake lever, sacrificing herself as the bomb explodes.
Zorin, who had escaped in his airship with Scarpine and Mortner, abducts Sutton. Bond grabs hold of the mooring rope as the airship ascends. Zorin tries to kill Bond by flying him into the Transamerica Pyramid
, then the Golden Gate Bridge
, but Bond manages to moor the airship to the bridge framework. Stacey attacks Zorin and in the fracas, Mortner and Scarpine are temporarily knocked out. Stacey flees and joins Bond, but Zorin attacks them with an axe: Bond sends Zorin falling to his death. Mortner also attacks Bond, but Bond escapes, blowing up the airship, killing Mortner and Scarpine.
Maud Adams
is said to be visible as an extra in one of the Fisherman's Wharf scenes; in the DVD documentary Inside A View to a Kill, Adams explains that she was visiting her friend Moore on location and ended up in the crowd, but admits she is unable to actually see herself in the film; In the same documentary, director John Glen confirms that Adams appears as an extra, but does not specify where she is visible. The appearance remained a mystery for years until she was identified as standing in the background during one of the Fisherman's Wharf scenes. As a result, Adams appears in three Bond films, previously in The Man with the Golden Gun
in 1974 and in Octopussy in 1983.
and Michael G. Wilson
. Wilson also co-authored the screenplay along with Richard Maibaum
. At the end of Octopussy
during the "James Bond Will Return" sequence, it listed the next film as "From a View to a Kill", the name of the original short story; however, the title was later changed.
When a company with a name similar to Zorin (the Zoran Corporation) was discovered in the United States, a disclaimer was added to the start of the film affirming that Zorin was not related to any real-life company. This is the first Bond film to have a disclaimer (The Living Daylights
had a disclaimer about the use of the Red Cross.)
would play Zorin. He turned it down, saying, "I didn't want to spend five months watching my stunt double fall off cliffs." The role was offered to Sting and finally to Christopher Walken.
Dolph Lundgren
has a brief appearance as one of General Gogol
's KGB agents. Lundgren, who was Grace Jones
's boyfriend, was visiting her on set when one day an extra was missing so the director John Glen then asked him if he wanted to get a shot at it. Lundgren appears during the confrontation between Gogol and Zorin at the racetrack, standing several steps below Gogol.
in London
, Iceland
, Switzerland
, France and the United States.
Several French landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower
, its Jules Verne Restaurant and the Château de Chantilly
were filmed.
The rest of the major filming was done in the Fisherman's Wharf
and the Golden Gate Bridge
in San Francisco. The Lefty O'Doul
Bridge was featured in the fire engine chase scene. The horse racing scenes were shot at Ascot Racecourse
.
The production of A View to a Kill began on 23 June 1984 in Iceland, where the second unit filmed the pre-title sequence. On 27 June 1984, several leftover canisters of gasoline used during filming of Ridley Scott
's Legend
caused the Pinewood Studios' "007 Stage" to be burnt to the ground. Broccoli arranged its reconstruction which was done by the end of July 1984. The soundstage was renamed "Albert R. Broccoli's 007 Stage". The filming of A View to a Kill continued when Roger Moore rejoined the main unit at Pinewood on 1 August 1984. The crew then departed for shooting the horse-racing scenes at Royal Ascot Racecourse. The scene in which Bond and Sutton enter the mineshaft was then filmed in a waterlogged quarry near Staines
and the Amberley Chalk Pits Museum in West Sussex.
On 6 October 1984, the fourth unit, headed by the special effects supervisor John Richardson, began its work on the climactic fight sequence. At first, only a few plates constructed to resemble the Golden Gate Bridge were used. Later that night, the shooting of the burning San Francisco City Hall commenced. The first actual scenes atop the bridge were filmed on 7 October 1984.
In Paris
it was planned that two stunt men, B.J. Worth and Don Caldvedt, would help film two takes of a parachute drop off a (clearly visible) platform that extended from a top edge of the Eiffel Tower
. However, sufficient footage was obtained from Worth's jump, so Caldvedt was told he would not be performing his own jump. Caldvedt, unhappy at not being able to perform the jump, parachuted off the tower without authorisation from the City of Paris. He was subsequently sacked by the production team for jeopardising the continuation of filming in the city.
Airship Industries
managed a major marketing coup with the inclusion of their Skyship 500 series airship in the film. At the time Airship Industries were producing a fleet of ships which were recognisable over many capitals of the world offering tours, or advertising sponsorship deals. As all Bond films have included the most current technology, this included the lighter than air interest.
The ship used in the climax was a Skyship 500, then on a promotional tour of Los Angeles after its participation in the opening ceremony of the 1984 Olympic Games
. At that time, it had "WELCOME" painted across the side of the hull, but the word was replaced by "ZORIN INDUSTRIES" for the film. During the 1984 season, the ship was painted green and red as a part of Fujifilm
's blimp fleet; it was subsequently coloured white. In real life, inflating it would take up to 24 hours, but during the film it was shown to take two minutes.
, and published by EMI/Capitol. The theme song, "A View to a Kill
", was written by Barry and Duran Duran
, and performed by the band. It has three different versions, of which the two made by Duran Duran make no reference to the James Bond theme; some of its notes are mixed, while "May Day Jumps" is the only song of the film that features the original theme. Barry's composition On Her Majesty's Secret Service was modified for use in the songs "Snow Job", "He's Dangerous" and "Golden Gate Fight" of A View to a Kill. "A View to a Kill" was second in the British charts and first in the American charts, thus becoming the peak song in the James Bond series.
