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Bond was following that trend. I don't want to defend Forster but it may not have been his fault. Maybe he did what they asked.
Yeah I know what you mean. I'm afraid I was kind of, seems silly to say it, offended in the cinema when the film started and went straight into the car chase with no preamble whatsoever. Film grammar to me is that you have to be introduced to the film, have the table laid in front of you and have the situation established. You can't just start in the middle of a scene and expect me to respond as I would do as if you'd done the proper opening beforehand- I find it kind of presumptuous. Plus I'm a Bond fan who had watched CR a few times by then and remembered how it ended: for me to feel that way makes me wonder how someone who had last seen it once, two years previously felt about it.
I would actually quite like to see an edit of the film which cuts out the car chase and opens it with Bond arriving at Sienna and getting Mr White out of the boot. Then you'd have the M scene to work as the introduction to the film before an exciting action sequence kicks in.
What I did mind was the inexplicable, confusing, headache-inducing editing...it felt like all the rules of film editing were being broken, including the crockery.
Think what Glen would have done with this PTS. It would have been a proper action sequence, that's for sure.
Not a scriptwriting example, but I always say that the start of the Sienna chase cutting to the horse rally is like something a first year film school student would do. In theory it's clever - very much in the vein of Kuleshov/Eisenstein's editing techniques that creates a symbolic meaning - but in practice it interrupts a perfectly tense interrogation scene and does nothing to actually tell the story. The horse race isn't even all that relevant later to the chase beyond being the first point they start from, and we get an establishing shot of it at the beginning of the scene anyway.
If they'd wanted to do some clever editing/directing and build up some tension they could have filmed and cut to insert shots of, say, Mitchell slowly reaching for his gun or him giving Mr. White a look, tighter close ups of Bond looking around and then finally clocking Mitchell etc. The sort of 'Hitchcock's bomb' approach where the audience are shown the danger before the actual characters know of it. But no, random cuts to the horse race happening a mile away it is...
So yeah, I definitely can see where you're coming from there with Forster.
QOS is one of the most stylish films of the series too
So you've seen NTTD, finally?
Copying others doesn't feel fresh to me. I want others copying Bond. But of course it's all a matter of how we view things.
It's one of the major things that always disappointed me about QOS. I never felt Bond was genuinely in danger or could get hurt at any point, which is such a shame. In CR we saw Bond taking punches/tumbles, downing whiskey after a fight and taking time to look himself in the mirror. In SF, while very much a heightened reality type Bond film in the classic mould, we saw a Bond having to recover from his injuries and getting over quite deep psychological trauma.
The Bond in SF's PTS is actually still very much the agent he was in QOS. Actually he's arguably better/more seasoned. The issues come in when he sees his fellow agent dying (although he gets on with the job), and when he gets shot (even then he manages to nearly beat up Patrice before Moneypenny shoots him again). Ultimately though, SF is a film about Bond coming back from that experience. It's far more evocative than QOS in my opinion.
I get that (and by the way, that's one thing I like about the movie, Bond's more vulnerable moments). But when you go from a Bond in CR who visibly struggles to keep up with a parkour expert, who gets bloodied during fights, and is even seen having to recover from quite nasty torture injuries, to one who can fall great heights without injury, or beat up opponents without getting any injuries in the process himself, something doesn't quite chime. I think some of that physical vulnerability could have gone into QOS (like I said, I think if Green had injured Bond during the ax fight/put him at a disadvantage we could have gotten much more impactful fight. As it is it's rather boring, and even watching the film for the first time I never thought Bond was in danger).
I wish we could go to the sort of Bond film that I fell in love with when I was younger: a standalone mission with unforgettable characters, stunning locations, glamorous surroundings, (a little bit of) humour and some remarks about food / wine / brandy / ... .
I loved CR - QOS, just like I loved OHMSS and LTK, but those atypical entries felt fresh because they didn't happen every single time. At this point the atypical Bond film has become the norm and I feel each time they want to surpass the previous one in that area (with the exception of SP perhaps). I feel it's been overdone and it would be refreshing to go back to a standalone mission without too many emotional bruises again.
I must admit I sometimes think: "If this is the way they want to keep going, do I really want them to continue?"
I'm not saying I want the Bond films to stop being made, though I am expressing a hearfelt concern here in the way things have been going lately.
That’s an interesting point: I hadn’t really noticed that before.
Yeah. @GoldenGun I feel you. Slight depth and slight lightness are needed in Bond films. That's why I feel the next director should look at The Living Daylights & GoldenEye for inspiration. I feel those Bond films got the balance really well....Casino Royale as well...that's why you love it too, I guess.
I think Bond did pretty well considering he had a bullet in his shoulder at that point! But I guess the point of that PTS is that we see Bond taking those hits, and then ultimately ‘dying’. If he hadn’t been injured I think he could have beaten Patrice.
😂 And with super speed QOS editing/lack of insert shots? Patrice’s bullets never stood a chance
I think what exemplifies it is when you compare the Madagascar chase in CR to the Siena one in QOS. In the former, Bond sometimes struggles to keep up, getting knocked about, pushing himself to keep going. He even resorts to rather brutish techniques to better his skilled parkour opponent. Sure, there’s an element of heightened reality but it feels like this guy could escape from Bond. In QOS Bond falls from inexplicably great heights and doesn’t even seem to pause. Like I said, it never feels like Bond is actually in danger of getting killed, and there’s this weird disconnect from the film trying to feel/look ‘realistic’ while having those implausibilities.
I don't know if they're really that extreme - Greene was like a rabid dog swinging an axe for the majority of that final fight.