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Hardly, its a firm favourite of mine.
TWINE on the other hand... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
It's a better movie but nobody was doing this Bond stunts.
Supposedly. And I guess with a more introspective script that idea could have been interesting. Bond after all would be somewhat sympathetic to Melina’s mission for revenge, having gone through that himself with Blofeld (I guess, but not really in the context of this particular movie, which is a problem) or at least having avenged his fallen allies in the past/later in this movie. It also plays well into the idea of an older Bond.
They could have played with these ideas a bit more - have Melina call Bond out on the fact that it’s his job to kill people, or show some sort of consequence when it comes to personal vendettas (I’m sure Kristatos could have been given some sort of personal vendetta element that influences his plan/ultimately leads to his downfall… perhaps it could have connected to the Columbo subplot with both dying at the end… I dunno, anything could have been better). The issue is in the context of this movie Bond comes off as finger wagging and hypocritical.
Agreed.
Indeed, I'd liked to see got her revenge, I think Bond was intruding in Melina's life in this, he's just after the ATAC machine (sure, he needs Melina because she's the daughter of Timothy Havelock), but I think Bond should just do what mission was given to him and let Melina mind her own business.
And it's even more disappointing that after all of that, he'd just thrown that ATAC away and destroyed it, like he deprived Melina of seeking justice for her parents, then at the end, the reason why he became connected to Melina, to which was the ATAC mission just went off nowhere.
The film missed an opportunity to delve deeper into the theme of revenge, especially with Bond's journey and Melina's blinded pursuit. Bond's confrontation with Locque could have been a pivotal moment, exploring his mindset as he succumbs to the desire for revenge. Unfortunately, the script doesn't fully explore this potential, making the 'gritty' and 'tough' approach seem superficial. Nevertheless, the film manages to captivate with its impressive set pieces.
I asked ChatGPT to write a new scene in the film. Something as simple as this would have elevated the film and could easily have replaced some of that nonsense with Bibi Dahl....
INT. MILOS' VILLA - NIGHT
The moonlight casts a soft glow over the villa's terrace, where Bond and Melina sit, glasses of wine in hand. The air is tense, filled with the weight of their shared pasts.
BOND
(looking into the distance)
You know, Melina, revenge is a dangerous game. I've played it before, and it doesn't lead to the satisfaction one might expect.
MELINA
(sipping her wine)
And yet, James, it's the only game worth playing for some of us. My parents were murdered in cold blood. I can't just let that go.
Bond's eyes flicker, a distant pain surfacing.
BOND
I know the feeling. I lost someone too, someone I loved deeply. It led me down a dark path, seeking revenge for her death. But in the end, it left me empty.
Melina studies Bond's face, sensing the scars that lie beneath his exterior.
MELINA
(hesitant)
What happened, James?
BOND
(sighs)
She was taken from me, and I thought avenging her death would bring closure. But it didn't. It only deepened the void.
Melina's expression softens as she reaches for Bond's hand.
MELINA
(in a gentle tone)
I understand your pain, James, but I can't let my parents' killers roam free. I need to make them pay.
Bond meets her gaze, his eyes reflecting the weight of his experiences.
BOND
(leaning closer)
Melina, revenge is a road that leads to darkness. I've walked it, and I've seen others consumed by it. It's a lonely path, and the toll it takes on the soul is too high.
Melina looks conflicted, torn between her desire for justice and Bond's warning.
MELINA
But can't it bring a sense of justice, of making things right?
Bond looks at her with a deep intensity.
BOND
(reminiscing)
I once told someone that revenge is a dish best served cold. But in the end, all it brought me was a cold heart.
Melina takes a moment to absorb Bond's words, a realization dawning on her.
MELINA
(softly)
I don't want to end up alone and bitter.
BOND
(smiling faintly)
No one does. There's a saying I heard once – "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." One for your enemy and one for yourself.
They sit in contemplative silence, the shared understanding forging a connection between them.
BOND (CONT'D)
(looking into her eyes)
Melina, maybe there's another way. Together, we can find justice without losing ourselves in the process.
Melina gazes at Bond, a mix of vulnerability and determination in her eyes.
MELINA
Maybe it's too late for me.
Good. Haha, I’m glad we’re completely agreed on at least one thing. But it’s always interesting to hear what you have to say regardless whether you agree with me or not 😊
Perhaps I’m not experienced enough with screenwriting (and to be honest, someone like @peter being an actual scriptwriter will probably have a better judgment over this than me) but I thought that effort from ChatGPT wasn’t any better. Very on the nose dialogue and descriptions (again, I may be wrong, but I assume it’s not recommended writing stuff like a character’s eyes ‘flickering’ as it controls what an actor does a bit too much, and on the opposite end of that is all the vague s*it such as ‘Bond meets her gaze, his eyes reflecting the weight of his experiences’ which no one can possibly convey).
Bond was talking to Melina, if he didn't interrupted, there's Melina already aiming her crossbow at Kristatos, but Bond interrupted her only to say that Kristatos should be given to the authorities and while they're talking, Kristatos was already planning to kill Bond, so Columbo shoots a knife on him.
If Columbo shouted to Melina to shoot him, it would be very quick, I guess, because it would've been a rushed attack.
