History YMMV / Goldfinger

* CompleteMonster: The [[AntagonistTitle titular Auric Goldfinger]] is a man whose [[FauxAffablyEvil wit and politeness]] only mask the dangerous psychopath that he is. Obsessed with [[{{Greed}} increasing his wealth at any cost]], Goldfinger plans on poisoning an army barracks and the surrounding town, which would kill 60,000 people—[[LackOfEmpathy for which he cares nothing about]]--and then detonating a nuclear device in Fort Knox to trigger a major economic crisis for his own profit. He punishes his assistant, who becomes a Bond girl and costs him a rigged card game, by having her murdered with golden paint that suffocates her, and later tries to have James Bond sawn in half with a laser. He gloats to his mob partners even though he was always planning on killing them and does-- simply to bask in his [[ItsAllAboutMe own ego]] at his plan. Despite being one of the earliest villains that Bond ever faced, Goldfinger still remains one of the worst.

* ToughActToFollow: None of the three other Bond films directed by Creator/GuyHamilton (''Film/DiamondsAreForever'', ''Film/LiveAndLetDie'' and ''Film/TheManWithTheGoldenGun'') are considered even as good as ''Goldfinger''.

* WTHCastingAgency: Some fans and critics had this reaction to Cec Linder in the role of Felix Leiter, whom some found to be too old to play Bond's best friend, with Bond author Raymond Benson describing him as looking "more like Creator/SeanConnery's uncle than his best friend" (though ironically, he was a year younger than Creator/JackLord). A somewhat downplayed case, however, thanks to Linder's admirable performance as Felix.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: The film actually fixed a major plot hole in the novel by changing Goldfinger's scheme from robbing Fort Knox (which many critics said was ridicuously impossible) to blowing it up to cripple the US economy.

** Koreans are described by Fleming -- through Bond -- as "lower than apes in the mammalian hierarchy." This is the most bigoted Fleming's work ever got -- previous "ethnic" villains like Literature/DrNo and [[Literature/LiveAndLetDie Mr. Big]] were somewhat stereotypical, but were at least dangerously competent and very intelligent[[note]] Though admittedly, that ''might'' be because both of them had partially Caucasian ancestry...[[/note]] -- and a common guess among readers is that Fleming's views were influenced by [[UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar the then-recent war]]. To make it worse, Oddjob and Goldfinger's Korean servants are the ''only'' Koreans Bond's actually encountered, and he immediately assumes all Koreans are as horrible as them.

** Oddjob. Despite having no lines, Harold Sakata's rather terrifying screen presence made Oddjob, along with Red Grant in the previous film, the iconic Bond henchmen. Indeed, ''every'' henchman after this is an {{Expy}} of either Oddjob or Grant.

* UncannyValley: Goldfinger in the book. However, the effect comes across from the odd combination of his appearance and his dress sense: in the golf scene, Bond notes that Goldfinger looks like he went to a costume designer and asked, "what do people wear when they go to play golf?" The result was unsettling to look at because it didn't look natural at all.

* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: The guards at Auric AU, who are supposed to be Korean if going by the novel, are shouting in ''Cantonese'' according to the [=Bluray=] subtitles.

* AndYouThoughtItWouldFail: The title theme was almost taken out of the film because Harry Saltzman hated it, saying, "That's the worst fucking song I've ever heard in my fucking life".

** Goldfinger jokes that Oddjob is not a very good caddy because "Golf is not yet the national game of Korea". From 2008 onwards, the top ranks of the LPGA have been heavily dominated by South Korean players.

** The old lady who suddenly pulls out an MP 40 and shoots at Bond's Aston Martin when he escapes from Goldfinger's henchmen may also count.

** Pussy Galore, just might be the most famous BondGirl of all time, or at the very least tied with Honey Ryder, and not just for her PunnyName, but for being one of the first no-nonsense [[FemmeFatale Femme Fatales]] in the franchise, that is redeemed by Bond, which would become a reoccurring theme, well in the film franchise at least. Not to mention her excellent portrayal by Honor Blackman.
%%* EvenBetterSequel: ''Goldfinger'' is considered by many to be the greatest of the ''Bond'' series, and it was the ''third'' film.

* WTHCastingAgency: Some fans and critics had this reaction to Cec Linder in the role of Felix Leiter, whom some found to be too old to play Bond's best friend, with Bond author Raymond Benson describing him as looking "more like Sean Connery's uncle than his best friend" (though ironically, he was a year younger than Creator/JackLord). A somewhat downplayed case, however, thanks to Linder's admirable performance as Felix.

* InferredHolocaust: US-Chinese relations in the aftermath of Goldfinger's plot. China has just financed and supplied a terrorist attack and attempt to detonate a nuclear device on US soil. Worse, despite his globe-trotting nature, Bond never visits mainland China (he does visit Hong Kong, but as a British colony it would be spared in an all-out nuclear war between the US and China). To be fair, though, Mao's regime looked very negatively on foreign tourists and foreign countries were portrayed as inferior or hostile, so Bond would have a high chance of getting thrown in prison or at least questioned if he went there.