Duran Duran was chosen to do the song after bassist John Taylor (a lifelong Bond fan) approached producer Cubby Broccoli at a party, and somewhat drunkenly asked "When are you going to get someone decent to do one of your theme songs?"
During the opening sequence, a cover version of the 1965 Beach Boys
song "California Girls
", performed by Gidea Park with Adrian Baker
(a tribute band), is used during a chase in which Bond snowboards; it has been suggested that this teaser sequence helped initiate interest in snowboarding
.
. The British premiere was held on 12 June 1985 at the Odeon Leicester Square Cinema in London. The film was first broadcast on British television on 31 January 1990. It achieved a box office collection of US $152.4 million worldwide with 50.3 million in the United States alone. On its opening weekend in the US it earned $10.6 million.
Although its box office
reception was excellent, the film's critical response was mixed. Rotten Tomatoes
currently gives A View to a Kill a 39% "Rotten" rating, which is the lowest rating for the official Bond films on the website. One of the most common criticisms was that Roger Moore's age was 57 - and had visibly aged in the two years that had passed since Octopussy; Sean Connery
declared that "Bond should be played by an actor 35, 33 years old. I’m too old. Roger’s too old, too!". Moore has also stated A View to a Kill as his least favourite film and mentioned that he was mortified to find out that he was older than his female co-star's mother. He was quoted saying "I was horrified on the last Bond I did. Whole slews of sequences where Christopher Walken was machine-gunning hundreds of people. I said 'That wasn't Bond, those weren't Bond films.' It stopped being what they were all about. You didn't dwell on the blood and the brains spewing all over the place". In a December 2007 interview, Roger Moore remarked, "I was only about four hundred years too old for the part."
The film was mentioned by Brian J. Arthurs of The Beach Reporter as the worst film of the Bond series. C. Pea of the Time Out Film Guide said, "Grace Jones is badly wasted." Norman Wilner of MSN
chose it as the worst Bond film, while IGN
picked as the fourth worst, and Entertainment Weekly
as the fifth worst.
Danny Peary
had mixed feelings about A View to a Kill but was generally complimentary: “Despite what reviewers automatically reported, [Moore] looks trimmer and more energetic than in some of the previous efforts…I wish Bond had a few more of his famous gadgets on hand, but his actions scenes are exciting and some of the stunt work is spectacular. Walken’s the first Bond villain who is not so much an evil person as a crazed neurotic. I find him more memorable than some of the more recent Bond foes…Unfortunately, the filmmakers – who ruined villain Jaws by making him a nice guy in Moonraker – make the mistake of switching Mayday at the end from Bond’s nemesis to his accomplice, depriving us of a slam-bang fight to the finish between the two (I suppose gentleman Bond isn’t allowed to kill women, even a monster like Mayday)…[The film] lacks the flamboyance of earlier Bond films, and has a terrible slapstick chase sequence in San Francisco, but overall it’s fast-paced, fairly enjoyable, and a worthy entry in the series.” Also among the more positive reviews was Movie Freaks 365's Kyle Bell: "Good ol' Roger gave it his best. ... Whether you can get past the absurdity of the storyline, you can't really deny that it has stunning stunt work and lots of action. It's an entertaining movie that could have been better."
. It was available for the ZX Spectrum
, Amstrad CPC
, Commodore 64
, Oric 1 and Oric Atmos, and MSX
. The second, titled James Bond 007: A View to a Kill was a text-based
video game for DOS
and Apple II computers. It was developed by Angelsoft, Inc. and published by Mindscape Inc.
The film was loosely adapted into a series of four Find Your Fate adventure game books, Win, Place, or Die, Strike it Deadly, Programmed for Danger, and Barracuda Run, which were released in 1985.
May Day was a playable multiplayer character in the 1997 and 2000 video games GoldenEye 007 and The World Is Not Enough
, for the Nintendo 64
and both N64 and PlayStation
respectively. In the 2002 game Nightfire, May Day and Max Zorin also appears as bots
. Other references include Nikolai Diavolo, a character in the 2004 game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing
, claiming Zorin to be his mentor and friend. In GoldenEye: Rogue Agent
, a multiplayer level is the summit of the Golden Gate Bridge, including the Zorin blimp, which would fire on players when activated. Players are also able to climb the suspension cables (similar to the events of the film).
Spy film
The spy film genre deals with the subject of fictional espionage, either in a realistic way or as a basis for fantasy . Many novels in the spy fiction genre have been adapted as films, including works by John Buchan, John Le Carré, Ian Fleming and Len Deighton...
of the James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
series
James Bond (film series)
The James Bond film series is a British series of motion pictures based on the fictional character of MI6 agent James Bond , who originally appeared in a series of books by Ian Fleming. Earlier films were based on Fleming's novels and short stories, followed later by films with original storylines...
, and the seventh and last to star Roger Moore
Roger Moore
Sir Roger George Moore KBE , is an English actor, perhaps best known for portraying British secret agent James Bond in seven films from 1973 to 1985. He also portrayed Simon Templar in the long-running British television series The Saint.-Early life:Moore was born in Stockwell, London...
as the fictional
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
MI6
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
agent James Bond
James Bond (character)
Royal Navy Commander James Bond, CMG, RNVR is a fictional character created by journalist and novelist Ian Fleming in 1953. He is the main protagonist of the James Bond series of novels, films, comics and video games...
. Although the title is adapted from Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...
's short story "From a View to a Kill", the film is the fourth Bond film after The Spy Who Loved Me
The Spy Who Loved Me (film)
The Spy Who Loved Me is a spy film, the tenth film in the James Bond series, and the third to star Roger Moore as the fictional secret agent James Bond. It was directed by Lewis Gilbert and the screenplay was written by Christopher Wood and Richard Maibaum...
