How can the Terminator possibly succeed at killing John Connor since he already hasn’t?

If you are going to tell a good story about time travel, you have to embrace the paradox.  You have to just accept that it doesn’t all make sense but if time travel were really possible, it wouldn’t all make sense.

If they can go back to the exact point in time they want to get some whales, why couldn’t they come back five days earlier so they wouldn’t be crippled by the probe?

Time travel is a conceit that allows us to bring one character from one time into another era, which can give us cool results or it can give us Kate and Leopold.  Often it is used precisely because of the problems it creates.

Looper was, cleverly enough, all about the problem of Time Travel.  Time Travel exists.  We know it is a really bad idea.  People do it anyway.  It turns out it was a really bad idea.

I’m simplifying just a bit.

Abraham Lincoln is a pretty clever guy.  When Bill and Ted bring him to the future, don’t you think he’ll figure out that he might want to skip the play?  

Dr. Who just embraces the paradox by saying, in essence, that paradoxes happen when you start traveling through time and if you don’t like it, you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.  It’s sort of a “let the buyer beware” philosophy.

What do you meant the same matter can’t occupy the same space?  Twenty years apart, not a single piece of matter that comes in contact would be the same!  Besides, wouldn’t they only occupy the same space if they could somehow merge with each other rather than bump into each other? Science!

In fact, I think it is the mess of time travel that makes it so compelling.  The main reason most time travel movies revel in the paradoxes is because the paradoxes are the most fun.  If the Borg can’t travel back in time to change history because they didn’t, you don’t have much of a story, do you?

Hey, that’s pretty cool!  It was Earth the whole time!  Hang on…how did they travel in time to begin with?

You can avoid the entire thing by making your Time Travel movie a comedy.  If your movie is called Hot Tub Time Machine, not too many people are going to complain about any paradoxes created (unless you’re me).  It’s about a hot tub that’s a time machine.  Get over it!

But if Marty manages to erase his own birth by ensuring his parents never go out, he’d never have been born so he couldn’t have prevented his parents from going out!

I like Time Travel and I like it when it’s done well.  I think that Looper is a fantastic film because it establishes rules and sticks to them.  On the other hand, how can Joe both kill and not kill himself?

Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey indeed!

When Marvin the Martian said “where’s the Kaboom?  There was supposed to be an Earth shattering Kaboom” in “Hare-way to the Stars,” it was funny.  When he says the same thing in this film, it feels kind of desperate.

Back in my youth, I fell in love with the Looney Toons on Saturday morning.  For 60 or 90 minutes, they would play the best of the classic cartoons.  A lot of them were shortened or they would splice together a couple of road runner cartoons to make a really long road runner cartoon in which Wile E. Coyote really got the shit kicked out of him.

For all those folks filled with nostalgia for shows like “Thundarr the Barbarian” or “Josie and the Pussycats,” I’m filled with nostalgia for those cartoons.  I watched some of the other Saturday morning cartoons but none of them really stuck with me.  Eventually, all I cared about was the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour.

I’d seen all of the cartoons at that point.  Most of them, anyway.

I never got tired of them.  I’m still not tired of them.  I could watch “Rabbit Seasoning” over and over and over again.

Tom and Jerry?  Just lame-ass versions of Tweety and Sylvester.

Woody Woodpecker?  Basically just Daffy Duck with red hair.

Looney Toons were the gold standard.

They still are.  That’s why I try like hell to enjoy films like Space-Jam and Looney Toones: Back in Action.  They may not be the best examples of Looney Toons but they are still Looney Toons.

Mel Blanc is gone, of course.  Bugs Bunny just doesn’t sound the same.  Chuck Jones is gone.  Bugs Bunny doesn’t act the same.

Just as Kermit the Frog is no longer Kermit, Bugs is no longer Bugs.

You can put Bugs in a Norse helmet but that doesn’t mean you’ve managed to capture the brilliance of “What’s Opera Doc?”

Now I don’t want to say that Waner Brothers animation has completely tanked.  The Animaniacs were funny as hell.  And they have put out some fine DC super-hero stuff.

The Looney  Toons, however, don’t feel as if they have ever fully recovered.  There has been attempt after attempt to revive the brand with limited success. By far the biggest success has come in simply releasing home video versions of the old cartoons.

I want them to keep trying, though.  I want to keep watching them try because even though that isn’t the same Bugs Bunny or the same Elmer Fudd, someday they might just end up being as brilliant as they once were.

