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Indeed, I was there too. The audience are suckers for nostalgia, it's an easy trick. Stick the Falcon in the Force Awakens and watch everyone lose their shit. The real trick is committing something completely new to film that elicits a similar reaction.
I think it's time we see a little renewed love for the Lotus & Rolex. The product placement folks will have to be consulted though.
I was also there, the audience were still cheering and applauding while Bond was threatening M with the ejector seat. Great moment. However, trying to pull the same trick twice and second time round in a rather vanilla way just comes off as.....
:-q
Couldn't agree more. It had a certain mystique that to me has only diminished since the 90s, but SF was the real killer for me.
Indeed. Them just stumbling across the Falcon in the middle of nowhere was extremely contrived. Yes you enjoy it because it's the Falcon but at the same time it's a hollow enjoyment.
The same applies to the DB5. At the SF premiere I have to confess to being excited when he activated the machine guns (although I didn't scream and applaud like many) but in the cold light of day you realise it was just Mendes tickling your nostalgia prostate.
The DB5 these days is the equivalent of hiring a high class prostitute - enjoyable at the time but you feel empty afterwards.
What we need are orginal Bond moments that we can fall in love with.
Take TSWLM - they just went and made an epic Bond moment in its own right, no need to reference Connery.
Christ even OHMSS, which you would think would be the one film more than any other to hang onto the nostalgia life ring, doesn't reference the early Connery films as much as SF and SP.
We keep hearing from Babs that Mendes is an amazing filmmaker who can tell interesting stories and take the character on an exciting adventure. Well do it then instead of just regurgitating stuff.
//but no-one ever panicked that the Lotus in the early 80s Moore movies suddenly turned a deep red colour.''//
It didn't turn red. Moore/Bond had a white Lotus in For Your Eyes Only, which blew up. Despite Bond's joke to Q about "putting the Lotus back together," it seemed like the red Lotus was another car.
Also, re: DB5 in Skyfall...it wasn't just the Royal premiere. The reveal of the car got a rise out of the audience the four times I saw it in the theater.
However, after all that effort to blow it up, bring it back *again* for SPECTRE? That was too much for me. Mitigating factor: it did give Whishaw probably the best line of the movie. ("I told you to bring it back in one piece, not bring back one piece.")
This.
Yes, that was indeed rather silly. My long banshee cry is to put Bond back in a Bentley for the first time since FRWL/NSNA.
I would've agreed wth this some years ago but the problem is these days Bentleys are too much associated with chav footballers and morons like Katie Price so I'm happy to stick with Aston as it still manages to retain its class.
Terrible idea.
We would probably get a fairly good spy and mission driven movie, which has been too bloody long overdue.
You'd get a remake of an earlier film. Were people clamouring for the Russo brothers before Cap 2? Let's be honest, most people here haven't got the slightest idea of how to go about producing or directing a Bond movie they just assume the 'in vogue' director is the obvious route.
It does feel somewhat strange that this iconic car has now appeared in more DC Bond films than any other Bond actor.
On a somewhat unrelated note - I don't think you can really put Lotus in the same boat as Rolex. The former was product placement in the 70's, whilst the latter is part of Bond's 'DNA', being his wristwatch in Fleming's work.
The Rolex Submariner will forever be the quintessential 007 timepiece I think, even though Fleming wore the Explorer
The Falcon was a continuing character in the old trilogy, whereas the DB5 vanishing after the pts of TB indicated that it was no lasting character.
Please, no! They should have told Mendes before shooting SF, not now. If he did another one, he would probably come up next with a golden PPK.
Gimme a break. She just happens to have the Falcon and just happens to be picked up by Han and Chewie straight after she presumably flew it for the first time. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting a screenwriting opus, but if we're knocking SP, SW isn't getting away with its contrived bollocks either. The main point is that, irrespective of the narrative, the Falcon and DB5 are there first and foremost to get the general public moist because, 'look it's dat fing wot is famous and was in dat ova one'.