, Moonraker
Moonraker (film)
Moonraker is the eleventh spy film in the James Bond series, and the fourth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The third and final film in the series to be directed by Lewis Gilbert, it co-stars Lois Chiles, Michael Lonsdale, Corinne Clery, and Richard Kiel...
and Octopussy
Octopussy
Octopussy is the thirteenth entry in the James Bond series, and the sixth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The film's title is taken from a short story in Ian Fleming's 1966 short story collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights...
to have an entirely original screenplay. In A View to a Kill, Bond is pitted against Max Zorin
Max Zorin
Max Zorin is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the James Bond film A View to a Kill. He was portrayed by Academy Award winner Christopher Walken...
, who plans to destroy California's Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
.
The film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli
Albert R. Broccoli
Albert Romolo Broccoli, CBE , nicknamed "Cubby", was an American film producer, who made more than 40 motion pictures throughout his career, most of them in the United Kingdom, and often filmed at Pinewood Studios. Co-founder of Danjaq, LLC and EON Productions, Broccoli is most notable as the...
and Michael G. Wilson
Michael G. Wilson
Michael Gregg Wilson, OBE is the producer and screenwriter of many modern James Bond movies.-Background:Wilson was born in New York City, New York, the son of Dana and actor Lewis Wilson. His father was the first actor to play the DC Comics character Batman in live action, which he did in the...
, who also wrote the screenplay with Richard Maibaum
Richard Maibaum
Richard Maibaum was an American film producer, playwright and screenwriter best known for his adaptations of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels....
. It was the third James Bond film to be directed by John Glen, and the last to feature Lois Maxwell
Lois Maxwell
Lois Maxwell was a Canadian actress.Maxwell began her film career in the late 1940s, and won a Golden Globe Award for the New Actress of the Year for her performance in That Hagen Girl...
as Miss Moneypenny
Miss Moneypenny
Jane Moneypenny, better known as Miss Moneypenny, is a fictional character in the James Bond novels and films. She is secretary to M, who is Bond's boss and head of the British Secret Service...
.
Despite being a commercial success, with the Duran Duran
Duran Duran
Duran Duran are an English band, formed in Birmingham in 1978. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and a leading band in the MTV-driven "Second British Invasion" of the United States...
theme song
A View to a Kill (song)
"A View to a Kill" is the thirteenth single by Duran Duran, released in May 1985.It was a stand-alone single, created for the James Bond movie A View to a Kill, and it remains the only James Bond theme song to have reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100; it also made it to #2 for 3 weeks on the UK...
performing well in the charts and earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Song, A View to a Kill got a mixed reception by critics and was disliked by Roger Moore himself due to his age. Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including Joe Dirt, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New...
, however, was praised for portraying a "classic Bond villain".
Plot
James Bond, MI6 agent 007 and sometimes simply "007", is sent to Siberia to locate the body of 003 and recover a microchipIntegrated circuit
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit is an electronic circuit manufactured by the patterned diffusion of trace elements into the surface of a thin substrate of semiconductor material...
. He is ambushed but flees in a submarine built to resemble an iceberg
Iceberg
An iceberg is a large piece of ice from freshwater that has broken off from a snow-formed glacier or ice shelf and is floating in open water. It may subsequently become frozen into pack ice...
. Q
Q (James Bond)
Q is a fictional character in the James Bond novels and films. Q , like M, is a job title rather than a name. He is the head of Q Branch , the fictional research and development division of the British Secret Service...
analyses the microchip, establishing it to be a copy of a microchip designed to withstand an electromagnetic pulse
Electromagnetic pulse
An electromagnetic pulse is a burst of electromagnetic radiation. The abrupt pulse of electromagnetic radiation usually results from certain types of high energy explosions, especially a nuclear explosion, or from a suddenly fluctuating magnetic field...
made by government contractor Zorin Industries.
Bond visits Ascot Racecourse
Ascot Racecourse
Ascot Racecourse is a famous English racecourse, located in the small town of Ascot, Berkshire, used for thoroughbred horse racing. It is one of the leading racecourses in the United Kingdom, hosting 9 of the UK's 32 annual Group 1 races...
to observe the company's owner, Max Zorin. Zorin's horse wins a race but proves hard to control. Sir Godfrey Tibbett, a horse trainer and MI6 agent, believes Zorin's horse was drugged, although tests proved negative. Through Tibbett, Bond meets French private detective Achille Aubergine and Aubergine informs Bond that Zorin is holding an horse sale later in the month. However, during their dinner at the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
, Aubergine is assassinated by Zorin's mysterious bodyguard, May Day, who jumps off of the tower with a parachute. Bond chases, but fails to apprehend her.
Bond and Tibbett travel to Chantilly, France
Chantilly, Oise
Chantilly is a small city in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune in the department of Oise.It is in the metropolitan area of Paris 38.4 km...
to stay at Zorin's estate. Bond is puzzled by a woman who rebuffs him and finds out that Zorin has paid her a very large cheque. At night, Bond and Tibbett break into Zorin's laboratory and learn that he is implanting drug-releasing microchips in his horses. Their intrusion is discovered and May Day assassinates Tibbett. Zorin identifies Bond and tries to have him killed too, but 007 survives.
General Gogol
General Gogol
General Anatol Alexis Gogol is a fictional character in the James Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, and The Living Daylights. In the films, he is the head of the KGB. In his final appearance in The Living Daylights, he has transferred from...
of the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
confronts Zorin for murdering Bond without permission as Zorin was trained and financed by the KGB, but he has now gone rogue
Renegade
- Games :*Command & Conquer: Renegade, a 2002 first-person shooter video game*Renegade , a 1986 video game*Renegade Legion, a 1990 board game series including the video game Renegade: the Battle for Jacob's Star...
