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The more I analyse bond films - the less I take issue with plot holes (both SP and particularly SF are filled with them - and every bond film has them in spades). I tend to now place more importance on whether the film connects emotionally with me. So obviously under this criteria I completely get why someone might even enjoy Die Another Day because of their first viewing experience of it.
I wonder if he would have wandered in and out of various girls' bedrooms.
Yes, it really IS all about the individual experience.
:)>-
Regards Tuck9, I was talking about LALD on another thread, and mentioned how i missed the henchman turning up in the final reel to kill Bond (TeeHee, Wint and Kidd etc!) and how i missed it. I still have problems with the final section of SP, i was thinking it would have been better for Bond/Madeleine to have the final confrontation with Blofeld at his base, intercut with M, Q etc defeating Denbigh back in London. Blofelds base gets blown up (with Hinx!). Bond and madeleine return on the train, where Hinx turns up and we get that brilliant fight scene at the end! Madeleine, horrified that if she stays with Bond, her life will always be in danger, disembarks from the train, leaving Bond alone again, end titles! Set up for Bond 25, Blofeld comes after Bond!
I do have to agree that it was a total mistake not to have Hinx hidden somewhere in the Mi6 building. Maybe he could come back with some new mechanical weaponry added post falling off the train – perhaps a metal jaw…….? (Or are we all tied of origin stories for classic Bond characters now?)
Also, what do you do with Hinx when he returns? Will him and Bond have another fistfight? Why bother? After all, they just had an amazing fight earlier in the film – why try to trump it, especially if it just comes across as repetitive? Maybe he could have chased Bond in a speedboat down the Thames? Once again, we’ve already seen the character chase Bond by car and plane throughout the film…..
FINNALLY…I know people want to keep Blofeld in the series. But I was always an advocate of giving him ONE great film and then killing him off. Waltz was totally underused, but if they hadn’t screwed up the character as much as they did (and actually made Blofeld the focus of the story), I’d be happy for him to die.
Think of Heath Ledger’s Joker. You only get one film of that character – but it’s definitive. Blofeld has not had that story yet. I remember when I first saw SP and watched Bond cross the bridge with his Walther, I was thinking “They can’t kill Blofeld after such a lacklustre reintroduction, the character deserves a chance to redeem himself”.
Considering how much Mendes fudged the villain in SP (which is surprising especially because Silva was great in SF), Waltz HAS to return in the future.
Another point I feel compelled to make: Mendes might not have been the right choice for SP. He brings his more artisan approach he adopted in SF where everything is earnest and full of portent. However, SP is a fun and silly film. It's the sort of movie that has scenes where people get thrown through walls and Andrew Scott mugs and sneers to the camera. You needed a director who could adopt the camp aspects better. Someone who isn't afraid to have some fun and ditch the naval-gazing.
Mendes isn't that guy....he tried, but it just wasn't a comfortable fit....on the other hand, SF is magnificent.
Generally, Skyfall was a mega-success, sold a ton, culturally significant, critics loved it, most fans loved it and even people who weren't Bond fans enjoyed it.
Mendes already won with that. No one could've followed that up directly, and he didn't even need to. Skyfall concluded soundly. Nothing was missing. A follow-up to it may have been wanted or justified but one wasn't needed.
The logic of this chase was always lost to me. Bond had air superiority and he compromises it by flying way to low merely to provoke Hinx. What was he hoping would happen as soon as they drove into a forest area? He got damn lucky that he was able to scrabble together a plan to catch the cars. But it was pure luck and bad planning.
It's a terrible action scene. I find the mixing incredibly flat, too. There's no life to it at all. I'm not sure if that's mixed differently for the web or not, (I can't imagine why it would be) but the whole thing feels unfinished sound wise. No grumbling engines, no impact for the explosions, even Hinx's gun sounds muted. I'm sure it was a creative decision to let the music be more prominent, but it doesn't work for me at all.
I skip over the entire sequence during my rare watches of the film.
It's a shame, because the stunt at the end - with the fuselage crashing through the cabin - is very good.
I would have preferred we have an adventure where it is revealed that Quantum was a front for a more sinister organization. Bond is sent to track down the one man from Quantum still standing. He finds White on death's door. White tells him that SPECTRE is behind Quantum. He further tells Bond that SPECTRE is headed up by a mysterious figure called Number 1. We then see a SPECTRE meeting with 12 people around the table. We get the scene that Fleming wrote in TB except it ends with Blofeld saying that White and his daughter are to be exterminated. Hinx is dispatched.
