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That indicates that in those countries Spectre is viewed to be a classic like GF TSWLM or SF.
Critic reviews were mostly great in Europe too.
It's really the US that "hurts" SPs legacy, imho.
That's not how it works. I like SP, but it's never going to be seen as a classic by the wider audience.
Which of Craig's last three films, QOS, SF and SP, has the best chance of becoming an 'evergreen'?
That......was not my question ;-)
SF, then. But I much prefer SP personally. No contest.
;)
SF, because it was the movie of late 2012. I've spoken to a lot of people who in hindsight don't regard it as highly as they did when it was released, but that maelstrom of appreciation was hard to swerve at the time. I don't think that really dissipated too much and for those who were there at the time it was a border-line phenomenon. As we all know, nostalgia is a persuasive agent and I think that narrative will inform its legacy. QoS and SP will never shake the negative associations. CR is the only bona fide classic imo.
I believe SP is the new TSWLM and will be regarded very highly in the future.
TSWLM reinvigorated a series that was on the verge of extinction. SP followed one of the most successful entries in the franchise and was generally viewed as being inferior. I don't see how you arrive at that hypothesis.
Agreed @RC7
I dislike it's attempts in connecting all of Bond's past to current events. It's now been done to death so leave it alone now.
Minor quibbles are the unexciting car chase and the Moore-like parachute gag.
Other than that I love it.
PTS, torture scene, Madeline, Blofeld and rest of cast..all excellent. But the best for me was the brutal train fight. Fantastically choreographed and edited. Right up there in my favourite Bond moments of all time!
It's funny but much as I enjoyed MI: Rogue Nation especially the awesome heroine Rebecca Ferguson, it's still only comes across as a Bond pretender.
I've seen it twice. Not sure if I'd even buy it.
With SP i got it release day and will be watching it for a 4th time soon.
I agree, that's what I meant by it not dissipating much. Friends of mine have relegated it slightly, but on the whole I believe its still well regarded by many as you say.
Excellent CR) so may remember SF, with a little more affection ?
I would agree with that too.
SF seems to be a Bond movie that really appeals to non Bond fans.
Isn't that wonderful :-P? It forces us Bond fans to think outside the box, to escape our safe haven of Bond Fandom.
SF was a movie loaded with lazy writing, but the general audiences loved it for the same reason they loved that lazy mess Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Khan- compelling action leading to the touching death of a long running & much liked character. Both movies are not high on my lists, yet both get soaring rankings by both hardcore fans and Rotten Tomatoes...
Just sayin'... :P
It moves with a steady pace through empty streets, dusty environments, never with losing the classical elegance of what is atypical for a Bond film.
All this is crowned with Mendes and Hoytema's approach with moving between hot/cold, heaven/hell, love/purgatory. The way the colours are almost scrubbed of the screen in Blofelds communications center, in a way showing the gray-zone of Blofelds inherent vices, and how deep blacks casts hellish shadows on Bonds final ruminations in the ruins of his own world in the films last act.
Spectre is not the typical Bond-film, it plays with the norms and subverses everything we know and think about Bond behind the classic, international facade. We are being subjected to the very core of what Bond is and what he represents. The film is centered around what Madeleine says to Bond, at a culminative moment, when they finally can settle down and have their respective outlooks of the world shared: "Is this really what you want? Living in the shadows, hunting, being hunted, always alone" and this mantra is displayed in all departments, the aforementioned cinematography, the set design (the transparency of Madeleine's office, the classic rustic style of Lucia's apartment), the score which builds more on themes and motions than on actual scoring on the events (omnious callbacks from the past, both from Skyfall and use of diegetic sounds within the score that creates a very different sound picture).
The action-scenes is something that I have noticed is one of the things that have drawn the largest criticisms. Sure I can see where they're coming from compared to the often superb scenes from Craig's earlier films, but the action in Spectre has a very clear sense of forward momentum. It derives from being vehicle-bound, Bond is caught in a kind of metastasis, flying ahead, driving ahead. The iconic vehicles is an extension of Bond himself, he is controlling and heading non-living things, much like how he infuses life in a profession filled with death and non-living entities. It's a roaring experience, but which creates an detachment between the narrative and us as an audience. That is something that is different from the earlier Craig films where he is a more direct and physical being in the vivacious action-scenes.
Speaking of which, Daniel Craig's performance as Bond was one thing that I was sorely disappointed in when I first saw the film. I saw him as bored and slightly sluggish, wispering many of his lines and just looked uninterested. But now I rather see his performance as a relaxed, laid back man, he conveys that certain kind of calm and cool that only Connery could exuberate. Craig displays the kind of man Fleming so often described, a man at ease with the world around him but not with himself. The conflict between those two is interesting and very well displayed.
