The Sound of 007

It's a nice summary of the history of the music in the James Bond films. Surprisingly, they left out the John Barry instrumental theme to On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I always found that to be a compelling piece of music.

To me, that intro was much better than the James Bond theme used through the films of the franchise. It was used throughout the action segments of the film and aligned so well with the character. You'll know it when you hear it.

Otherwise, this is a nice walk through the films of the franchise and touch upon almost all of the instantly recognizable musical pieces and motifs of the series.

Whilst I found the Sound of 007 to be fascinating, insightful and compelling as a James Bond fan, and as a fan of all the music scores and theme songs from the past 60 years, it didn't completely satisfy my thirst for wanting to know about the musical origins of all the Bond films.

The works of John Barry and David Arnold are quite rightly covered in detail and celebrated as being most influential on the franchise but it didn't cover the lesser contributions of Bill Conti, Michael Kamen and Eric Serra. These were ominously overlooked and I really wanted to know more about these scores, or maybe that is just the completist coming out in me, but either way I felt it was a missed opportunity to make this a definitive documentary about the Bond music film by film. They could easily have stretched out the running time to 2 hours instead of 88 minutes by giving more even coverage to every film.

The Timothy Dalton era is almost completed omitted. Why were there no contributions from A-Ha or Gladys Knight? Even John Barry doesn't mention his score for The Living Daylights. Apart from that shortfall it is still worth a watch as there were many stories and facts I hadn't heard before from the many talented writers, performers and producers who created them.

Music has been an important element of the James Bond movies.

Dr No had the Bond theme composed by Monty Norman and realised by John Barry.

It was Barry who was instrumental in bringing the iconic songs to the movies. Big numbers from the likes of Shirley Bassey singing Goldfinger or Diamonds are forever.

How the music reflected the era once Roger Moore took over the role. Paul McCartney going for a more rock sound with even a hint of reggae.

Marvin Hamlisch brought a touch of disco to The Spy Who Loved Me.

Duran Duran stating how difficult Barry could be to collaborate with but they managed to hit number one in America with A View to a Kill.

I was amused that Sam Smith who won an Oscar for his song for Spectre. Boasting that he wrote the song in 20 minutes and recorded it in one take in a further 20 minutes. It seems Radiohead did have the better song.

There was more emphasis on No Time to Die as it was the most recent movie.

There were failures, Shirley Bassey did not like her song for Moonraker. Tim Rice showed that he should stick to musicals as his song for Octopussy was not an all time high.

I was puzzled why A-ha and Chris Cornell's songs were overlooked.

A criticism about the Daniel Craig era was that the main Bond theme has not been used at all in the action scenes.

David Arnold gives an explanation as to why, the Bond theme appears at the end of Casino Royale.

That does not explain why since then, there are snatches of the Bond theme rather than a full blooded roar.

I remain unconvinced by Hans Zimmer deconstruction of the Bond theme for No Time to Die. It was bass heavy and reminded me too much of his Batman work.

Everyone has their favorite (and least favorite) Bond songs. This film looks not only at the songs, but at the scores that accompanied the films, although most of the attention is rightly given to the songs. A great amount of footage from older John Barry interviews is included (he passed away about 10 years prior) as well as Monty Norman, David Arnold, Thomas Newman, and Hans Zimmer. Zimmer, as the most recent composer, receives as much attention as Barry, likely due to the fact that this appears to have been produced alongside "No Time to Die."

Although the music is wonderful, and many of the stories behind the music are fascinating, the film tap dances around many of the musical Bond moments we'd rather forget. Some of the bottom tier songs are briefly mentioned as being less popular, but are mostly praised for being daring and brave. That they may be, but daring and bravery doesn't always result in success, so maybe they shouldn't pat themselves on the back so much. One exception to this rule is Madonna's song for "Die Another Day," which is so irredeemably bad that it is completely ignored, aside from a brief image of Madonna's face towards the end of the film. This was one of three films whose music was ignored entirely. Also ignored were the missteps in scoring, namely the disco laden score in "Live and Let Die" and the electronica score for Goldeneye. I'm all for celebrating the musical successes of James Bond, but the failures could have been very interesting to explore.

One of the darker aspects of Bond's musical history was the lawsuit regarding whether Norman or Barry deserved credit for the theme from "Dr. No." This hostility may have contributed to Barry's departure from the franchise, and is not even mentioned in the film. The story behind the creation of the theme at least offers a glimpse into how each man felt deserving of credit as the composer.

While the film briefly mentions some of the alternative songs that were considered, namely Radiohead's "Spectre," other notable songs were ignored. K. D. Lang's "Surrender" was composed for "Tomorrow Never Dies" by David Arnold, and the song was heavily referenced throughout the film's score. Since Sheryl Crow was a more bankable name, Lang's song was replaced and relegated to the end credits of the film. It's widely considered the better Bond song of the two, but neither song is mentioned in the film. Neither is "No Good About Goodbye," the song David Arnold was writing for Shirley Bassey to perform for "Quantum of Solace" before changing direction. She later approached Arnold and asked him to complete the song for her anyway. He did, and like "Tomorrow Never Dies" the original song that got replaced is often considered superior to the song that was finally chosen. As the only vocalist to perform three Bond songs, even the abandoned idea of writing a fourth song for her seems noteworthy, at least.

At 88 minutes, there was plenty of time to include notable stories such as these. It was a very enjoyable film through and through, despite its effort to maintain that everything was always so rosy. If only it had been willing to tell the full story, bruises and all, I'd have been willing to give it full marks, but an abridged documentary deserves an abridged rating.

The documentary "The Sound of 007" enriches us with details about the construction and choices of songs/writers and performers for each of the James Bond films. Composer John Barry created the sound of James Bond, he mastered 11 of Bond's music scores. He invented the style and it was the basis of all other subsequent Bond movies.

Any of the 007 movies without the well-known opening theme doesn't sound like a James Bond movie. The theme became one of the main characters of the film, without it the film would be incomplete.

Aside from the opening theme, each Bond film brings the trademark of a song originally written to embrace the plot, this is for all 25 Bonds films.

The documentary focuses a bit more on the soundtracks from the 60s to the 90s and touches on the 2000s onwards. But the film manages to give a good view of how important a soundtrack is for the construction and identification of one character: BOND...James Bond!!!