rw2516

The stories were filmed out of order. Bond and Blofeld actually meet for the first time in OHMSS, which follows the novel almost religiously. In this case you are not asked to disregard the previous movie, but rather the flawed YOLT is asking you to disregard the superior movie that follows it.
If RAIDERS conflicted TEMPLE OF DOOM which takes place first.

rennervision

I've always felt Die Hard with a Vengeance did this. In Die Hard 2, McClane is a semi-famous superhero happily reconciled with his wife and now working for the LAPD. (And working there makes absolutely no sense by the way, since he didn't really endear himself to the police chief.) When the third one starts, he's once again a loser separated from his wife and back with NYPD. (And arguably, starts off as a much better sequel because it seems to better understand McClane's character.)

The other one I can think of is Rambo. When Rambo II ended, Rambo was done with war and walked away to live the life of a recluse somewhere in Thailand. In Rambo III, he trades in this anonymous existence to rescue Colonel Trautman in Afghanistan and in so doing finds new meaning in his life. The fourth movie, though, pretends like Rambo III never happened. Once again he's back in Thailand (did he make a special trip there again just to settle down and catch snakes?), living day-by-day trying to forget his life and his past when he gets reluctantly pulled into the civil war conflict in Burma. This was a wise direction for the series - as this was a much better, believable conclusion compared to the rather ridiculous adventure set in Afghanistan.

rennervision

The other interesting thing about this is the next movie, Diamonds are Forever, basically pretends like OHMSS never happened. (No doubt because OHMSS was not very successful initially and Lazenby was replaced by a returning Sean Connery.) It starts off in Japan with Bond looking for Blofeld as if the movie picked up right where YOLT left off. There's absolutely no mention of Bond's marriage to Tracy.

Then at some point the Bond series began to acknowledge OHMSS as canon and referenced his wife at times. Things really came full circle when the series instead started to pretend like DAF was the one that never happened. In For Your Eyes Only, Blofeld is back to looking like he did at the end of OHMSS - still with the injuries he sustained from his bobsled fight with Bond in that film.

Guru Askew

Not so. There are references to Tracy in License to Kill and The World is Not Enough. The actor who played Leiter in a Moore film returned as Leiter in a Dalton film (David Hedison in LALD/LTK) and of course you have a ton of references in Die Another Day. Plus there's Q, M, Gogol and the defense minister who appeared in TLD with Dalton after appearing in 5 consecutive Moore films.

Wait, have you actually seen the Dalton and Brosnan films?

rw2516

I believe the filmmakers were taking the position that OHMSS never happened and that Diamonds continues after YOLT. The best way to make sense of it:

OHMSS-directly follows THUNDERBALL. Bond is seeking Blofeld for the SPECTRE plot in THUNDERBALL. Bond and Blofeld meet for first time. As in the novels. There is nothing in the story to suggest YOLT has happen yet.
YOLT-There is nothing in the film to contradict OHMSS already happening(except no mention of Tracy, which is moot because she isn't referenced in DAF either). When Bond and Blofeld come face to face nothing suggests they haven't already met. They recognized each other immediately.
DAF-begins with Bond hunting Blofeld for all previoius crimes. Nothing to contradict this. It's obvious throughout the film that Bond and Blofeld are previously familiar with each other.
For Your Eyes Only- In the pre-credits sequence, Blofeld is in wheelchair because of injuries suffered at end of DAF when Bond was crashing his escape pod all over the place.

Ash Ketchum

I haven't thought about any of this in about 40 years, but, yeah, they sure brushed all that off pretty quickly, didn't they? Of course, we didn't have the internet back then to ask all these questions and the reviewers of the time simply didn't give a shit since they were seeing tons of movies every week. Chances are the reviewers assigned to the sequels hadn't even SEEN the previous films in the series. A lot of the reviewers in the daily papers were completely clueless about popular cinema back then. I remember Vincent Canby (New York Times) wondering in his review of COTTON COMES TO HARLEM why the black audience was so confused about where their loyalties should lie. That's the villain they're cheering for! What's wrong with them? (I have the exact quote somewhere and it's pretty funny. It has special meaning to me because I was at the the exact same screening where Canby saw it. This was before advance critics' screenings became the norm.)

Groucho

Except that at the beginning of Diamonds Bond is seeking revenge on Blofeld, and the events of OHMSS are clearly referenced in the pre-credit sequence for "For Your Eyes Only".

Guru Askew

I chalk the OHMSS/YOLT discrepancy with Bond and Blofeld to the fact that the two films had different writers. Back then a screenwriter couldn't just marathon the previous 4-5 movies at home over the weekend before writing their adaptation. They would need to arrange screenings or request screenplays from the studio and there are several known instances of writers not reviewing the work of their predecessors, whether its the writers of the 5the 5th Planet of the Apes film declining screenings of the previous 4 to X-Files writers Morgan & Wong admittedly not watching the episodes in seasons 2 and 3 that they didn't work on (both of which caused continuity issues) to Steve Zaillian and Ridley Scott including a recurring character in Hannibal (that ended up being cut from the film but is present in the deleted scenes)that was deleted from the Silence of the Lambs screenplay. Similar situation: different screenwriter and director.

I don't think stuff like film-to-film continuity was on the radar of Hollywood in general before the 70s. I can't imagine Broccoli and Saltzman talking about reboots or canon or whatever. I just think that when you mix up the order of the books and go from the writer/director team of Gilbert/Dahl to Hunt/Maibaum its easy to see how they didn't have their facts straight re: the continuity. That is the most simple and obvious answer.