And I don’t want to miss it.

“Boys, we need to strike while the iron is hot and get another ‘Look Who’s Talking Film’ into the theatre!”

“Hot, how do you define hot…?”

“Great Idea Sir!”

“Problem is, the kids are growing up.  And Willis won’t sign for less than ten million dollars on anything these days.  How do we keep the voiceover gag.  Do they have another baby?”

“No sir, that’s played out.  We need another angle.”

“What’s your angle Johnson?”

“I’m thinking DOGS, sir!”

“Brilliant!”

“We could have TWO dogs!  And one could be a classy dog.  That would obviously be the bitc….uh….female.”

“I love this!”

“Are you guys even listening to yourselves?”

“Shut up, Wick.”

“Then the other dog could be a dog from the streets.  We could get someone streetwise to voice him.  Like Eddie Murphy.”

“No, that would be racist.”

“How about Danny Devito?”

“Brilliant, Johnson!”

“Are you fucking kidding right now?”

“Ignore him.  Who’s going to voice the bitch?”

“The Female dog, sir?”

“A female dog’s a bitch, right Johnson?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So who’s going to voice The Bitch?”

“Well, Dianne Keaton hasn ‘t had a lot of work since she broke up with Woody Allen…”

“Who?”

“Woody Allen!  He won an Oscar for ‘Annie Hall.’”

“Never heard of him.”

“Never Heard of him?  The guy has been nominated for more Academy Awards than you!”

“Pipe down, Wick!  We’re working here!  So we’ll get that bitch Keaton for the dog. Now, we need to come up with some conflict for Kirstie Travolta and John Travolta!”

“It’s Kirstie Alley, sir.”

“Whatever”

“How about this?  Travolta finally gets a good piloting job with a super rich, super hot blonde lady!”

“I like it!”

“And of course, Kirstie Alley..”

“Who?”

“Kirstie Alley, sir.  She’s the star of the film.”

“Did she voice the little girl in the last one?”

“No sir, she’s plays the mother of the two children.”

“Right!  Right!  Go on!”

“So she gets very jealous because she’s put on a little bit of weight and Travolta is spending all of his time with this hot blonde executive.  Of course he’s not interested in the executive at all.”

“Who’s he interested in?”

“Kirstie Alley, sir.  They’re married, remember?”

“Oh right, right.  That’s very wholesome.”

“Thing is that the hot blonde really does have a thing for John Travolta”

“Well, who wouldn’t, right?”

“This is starting to sound pretty sexist…”

“What do you know about sexism, Wick?”

“So she decides to trick him into driving her out to an isolated cabin on Christmas Eve just so she can seduce him.”

“Love it!”

“Kirstie Alley takes the kids to find him so she can save their marriage but they crash in a snowstorm”

“Holy fuck! Is this a horror movie?”

“Shut up Wick!”

“Then the dogs have to run to get help.  The family is rescued.  Then Travolta rejects his boss’ advances and finds his family.  The two dogs are in love and the entire family is soon going to have puppies.”

“I love it!  A happy ending!”

“A Happy ending?  The dogs are about to have puppies and John Travolta just lost his job.  He was working for a very powerful woman so she’s going to see to it that he’ll never have a decent job again (because that’s what powerful women do to guys who won’t have sex with them I guess) and now Travolta needs to support Alley, his two kids and a bunch of dogs as what – a taxi driver. Also, the female dog belongs to the rich ex-boss.  She didn’t really want the dog but she seems pretty vindictive.  Don’t you think she’s going to accuse Travolta of stealing her dog?  Why don’t we name the movie ‘Look Who’s Bankrupt Now’ because they are going to be bankrupt.  And Travolta will probably be in jail…”

“Wick?”

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re fired!”

I’m not saying that I think she’s a horrible person.  I don’t really know her.

Nor am I saying I have a problem with the fact that she has, from time to time, had weight issues.

Because seriously, there’s all sorts of unhealthy body issues going on in the Entertainment industry and the fact Alley gained a few pounds was actually something to be celebrated rather than vilified.  She may have been heavy for Hollywood but she still weighed less than most Americans.

My problem with Alley’s career is that she is a comic actress whom I never found particularly funny.

Her entire repertoire seemed to consist of looking miserable and/or being miserable.  She raised whining to an art form.  An art form that was completely unneeded.