. Zorin unveils to a group of investors his plan to destroy Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
to gain a monopoly in the microchip market.
007 goes to San Francisco
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
where he learns from CIA agent Chuck Lee that Zorin is the product of medical experimentation
Nazi human experimentation
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners by the Nazi German regime in its concentration camps mainly in the early 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Prisoners were coerced into participating: they did not willingly volunteer and there...
with steroids performed by a Nazi, now Zorin's henchman Dr. Carl Mortner, who took refuge in the Soviet Union after World War II. He then investigates an oil rig owned by Zorin. While recording conversations there, he finds KGB agent Pola Ivanova trying to blow up the rig, but her partner is caught and murdered. Ivanova and Bond escape together. She tries to steal his recording, but then finds out that Bond had switched tapes. Bond tracks down the woman Zorin attempted to pay off, State Geologist Stacey Sutton, whose family oil company Zorin has been trying to buy. Posing as a journalist, he rescues her from Zorin henchmen and the two attempt to steal documents about Zorin's plans from the San Francisco City Hall
San Francisco City Hall
San Francisco City Hall, re-opened in 1915, in its open space area in the city's Civic Center, is a Beaux-Arts monument to the City Beautiful movement that epitomized the high-minded American Renaissance of the 1880s to 1917. The structure's dome is the fifth largest in the world...
.
Zorin arrives and kills the chief Geologist with Bond's gun, then sets the building on fire in order to frame Bond for the murder and kill him. Bond and Sutton escape from the fire, but when the police try to arrest Bond, they escape in a fire engine.
Bond and Sutton then infiltrate Zorin's mine, discovering his plot to detonate explosives beneath the lakes along the Hayward Fault
Hayward Fault Zone
The Hayward Fault Zone is a geologic fault zone capable of generating significantly destructive earthquakes. This strike-slip fault is about long, situated mainly along the western base of the hills on the east side of San Francisco Bay...
and the San Andreas Fault
San Andreas Fault
The San Andreas Fault is a continental strike-slip fault that runs a length of roughly through California in the United States. The fault's motion is right-lateral strike-slip...
, which will cause them to flood. A larger bomb is also on site in the mine to destroy a "geological lock" that prevents the two faults from moving at the same time. Zorin and his security chief Scarpine flood the mines and murder the mine workers.
Sutton escapes while Bond fights May Day; when she realises Zorin abandoned her, she helps Bond remove the larger bomb, putting the device onto a handcar and pushing it out of the mine. May Day stays on the car to hold the faulty brake lever, sacrificing herself as the bomb explodes.
Zorin, who had escaped in his airship with Scarpine and Mortner, abducts Sutton. Bond grabs hold of the mooring rope as the airship ascends. Zorin tries to kill Bond by flying him into the Transamerica Pyramid
Transamerica Pyramid
The Transamerica Pyramid is the tallest skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline and one of its most iconic. Although the building no longer houses the headquarters of the Transamerica Corporation, it is still strongly associated with the company and is depicted in the company's logo...
, then the Golden Gate Bridge
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, the structure links the city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to...
, but Bond manages to moor the airship to the bridge framework. Stacey attacks Zorin and in the fracas, Mortner and Scarpine are temporarily knocked out. Stacey flees and joins Bond, but Zorin attacks them with an axe: Bond sends Zorin falling to his death. Mortner also attacks Bond, but Bond escapes, blowing up the airship, killing Mortner and Scarpine.
Cast
- Roger MooreRoger MooreSir Roger George Moore KBE , is an English actor, perhaps best known for portraying British secret agent James Bond in seven films from 1973 to 1985. He also portrayed Simon Templar in the long-running British television series The Saint.-Early life:Moore was born in Stockwell, London...
as James BondJames Bond (character)Royal Navy Commander James Bond, CMG, RNVR is a fictional character created by journalist and novelist Ian Fleming in 1953. He is the main protagonist of the James Bond series of novels, films, comics and video games...
: British Secret Service agent. - Christopher WalkenChristopher WalkenChristopher Walken is an American stage and screen actor. He has appeared in more than 100 movies and television shows, including Joe Dirt, Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, The Prophecy trilogy, The Dogs of War, Sleepy Hollow, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, A View to a Kill, At Close Range, King of New...
as Max ZorinMax ZorinMax Zorin is a fictional character and the main antagonist in the James Bond film A View to a Kill. He was portrayed by Academy Award winner Christopher Walken...
: Main antagonist. A microchip industrialist planning to destroy the Silicon Valley in an earthquake and gain a monopoly in the market. - Tanya RobertsTanya RobertsTanya Roberts is an American actress best known for her roles in Charlie's Angels, The Beastmaster, A View to a Kill, Sheena and That '70s Show. Roberts was groomed as a Hollywood sex symbol during the early 1980s.- Early life :Blum was born in The Bronx, New York City, of Irish and Jewish descent...
as Stacey SuttonStacey SuttonStacey Sutton is a fictional character in the James Bond film A View to a Kill. She is played by actress Tanya Roberts.-Biography:Sutton was the granddaughter of an oil tycoon in California. After her grandfather's death, Sutton oil was taken over by billionaire Max Zorin, who gave Sutton a cheque...
: The granddaughter of an oil tycoon whose company is taken over by Zorin. - Grace JonesGrace JonesGrace Jones is a Jamaican-American singer, model and actress.Jones secured a record deal with Island Records in 1977, which resulted in a string of dance-club hits. In the late 1970s, she adapted the emerging electronic music style and adopted a severe, androgynous look with square-cut hair and...
as May Day: Zorin's lover and chief henchwoman. She also possesses superhuman strengthSuperhuman strengthSuperhuman strength, also called superstrength, super-strength, or super strength, is an ability commonly employed in fiction. It is the ability for a character to be stronger than humanly possible...