I think the better idea here would be to have Melina look at Kristatos and her focus wasn't on Bond, while Bond was talking to Melina, unexpectedly, Melina shoots Kristatos dead, Bond was surprised:
So there's the realization from Bond that him stopping Melina from what she's doing is wrong.
We have this movie. It's called LTK.
In FYEO Bond was doing his job. That's all.
He's talking about Melina, it later worked in Quantum Of Solace.
QoS was another rogue mission but FYEO was business as usual. And I think this is the point of the movie. For Bond it's business as usual.
To be fair he said the film could have delved deeper into the idea of revenge, but not necessarily about Bond’s desire to get it. It’s possible to have a film like that with Bond simply doing his job/doesn’t have any personal stake in the mission beforehand.
It’s an odd Bond film in terms of its production. I think this is the point in the series where the budgets became frozen (which seems to be the main reason why Glen was hired as even Peter Hunt was out of their price range at the time) which didn’t help. You also have a pretty wide range of different voices involved in the script, including Maibaum, Wilson, Broccoli, early drafts from different writers, and notes from Stunt Coordinators. That’s actually not a bad thing - TSWLM was partly created from several cobbled together drafts from different writers. Pretty much all of the modern Bond films are written this way too, but with FYEO it feels as though they missed those initial pre-production meetings where they map out what the film is about/what they want out of it. As it is it feels like they went all in with the ‘back to basics’ concept but missed out what they wanted to do with character. It could have been done at the time - TSWLM for all its grandness and outlandishness has a pretty strong central story with Bond and Anya, and it even touches on the idea of revenge.
Maibaum’s criticisms of the script make sense in this context, but going from his own words I’m not sure if even he was the right writer to be tackling this. Ie.
"We tried to return to the earlier films with For Your Eyes Only but we didn't have Sean to make it real. And I was very disappointed with the way the love story was handled. The whole idea was that the great lover James Bond can't get to first base with this woman because she was so obsessed with avenging her parents' death. Nothing was ever done with it. It was as if the director didn't feel there was a love story there at all."
Yeah, even that seems a bit superficial and very much in ‘missing the point’ territory. The first base stuff comes off as a bit crude. I’m actually glad Moore played his scenes with Melina the way he did.
I mean in QoS, Bond lets Camille got her own revenge, something that's not touched upon in here.
The good thing about QOS is that it’s not a revenge film like LTK. By the end Camille gets little, and arguably even no closure from what she’s done, and Bond admits he thinks the dead do not care about vengeance. It hits home that idea that there’s an emptiness to the whole business.
QOS isn’t even one of my favourite Bond films, but in terms of the writing and this particular aspect it’s miles ahead of FYEO.
Yes, QoS isn't my favourite, but it does actually manage to explore some ideas. As you say, the main one is that revenge is hollow, and that everyone thinks that's what Bond is after when he isn't really.
I mean, it’s difficult for QOS to have been a traditional revenge story anyway as Bond really doesn’t have a single person who he can track down/kill to avenge Vesper for most of the film. It’s not entirely clear at the beginning that Yussief is in fact a Quantum agent, and he’s such a background character in the whole thing anyway until the end. M certainly has her doubts about Bond’s judgment as an agent, and the idea of Bond ‘letting go’ of Vesper is there, but revenge doesn’t really come into it until the end, at which point Bond has seen Camille go through this herself that him stopping Yussief from tricking another female agent (in effect putting a stop to this ‘cycle’) and having him arrested has much more relevance.
Yeah, because Bond was doing his job.
He is a professional. Melina is not.
Yes. That's the story they wanted to tell.
She still have the rights to seek revenge since it's her story, I think her story in that film is more bigger than Bond's (who's just after the ATAC anyway), her parents are both killed, and I think Bond, whose business was far from what Melina is aiming, shouldn't intrude or interfere in Melina's goal, just have Bond mind his own business, like what Bond did to Camille in QoS.
But again, it's not Bond's business of what would happen to Melina, in fact, she's old enough to handle herself, she's independent, she knows what she's doing.
And here's Bond whom suddenly came into her life out of nowhere and whose aim was about the ATAC machine and not about Melina and her family anyway then started scolding her about her personal vendetta.
Bond was just not in the right place.
For me, this is probably the first time and maybe the last time that Bond would interfere with a lady's plan, like it's not that he's controlling her or being strict to her, but he's just being intrusive of her, he's not like that before and not even after that film, mostly, he just lets the girls do their own things.
Bond has a mission. The ATAC is more important than a personal vendetta.
is he paternalistic? Sure, but he is a professional and Melina is a random woman.
Indeed, and again, she knows what's she's doing.
It's even showed again in Cortina when she bought a new crossbow, when she's tricked into that letters telling that Bond already find the killers of her parents, so she's not innocent.
She even followed Bond even in the Casino.
She's not innocent.
And again, it doesn't really matter to Bond really, and he should not care either, it's Melina's decision, he should never intrude into it, I mean he did that to almost all of the Bond Girls that he'd never intrude in their personal perspectives or motivations, he even helped Domino avenged her brother's death in TB.
I do think, now that I've been opened to the sort of missing and heated discussion about what revenge does, it would've been interesting to see that attempt in FYEO, but I love it for what it is and it's my favorite of Moore's era.