Bond watches White kill himself. Bond searches his home and finds that White had a daughter. Bond heads out to find the daughter as she is unwittingly involved. Bond finds her in a clinic. She reluctantly agrees to help him. Before then can leave the clinic Hinx gets her and a chase ensues.
Meanwhile we see back in London that C has taken control of the intel community and he is seen reporting into Number 1. He is further seen providing intel to the Chinese. A terrorist attack happens in Hong Kong where it appears the gang who pulled it off knew way too much. Bond continues to dig into more about Spectre. White's daughter takes him to a White hide out and they discover that C is involved with SPECTRE. Bond and Swann head back to London. However C is aware of their movements and orders SPECTRE to intercept. Bond is attacked by Hinx. He dispatches of Hinx. Returns to London where C is plotting the next terrorist attack in New York Times Square. He has again provided intel to SPECTRE. Bond comes back to find C and he is stopped. Felix is brought in and they stop the terrorist attack. At the end of the movie C says to Bond "I suppose I should tell you the name of the leader of SPECTRE...His name is Blofeld."
THE End. We are now set up for Operation Bedlam (though I am not sure I would call the movie that!) with Bond hunting down Blofeld and falling in love along the way. Then we have a tragic ending and we have set up the next film.
The PTS - cool opening, great action.
The train fight - up there with the best fight scenes in the entire series.
The torture scene from Colonel Sun - nice to see an adapted scene from an old 60's novel. Where it suddenly gets ruined is Bond's immediate recovery from a drill which could damage his brain permanently, jumping into action and shooting at the bad guys 2 seconds later. Utter garbage.
Unfortunately the majority of SP is dull, lifeless, mediocre or plain garbage (just like the song itself).
Absolutely right on. The film takes a half-assed approach to very important material. As they used to say on Top Gear, "ambitious but rubbish." Had Spectre stuck with the surveillance plot, eliminated the stepbrother nonsense, and simply introduced Spectre and Blofeld, it could have been a much better film.
But since nobody knew if Craig would return, they decided to cram a trilogy into one film, which is a fool's errand. You can't introduce Blofeld and Spectre and then have Bond completely defeat them in the same film. And if you're going to introduce Spectre as the organization behind the previous films' villains, then you need to do a convincing job of tying them into past continuity.
Your alternative storyline sounds like it could have had better results. My impression is that that Sony, Mendes, and the Producers didn't know or couldn't agree on what they wanted, and they kept commissioning drafts that made the film progressively worse. If memory serves, there was a draft whose villain was simply Oberhauser, aka "Stockmann," and not Blofeld. And Blofeld himself shapeshifted from draft to draft, going from an African warlord to a woman to Bond's de facto step-brother. It's as if no one ever had a clear vision of what the character should be...
Regarding the foster brother stuff, it's most odd to me because it feels very distilled. If you did some minor editing and ADR, you could eliminate all references to Blofeld being a foster brother entirely and you wouldn't miss anything. Take it out, and there's still enough palpable conflict between Bond and Blofeld. He's still the owner of an organization that gave Bond a lot of pain since CR, and Bond is still the guy that gave his organization a lot of grief over the years. There's simply not enough substance to the foster brother angle for it to be needed.
Which is too bad, because I think the foster brother angle could have actually been a pretty solid idea for an entirely different film and a brand new villain.
I wonder how the film would have been received if there was no Spectre or Blofeld, and Oberhauser was just that; a new villain from Bond's past, the son of Hannes, who grew up with a chip on his shoulder and became a master criminal.
But then I heard the reviews, the writing issues going on, and the leaks too...I still had hope.
I saw it in theaters. My brother and I rushed to get there. We happened to walk in just after the gunbarrel scene (Dead are Alive), so right when we see the parade float of the skeleton in frame. From then on, it seemed great....
Walking out of the movie I thought it was fine. I wasn't blown away. I wasn't itching to see it again. But I never hated it. I guess it will go down in history as living in Skyfall's shadow. Much like how Quantum gets flack for not being as good as Casino Royale.
I feel like I may have disappointed myself for having listened to the Score first (which I still love) and imagined how those scenes would have played out in my head. The Car Chase in Rome for example does irritate me. The music I think worked better than the rest of the scene.
The cinematography is wonderful - though not as captivating as Deakins' work.
The music was decent - though not as original as Skyfall's.
The writing needed work. I've noticed a lot of people complain about Skyfall's third act more or less, but when compared to Spectre's, it just makes more sense given the themes of the film.
