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Now, having just met you, I wouldn't go as far as calling you a cold-hearted bastard. But it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine... You think of Asian characters as disposable individuals, rather than meaningful ones. ;P
To say it's dire is somewhat hyperbolic. It is just average.
But I agree that it is the biggest disappointment and missed opportunity of the series and this is why we perceive it as actually being worse than it is.
Let's be fair the Craig era, warts and all, is better than camp, moribund fare such as DAF and TMWTGG.
You're joking now right?
Mendes thematic elements are about as subtle as Keith Lemon. The whole 'dead are alive' thing would be laughed out of first year film school it's so heavy handed. Actually shoving it in the audiences faces to the extent you write it down for them is both an admission that you've failed as a story teller and that they are too thick to get it.
From the London Underground to Shanghai have so much color and pop. Imagine my (and others) when Hoyte comes along and decides to piss (literally) over all these great European cities.
Wow, your ideas of sexy scenes are obviously very different from mine. For starters, mine would never involve a woman with a 4, let alone a 5 at the beginning. And yes, I realize that I am a political incorrect, sexist and misogynistic dinosaur. Still, that's how I feel.
I might mention too, that even if his widow had been played by a real hot cookie I still would find the scene creepy.
I can die happy now as my whole life has been one big quest to gain your approval.
The car chase is great. As in fun.
Re: the scene: she's aching to have a man love her (love being a substitute for another four letter word I want to use), and she knows she will surrender herself to Bond. Yes, I found it erotically charged.
There is conversely absolutely nothing in the narrative which I find remotely worthy of praise except for White's scene, and even that one is messed up with the "Women!! Children!!" conceit. The same goes for the performances (again, apart from the White scene - perhaps explaining why it was overexposed in the trailer). There is similarly absolutely nothing in the action sequences that is not entirely 'meh' predictable (yes, the Hinx fight is visceral, but as I've mentioned elsewhere, they should have used another location to avoid comparisons to three other superior Bond films).
So again, I think the much maligned Mendes ironically saves this film. At least I can appreciate it as thematic 'art' (even if heavy handed at times) while I concurrently lambaste it for being an unforgivable bore. The real crime is in the writing and in the dull as dishwater performances.
You must have popped out to the toilet during Bonds first encounter at the bar in Shanghai where they both look like Homer and Marge Simpson!
That I agree with, sir.
I have been longing for a return to Blofeld but he needed to be bigger than what he ultimately came off as. The large room in Rome oozes suspense and darkness. But then he's a typical 2015 villain, someone who gathers intelligence and puts it to his own advantage in some vague way. Even Elliot Carver has a clear plot ready.
If you're going to bring back Blofeld, even in the grounded-in-reality Craig era anno 2015, you need to make him big and loud and not just Coo-coo and be done with it. So yes, I see that as a definitive flaw of the script.
That said, I can deal with it because I'm going with everything else. But I do agree that the Blofeld is back thing feels a bit wasted.
We never should have gotten the brother plot either. That's a sign of fatigue. Keep Bond away from the personal angel as much as possible. A little bit is fine, as we've seen in you'd be surprised how many Bond films yet, but too much, like pepper and salt, can spoil the fun.
Hoyte's filter in combination with traditional film cameras produces a more monotonous washed out look. Like a painting.
Yes, what you said about the themes and relationships is quite true, but (in SF) he doesn't sacrifice exciting and visceral action for it. It has some of the most exhilarating fighting moments of the entire franchise. His recurring themes actually elevate these scenes. Watching Bond running towards the courtroom wouldn't of been nearly as interesting if they hadn't layered M's poetic speech on top.
Also, why does nearly everyone have an issue with long Bond films?? None of them feel lengthy. OHMSS, CR, SF go by in a breeze. SP might be rather bland but it's not the runtime's fault at all. In fact, the runtime only makes me appreciate it more. On the other side of the spectrum, QoS' length understandably irritates me. I wish it was an extra 30mins longer and would help the dreadful pacing issues.
All in all, I actually love having more footage per JB film and I wouldn't care if the following installment was nearly 3h in length.
If a Bond film were 3 hours, I would rarely make it from start to finish. I prefer the peaks to be spaced closer together, and therefore a run time between 115 minutes and 125 minutes would be ideal, as that allows for the optimum complexity of narrative, without getting bogged down.
