It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
It makes me wonder if the films are heading in a dangerous direction ...
I wonder how audiences would have reacted if SP had the 'Brazil' ending, in which the scene with Bond and Madeleine driving off into the sunset segued into a shot of Bond still strapped in the torture chair with a catatonic grin on his face and Blofeld saying "No, we've lost him..."
Sort of a happy ending! >:)
To be honest even just have the bloke earn his money. I didn't mind SF's score but the guy just took the piss with SP.
Oh I agree. SF was pretty meh to me but at least it was original. SP on the other hand has no excuse.
One of my gripes with SF and SP is that the running time is so long but Mendes rushes or compresses a lot of the story telling. They convey the odd feeling of being very long watches but with strangly rushed plots. I'd say this of SF in particular.
In SP Mendes tries to do too much. As everyone has noted, two endings kills it and are totally unnecessary. Just as the two villains weren't really required either. C is a bit pointless. Or focus on C and leave Brofeld in the backgroudb
Bond never shares his "secret" suspicion about Oberhauser with his colleagues or (more damningly) the audience. He's aggressively pursuing something - basically creating an assignment for himself where there was none. Yet we don't know what he's pursuing, and when we finally find out, he doesn't register a single thought or feeling about any of it.
Of course you can't describe the plot, cause it's just Bond chasing an inconsequential "secret" through a random patchwork of locations, stunts and characters (I use that word loosely). The only thing that plays like a proper story is the Nine Eyes subplot, but that doesn't even register as it doesn't concern Bond until way too late in the runtime.
Spectre is a cold, confusing mess. What would I have done differently? I don't know, maybe throw out everything except the PTS and try again.
Maybe Daddy loved David more.
Whilst I like both scores, it is somewhat disappointing that there are a lot of noticeable Skyfall cues in Spectre, but I think it is solely unfair to blame Newman for that.
We know the post production period for Spectre was shorter than Skyfall's - and I think there were rumours that they were still shooting in early October, a few weeks before the movie opened. Mendes is on record as saying they substantially re-edited the film after test screening it, and Newman himself is on record saying the cut of the film went down to the wire. Modern moves don't have things such as 'locked down edits' until the absolute final day - it must drive composers mad.
So, we're in a position where Newman has scored 'a' cut of the film, potentially in August/September, only to find himself having to rework substantial chunks of it - in a very short space of time - after the second substantial re-edit following the test screening. Not forgetting the sound has to be mixed before the film is finished, he probably though, to save time and still deliver a score that matches the action on screen - he'd use parts of the Skyfall score.
Not a nice situation to find yourself in, but if thats the hand your ultimately dealt, thats what you've gotta do.
I understand Barry had time pressure on TMWTGG too. And that score turned out ok
Well, yes in the 60s, they produced a Bond film every year and there was not such a time pressure. Until 1989, they at least made a Bond film every two years and still had a great score. Meanwhile, probably even three years are too short.
The issue to me really is that Newman used some of the more disappointing and dull sounding cues from SF in SP. Moreover, those repetitive sounding themes didn't work quite as well in the SP scenes as they did in the respective SF scenes. So it just felt tacked on, and in the case of the London finale, just a little too loud, monotonous and distracting.
great observations/analysis
I was OK with the Bond theme absent in CR. In QOS it was wearing thin, in SF it was criminal, in SP it's downright insulting. Why is it I must sit through 2.5 hours of film before I get to hear (arguably) the most exciting theme song in movie history?
Making a movie in the 1960s is worlds away from how movies are made today though.
I've been thinking that maybe the drill's effects weren't supposed to be immediate. Maybe in Bond 25 or 26, should we get a proper adaptation of YOLT, when Bond confronts Blofeld for the last time, he says "What makes you think this plan will work? I've foiled every one of your schemes. Even your little dentist's drill didn't work." and Blofeld tells him it wasn't meant to be instant. And by the end of the movie, Bond ends up an amnesiac in the care of a Japanese girl.
And Silva was like a dozen cans of Red Bull all at once mixed with LSD. And didn't succeed as coming across as evil as well.
I don't think the 007 theme being reused is a good argument or fair one. Every time the 007 theme appeared in a Bond film, it sounded very different between films. FRWL it was simple and to the point, in Thunderball it was loud, brash and in your face. In YOLT it was upbeat and adventurous in DAF it was uplifting and heroic and in Moonraker it was slow and peaceful. Each time it was used it was a brand new arrangement that sounded different from the other and fit the tone of each film. At least Barry took an effort to make each version sound different and unique per film.
Now we come to Newman's reused cues, they are literally the same exact cues from Skyfall. It's a flat out copy and paste job. "Uh Sam, I don't know what to compose for this scene... It's okay Tom, just get use some stock music from Skyfall!!!" No effort, just laziness.
Are the Newman compositions identical? I haven't played them side by side to know. I thought there were differences between The Moors (From SF) and Westminister Bridge (From SP) for instance, including the incorporation of the Bond theme in the latter?
Barry hasn't recycled music from other films, perhaps cues he wrote within the same movie. TLD comes to mind but you'd never hear a track from say Goldfinger in Thunderball. And while I can't speak for those people, the versions of the 007 theme heard in FRWL and TB are too different to even really make the connection. 007 in Thunderball, adds quite lot of new melodies to the them itself so it is similar but new at the same time. It's been reinvented.
And yes the Newman compositions are exactly the same excluding Backfire, but many of the compositions are just reused from SP and it was very jarring to the point it took me out of the movie a lot. Very sloppy and Lazy on his part. The Moors stuff is pretty much the same with a few new parts added to it but the track is so boring and un Bond like it's just unmemorable. That's not what Bond music should be.
Again, what I'm getting at is if Mendes and Newman were to come back for one more (rest assured they won't), then Newman could even further tweak this track, including its pacing, and then it would be more in keeping with what Barry did with the 007 theme over the years.
I think what people are really critical of him for is not creating memorable melodies and not using the Bond theme enough. Those are fair criticisms. The score is lackluster, but I found it fit the film well, just like SF fit that film well too.
SP was a continuation of SF, so it made sense to continue some of the musicial compositions over to validate that continuity.
I'm sure there are minor differences but not enough to really notice, plus I hate that specific track anyway, it just grates on me. If Newman reinvented it instead of just remaking it pretty much the same way it would have been better. And you are right, That is why I don't like his work for Bond. His other work I do enjoy like Wall-E which had great memorable themes but there was none of that for SF/SP.
Even though it was a continuation doesn't mean it should have sounded the same. The beauty of every Bond movie is that it has it's own sound and musical style. That continuation of music style is fine in Star Wars but not Bond.
If Bond 25 sees a new actor as Bond it will not again be a Bond Begins kind of thing. That has been done, and the franchise never repeated itself really.
The next Bond will just have his film, like DAD, TLD or GE. And the second one will not be linked unless EON would decide to actually shoot two movies back to back but I find that an unlikely scenario.
In any case the new Bond (be it in film number 25 or 26) will be a refreshing start with a new face and possibly even new cast for the MI6 staff.
It is even possible that there will be a new generation of movie makers responsible for Bond 25 or 26. Only BB will stay as main producer and possibly decision maker.
Interesting things will come our way I'm certain.