. - Patrick MacneePatrick MacneePatrick Macnee is an English actor, best known for his role as the secret agent John Steed in the series The Avengers.-Early life:...
as Sir Godfrey Tibbett: Bond's ally who helps him enter Zorin's villa and stable. - Patrick BauchauPatrick BauchauPatrick Nicolas Jean Sixte Ghislain Bauchau is a Belgian actor.-Early life:Bauchau was born in Brussels, the son of Mary , a Russian-born school administrator and publisher, and Henry Bauchau, a school administrator, publisher, writer, and psychoanalyst who served as an officer in the Belgian...
as Scarpine: Zorin's loyal associate. - David YipDavid YipDavid Yip is an English actor.Yip, of Asian and English descent, was born in Liverpool and trained at East 15 Acting School, London...
as Chuck Lee, a CIA agent who assists Bond and Sutton. - Willoughby GrayWilloughby GrayWilloughby Gray was an English actor of stage and screen born in London ....
as Dr. Carl Mortner: A former Nazi scientist who designs Zorin's microchips for carrying narcotic drugs (in the German release version, he is a Polish communist). - Fiona FullertonFiona FullertonFiona Elizabeth Fullerton is a Nigerian-born British actress.She is perhaps best known for her role as KGB spy Pola Ivanova in the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill and as Alice in the 1972 film Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.Fullerton made her film debut in 1969 with a role in Run Wild, Run...
as Pola Ivanova; a KGB agent sent by Gogol to spy on Zorin. - Manning Redwood as Bob Conley: Max Zorin's chief mining engineer who handles Zorin's oil interests on the East Coast of the United States.
- Alison DoodyAlison Doody-Early life:The youngest of three children, she was born in Dublin, Ireland. Her mother, Joan, was a beauty therapist, and her father, Patrick, worked in the property business and farmed...
as Jenny Flex: One of May Day's assistants who is often seen with Pan Ho. - Robert Brown as MM (James Bond)M is a fictional character in Ian Fleming's James Bond series, as well as the films in the Bond franchise. The head of MI6 and Bond's superior, M has been portrayed by three actors in the official Bond film series: Bernard Lee, Robert Brown and since 1995 by Judi Dench. Background =Ian Fleming...
: The head of the Secret Intelligence Service - Desmond LlewelynDesmond LlewelynDesmond Wilkinson Llewelyn was a Welsh actor, famous for playing Q in 17 of the James Bond films between 1963 and 1999.-Early life:...
as QQ (James Bond)Q is a fictional character in the James Bond novels and films. Q , like M, is a job title rather than a name. He is the head of Q Branch , the fictional research and development division of the British Secret Service...
: An MI6 officer in charge of the research and development branch. He provides Bond with unique vehicle and gadgets for battling Zorin. - Lois MaxwellLois MaxwellLois Maxwell was a Canadian actress.Maxwell began her film career in the late 1940s, and won a Golden Globe Award for the New Actress of the Year for her performance in That Hagen Girl...
as Miss MoneypennyMiss MoneypennyJane Moneypenny, better known as Miss Moneypenny, is a fictional character in the James Bond novels and films. She is secretary to M, who is Bond's boss and head of the British Secret Service...
: M's secretary. - Geoffrey KeenGeoffrey KeenGeoffrey Keen was an English actor who appeared in supporting roles in many famous films.-Early life:Keen was born in Wallingford, Oxfordshire, England, the son of stage actor Malcolm Keen. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School. He then joined the Little Repertory Theatre in Bristol for whom...
as Fredrick Gray: The British Minister of Defence. - Walter GotellWalter GotellWalter Gotell was a German actor, known for his role as General Gogol, head of the KGB, in the James Bond film series.Gotell was born in Bonn, Germany; his family emigrated to the United Kingdom after the Nazis came to power...
as General Gogol: The head of the KGBKGBThe KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
. - Papillon Soo SooPapillon Soo SooPapillon Soo Soo is a British model and actress, born to French and Chinese parents.-Career:Papillon Soo Soo appeared as Pan Ho in the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill, the first of three films that she appeared in.She is also well known for playing the role of the Da Nang hooker who uttered...
as Pan Ho: One of May Day's assistants. - Daniel BenzaliDaniel BenzaliDaniel Benzali is a Brazilian-American stage, television and film actor.-Biography:Benzali was born in Rio de Janeiro to Brazilian Jewish parents...
as W. G. Howe: A feeble-minded geologist working at San Francisco City Hall. - Dolph LundgrenDolph LundgrenDolph Lundgren is a Swedish actor, director, and martial artist. He belongs to a generation of film actors who epitomise the movie action hero stereotype including Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme.A graduate in chemical...
in an early, minor role as Venz, one of General Gogol's KGB Henchmen.
Maud Adams
Maud Adams
Maud Solveig Christina Wikström , known professionally as Maud Adams, is a Swedish actress, known for her roles as two different Bond girls: in The Man with the Golden Gun , and as the title character in Octopussy .-Early life:Adams was born Maud Solveig Christina Wikström in Luleå, Sweden, the...
is said to be visible as an extra in one of the Fisherman's Wharf scenes; in the DVD documentary Inside A View to a Kill, Adams explains that she was visiting her friend Moore on location and ended up in the crowd, but admits she is unable to actually see herself in the film; In the same documentary, director John Glen confirms that Adams appears as an extra, but does not specify where she is visible. The appearance remained a mystery for years until she was identified as standing in the background during one of the Fisherman's Wharf scenes. As a result, Adams appears in three Bond films, previously in The Man with the Golden Gun
The Man with the Golden Gun (film)
The Man with the Golden Gun is the ninth spy film in the James Bond series and the second to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond...
in 1974 and in Octopussy in 1983.
