Like everyone else who was alive in the late 90s, I played a hell of a lot of Goldeneye for the N64; as primitive as it may seem today, Rare's take on the Bond franchise was the first console shooter to make waves in a pre-Halo world. But despite the hours and hours I'd virtually murder my friends with the world's sexiest Englishman (not my definition), the source material never really interested me. At the time, I had never seen a James Bond movie, so I wasn't exactly worried if Goldeneye was a faithful movie-to-game translation. The N64 adaptation could have included a Kart racing level, and I wouldn't have known any better.
All these years later, it's safe to say that I have Rare's version of Jimmy Bond's adventure inscribed in my brain where so much useful knowledge could be, so I thought it would be a surreal experiment to finally sit down and watch the movie I had already had a great amount of exposure to, albeit in a different form.
It was weird.
Watching Goldeneye for the first time after playing the game so much is a lot like seeing Citizen Kane after you've already watched every scene in that movie parodied on The Simpsons (another surreal experience of mine). Seeing new representations of what were once fuzzy, low-poly environments felt like I just got cataracts removed. It's a shame that this novelty wasn't enough to keep me entertained for a solid two hours, because the movie itself is not so good-- aside from certain sexy Russian programmers.
It may be hard to believe, but with Goldeneye, Rare actually made a product that outdid the source material. And they were really creative when it came to extrapolating gameplay from minor scenes in the film; the entire first level of Goldeneye is based on what amounts to about a minute of the movie. Rare also produces a lot of content from things the movie doesn't show us, and things that could have happened within the narrative of the film. All of this amounts to a much stronger story in Goldeneye's video game adaptation; since we see and do everything from the perspective of Bond, it's much more interesting.
Looking back, it's funny to see what a surprise the N64 Goldeneye was at the time; we certainly weren't expecting much from a console FPS, let alone one based on a movie that was nearly two years old. But--as I've said--the video game version of Goldeneye manages to be much more entertaining than the movie on every level; even with the N64's lack of any real sound hardware, the game soundtrack is much better and much more memorable than the film's soundtrack, which is an awkward, synthy mess. The only good quality of the movie is that it reminded me of how much I loved the game--and that I actually wouldn't mind playing it again.
This can't end well
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