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
That's a lot of the problem. Blofeld is iconic, and EON are keen to have him in their movies, but I don't think he really is one of the best Bond baddies. Goldfinger, Largo, Scaramanga, Sanchez all worked a lot better. Blofeld was best when we only saw the back of his head.
This made me nostalgic. Love it.
Ah I do love that film. Think the first I heard about it was the Top Gear episode they did a few months before the trailer dropped, and I was quite excited and nostalgic because of how much I enjoyed the TV show when I was younger.
You're right, it's a very underrated film imo. Brilliantly done especially considering how low the budget was. It was apparently meant to be a much bigger thing, Daniel Craig was attached, so was Orlando Bloom, but they slashed the budget. Two million pounds they had for it iirc. But I thought the low budget really worked in its favour. Wasn't the most faithful of adaptations but it had a lot of charm and warmth to it I thought. It was a fun, home grown action flick. Ray Winstone was great. Loved the Heat esque shootout in Trafalgar Square.
I think that's definitely true of the films but Blofeld was a great (and diverse, he developed over the trilog) villain in the original novels. That's the problem imo. Cubby and Harry, and now Barbara and MGW, have never really followed the books when it comes to Blofeld. Fleming developed him over the course of his trilogy, he was radically different almost every time (which meant that unlike in the films, he was a recurring villain without it being samey or dull, there was never a "mwahaha I'll be back" vibe about it) but still remained a menacing villain and a real threat to Bond.
In the films they came up with the iconic look for him but then that's about it. He was a very one dimensional character. Pleasance was iconic and Salvalas was menacing, but can you name a defining character trait for the Blofeld of the 60s films outside of "evil genius" (and I use the term genius lightly, maybe he wouldn't have to keep extorting NATO if he didn't blow all his money on extravagant volcano lairs).
He was the original evil genius sure but that doesn't cut it anymore, not post Austin Powers anyway. Which is why they added the brother angle I think, to make it more interesting, when really all they had to do was go back to the source material. The Blofeld of the books already had a cool interesting backstory (and was a radically different and more interesting character from the Dr Evil type of the films).
They didn't need to give him a personal history with Bond to make him an interesting character. I love the iconography of Blofeld. The scar, the cat. Keeping all of that isn't the problem, the problem is they rely on that too much and didn't really make him a compelling character outside of that. Which is all the more frustrating to me when there's one right there in the source material.
Is it really? Detonation is the second best piece on the soundtrack, behind Los Muertos Vivos Estan. And we get an admittedly fleeting but glorious glimpse of Barry in Westminster Bridge.
Very well said.
The Blofeld stuff I mean. The Sweeney is a terrible film.
The basic problem that kills SP is that they couldn't wait and introduce Blofeld gradually.
SPECTRE is supposedly a bigger organisation than Quantum yet that got two films. SPECTRE goes from having never been heard of to thwarted in the space of one film.
I could've lived with Oberhauser being the villain in SP (although still think the 'author of all your pain' retcon stuff would've been clunky at best) if they simply had to have some more personal bullshit for Bond but Blofeld really should have only got one scene right at the end hinting of menace to come.
But instead they shoehorn Blofeld in from scratch (with a bollocks backstory) and have Bond vanquish him and the guy basically only has 3 scenes!!
In the 60s Blofeld already appeared in two films before Sean even came face to face with him FFS!
If Dan couldn't comity to at least two films they shouldn't even have started down the SPECTRE route until the next guy. But I get a sense that Babs was so desperate for Mendes she used Blofeld and SPECTRE as a lure to get him back on board without thinking what was best for the series going forward but as he only wanted to do one film we end up with a Blofeld clusterfuck.
The big misjudgement she made was that SF's success was entirely down to Mendes when the reality is it was a perfect storm of circumstances of which Mendes was a relatively peripheral part. I think SF would have done pretty much the same business if Campbell had taken the helm.
I'm not a Newman basher. I don't mind the score for the rest of the film (particularly the slower and more suspenseful bits). It's in the high paced action dept. where I think he blows it, but then I felt the same about Arnold in that respect as well.
Time for some new blood in the scoring dept. It's the one area where I think they have not recovered their past glory once in the past 30 years and an area where the competition has improved by leaps and bounds. They used to be the benchmark for so long, so it's especially sad.
The dust is ready to be risen...
M: A storm is coming up, are you ready ?
The SP finale is literally that guitar bit from Moors shouting out loud while Bond is walking through a linear maze. For like 10 minutes. Then he meets
DEH-DEH-DEH-DEH-DEH !!!!!!! DEH-DEH-DEH-DEH-DEH !!!!!!!
TWINE also didn't force a cringeworthy relationship, at least Richards was reduced down to a sex object for Bond.
The thing is, as someone who has written screenplays before, you can definitely feel the "bad feeling" you get when you know your script isn't good. There tends to be a lot of walking, forced metaphors, threats that don't really amount up to anything, easy conclusions and escapes (sound familiar?)--and more often than not it ends up being something you don't want it to be, and that's the worst thing that could happen.
Having said all this, if someone had shown me SP in 2002 I'd have been over the moon. So my expectations are much higher now than they were after Brosnan, and thats in large part thanks to DC.
Totally agreed. Mendes fails for me when it comes to action, he just can't do it. The only action highlight that really impressed me during his tenure was Bond fighting Hinx, and even then, it wasn't overly original or unique in comparison to the few train fights we've already had in the series.
And I'd be fairly sure that 99% of the Hinx fight was down to Gary Powell, Dan and Dave throwing ideas around between them.
The SF PTS succeeds more on a dramatic level than action.
Everyone raves about the Shanghai Patrice fight but it's style over substance. Necros v Green 4 for example smashes it out of the park as a bout of fisticuffs.
There was no other real action in SF (a few shootouts and fights - hardly the TLD cargo net is it?) and SP's was very disappointing all round apart from the aforementioned Hinx fight.
I think the PTS from SP was Mendes's best action sequence and obviously the Hinx fight was awesome. But yeah, most of the action doesn't hit the mark as it should.
The shootout in at M's hearing should have been exciting and gripping but it was edited in such a way it turned out kind of meh.
I quite like the assault on Skyfall though, even if it does have that 'Home Alone' feel to it!
Again I'd be surprised if this wasn't all Gary Powell's doing.
I liked the train fight but I would largely attribute that to the choreography.
SP hangs together better as a movie for me than SF and overall I enjoyed it, despite a weirdly lame climax.
The very last scene in CR at Lake Como is incredible though.
The London finale would have been a better pre-title sequence for Bond 25 instead, making Bond regret not killing Blofeld in the rest of the film. By the way, no Swann-song scenario.
It's the same sort of feeble wit that people who call QOS 'Quantum of Bourne' employ.
Yes haha we get it. Now come up with something original.