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
SP is nothing compared to CR. It's not even worth deliberating let alone being up for debate. Every Bond film, heck every film ever made has weaknesses but one thing's for sure, SP is nowhere near in the same league
as CR in every respect.....except maybe cinematography
...and Craig's performance...
...and Q...
...and Moneypenny...
...and M, especially M...
Agreed. There isn't much in Spectre that can rival Casino Royale. I'd put Lea Seydoux on par with or slightly ahead of Eva Green (both are excellent), but that aside, Casino Royale is better in every imaginable way. Much better performance from Craig, better villain, better and more coherent story, etc.
The longer I exist on this forum, the more I am coming round to this point of view. I would, however, always like it recognised that CR is itself a very flawed film in certain regards. I resist the idea that certain entries become anointed into some echelon where they are sequestered from criticism. Not that that is what you are advocating, of course. It's just that fan forums can tends towards echo chambers at times.
CR, to me, captures the essence of what Bond is about. For me. I continue to be surprised by criticisms I hear in some quarters that the Craig era has meandered away from traditional Bond. In my view (and I don't know how or why) CR has more 'traditional' Bond in it than any other Craig film, including SP, or any film since LTK.
That's just the way I feel. I had a huge smile on my face for most of it. Didn't like the downer ending but that's the way it goes as it was part of the narrative.
Yes, I do have many criticisms of the film (I'm would probably be considered a CR hater by some), but considering the IMO uneven films Craig went onto make, Casino Royale represents the strongest creative effort of the Craig era. The excellent far out ways the just OK. The first act is very good, the second act is probably in the top 5 of any Bond film (the casino stuff). However I will defend to my grave that the third act, compared to the two prior, is a big let down. I don't think the film required another action set piece, and in my opinion the love story was rushed, with poor dialogue. What could have been a near perfect 2hr movie, becomes a 2hr 20min merely excellent one.
Having said that, I'm not sure how else they really could have done the 'love' story and I'm glad they focused on the casino parts rather than overdoing time with the romance angle, because that's what makes CR so special (the casino scenes imho).
I agree. They clearly focused the majority of effort to make sure the Casino scenes worked, and that's why the later scenes with Bond and Vesper alone, with nothing in the way of plot or objective to support them, seemed more like an afterthought. I honestly don't think the collapsing house set piece adds anything to the film other than serve as a set up to an overly melodramatic death scene. I recognise the thematic importance of Vesper's death in solidifying Bond's character, but once the main plot is sorted with you cannot simply coast on a burgeoning relationship. I think there is a touch of self-indulgence in the storytelling, perhaps treating the material with slightly more reverence than it deserves. IMO streamlining the third act and making a few choice edits elsewhere (that parkour chase is simply too long to be convincingly plausible) would help to truly earn CR the reputation it currently enjoys.
Nothing is perfect. CR, like everything, has its superficial flaws, but as a piece of cinema it is exceptional IMO. It's within a bracket of possibly 3 or 4 Bond films that are transcendent. Bond survives on consistency and is rarely punctuated with genuine brilliance. I find CR to be one of those rare moments. QoS, SF and SP aren't close, by a long, long way.
While I would argue that not all of CR's flaws are strictly superficial but structural in some cases, I can see this is about as close as we are ever likely to be to agreeing on the matter.
I think you're right. They tried to add a bit of visual heft to it. I personally think it's original, iconic and works exceptionally well. The moment Vesper lets go is heartbreaking. Nothing in the canon compares.
But I still like QOS & SP better.
:D
Vesper in my opinion was a far better written character. Hard to compare with what Seydoux had to work with.
I find it hard to believe that they didn't do "chemistry reads" with Craig and Seydoux. IMHO her best scene with Craig is the first one when she is at her prickliest, but Craig had infinitely more chemistry not with her, but with Jesper Christensen (surely one reason why he appeared in three films).
I would agree with that. Green had a better character, a Fleming character, to work with. I thought that Seydoux, however, rose above the material she had to work with. For me, if that part was played by someone with less talent than her, the whole film might have fallen apart more than it already had due to a faulty script. At least for me, all of the things that worked about Spectre were in some way tied to Seydoux and her character.
They're both very good, though. Both are in my top 3.
This!
My thoughts on this too.
This is the type of exceptionalism I'm talking about. This is exactly why CR has the 'gold dust' reputation it does. seventy-five percent of any great work is perceived in the work itself (i.e. it is quantifiable), the other twenty-five percent is conceived in the mind of the viewer. Once a film, book, album whatever reaches the threshold of seventy-five percent, the brain will change it's reality so it can achieve the rest. This comes from our built in instinct to see value in things, and our tendency to overestimate value in order to remain optimistic about our prospects of survival. Problem is, this makes ascertaining the 'actual value' of content (i.e being objective) rather than it's perceived value (groupthink) difficult. Part of the issue is that often something which, in isolation, would be considered 'weak' is excused due to it's relationship with the surrounding material. This is why any perceived issues the content does have are downplayed as being 'superficial'.
Heaven forbid someone having a different opinion to yourself.
Regarding the Venice part of the film, I'm really not too keen on it and truth be told, if it wasn't in the film, I'd probably watch CR much more than I do, because it does bring me down quite a bit. However as I said, I believe EON made the right decision here, for box office reasons and for general audience expectations reasons. They needed Vesper's death to resonate emotionally on film, and the way they went about it does (too much for me actually).
I understand why they did it & I'm sure some liked that part, although it was indeed heavy on the emotions.
Interestingly, they were able to make an entire follow up film partly based on the impact of that death.
The exceptionalism I spoke of was to do with the fact that people will forgive laziness in CR, or FRWL that they wouldn't forgive in DAF or MR. So people make an exception, and don't mark CR down for it. They make excuses for a film they WANT to be a masterpeice, thus it becomes a masterpeice because they ignore the negatives.
Confirmation bias maybe?