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Everything after Morocco is so badly plotted, like terrible fanfic (down to the Hildebrand callout--too late for winks, dudes, just wrap up your movie!). I blocked out most of it.
The cinematography, the music, the actors, the little things which only exist in Bond world. It has Fleming all over it. It has real emotions, which was done the last time with Dalton, though they tried it to a lesser extend with Brosnan.
I recently got the vinyl scores of Skyfall, Spectre and No Time To Die. The gatefolded and graphic designs are bloody marvelous! And when listening to the scores I immediately get drawn to the atmosphere and the scenes of the movies. It has a lot of emotional melodies, big brass orchestra's, some ambient music, a lot of dynamics, tasteful electronics. Way way better than Arnold in my opinion.
Yeah it doesn't pay off, it's very odd. And as you say, we never get any attempt to tell us if Bond even cares about this guy- we don't even know if he liked Hannes or not.
Yes, you can edit the foster brother stuff out (it really is only a couple of lines here and there and just the plot reason for Bond recognising him) and the film would be the same. I can see why they did it: in the books Bond holds a grudge against Blofeld because he killed someone he loves- it's fair enough to try and adapt that (and fitting it to the plot of Octopussy is quite clever), but it doesn't go anywhere.
Yeah my thought has always been that Q should have given Bond another gadget PPK as he had in the last film, only this one has one explosive round, for shooting locks etc. Make the barrel sort of pop out or something so we know Bond is using the gadget function, and bob's your uncle.
He even switches to his PPK when he's trying to hit the 'copter and misses with the first pistol.
Oh yes, that's a wonderful scene.
As I think Q Branch suggested (apologies if it was someone else): put Helen McCrory in the role and the film improves instantly.
Plus it gives the added benefit of retro-fitting Blofeld's plan into the previous movie and selling the idea that he really was in the background all along, because she's in Skyfall and would have been Blofeld's evil puppet in the Government then, trying to bring down M.
Thanks, apologies echo; I always forget. It is inspired though, yes: I really wish it was possible to will that film into existence!
The weirdest thing about it is that the foster brother stuff was totally unnecessary. Bond already knows Blofeld is responsible for deaths of Vesper and Mathis, and he finds that out long before he actually finds out that Blofeld had killed Hannes. Even Blofeld's involvement with M's death is revealed long before the Oberhauser reveal.
Bond already had a personal reason to go after Blofeld, and that resonated with the audience more than the Hannes thing ever did.
Yes, excellent points, especially about how the audience care more about people we've seen than people we haven't.
I can't quite remember though, what's the involvement in M's death you mean?
I wonder if her videotape cameo could have more explicitly tied Spectre in with Silva and her death, or if that would have been a bit too much continuity to ask the audience to remember.
I guess the thing is though, if you could have written it so that part of the main plot is that Blofeld had found Silva and manipulated his grudges to try and expose MI6 and bring down M so that he could install his puppet C in place and take control of the intelligence forces, that's actually quite decent, matches up with everything in both films and doesn't really retroactively spoil anything in Skyfall (other than maybe taking away a bit of Silva's agency I guess). If they'd just concentrated on Silva and made it a sequel to SF without trying to hint that Greene or whoever was involved too, I wonder if that would have made it a bit stronger.
Even something like that bit where Q (inexplicably) connects the rings to the old baddies, if there had been screenshots of Vesper and M with 'deceased' splashed across them also on his screen, and a flash of anger from Bond, there's a bit of motivation right there.
As you say, clever though it is, foster brother goes nowhere. Funnily enough it could be an example of wanting to put some Fleming in there and it actually getting in the way of the story.
The problem is with Spectre the goal is an intelligence based one. It tries to have Nine Eyes be this despicable surveillance program. The problem is, to get to that point, Spectre have committed terrorist attacks.
Add in the fact the Nine Eyes resemble Five Eyes and the PRISM/ECHELON worldwide surveillance programs in action, and we have a plot that involves terrorist attacks to reach a reality where we as citizens don't feel impacted day to day.
Also, with the framing of Nine Eyes. We're supposed to hate it the minute it gets mentioned, and M detests it even before the reveal because it is undemocratic. Blofeld is just another problem on another bad plan. But we live in a world where this plan exists! While some may find it suboptimal, mass surveillance barely causes problems for the average person. Whereas a criminal's control of mass surveillance would certainly cause more fear in the population (I still don't know how Blofeld would make any money from this plan).
It would certainly be awful if a nefarious unelected villain got into the workings of government intelligence and started disassembling it, I'd be scared.
With Dr. No there are plethora of easy cash options he can take: he can sell the technology to the Soviets (in the novel I think that's his goal), he can ransom the Americans as you say, he could land the rockets where he could clone them, use insider knowledge to invest smartly and all the rest.
With Nine Eyes its true that they could influence governments. Manipulate intelligence forces, find WMDs where there are none, etc. But government control has an end goal: ideological or profitable. Spectre works sans ideology and the only potential quick cash out is selling surveillance to foreign powers. Or maybe getting the intelligence operatives to ignore Spectre operations.
But both of those are plans that could be run within British intelligence: Nine Eyes would just be the scaling up worldwide. Again there's no particular reason why the program itself as a new thing is bad for the public (and so hated by M) or profitable for Spectre. Certainly not worse for the public than the terror attacks, which are brushed over.
And that last paragraph is exactly the point. People have qualms with the FBI, NSA, CIA, etc. but if Elon Musk asked for a merger, the main point that people would have problems with is that it's Elon Musk, not that unified American intelligence violates privacy or whatnot. (and also in the analogy, Elon Musk already runs the CIA pretty much, so a merger doesn't really serve much more for him)