PRODUCTION
The ninth James Bond film marks the end of Harry Saltzman's association with Eon Productions. Relations between Saltzman and Broccoli had become strained, and the producers took turns producing Live and Let Die and the new film, The Man With the Golden Gun.
It was Saltzman who had always wanted to go on location in Hong Kong and Thailand, and these locations are the highlights of Golden Gun. Otherwise, the ninth James Bond entry is weak, even lower in quality than Live and Let Die. The main problem is that the film stays on one dynamic level throughout and is played entirely too lightly. Guy Hamilton must take the blame for the failure of Golden Gun, although its script, by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz, is none too thrilling. The set-piece formula is again apparent, creating the effect that the plot was built around the film's locations. There are a few good moments in the picture, but as a whole, it lacks unity.
Golden Gun was shot in Hong Kong; in and around Bangkok, Thailand; and near the resort island of Phuket Production designer Peter Murton found an unusual set of islands near Phuket, and one of these, Kao Ping-Kan, was used as the headquarters of Francisco Scaramanga. The site is otherworldly and exotic.
SCREENPLAY
Tom Mankiewicz wrote the initial draft of The Man With the Golden Gun before resigning from the project due to reported disagreements with Guy Hamilton. As usual, the Fleming original was completely thrown out Granted, Fleming's novel is probably his weakest, but it contains enough good elements to serve as a departure point for a screenplay. Instead, Mankiewicz created a new story involving not a second-rate Cuban assassin like Fleming's Scaramanga, but a super-villain of the stature of Bond himself. Scaramanga is equipped with his own island headquarters which resembles Crab Key in Dr. No. Mankiewicz's original idea for the story was to involve a duel between the two best shots in the world—Bond and Scaramanga. Supposedly, Mankiewicz wanted the film to be more serious, opposing Hamilton's wishes.
Richard Maibaum was hired to rewrite the script. Maibaum added a "MacGuffin" (Hitchcock's term for an item that is basically meaningless but serves as the villains' objective in order to motivate the action, such as the Lektor coding machine in From Russia With Love). Maibaum's MacGuffin is a solex agitator, a device which will convert radiation from the sun into pure energy. In the film, Scaramanga and the British Secret Service are both searching for the agitator, which is in the possession of a traitorous British agent in Hong Kong. Scaramanga is employed by the Red Chinese through a rich merchant named Hai Fat, who resides in Bangkok. A subplot is inaugurated when Scaramanga sends a golden bullet (his trademark) to Universal Export with the number 007 engraved on it M presumes this means that someone has paid Scaramanga his one million dollar fee to assassinate Bond. Therefore, Bond must somehow find Scaramanga before the killer finds Bond.