** [[UsefulNotes/{{Venezuela}} Caracas, Venezuela]] is mentioned as one of the banking havens that Goldfinger keeps part of his personal gold stock. With the total meltdown of Venezuela's economy from 2013 onward, if Goldfinger were still alive and still kept gold deposited in Caracas, he would then have likely lost it to government corruption and plundering.

** Hoo boy, Bond's quip about something being "as bad as listening to Music/TheBeatles without earmuffs" ended up unintentionally getting a lot of mileage.[[note]]It should be noted that at the time ''Goldfinger'' was being written and shot, the Beatles were a BoyBand who did mostly covers. It was only two months before the film's release that ''Music/AHardDaysNight'' -- the first album of all-original material -- was released, and good as it was, it still didn't predict ''Music/RubberSoul'' or ''Music/{{Revolver|Beatles Album}}'', much less ''Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand'', ''Music/AbbeyRoad'' or ''Music/LetItBe''. At the time of ''Goldfinger'', making fun of the Beatles was the 1964 equivalent of making fun of Music/JustinBieber would be today (which perhaps itself has an ironic lesson in it). And of course, one has to figure that even in the "swingin' 60s" the Beatles represented philosophies and ideologies that were or would be very much at odds with the ideology of Bond. The Beatles crowd wasn't Bond's target audience in 1964. In the end, though, WordOfGod is that he isn't referring to their music, but rather the ''incredibly'' loud legions of screaming fans at the concerts.[[/note]] Nine years later, [[Music/PaulMcCartney one of the Beatles]] would write and sing the opening theme for a [[Film/LiveAndLetDie Bond film]]!

* WhatAnIdiot:
** Tilly Masterson has learned that Auric Goldfinger has [[YouKilledMyFather killed her sister]] Jill (the victim famously left sprawled dead on a bed, painted in gold) and decides she wants some revenge. To do this, she decides to take him out by stalking him in Switzerland, where he has his base of operations, and shooting him with a rifle.\\
'''You'd Expect''': Tilly would do a little bit of research, the very least of which being learning how to shoot properly.\\
'''Instead''': Tilly rushes off to Switzerland with an [=AR7=] a .22 calibre rifle with pitiful stopping power and range, and is such a horrible shot that she [[EpicFail nearly shoots James Bond, a man standing several hundred feet away and up from her target, causing him to think that she was targeting him instead]].\\
'''It Gets Even Worse''': She tries to do it ''again'' later, when Bond is trying to infiltrate Goldfinger's smuggling facility. In her idiocy, she stops just short of advertising her position on a neon sign and trips an alarm wire, compromising Bond's infiltration attempt and leading them both into a chase that ultimately leads [[spoiler: [[TooDumbToLive to her death]] at the hands of Oddjob]].
** Bond actually spends much of the film screwing up, but some fans actually like this since it makes him more flawed, human and realistic and ultimately more sympathetic. For example, it was seriously idiotic of Bond to stay at the hotel, in the same room, right after forcing Goldfinger to lose a bunch of money in cards. In fact, this decision leads directly to the death of his GirlOfTheWeek.
** Neither the British nor American governments had any idea Auric Goldfinger was planning to break into Fort Knox. If he hadn't dabbled with the relatively penny-ante crime of smuggling gold, he would never have drawn their attention and brought Bond down on his head, though he may have been stepping up his attempts to gain gold considering he intended for the price to shortly shoot up.

* WhatAnIdiot: Bond and Goldfinger both:
** Goldfinger has Bond and Masterson captive in his home. He has realised Bond is extremely dangerous to his mission and has Oddjob torture him to unconsciousness.\\
'''You'd Think''': Oddjob will kill Bond and the girl. Operation Grand Slam will be successful.\\
'''Instead''': Goldfinger employs Bond as a secretary and confidant. Bond ruins everything.
** Bond has foiled Goldfinger's plot. He is féted in Washington and flying home, even though the villain - a resourceful, relentless, egomaniac genius - is still at large. At the airport, an official tells Bond he needs a vaccination to fly...\\
'''You'd expect''': Bond to ''at least'' travel incognito. To resist having a needle stuck into him. To bluff his way out or just run for it and escape the US another way.\\
'''Instead''': Bond gets the needle and regains consciousness in Goldfinger's plane.

* BrokenBase:
** It's one of the most popular ''Bond'' films, but there is some debate over whether this, ''Film/FromRussiaWithLove'', ''Film/OnHerMajestysSecretService'', ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'', ''Film/GoldenEye'', or ''Film/CasinoRoyale2006'' is the definitive Bond film.
** Some fans are conflicted over the fact that in the film Bond seduces Pussy Galore, to the point of making her change sides. In the book she is lesbian, leading to accusations of homophobia against the film, even though save for one line of dialogue where Pussy says she's immune to Bond's charms that could be interpreted several ways, the film contains no reference to the character being LGBTQ.
** It's also somewhat nullified by the fact that, according to the book, Pussy Galore is not ACTUALLY a lesbian. She was just molested by a male relative when she was a child and never got over it until meeting Bond, meaning that while it may be considered homophobic to not include Pussy's lesbianism in the film, it wasn't exactly a good representation of lesbianism in the first place, since it was caused by [[RapeAndSwitch sexual assault from a man]] and cured by a positive experience with another.

