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Comments
I enjoyed them all though.
There's only so much you can do, with a helicopter for instance before some moves or
stunts will look similar, perhaps not intentionally and not meant as a homage, but we fans
jump to the conclusion, it was deliberate. Instead of an accident. :)
After all many directors who are brought in, wouldn't have the depth of knowledge, that
many fans have.
It is true that the run time works in it's favour. I have never hated QoS. However, I do believe the action improved greatly with SP. If CR was Bond reborn, then QoS is the awkward teenage years. I don't care what anyone says, the action is hard to follow. Nothing is made clear, or plain to see. Besides the action, I enjoy the character stuff very much. I agree that QoS works quite well as a standalone film about a spy who lost a loved one. You don't HAVE to watch CR in order for the story to make sense. I wish they had explored the plot more though. Of all the modern Bond films, QoS has the most realistic plot and I find it to be very engaging. I really loved the party scene, and I thought Mathis' death scene was well handled. That last scene where Bond confronts Yusuf is just about perfect, Craig at his best as Bond.
OK but general audiences and critics agree that the action is needlessly abrupt and phrenetic, It's not a new opinion by me.
It feels to me like the most classic Bond of any of his, even Spectre, which was aiming for that. This movie is tight and to the point, and contains multiple memorable set pieces. That car chase at the beginning is probably the best in the series (that or the one in FYEO). The opera scene. The ridiculous hotel in the desert. That's at least three.
The score is probably Arnold's best, and the beginning music in particular, as we rush over the water to join the car chase is incredible. It's got this ominous tone reminiscent of some of the stuff in The Dark Knight, but I think this is even better.
I don't see a writer's strike in this movie either. The conversations between Mr White and the MI6 people really sparks, and Bond's dialogue with Camille in the plane is probably the most human interaction we see in a Bond film. They set up a SPECTRE-like organization clearly and efficiently while packing the film with great action (the parachute bit isn't great, to be fair) and intense personal confrontations. The final scene between Bond and Yusef and the Canadian agent is perfect.
Greene is a wonderful villain. He's short and odd-looking, and acts kind of like a freak. (Why is he stamping papers when we meet him? What a weirdo.) He's sort of a Zorin type, really, except he doesn't do anything as dumb as fly a blimp to crime scenes with his name on it, or burn down City Hall in person. He's got a great psychopathic balance of madness and competence.
I'll be honest, I thought this movie was shit when I first saw it, but it just gets better and better, and I actually have no idea what I didn't like the first time.
Oh, I'll add, I have no idea why people hate Another Way to Die. It's a kickass Bond song. The most crucial bit of any Bond song is that first 30 seconds, when the titles are first starting, and you see Cubby's name, Daniel's name, Fleming's name, and then the title, and no matter how much you don't like Jack White's mumbling through the lyrics, that blast that opens the title sequence does the job at least as well as any other Bond theme. Killer stuff.
Although, I've found it to be a great Driving song in the car.
So you like it as a song, but not a Bond song? Give me some insight on why you don't care for it in the titles...I normally just hear that it sucks, but it doesn't suck in an obvious way like All Time High or Die Another Day, to say the least. Or You Only Live Twice is a great song for sure, but it doesn't feel (to me) like something to kickstart a Bond film.
Maybe I just like the upbeat and brash ones...or maybe my taste is just bad. ;-) I also love Licence to Kill for its instrumental opening.
Something for no good reason. ;) I don't hate AWTD, by the way, I only wish we'd
Have gotten the Amy Winehouse ballad, if things had turned out, better.
"Needlessly"? No. The way the action is shot and edited fits the pacing and the style of the movie perfectly. To me, the way everything movies along and how the action is organized makes it one of the more unique and different Bond movies to me, remaining very grounded and realistic in its story, and yet it still manages to be very fun and entertaining to me.
Thankfully, I couldn't care less what general audiences and critics do or don't agree on when it comes to the world of Bond. Is this coming from the same critics and audiences that had issues with both the plot and title, simply because they didn't understand it? Whether you love or hate how the action is shot - I can understand that some aren't into a more frenetic, higher-paced style of action like we get in this - it's still fitting with the rest of the movie.
Fair enough, I just happen to disagree. I especially dislike that bit where Craig vaults over that banister and beats up those guards in the elevator. That felt very Bourne.
I think Bond films work best with the long range shots, like the CR parkour or SF pretitles, both which I think are some of the best sequences during the Craig era because they are nicely paced but still give perspective & depth to the action.
Siena in QoS was completely wasted in my view. Superb location but I would have liked to have seen more, especially during the rooftop chase.
The parkour chase definitely does, I have the same criticism of that. The stairwell fight is a bit different because Bond is discovered and has to deal with the situation. There is a reason for the frantic action.
Definitely. CR and SF had a more mature approach to the action. In fact there was no reason to go on the location at all in QoS, all the action was so tight that you barely got to see the surroundings.
There weren't enough establishing perspective shots during those early action sequences, and those locations were incredible.
Only when we got to Austria did everything start to slow down. The opening car chase worked for me because we had the beautiful opening tracking shot and also because it really was more about the cars and motion rather than the setting.
I didn't feel the same way about the Mitchel chase or the boat chase, which I though could have done with more wider shots. Particularly the Palio di Siena.
EDIT: This sort of thing works better for Bourne because Bourne has the action sequences more centred in buildings and within confined spaces. When one uses this approach in more glamorous & open settings (like in QoS) then a lot of the beauty of the surroundings are lost in the process, which is a key Bond differentiator. One must be able to 'feel' the location. Such a shame, because unlike in SP, in QoS, there was very little CGI in the locations.
I'm not sure if that's because I expected it from Bourne (which is most probably the case) or because I expected to have a more leisurely camera approach from Bond (which is also probably the case). So I think for me it was an expectations thing, especially because I had a certain expectation after CR about how the film might 'linger' in and on a location with perspective (I'm referring to the parkour on the cranes for example with those great moving camera angles from afar intercut with the close range shots).
I remember that I couldn't make out much of anything during my first watch of QoS, but didn't feel that way about the Bourne Ultimatum strangely. I will rewatch the latter before Jason Bourne comes out and see why that is.
Yeah, I agree. That panning crane shot in CR is a great example of capturing the action within the setting. Imagine if the crane fight was shot in extreme closeups. It just wouldn't have the same effect.
Hey, if you understand and enjoy the action, that's great! I wish I could.
With Taken, I have the same problem as QoS. The fights in one of them (can't remember which one) were cut to within an inch of its life, so I couldn't make out much. As mentioned, for some reason, Bourne is ok for me.
I completely agree on Bond in QoS/CR vs. SF. I realize that was part of the narrative (old dog and all that) but I think they messed this up, because many (including you and me) were still hoping for 'young bad ass' Craig Bond. It suits him.
Same, that's what I had hoped for, but sadly, Mendes and the screenwriters took it in a different direction: can't beat Patrice, doesn't get much done without his injuries coming to the forefront, can't save Severine...and yet with the snap of a finger, the Bond we know and love returns just seconds later to kill all of Silva's guards with precision and ease, and manages to gun down nearly all of the foes he faces in both London and Scotland with no issue.
This is the inconsistency that I can't stand; same thing goes for SP - he's incredible throughout, then we get to the torture sequence which all but guarantees that Bond will either die or be so severely injured/tortured that there's no way he can handle an escape, but nope! Sure enough, he snipes everyone in that compound and flees with no trouble whatsoever.