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Okay, that's cool. It seems like we're using identical examples of the action scenes and yet, our views couldn't be further apart. You call it avant-garde, whereas I call it sloppy. I guess I just can't shake the feeling that Glen must of had time constraints and rushed with the editing or something else was going wrong behind the scenes.
Anyway, let's not derail this SP thread any further ;) .
The editing is very deliberate. To call it 'sloppy' infers that it wasn't considered, which is incorrect imo.
Well, Glen was clearly working from the school of Hunt, whose style was a purposeful attempt to rattle the viewer and make them "feel" it. While the speeding of film and choppiness in the early Bonds upsets some, I honestly don't have an issue with it. Some of the jump cuts can be weird, but how Hunt and Glen were able to go beyond just frame editing with raw images to actually inject altered sound into the movies during the action was something I have never seen done in that way.
Hunt's genius at directing was visible from the start, particularly in the Grant fight in FRWL and the car chase and laser table of GF, where he took all these random shots of the sets and actors in motion (or stillness) and told a story with pictures that just takes you there. Glen very much recreates that visceral feeling in OHMSS for me where the action is its own visual story, and I actually think he avoids some of the jumpiness that Hunt would use in the early Bond films. As a result OHMSS feels like it has its own identity that is partly rugged, using some notes of Hunt's style while still being its own thing. There's moments where the camerawork and editing puts you with Bond in the fight as he's disoriented or on the attack, and that adds a lot to what we see and feel.
At least to me it does.
LALD, YOLT, FRWL and OHMSS are all deftly homaged in this film.
There are other nods but these four films are very clearly referenced.
The GF DB5 nods in both SF and SP aren't terrible subtle but I don't care.
This is a Mendes personal indulgence. He's having some fun. I can roll with it. He's not asking us to take it too seriously.
A couple of things I noticed again on recent viewing.
Speaking of Mendes and his DB5 obsession (which of course was actually introduced for the Craig-era by Campbell in CR) there is a very obvious nod-wink to the pages-and-pages of fan discussion on the car having the wrong steering wheel in SF.
In SP, Q tells Bond there wasn't much left of the DB5 after getting blown up at Skyfall, other than a "steering wheel". Har har har.
Another little nugget I picked up is when Blofeld remarks to Bond about all of Bond's dead girlfriends, he makes it clear that this was his, Blofeld's, doing.
In the Craig era, Bond had lost Vesper, Solange, Fields, Severine and M.
We fans had pointed out the total seemed a little high, even allowing that Bond has lost plenty of girls in the past, but not with quite the same concentration, in so short a space.
So I think Eon maybe retconned this development, by blaming it on Blofeld, as Blofeld does tell Bond that he had Bond's women killed as payback for Bond's meddling in his affairs.
Spectre will hold up well over time. Personally I find all the Bond films do. I find they grow on me. I just watched a SF/SP double bill. Long sit, but I loved it. These two films in a back-to-back viewing create a full contemporary Bond immersion and really cement Craig as an A-List Bond.
Actually I consider all the Bond actors A-List now with the original actor an A+.
I am well used to, and comfortable with what each successive actor has brought to the role.
I've always felt that that statement of Blofeld ("author of all your pain") was a purposeful characterization of his arrogance, and less a ret-con attempt. Blofeld is so full of himself and on his high chair, he uses a moment of manipulation to make Bond think that all the personal killings other men perpetrated while working under him (Quantum's killing of Solange, White's deal with Vesper, Greene's killing of Fields, Silva's murder of Severine, M's death) were really just his kills/orders. As with all the Blofelds, he's really not that powerful or mighty, and uses the accomplishments of others to inflate his own ego or to lie to his enemies in order to offset them. This Blofeld in particular is a mad, delusional man, and the idea that he robbed his ex-agents of their glory to take those dastardly acts as his own very much fits.
Blofeld had the power to order execution of all five, even if Silva was squeamish about killing M.
As we learn in SP Ernst was everywhere, knew everything. He was even in our beds, and probably with no socks. :-O
I think the very clear intention of the scene is to show Blofeld deluding his company into the power of his own abilities, of which he really has none, which is the whole arc of the character in every Bond film. White negotiated with Vesper, and in guilt, Vesper was the one that wrote her own certificate. Greene was pissed with Bond and Fields meddling in his affairs, so he had his boys drown her in what Bond thought he coveted. Silva killed Severine because he's mad and she was expendable for turning on him, and his ultimate goal was to wipe M off of the earth, so nobody would order him to do that; he was already planning it for decades! These men all did these things, except for Vesper who took her own life (how would Blofeld be able to take credit for that?). They acted quite clearly from their own impulses, not because a man was in their ear just before the act saying, "Bond is my archenemy, kill [such and such] for me so it tortures him!"
As the leader of SPECTRE, Blofeld was technically the superior of these men, and that's why he takes all the credit for what other people have done underneath him. Le Chiffre's actions were his, Greene's actions were his, Silva's actions were his, because he wills them to be and his power complex makes him believe his own delusion. He can't stand not being in control and being the alpha and the omega, and he needs to do anything to prove that to himself and others. In reality, White, Le Chiffre, Greene and Silva have caused more pain to Bond than he ever would be able to, and he can't stand that. The only reaction he then has is to discredit all the men who've faced Bond and say, "Their actions were really MINE, mwah hahahaha!"
But in reality, he's just a paper tiger.
