It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
I'm a sucker for the kind of hero narrative EON have been working with here, but I get how it's not for everyone. I also understand that the deconstruction of Bond has left many with the feeling that not enough of the Bond they know is left up there to enjoy. For me I've always liked the character, not the tropes or the gadgets, and my favorite Bonds are the early ones before formula became an expectation, so the Craig era was never a low for me. In many ways it was a high for how it decided to get along without all the bells and whistles that were expected, while putting a twist on things along the way.
I think Dan's Bond has definitely been through it, but I don't view him as a depressive figure. It's just that his movies chose to focus their first half on his first love in Fleming's stories and the effect the betrayal had on him, a massive story, and the movie after wanted to tell a Bond and M story that didn't have a lot of room for dilly dally with Bond and his finer aspects of life. The stories weren't crafted to have him screwing all over the place or toasting martinis in every scene, as his character wasn't in that mindset on those missions, which were certainly personal ones. One of the real strengths of SP is that it pays off what Craig Bond has been working towards as an agent and man, where, after the events he's face that rattled him, he's able to enjoy himself a bit on the job. Sexing up his contact in Mexico City, being a cocky bastard while looking his baddies in the eyes, giving a grin as he comes off a parachute, swapping playful barbs with Moneypenny and Q, etc. Unlike CR, QoS or SF he's not being put through the ringer and going through hell; instead, his development has allowed him to rise above it and be confident and capable in the face of danger.
Some people actually hate Bond in SP, which I have found so confusing. He's at the very least a man who isn't being tortured via a personal piece of drama like Vesper or M's deaths, he's just a man on a mission. This was something I thought people wanted. Even Blofeld's threats in the film are things Craig Bond shoots down with an condescending and amused look, showing that at this point in his career nothing impresses him. You can almost here him say, "Okay, Ernst, whatever you say," with an eye roll. He's bold, mischievous and as maverick as we saw him unencumbered in CR before Vesper betrayed him, except in SP the story doesn't saddle him with a personal pain like that again for part of the movie. In SP Dan gets to be his Bond at all times.
I can see why you enjoy it with this considered, @Getafix. Of the somewhat experimental Craig films, SP is definitely the one that most easily fits into what you would expect of a traditional Bond film. The film's desire to actually have fun is part of that, as is Bond's attitude in the film that refuses to torture him with another tragedy like all the previous films. I think after all he's faced, SP is the payoff for him where he finally gets a goddamn break. He certainly faces danger and risk as he always does on the job, but the woman he's with isn't in a gigantic conspiracy, his people back in London aren't constantly telling him he's past it or can't do his job, and he's not forced to face another personal loss from his center of allies. In a way, SP is harkening back to the Bond films we expect, where Bond faces challenge without the film putting him over the flame in dramatic ways like a toasting marshmallow.
I agree with a lot of what you say. I suppose it's about watchability and I don't find myself reaching for Craig era films too often. If I want serious character development and some intense cinema I will probably go elsewhere - there's no shortage of better written, acted and directed films out there.
Bond is about something else for me, and as I said it's not necessarily about ticking tired boxes. Like you the early films are the touchstones for me. Beautifully made, great writing, casts, prodiction design and music. It's an all enveloping world. The films themselves don't need to follow a formula but the overall look and feel should be Bond. And the writing must be crisp and witty. I'd welcome a little more weirdness as well - Silva is a bit too pantomime villain for me, rather than genuinely threatening.
And they have got a lot right recently. Perhaps it's the writing and music that have been the biggest let down with the last two. So plodding and pedestrian. Great ideas are fine but only if they're articulated with really good writing - that's where SF in particular just flops for me. Plus I find Newman's score infuriating, not least his petty refusal to make any more than the briefest of references to Adele's title song.
Having said that I appreciate what they've sought to do with the Criag era and mostly I've enjoyed it. It's a solid body of work by and large and shows that Bond doesn't have to be totally hemmed in by conventions and what came before. Hopefully in the future the films will be even better.
As I said somewhere (perhaps here), Bond squeals like a pig in the chair in SP. Not only was that extremely discomfiting for me to see (I'm not too keen on seeing men cry or yell in pain generally), but it suggested to me that there was some significance to his torment, especially due to Blofeld's ongoing commentary. Not more than five minutes later he is up and about shooting with the kind of precise aim that an Olympic shooter would be jealous of.