Christoph Waltz as Blofeld, a subject for much controversy is something of a revelation for me. He was the actor that I since 2009 had hoped to see play Blofeld, and when he finally did it he did it with bravur! He downplays himself, he plays with the smallest of movements, he barely blinks and when he does it feels almost as his minds works on. Blofeld here is a quitely displayed maniac, a man who seems himself as the forefront of the human race, a man with a heavy inferiority complex but ironically enough can never be seen for what he is when he is the leader of a shadow organisation as tangled and substantial as SPECTRE. One can see how a man like Ernst Stavro Blofeld could have risen to power, he is cunning, he is charismatic, and he is a visionary. Imagine if this character was someone who really lived in Austria in the beginning of the 20th century...
I have always seen the major conflict between Bond and Blofeld in this film as something as a sidepoint, sure Blofeld sees himself as mistreated by his father and wants to rationalise his behavior and doings (killing his father) by having to applicate it to someone. He puts the blame for himself on Bond. It is also displayed quite clear that Blofeld never built SPECTRE for the sole purpose of undermining Bond, it rather seems like a way of getting inside Bond's head (which he also does quite figuratively). Blofeld is the indirect reason of the events in the earlier films, but he never did it for the sole dismay of Bond.
Just look at how Waltz says the word "brother" in the film, he accentuates it in a mocking way, not even Blofeld believes that they once were brothers.
No, Waltz plays Blofeld very discreetly, miles away from how Silva was displayed and this was precisely what the film needed. He is the leader of the greatest shadow organisation there is and can't then be flamboyant in the apparent way.
As a way to end this I can't quite say if I prefer Skyfall or Spectre, they both are two very strong and thematically driven films. Ones opposites one might say. Skyfall poses questions which then Spectre answers. Skyfall represents new beginnings, youth and modernity whereas Spectre represents passing of time classicism and death.
Much like the "heaven&hell" concept which Mendes displays in Spectre his two films works as two sides of the same coin. Two films that can never be separated.
Right now I feel like Spectre is the better film, if only because it entertains me more, it goes by faster and it poses more interesting questions. It feels overall more like a prime production with a better sense of delicacy.
It does brilliantly cap of the strongest 4 film run in the franchise thus far, and with great sadness it may also be the end for Craig as James Bond. But if it is, he certainly goes out in pride.
I will end this piece by showing the following pictures:
http://screenmusings.org/movie/dvd/Casino-Royale/images/Casino-Royale-1202.jpg
You can have me anywhere
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By62fkUldN1MSTVSaWNxTmlHZGM
I recognize you anywhere
The way this particular setup is made in the latter film it feels like a tragic flashback for Bond, how he says those word to Vesper and to everything she represented to Madeleine. Which makes him realize that in that moment he had to get out, while he still has a soul left to salvage.
While Madeleine declare her love for the "blue eyed, vulnerable boy" which in that moment is not any longer an assassin. Bond sees a way out, a representation from someone who in visual terms is the opposite of Vesper. But as Blofeld says
The faces of your women was always interchangeable, wasn't they James?
Bond is getting out, but he is not gone.
The dead are alive
Wonderful post, my friend. Excellent.
I have to say that even though I greatly admire these last two films, I still want a new team behind the camera. Especially in the writing department. That's lik the most urgent matter at hand.
That being said, I think they should go in another direction with B25. If Sam Mendes isn't returning, then the films won't match up anyway. I don't want another CR/QoS fiasco.
It's the Craig-film in which James Bond has become the most suave and self-assured secret agent. He went from a rather rotten thug and assassin, who falls in love ("Casino Royale"), to a heart-broken, again rotten thug and killer ("Quantum Of Solace"), and then from an instrument of the British government ("Skyfall"), into a self-assured, well-thought, smart, less erratic and more funny secret agent ("SPECTRE").
We saw Daniel Craig changing and being molded into the famous charismatic, suave, dry and funny secret agent during the course of four adventures. Which therefore is a true quadrilogy of complexities and emotional depth......if we look at the James Bond character. Even Sir Sean Connery would have been jealous at this Craig-quadrilogy.
And while "SPECTRE" looks like the most formularic Bond film of the Craig entries so far, at the same time it isn't the most formularic Craig entry. I can't put my finger on it. Perhaps it's awakening of the more typical James Bond in this film, while at the same time it's still a story full of personal backgrounds. But while we see Blofeld return in this film and trying to emotionally destroy Bond, this time around the villain in a Craig Bond film falters. Daniel Craig stays more or less emotionally detached when doing his work. We saw that moment when Daniel Craig returns to London and explains all his work in detail to his new boss, 'M 2.0'. This time no personal resolution (avenging Vesper and 'M 1.0'), but the typical instinct Bond should have: Reporting his duties as a loyal terrier.