*** It's also somewhat nullified by the fact that, according to the book, she's not ACTUALLY a lesbian, she was just molested by a male relative when she was a child and never got over it until meeting Bond, meaning that while it may be considered homophobic to not include Pussy's lesbianism in the film, it wasn't exactly a good representation of lesbianism in the first place, since it was caused by [[RapeAndSwitch sexual assault from a man]] and cured by a positive experience with another.

* AwardSnub: The film did win an Oscar for Sound Effects Editing, but Creator/KenAdam's production design, Music/JohnBarry's score and Music/ShirleyBassey's theme song weren't nominated.

* SequelDisplacement: Many people start the Bond series with this one. Or they think this is the best, among ''24''.

* FranchiseOriginalSin: The Bond franchise tends to go in waves of being more outlandish vs more realistic. After the relatively realistic first two films, this film cemented the more boisterous elements with epic action sequences, death traps, villainous masterminds and their creative defeats. This made the series more iconic and would go even bigger with lauded films like ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'', but would reach full absurdism in films like ''Film/{{Moonraker}}'' and ''Film/DieAnotherDay''. This also made the series more ripe for parody, the Creator/DanielCraig era specifically tried to avoid comparisons with the ''Film/AustinPowers'' films.

* GrowingTheBeard: While ''Film/DrNo'' and ''Film/FromRussiaWithLove'' are still well thought of, it was ''Goldfinger'' that was the first Bond to be a huge hit at the box office (to the point that some theatres were holding showings ''24 hours a day'' to meet demand), establish most of the tropes common to the series and show how flat out awesome Bond could be.

* HarsherInHindsight: Bond's (and by extension, Creator/IanFleming's) negative attitude towards Koreans, no doubt fueled by UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar, became this in light of ''Film/DieAnotherDay'' (not only does Bond spent fourteen months as a POW in North Korea, but the film being reviled in the country).

* AuthorsSavingThrow: The film actually fixed a major plot hole in the novel by changing Goldfinger's scheme from robbing Fort Knox (which many critics said was ridicuously impossible) to blowing it up to cripple the US economy.

* AwardSnub: Neither Music/JohnBarry's score nor Music/ShirleyBassey's theme song received [[UsefulNotes/AcademyAward Oscar]] nominations.

* MemeticMutation: The [[ValuesDissonance extremely outdated]] views on gays and lesbians have been known to provide dark laughs for Bond fans, particularly the bit character described as, in complete seriousness, a "pansified Italian."

* StrangledByTheRedString: Tilly Masterson's attraction to Pussy Galore gets her killed because [[WhatAnIdiot it immediately strips her of all common sense.]]
* TooDumbToLive: Much of Tilly's hardship [[spoiler: and her eventual death, after Goldfinger kills her sister]] is due to her own shockingly poor decision-making. Though ironically, [[NiceJobBreakingItHero if Bond hadn't stopped her shooting Goldfinger, SMERSH's whole plan would have been a bust.]]

* WTHCastingAgency: Some fans and critics had this reaction to Cec Linder in the role of Felix Leiter, whom some found to be too old to play Bond's best friend, with one critic describing him as looking "more like Sean Connery's uncle than his best friend" (though ironically, he was a year younger than Creator/JackLord). A somewhat downplayed case, however, thanks to Linder's admirable performance as Felix.

** Hoo boy, Bond's quip about something being "as bad as listening to Music/TheBeatles without earmuffs" ended up unintentionally getting a lot of mileage.[[note]]It should be noted that at the time ''Goldfinger'' was being written and shot, the Beatles were a boy band who did mostly covers. It was only two months before the film's release that ''Music/AHardDaysNight'' -- the first album of all-original material -- was released, and good as it was, it still didn't predict ''Music/RubberSoul'' or ''Music/{{Revolver}}'', much less ''Music/SgtPeppersLonelyHeartsClubBand'', ''Music/AbbeyRoad'' or ''Music/LetItBe''. At the time of ''Goldfinger'', making fun of the Beatles was the 1964 equivalent of making fun of Music/JustinBieber would be today (which perhaps itself has an ironic lesson in it). And of course, one has to figure that even in the "swingin' 60s" the Beatles represented philosophies and ideologies that were or would be very much at odds with the ideology of Bond. The Beatles crowd wasn't Bond's target audience in 1964. In the end, though, WordOfGod is that he isn't referring to their music, but rather the ''incredibly'' loud legions of screaming fans at the concerts.[[/note]] Nine years later, [[Music/PaulMcCartney one of the Beatles]] would write and sing the opening theme for a [[Film/LiveAndLetDie Bond film]]!

* IronyAsSheIsCast: Fashion model Creator/TaniaMallet, who played Tilly Masterson, was never interested in acting and did almost no acting afterwards since; [[Creator/HelenMirren her cousin]], however...