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Why does everyone hate him? As far as I know, he actually added some depth to Brosnan's portrayal. Yes, you read that correctly, depth.
So you're saying TWINE is P+W's fault?
Yes, the writing in DAD is quite difficult to digest.
This case was made into a 1991 film Let Him Have It with a script written by P&W.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102288/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
Past comments on these boards have suggested P&W are given a hard time by fans and that their scripts were often compromised by other parties. I've heard Apted misguidedly allowed his wife to chip in with script ideas in TWINE and Lee Tamahori "added" several moments that weren't in the original drafts (including the Tsunami sequence.
Dr. Jones, if you will.
The character is probably inspired by the likes of Lara Croft but the name was a nod to their earlier film.
However I presume someone said: "we have to have a silly pun in there somewhere if we are going with a character called Christmas"
It is now been 16 months since I first saw SP. It's grown on me considerably since then, and I think it will be more appreciated in the future. How much will depend on Bond 25. DC and CW need to return. Spectre's role as a pseudo-Illuminati organization needs to be flushed out some more.
But aside from some of the flaws in plot and a third act that still seems rushed, Spectre is warming itself to me. I realized this the last time I watched it, and I took great delight in the Morocco scenes, from the arrival at L'Americain to when Bond and Madeleine spot the Rolls Royce. The music, the art direction, the costume design...all "marvelous."
Mendes takes a bad rap on these boards, but the quality of SF and SP, from a technical standpoint, is unsurpassed. Both films have been crafted by a master.
OK - except Feirstein was still involved in TWINE.... GE and TND, despite some good points, weren't what I would call well-written when it comes to plot or dialogue. DAD, among its many many flaws, had a tiny bit of Fleming in it at the very least. The tongue was certainly purposefully placed in the cheek for DAD - shooting for fun and big laughs for the 40th Anniversary (and missing). I'd say Purvis and Wade's work since then has been leagues ahead of what had happened in the interim after Maibaum.
Mendes certainly has a vision of how he wants to drive a Bond film, it just isn't shared by a lot of people here.
At the end of it all, I didn't quite enjoy his stylistic attempts nor did I enjoy the traditional elements. It felt to me like he tried to do too much and bit off more than he could chew. If they had pared it down a bit, there would have been a better film on display. I certainly admired his ambition, but not his execution the second time out.
Very true - they need a chaperone.
Mendes failed to do the Fleming 007 any credit and the movies may look good occasionally but that is not what I like about this franchise so much. For me Mendes is a question of diminishing returns, I find that the QoB 007 gets a real bumdeal with this director, for me Craig 007 is CR/QoB.
And I think that only CR will be really be remembered when the next 007 starts his run, And on the basis of GE/CR I can understand how people would love to see Campbell return, he is not a great director but managed to re-invent a new 007 twice.
No you are right. The Brosnan era was an utter disaster. I don't even really class them as Bond movies.
Maibaum just about got the right tone with Fleming dialogue on films that were close to the novels - LTK in particular. But P&W still haven't. CR was getting closer to it, but still not perfect.
I am pleased that the tongue-in-cheek has been dropped, and the lines are more serious in tone. But now P&W need to do a bit more research and actually start writing dialogue how Fleming Bond would sound in the books. This ain't rocket science. You would have thought they would have got that by now, given the amount of time they have worked on Bond.
If P&W always need their work finessing or polishing by another writer, then obviously they aren't good enough in the first place - or am I missing something here? Surely this isn't that difficult to find a decent screen writer who understands the character of James Bond, knows how he would speak, and also knows how to adapt the still untapped Fleming material.
I am sure there are thousands of talented unemployed screenwriters out there that would jump at the chance, if given the opportunity.
And yes - I've always been a Fleming purist.
And this is why they fail every time.
But they will feel the series has been successful. Most moviegoers don't care about Fleming.
Totally right.
1. How much of a hand did Mendes have in the scripts for SF and SP? I might be wrong, but it seems that the first draft of SF was done before Mendes agreed to come on board. And then when Logan delivered the script for SP, Mendes seemed miffed by how bad it was--suggesting he was not steering the story much.
2. Ultimately, Babs and Michael have control and responsibility for the franchise. The problems with SP lay at their feet, first and foremost.
3. The more I watch SF and SP, the more I see a true Jungian approach that coincides very well with Fleming, who was interested enough in Jung to translate a lecture he did on Perecelsus--an early alchemist. The idea of alchemey (of refining one's self) is a theme in both films, as is the theme of the "shadow" and the duality of the soul. I have no problems at all with these explorations and thought they were done effectively, especially in the case of SF.
I'm not ignorant of some of SP's faults, but its massive style, art direction, vintage flair, performances, character work, themes/motifs and attention to Bond's development from the reckless man of CR earn massive respect from me. The amount of effort put into these films, and their ambition to not just be something you've seen twenty times before earns further respect, with the added depth and operatic power it has. The only way SP could even slightly sour is if I compared it to the early Connery (minus GF), OHMSS and the other Craig films, where it may rank in the back 6 or 7 films therein, but only because the others are so profoundly great. It's a waste of time for me to even think the Moore and Brosnan films are worthy of a comparison with SP, so I don't even bother.
I think SP represents an interesting snapshot of where we're at in our reaction to the film industry now. Not only is everyone a critic, the criticism is almost barbaric. People think that movies that don't cross a billion are failures (even if SP got near $900 milllion), and they are better producers and writers than the people at EON who have grown up in the industry. Lastly, when people get what they asked for, they still complain. People hated seeing Bond placed in super emotional storylines that forgot the old Bond elements, so they got it all back, even the damn gun barrel. Now, people are crying for Craig to just play the Bond he did in the other films, the portrayal of the character so many hated (though I argue SP represents a Bond who has simply matured, and not a different guy at all). I just find it amusing, really. But I went through this with QOS and loads of other films, just as I will with SP. The trigger-happy culture may yet fall in line.
Depends on what you see as a success. The most highly acclaimed Bond films in the series are the ones that closely resemble the books. The ones which are mostly seen as the bad apples of the franchise (DAD, MR etc.) are the films which stray very far away from Fleming.
In Craig's tenure, I believe CR will be seen as his high point once he is done as Bond, and again this closely follows the book.
This ain't rocket science.
There's another element to that that changes the perception of what is going on. The Fleming based films had Fleming's source to work from, meaning the scripting process was easier. The movies that tell original stories then have it much, much harder.
I can't think of a script that would be harder to write than a James Bond film, and the added pressure of having no core Fleming to follow while still being expected to balance what the audience wants and what the story itself needs to be different and unexpected is brutal. It's why I don't judge any scriptwriters too hard, as I understand their struggle.