I love all things Bond, and have for a long time. Along with that, I have owned a compilation album of Bond theme songs that I listen to regularly basically my entire life, which I replaced more than once over the years as new movies/songs released. It was a foregone conclusion that I was going to rush to watch this documentary about "The Sound of 007." It was a big celebration of all the great music over the years, and talked directly about the way they make these theme songs. There was some extra attention given to No Time to Die, but that's not surprising since it is the most recent film and they had a lot of access to Billie Eilish and Finneas O'Connell. They interviewed a number of people involved in the creation of the music, and all of them still seemed pretty passionate about the work they did.
I was impressed that The Sound of 007 actually admitted the fact that not all 25 songs have been winners. They discussed some of the ways they have fallen short, and even made some speculation why that might have happened. They also openly discuss in this documentary that the franchise has a tendency to follow trends in modern music which doesn't always work. If I had my druthers, they would have walked through time and discussed every single song at least a little. Seeing more of the singers/bands discussing what they did would be awesome. As it stands they hit all the expected highlights, and skip over some of the others. It's still a decent documentary even if it didn't tell me anything new. In conjunction with the live concert that you can also watch online, this was a fun way to celebrate 60 years of James Bond films (while we wait at least 3 or 4 more years before we'll see a new one.)
I was impressed that The Sound of 007 actually admitted the fact that not all 25 songs have been winners. They discussed some of the ways they have fallen short, and even made some speculation why that might have happened. They also openly discuss in this documentary that the franchise has a tendency to follow trends in modern music which doesn't always work. If I had my druthers, they would have walked through time and discussed every single song at least a little. Seeing more of the singers/bands discussing what they did would be awesome. As it stands they hit all the expected highlights, and skip over some of the others. It's still a decent documentary even if it didn't tell me anything new. In conjunction with the live concert that you can also watch online, this was a fun way to celebrate 60 years of James Bond films (while we wait at least 3 or 4 more years before we'll see a new one.)