In SF in contrast, he goes off the grid after the fall, and we have a series of sequences in the film which show that he has paid a large price for that 'bloody shot' and fall, both psychologically and physically.
Regarding the London Tube train sequence in the earlier film: I don't see that moment as prescient prediction. Rather, I always saw it as a stationary train that was parked on the track which came tumbling down after Silva blew the hole with the explosive. It was empty to my knowledge. Silva doesn't have to be the head of Spectre to have some degree of expertise with surveillance and hacking, or even to have an ability to control systems. It's no more implausible than any number of other Bond plots, although somewhat more unrealistic than those in the prior two films.
The mute Patrice was involved in two superb (even iconic in the case of China) sequences with Bond. His involvement in Silva's scheme is quite clearly understood. As can be seen from the discussion a few pages back, Hinx's intention still confuses many of us on this thread. Furthermore, Patrice isn't a cliched villain in my eyes. Hinx is an Oddjob or Chandor (burly)/Jaws (tall and powerful) amalgam. One came across as real world deadly to me, and the other lost his ability to impress me after the ridiculous and inconclusive car chase through the streets of Rome (replete with man crush looks).
As I & others have mentioned countless times on here, it is a matter of execution. How the character and behaviour fits into a particular scene, how the scene itself flows, and how credible the characterization is are all just as important as 'plot' to me. That's the thing about 'art'. It's not so much what you do, but how you do it which makes something 'resonate' and gives it its 'soul'. There's a significant intangible aspect to it. I'm quite grateful actually, because it means art is unlikely to be supplanted by an outsourced computer, at least for a while.
Those of us who have expressed our criticisms and disappointment with SP feel it quite viscerally. That doesn't mean we are misguided, stupid, or subject to 'bizarre' and illogical thinking. It just means we have a different opinion when looking at a piece of art. We're entitled to it, and no amount of harping is going to change our minds. One day, we may look upon this 24th entry with a more positive assessment, but that will be entirely of our choosing, and not because anyone is hammering us over the head about how ignorant or wrong we are.
Much of SF made as little sense to me when it came out as SP did to you.
Face it - SF and SP are cut from the same raggedy cloth.
While I'm prepared to admit SP is poorly written and conceived, I find the allegation that SP actually makes 'less sense' than SF hilarious frankly.
Not this one...but then I am British,and this is a VERY patriotic film.
Neither of them are great movies in my view, but the idea they're chalk and cheese is quite amusing.
SP to me is poorly executed pastiche reminiscent of the Brosnan entries. Soulless.
Regarding the comparisons:
1. I disagree on the SF vs. SP PTS. Outside of the tracking shot, I much prefer the unpredictable back and forth of the SF sequence (car to bike to train). Super tense and one of the best action sequences in the Craig era for me. Similar to the OP Germany sequence for ratcheted up tension.
2. RE: The Hinx fight: yes, it's better than anything in SF, but I still prefer Slate and Obanno by far for the Craig era. Neither was as predictable as the Hinx fight, which reminded me too much of the FRWL, TSWLM & LALD encounters, all of which I personally preferred.
3. RE: Q: Nothing will beat the opening museum sequence between Q and Bond in SF for me. One of the best in the film. Sure, Q was decent in SP, but that's because the rest of it was so unmemorable.
Does the thought ever occur to you that you might be spending much too much time trying to see things that just aren't there and way too many words hammering your perceptions into the folks who care to read it?
The last two scripts were arguably the most logic lacking in the history of the franchise, so to my thinking it fails to reason to assume they had all those far-fetched and deep intentions you always envision. To my mind abandoning logic, especially in spy stories, shows a large disregard for the audience from side of the producers. And no, despite of what you and many others here are thinking this kind of illogic and gaping plot holes followed by gaping plot holes wasn't present at the Bond movies of yesteryear.
Quite right. In SF there were consequences for Bond after surviving the fall. In SP it didn't make a difference if he had been tortured or not. Which is a shame by the way, because I do like that sequence. I do try and give SP compliments where I see fit.
I've always seen the tube explosion as something that was planned far in advance to create a distraction. When Bond caught up to Silva, he tried to kill two birds so to speak. It's a hell of a coincidence, but nothing more implausible than in past Bond films.
So you think on paper the Blofeld/Oberhauser "twist" didn't look like pissing on Flemings work?
