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Comments
But SP HAS no plan, it HAS no danger? What"? oh no the biggest surveillance program in the world is set up and it's not democratically governed? That's..... ehm.... terrible. It doesn't put people in jail, it doesn't destroy countries, far from it probably a quarter of the audience would go 'well that's a good idea'. And it's horrible because it's, what, run by a creep? Yes, Blofeld is behind it and he's not just a villain, he's worse then that, because.... well...... because Mr. White was very fague about it! Oh and in retrospect it was Blofeld behind Silva and his mommy complex, and behind Greene and Quantum and their extortion programmes, and behind Le Chiffre as a criminal's banker. Even that part makes no sense. SPECTRE isn't introduced as a criminal organisation which is there to enrich it's members like it was introduced in Thunderball. We get nothing, and so we don't really feel the need to stop this unethically program. I feel for M, as I'm a civil servant too and his fight is a righteous one, but it isn't film material. And certainly not Bond-film material.
I personally loved how SPECTRE was portrayed in a nice modernizing of the old guard, and I have never felt its purpose was to enrich members. It's a place for people with power complexes and dreams of wealth and influence, but also where you can die in seconds if you screw up. Looking at the TB meeting it shares a similar feeling to SP's. Blofeld commands respect, but also massive fear, to the point that even those who aren't guilty of pilfering money are still fearful of being killed when he announces that there is a guilty party amongst them. Blofeld also has his own branch for killing SPECTRE members who disappoint him, again creating a very strange atmosphere where you can never be sure when your ticket is punched. You wonder why all of them stick around, given their boss and work environment, but that is the fantasy of it all.
With Waltz's Blofeld, he seems to have even more control, such that I could imagine he took all his desert base agents, strapped them to the torture chair and drilled their skulls to get them to answer his every word as the blank slates they now were, like Pavlov's dogs. The minute he clicks his fingers, all the agents rise and turn to him, perfectly in sync. It's a haunting and disconcerting image. The Nine Eyes program is simply an extension of that power and influence he can't live without. Blofeld was able to facilitate terror attacks in London through Silva, and also worldwide (as in South Africa) to get the program approved by governments who bought into the fear mongering. C was corruptible enough that he was willing to let Blofeld kill a few innocents all so his golden plan and dreams of a connected surveillance network came to be, achieving what he saw as safety at the risk of all privacy and democracy.
We can argue how successful this take on Blofeld was, but nobody could accuse him of being inconsistent. I thought we was a well drafted character, and was able to fall in line with who we expect Blofeld to be, essentially an egotist who shrivels with fear at the first sign of Bond.
My critic is that it is much too easy for Bond to stop Blofeld. Instead of a huge battle or the use of some clever infiltration skills, Bond just makes the whole crater lair explode with a few shots. This feels so lame, so anticlimactic. And it somehow also shows that the writers did not really care all that much about the surveillance plan at all. Otherwise they would not have made another climax in London which actually only deals with the personal rivalry between Bond and Blofeld....
Because it's fun?
As someone who likes SP, I still agree that if it's going to be appreciated, it'll take a while, as it did with QoS. That doesn't match up with my preference of it or what I wish would happen (basically, it being loved starting tomorrow), but I am able to take on an opinion that doesn't comfort me or validate how I feel. I think many posters here are able to do the same, taking themselves out of the equation while simply looking at trends from the past to make their judgements on this question.
We can't be sure how the chips will fall, but most of what we're doing lately is speculation based on subjectivity anyway. We can't tell what future Bond stories will be, for instance, so why do we bother sharing them? Well, because it's a fun and imaginative way to spend time. And it's also a great opportunity to make bets to prepare for eventualities where you can tell people, "I told you so," if a certain prediction of yours proves true.
The key is not to take anything seriously, especially oneself.
100% agree with you. This aspect of SF in particualr bored me rigid and is one of the main reasons that film turned me off from the start. Hacking is such a turn off for me - the moment someone starts tapping away at a computer in a movie my eyelids start closing - it's like a reflex. Having a laptop in the PTS was enough to set the alarm bells ringing.
I really don't think its necessary for the Bond to be tied up with these sorts of plots. Other action/thriller movies don't always go down that route. It just requires a bit of skill from the writers. Tech doesn't have to dominate the Bond universe just because it's so ubiquitous in our own lives.
Bond is supposed to be about escapism, whereas tech is now so everyday and dull.
All in all, the story works on paper, but I think the film missed a few essentials. Blofeld and the danger of his scheme were assumed too much. As@GBF states: SP just misses this imo.
Bond walks into Silva's base in SF to almost certain death as well. Going to SF with M is also arguably a certain death scenario which defies logic. It's a Mendes motif
It's a Bond tradition. It's what he does.
Sometimes, but certainly not all. It was very clearly a DN like situation, where Bond had to wade into the waters willingly to get to the location he needed to be at.
The way it's been done in the Mendes films is perfunctory and devoid of suspense or tension. Bond walks up, gets captured, turns the tables, escapes. It's like a parody of Bond films of old.
Whatever the reason, it did feel unimaginative, lazy, and it was very sloppily executed (say what you will about the rest of the film, but most of the scenes are shot beautifully; I couldn't stand that Blofeld supposedly had all this time time to put up pics of Bond's past (that looked like publicity shots from those films), kidnap Maddy, tie her up, and how easy it was for Bond to her in a building that looked and felt to be a giant maze).
Not really. Bond sees the "dragon," gets shots off and then stops when he sees it's a mechanical thing. Then they are approached by gunman and he makes no moves (it'd be stupid to, they'd kill him). Hence the capture.
Both films put Bond in a situation where he has to infiltrate the villain's base by the villain's terms. Bond knows Blofeld would never allow them to meet unless he wanted it, so he gets close to the marking White gave him on his laptop/tracker in the hotel and waits to be received once Blofeld tracks him through his own surveillance near the crater base. Blofeld couldn't resist the chance to entertain both Madeleine and Bond and use them as his toys once further, but Bond has an exploding watch up his sleeve (or under it in sartorial terms) if he needs an out. He had to go into the belly of the beast to do his job and he knew Blofeld wouldn't resist passing it up.
It's the classic Bond/villain meeting where the hero and villain enter with a gentlemanly greeting to each other all while they are mutually planning how to kill one other behind their grins.
Bond does have a plan when meeting Silva, though: he activates Q's homing device right before arriving. If he can stall a while, backup will come to arrest Silva.
Whereas in Spectre he announces his intention of killing Blofeld to the man's face, but Blofeld has the upper hand in every way. It's a very, very overconfident thing, just strolling into the base with no plan. Very Moore-esque, not like Craig's Bond IMO.
In both films Bond is dealing with madmen who he can't beat without getting inside their base, and to do that they need to make themselves vulnerable. It's ballsy, sure, but he's James f#$%ing Bond.