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M not being a traitor was not a choice by P&W, but by Fiennes; and P&W came in to take that into account.
About the scripts : we don't have the earlier Logan ones in the leaks, but we have notes and discussions on them. There is 3 complete P&W scripts in the leaks, up until early December (Sony is so careless that yes, there is even a script that is from a date posterior to the leaks, because in brief, they kept on using the same passwords even after they were public...).
IMO, in the P&W scripts, the third act has a big plothole, SF looks like a David Mamet movie compared to this, that makes Blofed look like a Austin Powers character. It basically involves Blofeld torturing Bond and looking at the nanoblood going crazy on his computer pad, and he explains to him he could look at his feelings for all this time. And when he leaves Bond to die in a solar furnace, while he goes back to London to steal a computer file, he doesnt take the tablet with him to see Bond die, for no reason. So Bond can escape without Blofeld aware of it. It's just so weird Blofeld is a geek who has so much fun seeing Bond's heart rate going up after a little torture, and then doesn't care seeing Bond's heart stop when he dies...
It was totally changed after that as we all know (but then we don't have any more info from the script).
I would have preferred if some of these concepts were fleshed out more in a two part film, which apparently may have been the original intention, although I'm not privy to any of the script info so I can't be sure.
While this film is enjoyable enough, I would personally have preferred if they had explored some of these concepts more fully & in more depth in a two parter and released them within 2 yrs of one another. I think that would have resulted in a script that would have done the material real justice.
That's one of my favorite things about this interpretation of the character, actually. After all his pontificating about his greatness, he's nothing but a man child yearning for approval and notice from his peers. Bond notes this and uses it to his advantage.
Eon/MGM/Sony could have saved millions of dollars if they had cast Tommy Smothers (still available) instead of Waltz. :-)
1) There were 3 scripts? I thought there was two.
2) I know that Tanner was going to possibly be a traitor, but at what point did this get switched to M? I can't find any info.
3) Was Tanner going to shoot himself at one point?
4) Was Blofeld supposed to be revealed with bandages and a drip at the Rome meeting? If so, do we know why?
And bless Ralph Fiennes! Perhaps he should get a co-producer credit down the line too.
Yes for the 4. (there are some infos here, including Loga tentative, http://www.commander007.net/2015/11/spectre-autres-scripts/ , btw)
About the snow chase, well, in previz they did indeed seriously considered the rumoured snowmobile chase
(image from http://www.commander007.net/2015/11/spectre-autres-scripts/ )
The origins in the movie however far away from the novels is still closer to the novels than a bleeding African warlord.
As P&W were rewriting the third act, Butterworth was revising the first two, according to an email. I think this version was submitted shortly before filming began.
That would have destroyed his character arc in SF.
I'm sorry, but do you mean yes is the answer to question 4?
I think he means the answer is yes to all four questions.
@Shardlake, what exactly about this do you consider so bad? I'm just asking because I seem to have missed some of your other posts. :-)
What were they thinking of? Surely it would seriously affect future Bond films?
Thank god 'Fiennes' said i'am not playing the part of a traitor.
.......and Blofeld as a woman?
http://www.commander007.net/2015/11/spectre-scripts-8-octobre-9-novembre/
Unfortunately Google makes a bit of a mess of it.
@Suivez_ce_parachute perhaps? :-)
I can too. He's not the only French speaker here.
Yeah but you're too busy helping me to take over the world, so I wanted to cut you some slack. ;-)
For me it wouldn´t be such a big difference. M in SF telling Bond that "it was the possibility of losing you or the certainty of losing the hard drive" is the biggest nonsense in Bond history up to then and shows neither support nor clear thinking on M´s side. Did she have a stroke, or what made her all of a sudden not trust Bond´s combat skills, and as if that were not enough, overlook the fact that she did in fact lose the hard drive?
In SP, it´s true that the gang sticks together, but MI6 being threatened by an arrogant brat isn´t much better than one of them being a traitor.
As for M being the traitor, Mallory is new in MI6, so we don´t know a lot about him or his motives. He could well have fought on MI6´ side in SF in order to reach some higher goal we don´t know about.