This thread is about SP unless I'm much mistaken isn't it? If people want to start a thread about general plot holes in other Bond films or SF specifically (which I'm sure has been done) I'm happy to slate Silva's clairvoyant escape plan and his tube train on demand with the best of them but that's not the topic up for debate here.
Stating that SP is not the only offender in sloppy writing is as irrelevant as trying to get off a murder charge by saying 'Yeah but Shipman did hundreds.'
In many other Bond films (the 70s particularly) sloppiness was abundant to various degrees and I do concede that there is a nostalgic 'get out of jail free card' that we seem to be willing to extend to a lot of the older entries that they wouldn't be allowed to get away with today.
But it wouldn't matter if the previous 23 entries comprised of films at the level of The Island of Dr Moreau, Batman & Robin, Ishtar, Superman IV, Battlefield Earth, John Carter etc etc it still wouldn't make SP Shakespeare.
SP's third act is horribly cobbled together and nothing is going to change that. Can you overlook it and just go along with the ride as its a Bond film? Yes of course just like a can with DAD. But it doesn't alter the fact that if you soberly analyse it without wearing your Bond tinted glasses its very poorly written.
Unfortunately after about an hour or so it starts to fall apart and never seems to fully recover.
SF in my view had a far more exciting (if admittedly) prosterous climax.
I din't think It'll go that far with SP though. There's enough to enjoy. But for me SF is more then the sum of it's parts and SP isn't. SF at least tells a consistent story. Not the story of Javier Bardem's Silva, but of Bond. Falling, slowly getting up and then running after the game to catch up.
In SP he doesn't have his own story, which in itself is fine, but they forgot to tell Blofeld's story too. And that's where SP misses the beat for me. It's all too easy. Bond just doesn't have one single setback in the film. The one that is actually threatening, Hinx's attack, comes out of nowhere and thus is a fight in the best of Bond's traditions. It's the only moment, next to the torture, where he seems to be ni danger. And indeed, he walks away too easy in both cases. Look at him following Patrice in SF, and barely hanging on to the elevater, even slipping. We just don't get that in SP.
I don't think they should've changed the script that much, just let him be more then a FPS character from a computer game. It would've made a mediocre film to a good one. And if they'd made Blofeld's plan just a little bit more threatening and acute (no London finale, talking about computer game shooting), and the film could have been great.
Bond just strolling into a villain's lair, no plan, confident that he will win the day - that's straight out of the late Connery / Moore playbook. It's not what I want from Craig's Bond.
Well said.
I agree. SF and SP hit new depths in terms of plot incoherence.
Not saying SP is Shakespeare. Quite the opposite.
I'm highlighting the absurdity of calling out SP for its plot holes while simultaneously hailing SF as a triumph of narrative coherence.
Just asking for a little teensy bit of consistency and balance in how the two films are judged - often in the same breath.
Who has been hailing SF for narrative coherence? I recall SF was similarly picked apart at the time in particular Silva's ludicrously contrived escape plan.
But given this is an SP thread doesn't that legitimately make it a fair target for criticism?
Once again I don't see how moaning that SF is no better (which it clearly is. Doesn't piss all over one of Fleming's characters for a start) vindicates SP?
No, the thought doesn't occur. Nostalgia be damned, Bond scripts have always expended "logic" for wow factor and escapism. The plots of your darling yesteryear are riddled with it, but it helps to understand that as its own genre, Bond plays by its own rules. If we wanted to spend a hundred pages picking apart every Bond film, the end result would be the same for 97% of their content. We all have our favorites, but it's salient to be mindful of watching you're watching. I just wish I had such dazzling selective thinking.
If thats your attitude why have you spent the last 5 pages in ever more tortuous contortions trying to 'prove' that SP's back of a fag packet plot all hangs together?
And where was the 'wow factor' in SP's climax? I suppose that would be the biggest explosion in movie history would it?
wow
If you had people constantly calling you full of shit while saying you were lying to yourself and others for thinking as you do, maybe you would be extra motivated to prove your stance, @TheWizardOfIce. In these areas of communicated, I know your strong suit does not lie. It's not the SP fans that keep bringing up these discussions, after all. The thread dies, then somebody pipes in by saying, "This film is utter shit, the worst thing I've ever seen," yada, yada, yada. It's become impossible to discuss it with any kind of meaning, so on this front I shall piss off. I've had my fill of people acting like a film touched them in a bad place and made them take off work for weeks of intense therapy.
Wow.