She successfully replaced Shelly Long on “Cheers” because…well…”Cheers” had lots of other characters that were interesting I guess.  It was as if the show producers said “we need another girlfriend for Sam but let’s make sure she’s way more annoying than Dianne so if Shelly ever wants to come back, nobody will care if Sam dumps the new girl.”

Her big movie “success” was the Look Who’s Talking trilogy.  The entire trilogy is about how unhappy she is with everything.

She’s unhappy being a single mom so she eventually falls in love with John Travolta.  That’s the first movie.

Then she’s unhappy because she’s having (really idiotic) marital issues with John Travolta.  That’s the second movie.

Then she’s unhappy because she read the script and realized it was, somehow, worse than the last one.  That’s the third movie.

Alley whined her way through her career and I’m not sure why it worked.  Do we like this kind of character?  Are we drawn to annoying women that we want to slap?  Is this what we think all women are like?

Do we have Alley to blame for Fran Drescher?

I keep thinking that characters like the ones Alley played her entire career have to be created by people who hate women.  In their minds women are, apparently, some sort of burden men have to deal with in order to have sex.

I imagine a lot of women think of men the same way but that whole perspective seems a little bit cynical, don’t you think?

Alley whined her way through her career because, I expect, that was what people told her they wanted.  She wasn’t trying to create a career filled with annoying characters who spent their entire life being miserable about stupid stuff.  Shit – she was in Wrath of Kahn for goodness’ sake!  She didn’t whine in that movie.

That’s what puzzles me.  Other people looked at that whining character and liked it enough for her to be stuck doing the same thing.

I suppose Alley isn’t the only actor who has spent their career playing people that nobody liked.  It can’t be very much fun, though.

I don’t feel sorry for Alley.  I’m sure she has a nice house and a nice car and whether or not she is a nice person, she isn’t suffering too badly as a result of her string of unlikable characters.

No, it was the rest of us who suffered.

As has happened a few times before, I was gifted this trilogy of films by a friend who enjoys the fact that I’m a stickler for the rules of the Alphabetical movie project.  If I own the movie, I will watch it.

Even if I hate it.

So what better way to screw me over than to give me a trilogy of films that get progressively worse until you reach one that is inexplicably awful.  How it failed to kill John Travolta’s career (again) is beyond me.  Kirstie Alley’s career has always been beyond me.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

One of the very important omissions from the rules is the fact that they say nothing about keeping a movie once I’ve watched it.  There is actually no rule stating that I have to keep the film before I watch it either.  To give away a horrible movie after someone went through the trouble of gifting it, though, seems pretty unsporting.

So if someone gives me an awful movie that fits the rules, I will watch it.

And then I will get rid of it.

In the case of the Look Who’s Talking trilogy, I actually accelerated my viewing schedule because I knew when I wanted to give it away.

Vilification Tennis does a game show theme every year where we play all sorts of offensive games and give away all sorts of lame prizes.  My goal was to watch this unholy trilogy of films in time to give them away to some unsuspecting audience member at the show this year.  I managed to finish the last one just two days before the show.

The set up was beautiful.  We played “Let’s Make a Deal” with an audience member, whom I will call Mark (anyone fond of confidence games will get that joke).  Mark was handed a T-shirt and told he could keep the shirt or he could trade it for what my co-announcer had in his pants pocket or what our lovely model had in a large box.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I knew for absolute certain that Mark was going to go for the box.  It was the biggest and therefore had the best prize, right?

No.  Because inside that box was a trilogy of movies that I was about to pawn off on someone else.  The best part about the whole thing is that Mark was going to think he was getting a good deal when he saw that he could have won a bottle opener.  I could see his spirits rise as he waited to find out what pleasure awaited him in the box of wonders.

But the box of wonders was, in fact, a box of deceit and he was left with one OK movie and two very bad ones.  And all of them featured way too much Kirstie Alley.

So Mark was duped into going home with a trilogy of movies he didn’t want.  He shouldn’t have felt bad about it.  It was a trio of movies that nobody wanted.  And I’d managed to go from watching them to getting rid of them in less than a week.  I’m quite certain that was a record disposal time.

As Mark walked out of the theatre that night, he waved the movies at me and said “what the fuck am I supposed to do with these?”

I smiled back and said “I don’t care!”