Production
A View to a Kill was produced by Albert R. BroccoliAlbert R. Broccoli
Albert Romolo Broccoli, CBE , nicknamed "Cubby", was an American film producer, who made more than 40 motion pictures throughout his career, most of them in the United Kingdom, and often filmed at Pinewood Studios. Co-founder of Danjaq, LLC and EON Productions, Broccoli is most notable as the...
and Michael G. Wilson
Michael G. Wilson
Michael Gregg Wilson, OBE is the producer and screenwriter of many modern James Bond movies.-Background:Wilson was born in New York City, New York, the son of Dana and actor Lewis Wilson. His father was the first actor to play the DC Comics character Batman in live action, which he did in the...
. Wilson also co-authored the screenplay along with Richard Maibaum
Richard Maibaum
Richard Maibaum was an American film producer, playwright and screenwriter best known for his adaptations of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels....
. At the end of Octopussy
Octopussy
Octopussy is the thirteenth entry in the James Bond series, and the sixth to star Roger Moore as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. The film's title is taken from a short story in Ian Fleming's 1966 short story collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights...
during the "James Bond Will Return" sequence, it listed the next film as "From a View to a Kill", the name of the original short story; however, the title was later changed.
When a company with a name similar to Zorin (the Zoran Corporation) was discovered in the United States, a disclaimer was added to the start of the film affirming that Zorin was not related to any real-life company. This is the first Bond film to have a disclaimer (The Living Daylights
The Living Daylights
The Living Daylights is the fifteenth entry in the James Bond series and the first to star Timothy Dalton as the fictional MI6 agent 007. The film's title is taken from Ian Fleming's short story, "The Living Daylights"...
had a disclaimer about the use of the Red Cross.)
Casting
Early publicity for A View to a Kill in 1984 included an announcement that David BowieDavid Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
would play Zorin. He turned it down, saying, "I didn't want to spend five months watching my stunt double fall off cliffs." The role was offered to Sting and finally to Christopher Walken.
Dolph Lundgren
Dolph Lundgren
Dolph Lundgren is a Swedish actor, director, and martial artist. He belongs to a generation of film actors who epitomise the movie action hero stereotype including Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme.A graduate in chemical...
has a brief appearance as one of General Gogol
General Gogol
General Anatol Alexis Gogol is a fictional character in the James Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View to a Kill, and The Living Daylights. In the films, he is the head of the KGB. In his final appearance in The Living Daylights, he has transferred from...
's KGB agents. Lundgren, who was Grace Jones
Grace Jones
Grace Jones is a Jamaican-American singer, model and actress.Jones secured a record deal with Island Records in 1977, which resulted in a string of dance-club hits. In the late 1970s, she adapted the emerging electronic music style and adopted a severe, androgynous look with square-cut hair and...
's boyfriend, was visiting her on set when one day an extra was missing so the director John Glen then asked him if he wanted to get a shot at it. Lundgren appears during the confrontation between Gogol and Zorin at the racetrack, standing several steps below Gogol.
Filming
The film was shot at Pinewood StudiosPinewood Studios
Pinewood Studios is a major British film studio situated in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, approximately west of central London. The studios have played host to many productions over the years from huge blockbuster films to television shows to commercials to pop promos.The purchase of Shepperton...
in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, France and the United States.
Several French landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
, its Jules Verne Restaurant and the Château de Chantilly
Château de Chantilly
The Château de Chantilly is a historic château located in the town of Chantilly, France. It comprises two attached buildings; the Grand Château, destroyed during the French Revolution and rebuilt in the 1870s, and the Petit Château which was built around 1560 for Anne de Montmorency...
were filmed.
The rest of the major filming was done in the Fisherman's Wharf
Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, California
Fisherman's Wharf is a neighborhood and popular tourist attraction in San Francisco, California. It roughly encompasses the northern waterfront area of San Francisco from Ghirardelli Square or Van Ness Avenue east to Pier 35 or Kearny Street...
and the Golden Gate Bridge
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, the structure links the city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to...
in San Francisco. The Lefty O'Doul
Lefty O'Doul
Francis Joseph "Lefty" O'Doul was an American Major League Baseball player who went on to become an extraordinarily successful manager in the minor leagues, and also a vital figure in the establishment of professional baseball in Japan.-Player:Born in San Francisco, California, O'Doul began his...
Bridge was featured in the fire engine chase scene. The horse racing scenes were shot at Ascot Racecourse
Ascot Racecourse
Ascot Racecourse is a famous English racecourse, located in the small town of Ascot, Berkshire, used for thoroughbred horse racing. It is one of the leading racecourses in the United Kingdom, hosting 9 of the UK's 32 annual Group 1 races...
.