HellTrack

I don't see how Batman Returns contradicts anything from Batman. Sure the style is a bit different. He's changed or updated his technology.

I also don't see how Highlander 2 contradicts Highlander 1. The two different meeting stories can be easily explained by saying that when you're sent into the future, you lose your memory of that past. And how does Highlander 3 contradict anything?

rw2516

It is never stated that Bond is seeking revenge for Tracy, just that he's hunting Blofeld. He was obsessed with finding Blofeld in OHMSS also. The fact that he is hunting Blofeld on his own time at begging of DAF implies that he is seeking revenge, however, in OHMSS Bond also takes a leave of absence to pursue Blofeld on his own time after being officially relieved of the case. He even resigned over it, "Blofeld is a must with me".

Bond at Tracy's grave in For Your Eyes Only is a direct reference to OHMSS, but nothing implies it is directly after OHMSS, rather Bond visits the grave occasionally and Blofeld has been plotting revenge while Bond is off doing Live Let Die, Man Golden Gun, etc.

I remember something that fouls my earlier post of inserting OHMSS before YOLT. In YOLT Blofeld introduces himself to Bond, "My name is Ernst Stravo Blofeld" implying a first meet.

There could be multiple Blofelds, like multiple No. 2s on THE PRISONER. Maybe SPECTRE created multiple Blofelds with "The Blofeld Identity", like the CIA created multiple agents with the Jason Bourne identity.

UAIOE

Or they just made the movies in a different order than the books were written.

dhmac

At the very end of the closing credits of Thunderball, it originally said something like "James Bond will return in 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' " because that was the planned order of films when TB was filmed. But due to all the snow skiing scenes in OHMSS, they would have had to wait until the following winter in order to film it which would have delayed the next Bond film release by another year. So they decided to jump ahead to the next book in the series and started production on You Only Live Twice instead. This decision is when the discrepancy started.

Just thinking about that fact and the "what if they were simply willing to wait another year to release the next Bond film?" - a "what if" question that then would have most like had Sean Connery starring in a very different version of OHMSS. And then that movie would have been followed by a very different version of YOLT (starring ???).

Mike86

Nothing is really contradicted but stylistically and tonally Batman is completely different from Batman Returns if you ask me. Batman also isn't a steaming piece of shit.

The obvious answer to me is that the prequel trilogy is contradicted in many ways when compared original trilogy in Star Wars. Lucas basically butchered the originals to make them fit his "artistic vision" for the franchise on a whole.

writer106

When I saw the thread title, I immediately thought of horror movie sequels which several posters have mentioned notablly Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Nightmare on Elm Street.

jdslater1

The thing I would add to the Bond debate is his skills.

In certain films he knows how to defuse/disarm bombs or missiles and in others he doesn't.

This goes well with a theory I once heard which I like quite alot.
James Bond is just a name. M just selects the right agent for that mission, the next mission might be for a different agent.

Mike86

I don't really count horror films I guess. They're sort of in a different league than normal films and in a lot of them (particularly the big ones like Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.) real world rules don't really apply to begin with and especially as the sequels go on.

majorjoe23

Skyfall makes that theory impossible, though, since we get confirmation that James Bond is his real name.

resinrats

I always took Bond as each actor was in their own continuity. So the Connery Bond went through all his movies but the Moore Bond didn't experience Dr No, Gold Finger and the others. So Brosnan films ignore all pre GoldenEye films just as Craig's Bond ignores all those and is just starting out since they are brining in elements of past Bonds.

Mike86

Honestly that's one thing I wish Skyfall wouldn't have done. That theory made a lot of sense and made it a lot more plausible as to why Bond's look has changed so much over time and why he doesn't age throughout the series.

Mike86

I actually haven't thought too much about it but after reading that theory a while back it did make a lot of sense before Skyfall took a shit on it.

Jason

I think the new Bond is a reboot, even though it's never been explicitly stated.

Dr. DVD

I think Skyfall's purpose was to roundly establish that Casino Royale going forward is a new Bond series free of the events of the previous movies. Judi Dench as M was just an instance where they liked the job she did portraying the character, and felt she would be the best choice to start the reboot. It's just the character in a different reality. Also, it can be inferred that some version of the Goldfinger story occurred to necessitate the classic car. Granted, if Q sector came up with that in modern times they were using pretty dated technology, but still...the only way Bond could have done that mission in the 60s is if he is in fact, immortal. But then again, Connery was portraying Bond, and it was proven in Highlander that he was indeed immortal (no way a Spanish man would ever talk like a Scotsman). But he was also beheaded, but it was proven in Highlander 2 that he could be resurrected regardless due to the events of the Dread Planet Zeist, so maybe that's what happened..deary me I've gone all cross-eyed.

Anyhoo, I believe that the Bond movies from Dr. No to Die Another Day are a case where the Bond identity was passed from one agent to another. I also think that there is a possibility that the agent who took over the 007/Bond identity after YOLT was so scarred after what happened to Tracy that he most likely died seeking vengeance with a clouded mind. This necessitated the return of Connery's Bond.

mostaccioli

in diamonds are forever bond doesn't act like blofeld killed his wife.

Groucho

He's mad about something at the beginning, although we're not explicitly told what.

Mabuse

Monsters University: Showing the characters want to go to school and learn to be scare-ers and win the scare competition and get jobs scaring kids requires us to completely forget what we already know; that the whole first film is about how the power utility's use of childrens' screams is unethical and that the power of their laughter is 10x more powerful.