While I do think "SPECTRE" doesn't entirely overclass "Casino Royale" and "Skyfall", the film most certainly overclasses: "Tomorrow Never Dies", "The World Is Not Enough", "Die Another Day", and even...surprise surprise......"GoldenEye"!
It's got all the Bond staples of a chase, a 007 in a tux, a beat 'em up with a henchman, a villain lair and all that, but it still does a lot to use that template and spin something new.
I love the idea of domesticity and family in the movie, as so much of the focus of the movie is around the homes the characters have made and their interactions with their families inside of them, whether home is used figuratively or literally. The vibrant life of Mexico City during the Day of the Dead in the PTS and the very rich home traditions the natives have to celebrate the deceased is immediately contrasted with the home life of Bond post-PTS, whose house contains bland, lifeless white walls, with objects strewn around recklessly. It feels unlived in, sterile, and reflects the home of a man who never truly feels tied down or secured to domestic life and is more keen towards international travel and adventure outside the familiar or comfortable.
The themes of domesticity and family conflict are rooted in not only Bond's sometimes prickly relationship with his MI6 family, but also in the character of Madeleine. She's also a woman without a home, on the move from a past she doesn't want to face, in many ways like Bond. Her father/daughter relationship with Mr. White is suitably troubled and complex, which the film goes to lengths to explore. White in many ways gets a final chance at redemption, sending Bond off towards her to protect her, only complicating the situation. The last view we get of him in that dilapidated, dusty shack is a great visual metaphor for how he and Bond live, as well; as agents of death they don't fit into domesticity/home life well at all, and are always on the move to the next mission, leaving any hopes or dreams of a stable family life behind that grows as dusty as the chess board White is sitting in front of as he takes his final breaths.
The image of the chess board alone represents the cold, calculating, strategic and dangerous game of moving pieces and checkmates that the world of spying itself is rooted in, and the imagery the game pieces express, like the monarchical kings and queens or the stalwart brave knights have an English feel to them, tying it to Bond's home base and MI6 itself. The chess metaphor is suitable, as I feel Bond is like a trapped pawn on the board in the film, a mere foot soldier in a secret spy war, and a far weaker force acting agains the monolithic and all-powerful SPECTRE that White has just been snuffed out by, in Blofeld's own brilliant checkmate maneuver.
The themes of domesticity continue to be played with later in the film as we are introduced to White, his ex-wife and Madeleine's "home away from home" in the suite in L'American as Bond turns in to shambles in his searching for what White has sent him towards. It's another "home" that no longer feels safe or stable, as Madeleine realizes in a flash how much her father truly cared for her when he had not much else to live for at the very moment Bond is confronted with the interrogation tape of the late Vesper, a woman that used to symbolize to him the hope of a domestic and stable life for him away from the bullets and the blood of espionage. In many ways, that domestic life feels far out of grasp for the both of them, which may be why they feel roped together and fitting for each other later on, as they connect over all they've lost. As the film goes on we also hear from Madeleine how a man came into their family home when she was young and tried to kill her father, before she shot the hitman herself. Again, the idea of a home that doesn't feel safe or freeing is brought up, expressing the opposite of all we attribute as humans to feelings of home.
All these ideas continue when looking through the eyes of Blofeld, too. The conflict Ernst had with his father, his view of Bond as a disruptive cuckoo bird of conquest in his own home "nest" and how that troubled tale drove him to murder his father, fake his death and create SPECTRE continue to enforce the idea of bad family dynamics and negative views of home. Even when Bond and Madeleine are at his lair, Blofeld takes it upon himself to decorate makeshift, temporary little rooms or "homes" for the both of them to inhabit while there, almost mocking them with images and items of their pasts in the forms of photos as he shows how adept he is at rooting into their pasts and uncovering their most hidden secrets, secrets rooted in the repression of childhood memories circulating around family.
Adding in Bond's lack of fatherhood after his parent's deaths, the loss of Hannes and how that's all scarred and impacted him, and it's easy to see that family and home life, and how home or the nature of houses and family can often be more devastating than positive for these characters.
And this is only a piece of what I think SP explores through its characters.
I Must have watched it 10+ times already since I watched it on opening night, at the cinema.
But if we are referring to a long-term Craig 'Classic' then I think CR is the obvious choice there.