The production of A View to a Kill began on 23 June 1984 in Iceland, where the second unit filmed the pre-title sequence. On 27 June 1984, several leftover canisters of gasoline used during filming of Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
's Legend
Legend (film)
Legend is a 1985 fantasy film released by Universal Pictures, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Cruise, Mia Sara, and Tim Curry. Though not a very notable success when first released, it received a single Academy Award nomination for Best Makeup, and since its initial release, has developed...
caused the Pinewood Studios' "007 Stage" to be burnt to the ground. Broccoli arranged its reconstruction which was done by the end of July 1984. The soundstage was renamed "Albert R. Broccoli's 007 Stage". The filming of A View to a Kill continued when Roger Moore rejoined the main unit at Pinewood on 1 August 1984. The crew then departed for shooting the horse-racing scenes at Royal Ascot Racecourse. The scene in which Bond and Sutton enter the mineshaft was then filmed in a waterlogged quarry near Staines
Staines
Staines is a Thames-side town in the Spelthorne borough of Surrey and Greater London Urban Area, as well as the London Commuter Belt of South East England. It is a suburban development within the western bounds of the M25 motorway and located 17 miles west south-west of Charing Cross in...
and the Amberley Chalk Pits Museum in West Sussex.
In Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
it was planned that two stunt men, B.J. Worth and Don Caldvedt, would help film two takes of a parachute drop off a (clearly visible) platform that extended from a top edge of the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is a puddle iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris. Built in 1889, it has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world...
. However, sufficient footage was obtained from Worth's jump, so Caldvedt was told he would not be performing his own jump. Caldvedt, unhappy at not being able to perform the jump, parachuted off the tower without authorisation from the City of Paris. He was subsequently sacked by the production team for jeopardising the continuation of filming in the city.
Airship Industries
Airship Industries
Airship Industries was a British manufacturer of modern non-rigid airships active under that name from 1980 to 1990 and controlled for part of that time by Alan Bond. A predecessor company, Aerospace Developments, had been founded in 1971, and a successor, Hybrid Air Vehicles, remains active...
managed a major marketing coup with the inclusion of their Skyship 500 series airship in the film. At the time Airship Industries were producing a fleet of ships which were recognisable over many capitals of the world offering tours, or advertising sponsorship deals. As all Bond films have included the most current technology, this included the lighter than air interest.
The ship used in the climax was a Skyship 500, then on a promotional tour of Los Angeles after its participation in the opening ceremony of the 1984 Olympic Games
1984 Summer Olympics
The 1984 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXIII Olympiad, was an international multi-sport event held in Los Angeles, California, United States in 1984...
. At that time, it had "WELCOME" painted across the side of the hull, but the word was replaced by "ZORIN INDUSTRIES" for the film. During the 1984 season, the ship was painted green and red as a part of Fujifilm
Fujifilm
is a multinational photography and imaging company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.Fujifilm's principal activities are the development, production, sale and servicing of color photographic film, digital cameras, photofinishing equipment, color paper, photofinishing chemicals, medical imaging...
's blimp fleet; it was subsequently coloured white. In real life, inflating it would take up to 24 hours, but during the film it was shown to take two minutes.
Music
The soundtrack was composed by John BarryJohn Barry (composer)
John Barry Prendergast, OBE was an English conductor and composer of film music. He is best known for composing the soundtracks for 12 of the James Bond films between 1962 and 1987...
, and published by EMI/Capitol. The theme song, "A View to a Kill
A View to a Kill (song)
"A View to a Kill" is the thirteenth single by Duran Duran, released in May 1985.It was a stand-alone single, created for the James Bond movie A View to a Kill, and it remains the only James Bond theme song to have reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100; it also made it to #2 for 3 weeks on the UK...
", was written by Barry and Duran Duran
Duran Duran
Duran Duran are an English band, formed in Birmingham in 1978. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and a leading band in the MTV-driven "Second British Invasion" of the United States...
, and performed by the band. It has three different versions, of which the two made by Duran Duran make no reference to the James Bond theme; some of its notes are mixed, while "May Day Jumps" is the only song of the film that features the original theme. Barry's composition On Her Majesty's Secret Service was modified for use in the songs "Snow Job", "He's Dangerous" and "Golden Gate Fight" of A View to a Kill. "A View to a Kill" was second in the British charts and first in the American charts, thus becoming the peak song in the James Bond series.
Duran Duran was chosen to do the song after bassist John Taylor (a lifelong Bond fan) approached producer Cubby Broccoli at a party, and somewhat drunkenly asked "When are you going to get someone decent to do one of your theme songs?"
During the opening sequence, a cover version of the 1965 Beach Boys
The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American rock band, formed in 1961 in Hawthorne, California. The group was initially composed of brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, The Beach Boys signed to Capitol Records in 1962...
song "California Girls
California Girls
"California Girls" is a song by American rock band The Beach Boys, featured on their ninth studio album Summer Days . Written by band-members Brian Wilson and Mike Love, the song features contrasting verse-chorus form...
", performed by Gidea Park with Adrian Baker
Adrian Baker
Adrian Baker is an English singer, songwriter, and record producer.-Career:Baker made his debut as a singer on Magnet Records/Epic Records in the United Kingdom. In 1975, he released his first solo album, Into a Dream...
(a tribute band), is used during a chase in which Bond snowboards; it has been suggested that this teaser sequence helped initiate interest in snowboarding
Snowboarding
Snowboarding is a sport that involves descending a slope that is covered with snow on a snowboard attached to a rider's feet using a special boot set onto mounted binding. The development of snowboarding was inspired by skateboarding, sledding, surfing and skiing. It was developed in the U.S.A...
.
Reception
A View to a Kill was the first Bond film with a premiere outside the UK, opening on 22 May 1985 at San Francisco’s Palace of Fine ArtsPalace of Fine Arts
The Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, is a monumental structure originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in order to exhibit works of art presented there. One of only a few surviving structures from the Exposition, it is the only one still...
. The British premiere was held on 12 June 1985 at the Odeon Leicester Square Cinema in London. The film was first broadcast on British television on 31 January 1990. It achieved a box office collection of US $152.4 million worldwide with 50.3 million in the United States alone. On its opening weekend in the US it earned $10.6 million.