I have a theory about this, granted it's just a theory. Part of me wonders whether Mendes tweaked the grade rather significantly on SP to the chagrin of Van Hoytema. I may be wrong (I can't be bothered to google image search) but I don't recall Hoyte being at the World Premiere - certainly not in the line up, of which he'd be a significant member. To be fair it was a bit of blur, but that always stuck in my mind. I also don't recall, bar a couple of slight interviews, Hoyte having very much to say about the film. I'm pretty convinced that the effect is not created in camera, unlike Deakins (taking into account there's always colour work in post).
MB as featured in the Matrix around the turn of the century - anytime, anywhere. MB almost 20 years later- just not my cup of tea.
Connery average run time 117 minutes
Moore average run time 126 minutes
Dalton average run time 131 minutes
Brosnan average run time 128 mintues
Craig average run time 136 minutes
Why is this a problem? It just depends on what story you are telling and how you tell it.
I'm pretty sure if they announced that B25 was going to be 6 hours long and Aidan Turner playing Bond then you'd suddenly be pretty happy with long run times.
The end titles alone play three times as long than in the 60s, as per modern conventions. However, I don't think you're wrong about the average feature lengths going up. Take QOS out of the equation, and I bet the Craig's run a bit longer even on average. You also left out OHMSS, and for a fair reason, but that one would have squeezed a nice 140 quality minutes between Connery's films and Moore's.
Still, I don't see that as a problem. Even without the debate on whether or not the Venice scene is needed in CR, that film has never strained my patience, not even once, and it is one of the longest Bond flicks at 144 minutes. Filmmakers can screw things up in under 80 minutes and they can deliver excellence with over 200 minutes.
I'm glad the producers don't succumb to the short attention span crowd and their desire to grab a burger, then barge into the theatre while the film's already begun, flashing their iPhones to see where they're going, taking their time blocking people's view while deciding who's going to sit next to whom and who brought the nachos with cheese and why nobody brought any popcorn, and evacuate the place once the hellish fire of the eternally cursed end titles begin to flame up, so that they can quickly ride to the nearest club and finish the day in intellectual numbness. I prefer things the other way: have diner, make it to the theatre in time, inhale the atmosphere, chat about what we hope the film will deliver, watch some trailers, enjoy the film, leave when the film's actually finished, then find a quiet place to contemplate the film and after that, call it a day. And if that means I spent close to 4 hours in total in the theatre, then I welcome it.
Again, why would the fact that the Bonds, on average, are playing 15 minutes longer than they used to (I subtract the longer end titles), be a problem? Many of the longer Bond films, like OHMSS, CR, TLD, GE, SF, ... are also high on people's list. As long as a film delivers the goods and knows when to stop, what's the big deal? As a matter of fact, my biggest complaint back in 2008 was that QOS was over before it had begun. I have somewhat gotten over that by now because the home viewing experience is a bit different from the theatrical one. Still, I'm not even sure my issue really was the running time but the fact that I felt like entire reels of film hadn't even been allowed to unspool, that I was missing content to make the film more coherent. I've gotten over that too by now. Point is, I wanted QOS to have played a bit longer in favour of a good story.
My point is, there should be no concern with the feature length of the Bonds, and certainly not with the fact that the averages per actor have gone up by 20 minutes in 50+ years time. Our concern should be with what every second of film delivers, no matter how many seconds the film counts.
Well back in the 60s they would of filmed a lot more efficiently because they did it on physical film and that costs a lot with their tight budgets. (Don't forget that a new film came out every year as well.) Editing was also a nightmare back then, so I'm sure they would naturally shoot less minutes of film. They'd plan more in advance and compromise with an average take. Nowadays they have the *luxury* to film dozens of hours of padding just for the heck of it - even if it never makes the final cut. But some eventually will "because they have it anyway" and it makes the films longer.
Obviously they used film in all the other decades too, but they got progressively longer because of the higher budgets, the better tech and above all; the stories they were telling.
Finally, audiences have to spend a lot more per ticket than they used to do. Back then it was maybe 4 bucks for a 100 min film and now it's like +10 bucks for 120 min. Modern audiences expect more because of the cost, but it's still around twice as expensive as before. For the studios it's a trade-off between making films longer so people are more willing to buy a ticket, and making it shorter so they can fit more viewings per day. It balances out to about a 130 min movie; which is a higher average than previous generations.
I see this kind of effect in a lot of contemporary special effects driven films too though, like Ultron, BvS & most notably Assassin's Creed, and since there was a lot of special effects touch up in SP it could have been done to hide or mask the CGI.