All in all, I would say it is disappointing to some extent. But I find myself going back and watching several scenes on Youtube and even the whole thing every now and again. Each time, however, I keep thinking it might be better than how I remember, but it just kind of remains the same.
I am taking the opposite route with NTTD. I want to know as little as possible about the film. I have even resisted watching the trailer...
I'll add in Bond is saved by what? A convenient gadget, an exploding watch. A film after Q makes a dismissive comment about we don't go in for that anymore (explosive pens), Bond is saved by one.
My brother pointed out when we talked about the film after seeing it how easy the escape and shooting the henchman was. I wondered in the theater if he was being allowed to escape to set something else up. Just lazy and completely uninspired.
1) Madeleine has experience with violence, and is a woman who doesn't need Bond to look after her,
2) Blofeld is a legitimate threat to Bond.
It also would communicate that Bond's ability to connect to another person is the ace up his sleeve, that Blofeld doesn't have, that allows Bond to live (or die?) another day.
It was the easiest choice and I can't believe they dropped the ball there.
I hope that the new Bond brings the chance to do something proper with Spectre and to right the wrongs of the film.
Have any fans re-written SP? It has great potential but, as many comments here say, it is rushed, clumsy and never really gells. IMHO, it has the potential to be two movies with more time spent developing Madeleine and a bigger build up re Spectre as a threat. Even Bond suffering defeat at the end of SP part one ? (like Infinity War), something different but not undermining anying "Bondian" plus the tome nneds to be consistant
Yes @peter and I embarked on a re-write, it started with me throwing a few ideas out to him and then he encouraged me to put something down, then he took a look and started to get it into a proper professional script form.
By the time the 1st draft was done and Peter doesn't despise SPECTRE like I do that even he admitted the original script/film was incredibly troubling that even a radical re- polish was showing up the problems.
We attempted to keep the 9 Eyes element but try and ramp it up to something really threatening the foster brother nonsense was gone and no personal attachment was included. We were sticking with the idea of tying the films together and making it all part of one bit arc from CR to SP.
Blofeld was to be a very different creature to the Waltz one and Mr White would be something much more integral but even changing those things and removing others it just didn't work.
There is no urgency, it lacked the ticking time bomb element the race against time factor we felt was missing. SPECTRE essentially was an attempt to give Craig's Bond a man on a mission entry though they had to make him rogue and combative and not trusting.
The first draft exercise then made it clear we needed to do something much more radical with this so then although we kept characters from SP, with the exception of the PTS (which has been changed quite significantly) the rest of what we are now working on is all new.
We wanted to make the organisation sinister and dangerous and the main scheme to be quite terrifying while giving it that ticking time bomb and race against time feel that is very much an element of quite a few of the films.
While also drawing on the spirit of Fleming, taking a Craig Bond, giving him a mission that ties to the first 2 films not Skyfall (that would be the GF of the era).
Think how TB picked up the SP thread again but upped the ante.
I'm not going to say anymore than that as we want to show this to the forum when it is finished but just a taster of where we are going with this.
So from our experience of trying to salvage the original film/script we came to the conclusion that pretty much scrapping it and starting almost from scratch was the best course of action.
Look at is as an alternative timeline of what we thought happened after Skyfall.
The film/script for Spectre has no urgency. It floats.
It was clear that basing it off of what we got was the first mistake. Without urgency and tension, there's no story worth telling.
So, in this second draft, we took threads from B25 but are creating something wildly different to what we saw back in '15.
Balls to the walls on this project that Shardlake and I have been embarking on.
We want to first of all do what SPECTRE didn't do, which was honour that last moment where Bond accepts the mission from his new Boss.
His experiences in Skyfall were like a therapy session, he's laid to rest his issues with his past, the blowing up of his childhood home and saying goodbye to his previous Boss type mother figure.
This is the same Bond, so no trying to make him like Roger Moore but playing to the strengths of Craig's interpretation of the character but with more of an assuredness to his persona.
Like he's advancing on that coming back from the dead moment in Macau as illustrated on the boat.
Making it brutal when it needs to be and also making it guy on a mission story. Bond and M not butting heads, time has moved on since Skyfall.
Also if we are going down the route of tying CR and QOS to this story, doing it using elements of those 2 films.
There is enough connective tissue to do it we found using a particular character from QOS used briefly and also giving Mr White a story very different to what we saw in the film
So no rogue element, something like the tone of CR and QOS with the only past element being of where SPECTRE came from, Blofeld is pushed back into the shadows and we have a entirety new villain for this story.