Although its box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
reception was excellent, the film's critical response was mixed. Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
currently gives A View to a Kill a 39% "Rotten" rating, which is the lowest rating for the official Bond films on the website. One of the most common criticisms was that Roger Moore's age was 57 - and had visibly aged in the two years that had passed since Octopussy; Sean Connery
Sean Connery
Sir Thomas Sean Connery , better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globes Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930), better known as Sean Connery, is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy...
declared that "Bond should be played by an actor 35, 33 years old. I’m too old. Roger’s too old, too!". Moore has also stated A View to a Kill as his least favourite film and mentioned that he was mortified to find out that he was older than his female co-star's mother. He was quoted saying "I was horrified on the last Bond I did. Whole slews of sequences where Christopher Walken was machine-gunning hundreds of people. I said 'That wasn't Bond, those weren't Bond films.' It stopped being what they were all about. You didn't dwell on the blood and the brains spewing all over the place". In a December 2007 interview, Roger Moore remarked, "I was only about four hundred years too old for the part."
The film was mentioned by Brian J. Arthurs of The Beach Reporter as the worst film of the Bond series. C. Pea of the Time Out Film Guide said, "Grace Jones is badly wasted." Norman Wilner of MSN
MSN
MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...
chose it as the worst Bond film, while IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
picked as the fourth worst, and Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
as the fifth worst.
Danny Peary
Danny Peary
Danny Peary is an American film critic and sports writer. He has written many books on cinema and sports-related topics.-Biography:...
had mixed feelings about A View to a Kill but was generally complimentary: “Despite what reviewers automatically reported, [Moore] looks trimmer and more energetic than in some of the previous efforts…I wish Bond had a few more of his famous gadgets on hand, but his actions scenes are exciting and some of the stunt work is spectacular. Walken’s the first Bond villain who is not so much an evil person as a crazed neurotic. I find him more memorable than some of the more recent Bond foes…Unfortunately, the filmmakers – who ruined villain Jaws by making him a nice guy in Moonraker – make the mistake of switching Mayday at the end from Bond’s nemesis to his accomplice, depriving us of a slam-bang fight to the finish between the two (I suppose gentleman Bond isn’t allowed to kill women, even a monster like Mayday)…[The film] lacks the flamboyance of earlier Bond films, and has a terrible slapstick chase sequence in San Francisco, but overall it’s fast-paced, fairly enjoyable, and a worthy entry in the series.” Also among the more positive reviews was Movie Freaks 365's Kyle Bell: "Good ol' Roger gave it his best. ... Whether you can get past the absurdity of the storyline, you can't really deny that it has stunning stunt work and lots of action. It's an entertaining movie that could have been better."
Appearances in other media
A View to a Kill was adapted into two video games in 1985. The first, titled A View to a Kill, was published by DomarkDomark
Domark Software was a video games software house based in the United Kingdom. The name was derived from the given names of its founders, Dominic Wheatley and Mark Strachan...
. It was available for the ZX Spectrum
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd...
, Amstrad CPC
Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad CPC is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, where it successfully established itself primarily in the United Kingdom,...
, Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
, Oric 1 and Oric Atmos, and MSX
MSX
MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation...
. The second, titled James Bond 007: A View to a Kill was a text-based
Text-based
Usually used in reference to a computer application, a text-based application is one whose primary input and output are based on text rather than graphics or sound. This does not mean that text-based applications do not have graphics or sound, just that the graphics or sound are secondary to the...
video game for DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
and Apple II computers. It was developed by Angelsoft, Inc. and published by Mindscape Inc.
Mindscape Group
Mindscape is an international software publishing company, previously part of The Learning Company. They are now affiliated with EA . As of 2004, the group has offices in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. It has an annual turnover of €38 million and employs 150 people. Mindscape...
The film was loosely adapted into a series of four Find Your Fate adventure game books, Win, Place, or Die, Strike it Deadly, Programmed for Danger, and Barracuda Run, which were released in 1985.
May Day was a playable multiplayer character in the 1997 and 2000 video games GoldenEye 007 and The World Is Not Enough
The World Is Not Enough (video game)
The World Is Not Enough is a 2000 first-person shooter video game based on the James Bond film of the same name. The game was published by Electronic Arts and released for the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation console systems in 2000. The Nintendo 64 version was developed by Eurocom and the PlayStation...
, for the Nintendo 64
Nintendo 64
The , often referred to as N64, was Nintendo′s third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in North America, March 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1997 in France and December 1997 in Brazil...
and both N64 and PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...
respectively. In the 2002 game Nightfire, May Day and Max Zorin also appears as bots
Computer game bot
A bot, most prominently in the first-person shooter types , is a type of weak AI expert system software which for each instance of the program controls a player in deathmatch, team deathmatch and/or cooperative human player. Computer bots may play against other bots and/or human players in unison,...
. Other references include Nikolai Diavolo, a character in the 2004 game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing
James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing
007: Everything or Nothing is a third-person shooter video game, where the player controls James Bond. Bond is modeled after and voiced by the former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan, making it his final performance for the character in game and film...
, claiming Zorin to be his mentor and friend. In GoldenEye: Rogue Agent
GoldenEye: Rogue Agent
GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is a 2004 action-adventure Science-Fiction First-Person Shooter video game, developed and published by Electronic Arts. Despite it is set in an alternate timeline of James Bond universe, the player takes the role of an ex-MI6 agent who is recruited by Auric Goldfinger, a...
, a multiplayer level is the summit of the Golden Gate Bridge, including the Zorin blimp, which would fire on players when activated. Players are also able to climb the suspension cables (similar to the events of the film).