Hardly. Being a powerful leader and robbing credibility from underlings don't have to be mutually exclusive things. Blofeld is a terrifying person and clearly uses surgical mind control to get his team to do his bidding, but there's also an aspect of failure to him. He sees that his underlings have done more harm to Bond than he ever could, and he uses his figurehead position to take credit for everything that's happened to him, even though he likely gave no orders and obviously has never physically done anything to hurt Bond. He's a coward huddled at the top of the heap, but the myth of fear he has created for himself inside SPECTRE has made people think twice.
It's not a matter of Blofeld being weak and that drivess people to want to take control from him. White was his friend, Le Chiffre was a side associate that just wanted to play with big money, Greene wanted connections that would give him land and resource control and Silva was funded for a personal vendetta. None of them wanted Blofeld's job, they wanted what he offered them. SPECTRE was/is just the biggest game in town, a hub for the power hungry who want to be the big dog in the room while having their abilities appreciated and heavily rewarded in heaps of cash.
This Blofeld was written with a lot of nuance and subtext (and delusion), and I think many are making the mistake at taking him at his word without questioning the truth behind what he's saying. Much like the deep Bond of QoS kept telling everyone Vesper was meaningless to him, even though we knew he was lying to feign power and strength. The same thing exists here with Blofeld taking credit for things that happened on accident or through the actions of other men that he then turned around and claimed as his own actions. He's a lot like modern terrorist cells that publicly take credit for every suicide bombing that happens in the world. They weren't really behind it, but people believe their lie and because of this, the fear and power they represent increases. Blofeld is playing this same mind game with Bond.
If people think Blofeld sat around his desk with a pad and paper listing all the people Bond loved or liked so he could kill them all later, they're nuts.
You can go on about all the business of it Blofeld not being taken at his word but that doesn't explain away step brother gate and linking the films together with scanning a ring accompanied by the most convenient software program to illustrate it to the audience in history.
The biggest issue for me is that P&W could have dealt with this so much better with existing material they already had, it's all in the previous 3 films to do it, I've done it and one of these days when it's finished it I'll post it.
I like LTK. But TB is in a different class.
The ring thing was fine to me. The rings are made of a special rock, all the bodies of the SPECTRE agents who wore the ring had traces of it on them. Fair enough. With all the Quantum/SPECTRE members dead, I can't think of how the reveal could've been done better, since you would only be able to have Bond find files or look at them in a database. Or dig up their corpses in plots all over the world to look for rings, but that would've been a boring montage. ;)
@echo, the SPECTRE rings all the members wear are made of iridium, a rare element found most easily in meteorites, and traces of that element were found on Le Chiffre, Greene and Silva in autopsy, essentially linking them as agents of the organization. The implication is that Blofeld used parts of the meteorite that crashed into his Moroccan base (near the area where he served in a battalion of the French Foreign Legion called 'Les Spectre de St. Pierre' with Mr. White) and created the rings for his members with the element contained in the rock. SPECTRE was then birthed through the symbol of the rings by the fantastic power (the meteorite crash) that gave Blofeld a metaphorical sense of power in his own life. Like the meteorite, he had been waiting in orbit, building up power before his descent and ultimate impact.
Some of this is explained here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/3sjlye/empire_magazine_spectre_spoiler_special_podcast/cwxre0p/
Christ Eon really over though this. Weren't the rings just metal or titanium? Where did you read it came from a rock?
I doubt that Bond , within the films, think of it as "the ending".
It makes little sense to lean on real world examples for a series like this that is removed from it, despite the Craig films being more grounded.
My point about Blofeld being a paper tiger is connected to who he is in the face of Bond. He tries to get Bond all the time, and always fails, showing that he lacks the power and ability to finally silence him, despite the fact that he doesn't shut up about how powerful he is. His running of SPECTRE doesn't come into it at that point, as we see in the film that he has an ability to cast fear and influence, in the Rome meeting and in his organized bombing of Africa, and how he has drone-like agents at his command. Around regular people, sure, he can find some power to have, but when Bond comes into the picture, it's all gone. This has been Blofeld's story from the very beginning.
@QuantumOrganization, it's all in the link and in the podcast with Mendes. The rings were made of meteorite rock containing iridium, and the trace of that element was found on all the past enemies Bond has faced.
That I have a harder time believing. I much prefer the idea that Le Chiffre, Greene and Silva all had rings they wore at one time or another, or shook the hands of men with the rings, as opposed to them passing around one. It does make you wonder when any of them got sworn into SPECTRE in the first place. I guess the moment you are a Quantum member you are also a SPECTRE member.
After witnessing what DC's Bond does to Slate, Connery and Lazenby wouldn't make it out of the room.
Correction, @TripAces: If there were no surgical scissors in the room, Sean and George could still survive. For a while. ;)
Speaking as a Craig purist who has witnessed this change, I don't think it's that dramatic a reaction. Most of the people I know who want Craig gone simply feel he's done what he sought to do and has told a specific story. In addition, they see the SP ending as a good enough way to bring another Bond actor in while Dan's Bond seems to be going off with the girl.
I don't feel this way, but I can understand the position in some ways. I don't see, however, many saying, "Craig's shit, get him out!" It's far more common to see people comment that he's had his time and the holster needs to be worn around another man's shoulders. I think Dan himself would agree, and with a final film he'll pass the title to another at around the period that he feels it's time to move on. All signs are pointing to Bond 25 being that swan song.
Secondly, I just think 10+ years is enough for one actor, and especially because everything has been so clearly linked during this latest iteration.
Pity the backstory was portrayed as it was, it makes far more sense this way.