Abrams did quite a good reinvention of another franchise with MI3, he did so with ST & SW. Alias as a pretty good spy story so I would wager that he could actually deliver.
I'd say the Falcon appearance in TFA is similar to the DB5 appearance in GE. First time in as many years (30 in the case of the DB5, and 32 in the case of TFA). Also, it has some relevance, because it is Han's ship, and he is in the film.
The DB5 in SF would be more similar to the Falcon miraculously (and unbelievably) being shoehorned out of nowhere into the prequels.
I´d say that has to do with SP being a bore, while TFA rocks.
It's very true. They can wax lyrical about the enjoyment factor until the cows come home, but as a screenplay it does very little new in terms of content and nothing new in terms of form. So I don't see it as some kind of benchmark in that regard. Far from it.
Like I said above, though, it's primary function is to tickle your testes. The film could function perfectly fine without it. The fact it's not even in Han's possession only serves to highlight the needless narrative gymnastics. I get that it's part of a wider continuity, but still, it serves exactly the same purpose as the DB5 emotionally.
Both are solely there just to fellate the fans.
I can accept a bit of subtle fan wankery (Hildebrand in SP is a good example) but what bothers me is that time and again now (6 times in 8 films) we just keep reaching for the DB5 like Amy Winehouse for a crack pipe and it just seems like them being out of ideas more than anything else.
If someone is doing a Bond sketch or parody then fine, shoehorn in a DB5 at every opportunity but you would like to think that the official Bond filmmakers would be confident enough in the character to wean themselves off this mother's tit substitute and stand on their own two feet.
Rog made it through 7 films perfectly fine without you ever thinking 'This film isn't very Bond like. I really wish the DB5 would turn up for no apparent reason to remind I'm watching a Bond film.'
This makes even more sense as the model they should've followed when you go watch Spectre and realize what a piss poor job they did of constructing any sort of coherent plot. Base it off a novel that's barely been touched yet (MR for instance - or one of the better continuation novels), and at the very least you've got a plot that isn't the mess Spectre came up with. Its incredibly frustrating to leave a Bond film that has such a poor plot, poorly written characters, etc. and go home where you have countless Bond novels that could've been used as a basis for the film and saved the production time, money and effort.
In regard to the DB5, I liked the usage of it in the Brosnan era. One car chase in his first film, and a brief shot in his 2nd. In Skyfall I liked the inclusion of it simply because it was the 50th film. Casino Royale felt forced - like they knew they were stripping down some of the same, tired elements of Bond films so they decided to throw one in there for the hell of it. Spectre was the killer though. If they want to show it getting rebuilt in the background, then fine. But the mentions, the final sequence, etc. was just too much.
Craig's era is a weird one for me to think about. I love CR, like QoS & SF, and am not a big fan of SP at all. However I like SF because it was a well made film, but like QoS more because it tried to be original (and if they'd had the time to put together a full script and production it might have been a worthy follow up to CR). SP went and kind of put a damper on the entire era though for me when I try to look at it as a whole. I definitely hope Bond 25 can right some of those wrongs for what I hope will be one more Craig outing.
I've never understood this guff surrounding anniversarys. They should be celebrated outside of the film. If they want to include some subtle homages, which they do in every movie anyway, then so be it, but why are people so enamoured with this concept of overt references just because the film happens to be released in a specific year? Do we roll out the DB5 again for the 60th and the 65th? How about the 70th, 75th, 80th... Why not just have it in every film from now on?
Quite.
We had none this garbage for the 25th anniversary just a cracking Bond film.
Perhaps if they worried more about delivering us something at the level of TLD rather than how many references they can shoehorn in we might be might not be bemoaning the quality of the script so much.
Seems like Mendes and P&W are hoodwinking EON by using being knowledgable about Bond as a smokescreen for not being very good at their jobs. Why come up with something inventive and original when you can just wheel out the DB5 again?