Along with everything you’ve listed here, I also appreciate that the movie finally gave Moore his “And you’ve had your six” moment.
I have mixed feelings about this. Partly because Moore hated that scene and fought hard against it, partly because I feel the movie awkwardly merges two versions that would have worked better independently : the tex avery "butterfly's additional weight is too much" joke, and the mean-spirited kick down. I appreciate both intents, but I feel they cancel out each other a bit. As opposed to, say, The Spy Who Loved Me's simple tie snap.
Apart from that, it's a solid movie, but a bit uneven. For all its serious investigative plot, it also has this funnily forced "mickey mouse at the winter olympics" feel, with an action sequence in each one of the discipline (apart from bobsleigh, which was already ticked in a previous movie). Bond versus the ski jump, Bond versus the biathlon, Bond versus the artistic skating, Bond versus the *checks list* have we done hockey yet ?
I've always mocked that aspect, but it feels artificial in retrospect mostly. In the movie, it flows mostly organically, and I'm particularly fond of the musical build up to the ski jump sequence. Which would be really tense in a Hitchcock movie, but Moore isn't Cary Grant or Michael Caine, and the threat of having to ski jump into a firing squad isn't as terrifying for Bond's magical omni-expertise than it would be for even just a Harry Palmer. Yet, the way it's filmed (and sounded) makes it kinda work.
So it's an odd movie, with an uneven sense of vulnerabilities, oscillating between cold war flick protagonists and supermaney jamesbonderies. I think this vague sense of patchwork is what makes me rate it lower than Spy Who. That or, more subjectively, Barbara Bach (or the role her lookalike was playing in my life, making this film special forever).
And yeah, I really dislike this pre-title. Okay, get rid of Blofeld, got it. But... see, after the Tracy melodrama, both the "angry revenge spree" of Diamond's pre-title and this goofy helicopter scene feel cartoonish and out if place. They make of Tracy a throwaway fridged girl for lolz, and... while that's very bondish, it's still disrespectful of the Majesty's Secret Service movie itself...
It's, like the cliff scene (or like trying to not look too pedophiley in that movie's one unique instance), Bond trying to have it both ways. A common, unsolved issue with the franchise.