Doing Vilification Tennis at the Renaissance Festival is a dicey proposition.  We are doing a show that is pretty vile and vulgar and the audience likes it that way.  However, we are doing it at a venue that is advertised as appropriate for all ages.  That means you have to walk a pretty mean balancing act between offensive humor and trying to ensure parents who are walking by don’t have to explain too much to their kids later.  Because parents hate that.  More on that later.

Most days I think we do an admirable job of walking that tighrope.  Every now and again, though, there is a complaint.  I take the complaints seriously and I do my best to keep the performers from getting out of hand.  Our show is best if we flirt with the line without merrily skipping across it.

On occasion, we get an instruction from the festival management about the kind of material they would like us to avoid.  Most of the time, the request is a little odd and when I ask for clarification, I find it was one joke that caused the problem.

For instance, I was once asked to cut all references to beastiality from the show.  I asked them if the joke “you lost your job as a shepherd because too many of the sheep were starting to look like you” crossed the line.  Well, no.  That was pretty subtle and that was OK.

I went through a few other jokes and finally was able to determine the real issue was with a song called “you hae sex with farm animals.”  The problem was the blatant statement “you have sex with farm animals.”

Now the song was ridiculous and I have no idea why it made someone lose their shit but I dutifully asked the performers in question if they would mind not singing the song any more.  Problem solved.

However, there came a time when I was asked that we drop all pedophilia jokes from the show.  I again asked a few clarifying questions and was satisfied that they meant exactly what they said.  No pedophilia jokes.  There was the potential for an actual lawsuit so they were off the table.  End of conversation.

OK.  They were off the table.

But I got to thinking, when we deliver a pedophilia insult in Vilification Tennis, we are saying that the person on the receiving end is a pedophile and that is pretty messed up.  We aren’t saying “woo-hoo pedophilia!”

We are saying exactly the opposite – pedophiles are horrible.  I would argue that people who do that sort of thing to kids deserve to be ridiculed as much as possible.

So who would complain about such a thing?  Who would be pissed off to the point of threatening a lawsuit when people are saying “hey, having sex with a child is a really horrible thing to do?”

…

Exactly.

But of course, the people threatening lawsuits are not pedophiles who are offended that we are making fun of them.  No, they are parents who don’t like the idea that their kids might learn about pedophilia from an insult show at the Renaissance Festival.  They want to tell their kids in their own way (not at all) and at the appropriate time (never).

Does losing pedophilia jokes hurt our show?

No.  Every restriction forces us to become more creative and write funny material within the rules.  Which you can easily do.  Want to write a joke about a sexual deviant?  No problem.  There’s all sorts of ways to do that!  Necrophilia is totally OK!  So is beastiality.

As long as you say something more creative than “you have sex with sheep!”

But my problem is the idea that you are somehow going to be able to protect your kids from concepts that might scare them.  Eventually, they are going to grow old and die.  Eventually, they are going to get dumped by someone they care about.  There are lots of unpleasant things out there and you don’t protect your kids by pretending those things don’t exist.

You protect your kids by telling them about those things and telling them how to avoid them.

I’m not talking about telling kids every sordid detail, by the way.  I’m talking about being able to answer the question “what is a pedophile” in a simple terms that help your kid undestand what a pedophile is, and how to avoid them.  They’ll probably never need those skills but wouldn’t you rather they had them?

Our show isn’t damaned by the fact someone will sue the festival if they hear us making a pedophile joke.  In fact, it may be better because of it.

I honestly believe, however,  that potential litigator’s kid is not better off as a result.  That child is sheltered and poorly equipped for the real world.  Monsters under the bed aren’t real but there are monsters.  And they look like everyone else.

Why not prepare your kids for those monsters instead of deciding that the monsters are the ones who tell your kids about something before you were ready to do it yourself?

How many stories can you tell about Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer?  One.  There is no rampant speculation about who they were or what they did.  We all know.

You can make one movie about Ted Bundy and you’ve pretty much covered the story.

Jack the Ripper, on the other hand, could be anyone.  He could be a time travelling alien!  He could be professor Moriarty!  He could be a lady! He could be Abraham Lincoln (the assassination was faked so he could emmigrate to England and fulfill his darkest desires)!

And we can make movies and television shows and write books about all those possibilities because there isn’t anyone who is going to complain about fictionalizing someone about whom we know nothing.  Nothing beyond the fact that he killed a lot of women, anyway.

Until he stopped.

One assumes this is because he died because death or prison are about the only thing that can stop a serial killer.  However, maybe he stopped killing because he used a time machine to travel to modern times.  I mean, that’s one of the many possibilities left open to us, right?