I'm not looking for vindication. Just calling out some BS
Spectre, like all of the Bond films that came before, is full of its faults. True. And even I dismissed their relevance, because it tried to be something it couldn't, a combination of a realistically relevant world and an escapist fantasy, trying to please every crowd. It couldn't. Die Another Day did a different thing, trying to appeal to the trend of over-the-top action (like your favourite infamous parachute surfing tsunami scene with CGI, for example) and before that, when Miami Vice was popular, Licence To Kill tried to blend in to the genre. All the 24 films have their fans. And all of them, like anything else, have their detractors.
But, let me be clear. Spectre, to answer the titular question of this thread, will be appreciated in the future, just like Die Another Day, Moonraker and Diamonds Are Forever gained some sort of forgiveness and appreciation for what they are, now. Every film that made its detractor feel like one is touched in the wrong nerve, found some sort of a renaissance among the crowd. Love it or hate it, that's how things are.
So, no need to piss each other off. It is what it is. Hope you all feel better now.
Carry on.
I'm afraid this notion simply isn't true. For example, a few pages ago you defended Bond's dumbness to just go straight into Blofeld's headquarter without any plan whatsoever by claiming that he does this just all the time in the movies. But if you look at it there are actually only two times in the history of the franchise in which Bond goes straight into his enemies captivity. One is in DAF (which somehow doesn't count since the whole film is such a parody) and the other towards the end in TMWTGG when he flies to visit Scaramanga. But there he knows Scaramanga is vain and admires him so he has every reason to speculate that he won't kill him as soon as he arrives. This contrasts sharply with Bonds behavior in the last two films in which he simply goes to his enemies without any reason why he should survive this endeavor. What makes it even worse in SP is that he is breaking his promise to protect White's daughter by simply bringing her to her father's "murderer".
I think you are right that its worth getting back on topic as debating the quality (or lack thereof) of the script is largely a fruitless task as its not going to change anything. I think the reason SP is so divisive and causes such heated arguments (and, seemingly, mental breakdowns in some) is that what we were sold in the Craig era was that we had moved into a period where EON had upped its game in terms of overall quality.
Now they were attracting the best talent; Oscar winners and genuine talent all over the shop in both cast and crew - Forster, Mendes, Deakins, Van Hoytema, Mikklesen, Almaric, Bardem, Waltz, Fiennes, Wishaw, Finney, Seydoux and of course Craig and Dench. The only exception to this impressive recruitment drive was in screenwriting. They got away with it in CR as they had the spine of a Fleming book to hang it on. The cracks were apparent in QOS but they had the writers strike as an excuse. SF looked well polished but once you picked away at it the flaws were obvious, but the staggering box office once again meant it could be swept under the carpet. However theres only so long they could get away with it and this neglect in getting top quality writers in finally proved fatal for SP.
Bondmania was back! CR had miraculously restored Bond's credibility to almost mid 60s levels after the cliche ridden Rog and Pierce eras. Yes QOS seemed a misstep at the time but is ageing rather well. Then SF upped Bondmania levels near to when Sean was at his peak. Admittedly it was helped by a perfect storm of exterior circumstances; surfing the patriotic wave of the jubilee and Olympics (of course the parachute stunt was the best piece of global marketing a film has ever had) and piggybacking on Adele's massive popularity to bring in bigger numbers than Bond had since 1965.
Then came SP. Expectations were high following SF (which, whatever gripes people might have level at the plot, is unquestionably a very slick and classy production) and then a dark and foreboding teaser trailer followed by a main trailer that, set to a spectacularly ominous arrangement of Barry's OHMSS, seemed like we could be up for the culmination of the Craig era with an absolute epic.
And then we saw the finished product.
Its not so much the fact that SP is markedly worse than some of the older films and people are unfairly hammering it when they give some of those films a free pass.
Its the crushing disappointment.
That we thought it would be so good added to the fact that it couldve been so good is what stings like a paper cut across your bell end.
So in answer to the question posed by the thread (which in fairness I've been as guilty as anyone in detracting from) I would say that SP will become more appreciated over time as given it is by and large lambasted it by everyone it can only go up. Slowly, once we have all been through the cathartic process of slating it on here and the scars start to heal, it will just settle into the middle of the pack as a standard Bond film as the memories start to fade of the promise we all thought was coming back in September 2015 and the devastation we felt when we heard the words 'Your little brother' for the first time.