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bang on!
As for P&W, they have had a long run. But I don't hate them. P&W having a bit of a hand in the next one is fine with me. But as I've said, I'd like a new writer for the main writer.
Every time there is a waiting period for a Bond film, we all say: script, get a good writer, script. @doubleoego, Eon "putting their hands in their pockets" is actually not a fair point, I believe. That is not the issue. Just choosing a good writer is, but I don't think they have a rep for trying to get cheap writers. The script matters more than just about anything, at least right up there in the top 3 elements in making a really good Bond film.
EoN need to part ways from P&W completely and do the work to find and pay good money for fresh talented writers and such talent doesn't come cheap.
When you set a tone like they did with CR and QOS, you can't move away from that too much in my opinion. And I feel that is what happened in SF and even more in SP.
Also, I like the train fight in SP, but if you compare the way Bond fights in SP to CR and QOS, he certainly hasn't got better at it.
EoN's view of P&W may unfortunately not be the same as most of ours. Maybe not so much balls but brains to actually comprehend the lackluster crap P&W are feeding them.
I actually read that composers don't get paid when part of their score is the "Bond theme". They only are paid for their original compositions when the soundtrack sells.
If thats the case, its a shame. Same goes for the weaving of the title song into the score. (It always worked for David Arnold, who helped compose many of the title songs)
So maybe Newman just wants to get paid. Which is appalling to me. Use the Bond theme!
1. Scene where Mads was kidnapped and taken by Hinx on a snowy road. Bond follows in pursuit in a plane and the two exchange shots by pistol with some shots fired actually contacting the plane. It just seems ludicrous to me, as a pilot in the past, that Bond could actually fly the plane close enough and steady enough to contemplate firing a pistol at a moving SUV and a snowy windy road.
2. The grand finale scene where Bond and Mads while on a boat blasting down the river at night chase after Blofeld's Helicopter. Bond fires shots with a pistol, at night, while on a boat, and manages to bring down a decent size heli. Maybe a blimp, but a heli? This is just laughable.
I know we are dealing with Bond and he is an amazing shot, but lets rejoin this universe in the next film. I also share the same complaints of a car chase ruined by a phone call and an old man driving 20 mph, forced scenes sharing precious screen time with the MI6 gang, and lazy retconning of Spectre.
I don't lay this all at DC's doorstep. I think he's a great Bond and is responsible for many moments of brilliance. EON needs to cut out the rubbish and focus on finding those moments.
Let Him Have It - Decent but fairly average reselling of a true story so they didn't even have to come up with any ideas of their own.
Plunkett & Macleane - Reasonably entertaining fluff but hardly a film that gets a special collectors edition release.
AND THATS IT!!
That's enough to get you the job writing one of the industry's biggest franchises. What just because they've read a few Fleming novels?
And since? They've written TWINE & DAD (hardly stellar screenplays), CR (thanks to Fleming for most of that), QOS (I'll maybe give them the benefit of the doubt there given what happened), SF (reasonable enough I suppose), SP (polished a turd and made it even more turdy) and both Johnny English films!
How anyone can say we're not shopping in Lidl with these two is beyond me. Actually scratch that - we're not even shopping. P&W is like ferreting around the bins in Lidl car park.
It's utterly bizarre that EON are happy to spend money to attract the likes of Deakins, Van Hoytema, Dench, Fiennes, Bardem and Waltz but when it come to writers they're trying to pay Mike Ashley zero hour contract wages.
Lets not underestimate the influence of the various directors on the end products, we are so easily to blame Tamahori but forget that Forster & Mendes did have their own agendas as well.
Campbell is like Glen working for the franchise and less for his own glory.
Completely agreed.
And if you're going to venture away from Fleming as they did with SP anyway, get someone who knows how to write a compelling thriller to do it rather than the quartet of writers who gave us Bloferhauser.
Indeed.
Campbell and Glen were kept on a tight rein by EON whereas Tamahori, Forster and Mendes were given various degrees of 'creative freedom'.
Judge the results for yourselves.
Not sure this can be answered definitively. However, when the Dec. 1, 2014 draft was presented, it was attached to an email saying that Jez Butterworth was polishing/refining the first two acts and the third act had been revised by Purvis and Wade.
This was the draft that explained Blofeld hated Bond ever since loosing in a poker game when they were kids. It did not contain the torture scene we'd get in the final film.
This isn't intended to contradict or criticize, just to provide additional information.
