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The only thing EoN need to look at Marvel for is the involvement Feige has over the films and even then, it's only looking to serve as a reminder that Cubby and Harry largely had it right in their stewardship of the films when they were in charge. Feige is similar as a sort of modern day Cubby and Harry but with greater creative and business strengths. EoN need to have tighter control over their films and be more stringent about what they want. (Newman's refusal to use the Bond theme should have activated an automatic dismissal and a replacement broufht in stat). However, but at the same time they need to move away from some of their outdated policies that limit the pool of talent they could get working on these films.
They need to focus on establishing a creative direction and sticking with it until it is necessary to restrategise. In the mean time have writers come in and pitch ideas as to where the story and characters are going. A shortlist of the best ones get turned into draft screenplays and the best one of that gets put forward to be worked on until the script is complete in which EoN are regularly given progress reports and not the crap that happened with Logan RE: SP.
Newman refused to use the Bond theme? Sure it's in both Skyfall and Spectre.
The iconic guitar part of the Bond theme has been played only once outside of the end credits in the Craig era - the DB5 reveal in SF.
Yes I agree, but that's very different to him actually refusing to use the Bond theme - i think that is not true.
Is Fleming's Bond cool and suave?
The frustrating thing is how little the personal connection between Bond and Blofeld even matters to the story, such that it could have been forgotten and nothing would have changed, beyond a few throwaway lines where Blofeld teases Bond about it ("Brothers know how to touch each other's buttons," etc.). I think quite strongly that if that particular element was dropped from the movie, many, many more people here would be positive about SP. As it stands, it's my belief that the stepbrother angle soured the film for some and after that point, there was no chance it could recover after that.
I didn't use to mind it much, but the more I think about it and how little any of it matters to the story in any way-and how silly it comes off in the movie at times-it just doesn't work.
Here's how it should have gone: Blofeld should have simply wanted Bond's head on a silver platter not because of some misguided childhood envy, but because 007 had spoiled all his plans since CR and QoS. When Bond finally ran into Blofeld, it would be him coming face to face with the criminal maestro behind a lot of his biggest missions, and for Blofeld he'd finally meet the man who had almost single-handedly unraveled some of his organization's greatest schemes. You could even give SP a DN spin and maybe have Blofeld trying at first to recruit Bond to join SPECTRE, then turn sour to him after Bond refuses. Or just have him go full-blown agro on Bond and try and kill him so he quits getting in the way of his organization's interests.
The plot needed nothing more than that to make Bond and Blofeld credible enemies. Them having a past does very little in the grand scheme of things, and feels very corny at times. It just feels...weird, that's all I can say. It would be like knowing Holmes and Moriarty were private school rivals as kids, before growing up to be full-blown enemies. It just doesn't work.
I really like SP, but out of all the Craig films, I want to change it the most. I see such potential in it to be even better that it's frustrating it's held back by some of the stuff between Blofeld and Bond and the issues that arrive as the third act begins.
He didn't want to use it and apparently he didn't want to weave cues from Adele's SF theme. Someone else was brought in iirc to add bits of the Bond theme. In any case, we didn't get a full Bond theme within the movie itself and that, I find unacceptable.
That's just illogical, though. Just because you plan to do something a decade down the line doesn't mean that won't change. In all likelihood, it will. This whole discussion is a bit of a non sequitur - SF was a hugely successful standalone movie, both critically and financially. The 'misstep' that is at the heart of this argument was born out of the giddiness to include the SP organisation at the earliest opportunity and the decision to retcon. Had those two things been handled differently, or even abandoned completely, we would likely not be having this conversation. The issue people have is not with forward planning (they've just convinced themselves of this because of Disney/Marvel), the issue is with general decision making at the pre-production stage.
I think that was my point.
The criticisms over his use of the Bond theme are somewhat nonsensical: the theme was all over the Skyfall score, not always overtly but certainly creatively, and that approach very much applies to Spectre, which in-keeping with the movie's central notion of the past catching up is closely tied into Skyfall's musical ideas. In fact, it's surprising to hear how much of Skyfall's material is referenced in Spectre; at the same time, Newman is far too accomplished a composer to use said ideas as a crutch. Instead, it's best to see both scores as two sides of the same Bondian coin: a musical depiction of the past, present and future.
When it comes to Spectre itself, the Bond theme first makes a forceful, brassy appearance in the opening "Los Muertos Vivos Estan", subsequent applications ranging from the slyly knowing bass flute intonations in the opening moments of "The Eternal City" to the spine-tingling choral interpretation midway through "Backfire", the steady build-up of "Safe House" and the relentlessly exciting statement in "Snow Plane". Surely its biggest crowd-pleasing moment comes in the hugely dramatic "Westminster Bridge" whose squealing horns recall John Barry at his finest. What Newman does brilliantly is avoid using the theme as a glib, predictable signifier of something heroic: instead he deploys it very carefully, looking to see how it can extend the emotional impact of a given track in the most memorable way possible.
Newman scored the whole film. You're thinking of GoldenEye where John Altman was brought in to bring the Bond theme into the tank chase.
IMO the complaints on Newman are very much correct.
Until we hear the Bond theme like these from him...
... he is under-using the Bond theme. Me and @ClarkDevlin are aware the Bond theme is used his both his soundtracks, but we are talking about a huge, bombastic version of the Bond theme during an action sequence or Bond doing something cool. Which simply has not happened outside of the DB5 reveal in Craig's era.
This.
That would almost mean the end of Craig,i think he would have lost interest by then and moved on.
Please, no more anniversaries and tributes. 2002. Blatant references in 2008. 50th anniversary in 2012. Nostalgic elements in 2015. Please make the 25th a stand alone mission which looks to the future, not the past.
Do any celebrations and tributes outside of the movie
I wasn't so much talking about mapping out the next 10-15 years, but instead extending pre production planning of the next film to run simultaneous to the production cycle of the current film. This would allow more time for ideas to mature and bad elements to be dismissed earlier in the process. This might help hit the 3 year release window a bit better.
I agree that the preproduction process needs to be tweaked to ensure the gatekeepers aren't letting these terrible ideas pass through in the first place. Obviously to them, the ideas were brilliant which is the real problem.
That's what I mean. The celebrations for OHMSS and the release of B25 will coincide.
I'm not sure I like the idea of Bond not being on screen for nearly 4 years.
He could lose his momentum during that period,and would definitely lose out to Bourne and Hunt in MI.
Or maybe a chance to forget SP and long for Bond again? TSWLM, GE, and SF all did financially better after a longer gap and a disappointing entry.
I don't know ...just throwing thoughts out.