There are many fictional characters who have been through any number of revisions through the years.  Sherlock Holmes is a great example.  Yet Jack the Ripper is a real person (more or less) who has gone through the same process.

He is, to some extent, viewed through the lens of the era that is telling the story because he is such a blank slate.

He’s just a guy.

At least we think he’s a guy.  Most serial killers are guys so it’s a fair assumption.

As a writer, I can understand the love affair with the Ripper because creating characters from scratch can be a challenge.  Sometimes you just need a few details to start the process.  The Ripper gives you a place, a time and a series of events.  The rest is up to you.

You know where and when this person lived.  You know a few things about what he did.  Now come up with everything else.  Have fun!

As a comedian, if I were writing a story featuring the Ripper, I’d probably end up writing some darkly comedic story about this poor schlub who ended up being in the wrong place every time some freak accident ended up in a horribly mutilated Whitechapel prostitute.

I’m not saying I’m going to write that story, mind you.  I’m just saying that I *could* write that story and when I did, nobody would be telling me that I wasn’t being true to the memory of the Ripper.

Honestly, I think there’s a little bit of the Ripper in every modern serial killer story.  He’s the legend that creates the Hannibal Lectors and Dexters of our current times.

And yet he remains an enigma.  He inspires a great deal of creativity precisely because they only way to actually know anything about him is to make it up.

I don’t actually need to watch Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels with subtitles.  Not anymore.  Those first couple of times watching the film were pretty challenging, though.

I don’t know what to make of Guy Ritchie, honestly.  This film and Snatch are an awful lot of fun.  I like his Sherlock Holmes films.  But I just don’t feel like he produces great movies.  Fun movies, sure, but fairly slight.

Nobody is going to accuse him of producing the greatest Sherlock Holmes ever, for instance.  I really enjoy both of his Holmes films but I’ve spent a lot more time re-watching “Sherlock.”

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is a breakout film for him and it has a Tarantino vibe to it.  Lots of violence.  Lots of clever dialogue.

The story itself is pretty slight.  Which is fine, I guess.  But his stories continue to be slight.  Where Tarantino is always swinging for the fences, Ritchie is content with a ground rule double.

Someone, I imagine, will object and insist that this movie is fantastic.  I actually enjoy the hell out of the movie.  There aren’t really any major flaws.

If this was the only movie Ritchie made that felt slight, I wouldn’t have a problem.  I’m not objecting to this movie so much as I am questioning why Ritchie never seems to stretch himself.

I suppose he doesn’t have to.  Why would Michael Bay stop making movies with shit tons of explosions in them?  He makes gigantic piles of money doing so.

Ritchie is in the same boat.  Nobody is pushing him to make movies with nuanced character development.  As long as he makes stuff that is entertaining and crowd pleasing, he doesn’t have to.

And there are lots of directors out there who could have made a couple of truly awful Sherlock Holmes films.  What if they’d thrown the franchise at McG, for instance?  Same cast.  Directed by McG.

If that doesn’t make you shudder, you haven’t seen many films by McG.

That’s a good thing, by the way.  That’s a very good thing.

It feels a little bit like Ritchie likes the plot more than the story.  He loves moving around all the convoluted pieces in Lock, Stock.  He enjoys the convoluted game.  The characters are secondary.

I’m spending a lot of time ripping on Mr. Ritche and that is pretty unfair because he makes better movies than I could make.  He definitely makes better movies than McG can make.

The thing is, I want him to swing for the fences just once (he was not swinging for the fences in Swept Away).  I feel like the guy has a truly spectacular film in him and while he’s produced a lot of really enjoyable movies, he could produce something greater.

I’d even be OK if I had to watch it with subtitles.

The Living Daylights was made in 1987 and while it doesn’t have the best of Bond villains, I think it is a solid film in the franchise.  I’ve already defended Timothy Dalton as Bond so I won’t bother to do that again.

Watching the film now, what I’m struck by is the depiction of the Mujahideen as heroes and freedom fighters.

I’m not making any value judgements on whether or not that is right.  Rather, I’m thinking that to a post 9/11 audience, that depiction might not make any sense.  I can think of a few reasons why.

First, of course, is the fact that most people have no real concept of how any event in history connects to any other event.  We see how things work now and jump to the unreasonable conclusion that there was nothing that happened then that might have had an impact.  So right now, we see the Mujahideen as a group that, among other things, once counted Osama Bin Laden as one of its main financiers.