I agree, but then, it didn´t make sense for M not to trust Bond in SF, after all they had been through.
This is a very revealing and interesting article about what Sony had to say about the initial drafts. I agree with nearly all their comments, and the things they flag up as weak are still the things which let the final thing down.
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/04/17/when-blofeld-was-a-woman-in-spectre-sony-leaks/
Boy I for one am glad they left out the female Blofeld. What's with having just the name Blofeld and none of the original character? And the fellow CIA female CIA agent as Bond girl. That would have been another Bond's equal.
Because the whole idea of making Blofeld connected to Bond's distant past must go down as one of the worst in the history of the series.
I know some think this is fine and they think it's done subtlety but to me and others it's like a sore thumb and now it's shackled this era with this nonsense.
I have no problem with tying the films together but I'm no script writer but if you look at my posts in the how would you have done it differently I came up with a much better idea than P&W did.
The tying together is no lame it feels like an after thought they had a chance to really do this justice but instead it was lame. SP for me has now sullied this era and there is no way to back away from it, it's out there and Purvis & Wade need to go.
I could n't care less about the Brosnan era Bond ended in 1989 and then began again in 2006.
Firstly, I really like the idea of creating paranoia and tension with the MI6 team back in London. One of the more shoddy elements of Spectre for me was the handling of M, Q, MP and Tannner. In particular M who's only purpose is to push the whole drab surveillance theme. Seemingly, Logan had given them something to do something P&W failed to.
It would have been great to watch tension build in Whitehall as Bond is in the field going after Blofeld. The fact that MP is a prime suspect is also an exciting and irreverent touch that I fully endorse. Additionally, the reveal that Tanner is the traitor is brilliant and would have given the marvellous Rory Kinnear something to do (finally!). The suicide scene would have been terrific. It's not an overstatement to say that Kinnear is probably the best actor in Spectre, however, you'd be hard pushed to notice it considering the lack of material he gets.
Check out his Hamlet:
The London scenes in the final film fail to really up the ante and only contribute to the disjointed and uneven nature of the finished product.
Furthermore, Charlotte King on paper is a much more interesting and fun character than Hinx. I think Mendes had a change of heart and decided to introduce Hinx after the train sequence was devised. It makes more sense to have someone with Bautista's physicality for a scene like that; solely for that stunt sequence alone I'm willing to forgive Charlotte's exclusion. I just hope we get a character like Charlotte (clearly built in the image of Xenia/Fiona Volpe) in the next film.
Additionally, the big elements that P&W contributed can clearly be picked out looking through the leaks and the comments made by the filmmakers:
- The Oberhauser backstory.
- M's final message to Bond and his going rogue.
You can see in an interview that P&W give to Premiere that they went down the Oberhauser route after reading Logan's script and seeing that the story went to Austria. The pair then decided to add the Oberhauser backstory as they were familiar with the Octopussy short-story. There is little doubt that the Oberhauser/Blofeld element came from P&W.
However, before we start demanding their heads on sticks, it needs to be appreciated that film is a director's medium. P&W are only there to work on the whim of the director and if you're unhappy with a film the person you should probably blame is the director. Mendes clearly had it in his head very early on that he wanted to explore Bond's childhood (just look at the ending of Skyfall) so when P&W brought up the whole Oberhauser thing it must have sounded positively heavenly to Mendes.
What pains me is that Mendes had no clear vision on who Blofeld is. He went through so many different iterations of the character in such a short period of time. From African warlord, to ugly lesbian to evil step-brother. Surely the character of Blofeld has such a firm ingrained identity that none of these interpretations neatly fit within? It would seem that Mendes was merely creating entirely new characters and (frustratingly) saddling them with the name "Blofeld".
Having said that we do end up with something closer to the iconic character in the final film. However, that's only because Mendes happily embraces all the gimmicks associated with Blofeld (obscurity, the jacket, the cat, the scar, etc). On the other hand, Blofeld was never that fleshed out a character and always just a collection of gimmicks anyway. So maybe Sam felt he had little to work with anyway....
Watching this video makes me wish they went with Chiwetel for Blofeld: