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Comments
Spectre is good.
But there's the rub: the plot DOES work. And the only way to know that is to take the film seriously.
It was a cheap knock off from TWINE and GE (Alec)
Was it good when Bond shoots down a helicopter with a pistol?
That said we have seen in real life a man with a rifle or a gun taking down a helicopter or a plane. A single bullet killed the Red Baron, after all (okay so it killed him and did not touch hos plane, but still, others were taken down by a gun). Bond did a bull's eye. Far fetched, yes, but it happens sometimes.
Back it explodes ........... Oh! Sorry that's been done. ;)
It could have been redone.
I think it also was freely inspired by the end of the novel DAF. What they needed was a bigger gun really.
I don't think Pam Bouvier would agree.
I am sort of with you here, @bondjames. The problem with Mendes Bond films is that he seems to love helicopter imagery. Whether it's Silva's "Boom Boom" entrance upon Scotland (Apocalypse Now reference?), the explosion and crash of that craft, the SP helicopter tussle or the finale's smash up, it's all a bit too overdone.
I agree that it feels sloppy. Mendes clearly wanted some way to have Blofeld symbolically fall from grace and crash in the helicopter, injured and in pain on the ground like Ozymandias on that bridge to convey a fallen empire, and the only way he and his team could figure out how to do that is by Bond shooting at the helicopter's weak spot with his PPK. We do see Bond really try over and over to get his shot before succeeding, it's just not really that climactic of an action to be honest. In the history of Bond finales, this doesn't get the heart pumping. And because we opened the film with a helicopter fight, that couldn't be rehashed. But because the helicopter imagery returns for the finale, it feels redundant anyway, making me question if they should've just gone for it regardless, though I can't think of a way to get Bond on the helicopter with Blofeld. Dammit.
The biggest issue with SP content wise is that it's front-loaded, and heavily so. We get a lot of the big, meaty action in the first half, and then not much in the second. The biggest piece of the film is the one that opens it, so SP puts itself in a weird spot where it peaks literally out of the gate from an action standpoint such that anything beyond that save for the Hinx and Bond train fight feels lesser.
The biggest problem I personally have with SP's action is how disconnected and anti-visceral it feels. We only really see Bond throw a punch and get his own hands dirty a few times here and there, and these last for only a few seconds. All the rest of the action is vehicular in nature: we get Bond causing chaos in a car, in a plane, on a boat; anything but a bike, really. The issue with this, however, is that we don't really feel any emotive investment in this action. Because we can't even see Bond in the car and plane sections (for the most part) we're disconnected almost entirely from whatever impact his actions could have. In the train fight however, and in every Bond fistfight, we feel the punches because we can see Bond and we latch on to him in those desperate moments of survival. Those visceral, man to man moments were missing in SP, big time. I've never cared for chases or other kinds of vehicular action when a well choreographed fist fight gives you all the raw power you need to feel in a high octane moment.
SP could have been heavily improved with a more emotional core moment, akin to SF's Tennyson scene, and more in your face and "present" action with Dan like the Hinx fight or QoS's pulse pounding Slate face-off. I like the movie, but I agree that we should see Bond's pain at what Blofeld and SPECTRE have done to him in a more overt fashion, brining it back to my concern about a slightly off emotional core. I can see why some feel Bond doesn't have much of a reaction to the news of Franz being alive and his hand in SPECTRE, and one close-up where 007 realizes the organization's involvement in his past would've been stellar and gone a long way to showing how the awareness troubles him.
The thing that complicates all this is Blofeld's "author of all your pain" line. I think it was a poor phrase to use because it makes people think that Blofeld was committed solely to dismantling Bond's life, and he set out to do that purposely and without any other interest in the past. Is anyone else bugged by this as much as I am?
The only action scenes that disappointed me, somewhat, was Bond destroying the SPECTRE base, and the maligned helicopter crash.
Regarding both SP starting out strong and then weakening considerably, and the somewhat 'tacked on' feeling to the action, I think that is very similar to TWINE, a film I criticize for similar reasons. There are tonal variations in SP as well (from serious to somewhat jovial and from tense to somewhat trivial) that may throw some viewers. It certainly threw me during my first watch, but with successive viewings it's gotten much better. That's similar to TWINE as well imho. Do we take it seriously, or not?
Regarding 'author of all your pain'. Yes, I think that shouldn't have been used, and I feel the same way about 'beloved M' and 'big one Vesper'. To me, these remarks diminish Blofeld and make him look somewhat Dr Evil'esque. Same goes for 'cuckoo'. All unnecessary.
I would have preferred if Bond came to the realization about the significance of Blofeld's impact on his life (via M, Vesper, Mathis, Fields etc. etc.) through some kind of flashback scenario. A dark moment of reflection or realization at L'Americaine as an example, when he finds the Vesper tape (perhaps on his own without Madeline). I'm sure Craig could have acted his pants off and delivered this moment. It's a pity we didn't get that.
A longer runtime doesn't equate to a better movie; perhaps that's one of the reasons why I love QoS so much - shorter runtime makes it such an easy, engaging Bond movie to sit down and watch. Hell, even these 150 minute + releases wouldn't be bad if they can nail down the script and pacing.
Odd that people find the SF climactic scenes as Home Alone. I saw Straw Dogs in those scenes.
Depends on whether one is a 70's baby or a 90's baby I guess....
Definitely shades of a cross-dressing Patrick Swayze in them. But of course.
The two flatest and least supenseful sequeces of the Craig era, the QOS Desert climax was 10 x better than those, you definitely thought Bond was in danger then.
I'm pretty sure in 10 years SF will only be remembered for the 50th Anniversary that accompanied it and Adele.