P&W also worked on (but didn't receive a credit for) the 2003 Italian Job remake. I vaguely remember seeing a teaser trailer or some kind of early promotion where their names were on the screenplay credit (with others), but they weren't referenced in the final credit.
Here's the final WGA credit: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317740/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_wr#writers
Totally as an aside, their first draft of The World Is Not Enough says, "Based on an idea by Richard Maibaum." I don't know what that idea was.
I'd much rather have Blofeld as an African warlord than Bond's foster brother. At least it's a more unique take than a small European man.
Mendes completely fudged Blofeld in Spectre.
There were some really great stuff; the silhouetted figure at the Rome meeting, the nehru jacket, the reintroduction of the cat and the scar. But these are really surface details (arguable Blofeld was never a character in the original series and more a collection of gimmicks). But aside from embracing the character's iconography, the half-brother angle doesn't work.
I'm not too much of a purist. I don't mind if the directors play around with the canon, however, if you're going to make Blofeld the half-brother of James Bond, you better develop that idea fully. In Spectre the whole angle is a complete after-thought. Mendes is overly concerned with evoking the flamboyant tone of the earlier Bond films. Subsequently, the 'brother' idea falls completely flat. There's very little meat to it. Which is surprising as dramatically it raises a lot of interesting questions. The sort you'd expect a director like Mendes to mine. Sadly he was clearly having too much fun with aping the nostalgia factor.
The smarter thing to have done was to leave the villain as Franz Oberhauser. They could have kept their half-brother nonsense and revealed him to be a high-ranking member of the organisation. The second in command (hence the awe he inspires at the Rome meeting).
When Bond is being tortured he could say something along the lines of "So you're the leader of this organisation?" Oberhauser would reply, "No, there is someone else and he's been dying to meet you. It's a shame he won't, blah blah blah".
That way they can keep their options open in case Craig leaves and they need to introduce a new Blofeld. Plus it would have been a neat twist; everyone was expecting Waltz to be Blofeld, and guess what.......he was Blofeld. Sigh. It would have been a great reversal.
(I know the internet elite hate the obvious twist, but there are a lot of fans who don't read blogs and forums who like the reveal.)
I suppose the saving grace of this whole mess is that Waltz could return. I know he's an actor who has been posting diminishing returns since Django but I hope he does come back. Spectre felt more like an introduction to the character.
By all means have him working for SPECTRE and at the most have a FRWL/TB appearance of Blofeld.
So many ill judged decisions in the making of SP but compressing Bond never having heard of SPECTRE to Blofeld being vanquished in the space of one film might just be the worst.
Did EON waste all that money on legal fees fighting McClory then finally get their hands on the rights only to get it all over and done with in one film?
Apart from that, I've found them more miss than hit over the past 20 odd years to be honest, although it's still my #1 franchise by some distance.
Indeed.
Would I prefer a studio to take over control of Bond? Not a chance.
Could EON do better? Indubitably.
That's the conundrum.
Does something need to be done differently? Yet the one way to ensure something is done differently could be far worse.
:
EON are delivering 4th every season which is reasonable but there are some fans who have aspirations to challenge for the title and CL.
But if we get rid of Wenger there's every chance we might plummet down the table so are we better off sticking with what we've got?
The 'In EON we trust' brigade of fans still hold sway at the moment but how many more SPs will it take before the mood changes to 'You don't knew what you're doing?'
Not many I would say.
I agree and that confused me as well. How did Logan have that much command over EoN's logic is beyond me.
What happened to the inspiration that gave us CR?
Agreed on all points, particularly the reveal.
The name might as well be revealed as Joe Bloggs for all the impact it has.
Yes we on here know who it is but to half the audience who aren't Bond geeks it's meaningless. But that doesn't really bother me either way.
What is a total disgrace is that the name Blofeld is utterly meaningless to Bond. We are being told he's Bond's nemesis by the use of the name Blofeld but to Bond Ernst Stavro Blofeld might as well be the name of a Polish plumber who's coming round to unblock his sink. Hence what should be a wow moment a la Donald Pleasance turning round to face Bond is reduced to 'catchy name'.
The name Franz Oberhauser is the big reveal to Craig's Bond but has zero relevance to the audience because we have never heard of the guy.
Christ the more you chip away at it the more it infuriates you at how shockingly they dropped the ball with the third act of SP. In fact in terms of not dropping the ball they'd have done better getting Simon Mignolet in to write it instead of Logan and P&W.