So therefore Mujahideen = Taliban.  Because the Mujahideen (with a lot of help) managed to force the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, they naturally must have become the Taliban, right?

No.

Then there is the fact that the cold war is long over and it is a confusing concept to those who didn’t live through it.  The Mujahideen were the good guys in some sense simply because the Soviets were the bad guys.

More specifically, in The Living Daylights, the brutal airfield Soviets were the bad guys.  John Rhys Davies was the good guy.

What is really hard for modern audiences to understand is how conflicted we were about the Soviet Union in the late 1980′s.  We hated them.  But Gorbachev seemed like such a nice guy. But we hated them.

I don’t think we Americans like that kind of conflict.  We like to hate other countries or love them.  We hate Iran.  We like Iraq (a little).

Actually I don’t think most Americans love any country except America.  But we sure do love hating other countries.  Heck, a lot of Americans hate Canada.  And that doesn’t make any sense because Canadians are so nice.

That’s probably why we hate them…

Anyway, ever since 9/11, the Afghans are the bad guys.

Sort of.  I mean, the Afghans that aren’t the Taliban are OK.  But those Taliban Afghans are still petty awful.  Better to just think they’re all awful, right?

That’s so much easier.

Bond films aren’t meant to educate us on the history of the Middle East or, for that matter, the cold war.  They are meant to entertain.

But a Bond film that features Afghanistan today would feature a heroic but weak central government fighting the wicked Taliban leader who wants to subjugate the world to his iron will.

He’d also have a shark.

But I digress.

I would imagine most Americans would not understand the difference between that guy and the heroic (and handsome) leader of the Afghan resistance in The Living Daylights.

I guess most Afghans wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between Americans who didn’t give a shit about them in the 80′s and Americans who don’t give a shit about them now so that’s probably fair.

When Bond gets home at the end of this one, I really feel that he’s got to consider himself lucky that the bad guys he faces are so fucking stupid.

Let’s look at a few examples, shall we?

The first time we meed “Mr. Big,” he looks Bond up once or twice and says the smartest thing he’s ever said.  ”Kill him.”

His two henchmen take Bond outside and shoot him in the head try to lead him to a private place where they can shoot him and, of course, before they can do that he beats the shit out of them.  Lesson learned, right?  Next time you have a run in with Bond, just kill him!

Bond moves on to romance a lovely lady on Kanaga’s island full of (spoiler alert) dope and she gets freaked out by the voodoo dolls on the island.  She had good reason to be freaked out by them because one of them shoots her with a poison dart and kills her.  Bond finds her body and given he is now in their sights, the bad guys shoot him with a poison dart and kill him do nothing.

Later Bond is once again captured by Kanaga and Mr. Big (worst “secret” agent ever) and this time they decide the best way to kill him is to shoot him in the head take him out to an alligator farm and leave him to be eaten by a bunch of alligators.  Do they watch until the gators have finished their meal?  Hell no.  The guys a goner, right?

No.  He’s James fucking Bond.  Smart guys have a tough time killing james Bond.  How likely is it a bunch of stupid alligators are going to get the best him?

So Bond gets away.  Again.  Because that’s what he does.  Then he’s involved in a boat chase that is a hell of a lot more dangerous than the alligators.

Eventually, Kananga captures him again.

I think Bond does it on purpose, actually.  How can you get a reputation for being an escape artist if no-one ever captures you?  So he just shows up at the bad guy’s place, flashes his pearly whites into the nearest video camera and then just waits for them to nail him.  He knows they won’t just shoot him in the head.  If nobody has thought of it by now, they never will.

So Bond is captured again.  Kananga, having forgotten the fact that he’s ordered Bond killed twice and the dude is still there, decides that this time he’s going to shoot Bond in the head tie Bond up, give him a minor cut and let a shark eat him.  Given what has come before, you’d think that Kananga might keep his eye on Bond and possibly have a gun with him to shoot Bond if he manages to escape before the shark eats him.

But he doesn’t.  Because while he may have a great plan on how to corner the US heroin market, he can’t figure out that when a “secret” agent keeps showing up, it is time to ditch the elaborate death traps and shoot him in the head.

And you know what?  Live and Let Die is one of the best Roger Moore Bond films.  I enjoy the hell out of the movie.

But let’s be honest.  If Kanaga wasn’t such an idiot, James Bond would never have returned.