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Waltz was great. The way he said "cuckoo" still haunts me. Regardless of the step-bro nonsense, SPECTRE did a lot of things well for me.
Perhaps my favorite touches of his in NTTD are when Bond says, "Happy Birthday, by the way," and Waltz replies "Thank you" with true sincerity, and then moments later when Bond says, "A celebration of all that is Ernst Stavro Blofeld," and Waltz chuckles, shrugs his shoulders, and replies, "Yeah, James." It really shows both Blofeld's ego and his madness. Bond is both taking the piss out of him here and playing on his pride, and Blofeld, while attempting to behave modestly, is nevertheless fed on Bond's hollow compliments. A really smart bit of writing and a perfectly played moment by Waltz.
LOL, will you be here all week? :))
We loved how Bond was growing, but always felt like the man whom we first met in CR....
And then came Spectre, a film I was nervous to watch; I was concerned it would mess with the positive rythm established in the first three films.
In fact, I was so nervous, I delayed watching the film for two nights....
And then my daughter and I sat down to watch it..... I must say, viewing this with my girl was a brand new experience. She was very enthusiastic, and I must've been swept away with this enthusiasm since I genuinely enjoyed the film-- warts and all. This was not expected!
My daughter was chatting about the costumes, the relationship between Q and Bond (which I previously had found Bond to be an unfunny dick, but; in the presence of this eighteen year old, I was loving the thinly veiled threats and their impatience with each other later in the clinic...); She loved Madeleine and how she is not only the daughter of an assassin, but the daughter of THAT assassin....
I'll let some time go by before I watch this again, but I'm hoping my daughter has cast a positive spell over me and this film...
It's like a castle built on sand; beautifully done on a visual scale, but built on very shaky foundations. IMO of course. It's possible that the "Brofeld" situation is only offensive to longtime fans of the franchise, and the more casual viewer doesn't really care. I noticed it didn't come up in your post.
Exactly this. Good point about the Quantum organisation. 👍
Very well put.
This is exactly the problem with the back end of Craig's tenure. They set things up so well with his first two films, with an interesting new organization lurking in the shadows that they quite literally could have done anything with. Unfortunately MGM's financial woes caused a re-evaluation of that direction and EON then moved on from that idea in favor of old, burnt out Bond. But that film worked and was really good and should have mapped the direction the rest of his tenure should have gone. But, instead we have to have an entire film that exists solely to remind us about the brilliance that came before it and then proceeds to cannibalize all of that greatness and boil Craig's whole tenure down to a childhood friend being bitter about his father's affection for Bond and deciding to ruin Bond's life, and put various parts of the world in varying degrees of danger, in order to settle a childhood vendetta.
I don't get why so many people misunderstand the film this way. Oberhauser/Blofeld did not start Spectre or go down his path because of a vendetta against Bond. That would indeed be lame, but fortunately that's not in the movie.
Exactly. Someone who would murder their own father because he took a liking to a kid they were looking after for awhile is psychopathic from the start. He would have gone down a similar path with or without Bond's involvement.
Directly from the movie:
Blofeld: You probably know that James here lost his parents when he was young. But did you know that it was my father who helped him through this difficult time? Over the course of two winters he taught him to ski, and climb, and hunt. He soothed the wounds of the poor little blue-eyed orphan. Asked me to treat him as a brother. My little brother. They formed quite an attachment.
Madeline: So, you killed him.
Blofeld: Yes, I did. You know what happens when a cuckoo hatches inside another bird's nest? It forces the other eggs out. Well, this cuckoo made me realize my father's life had to end. In a way, he's responsible for the path I took. So, thank you. Cuckoo.
Blofeld himself states that Bond sent him down the path he took. Did he specifically create SPECTRE to get back at Bond? Maybe, maybe not. But people draw this conclusion because Blofeld isn't given any other motivation in the movie.
I'm not disagreeing with you in the sense that I agree it's a pretty poorly written film, but I think it would be fair to say that Blofeld would have taken that path eventually if all it took for him to become a murderer was Bond's presence in his life.
There are moments in the film that lend themselves to the idea that a large motivation behind Blofeld's actions are messing with Bond. He clearly revels in manipulating what happens around Bond in the "the author of all your pain" scene. He states that since Bond "interfered in my world, I destroyed yours".
A more clear link is found in the torture sequence. Blofeld asks Madeleine "you know what happens when a cuckoo hatches inside another bird's nest?" Madeleine replies "Yes, it forces the other eggs out". Blofeld finishes "Yes. Well, this cuckoo made me realize my father's life had to end. In a way, he's responsible for the path I took... So thank you, cuckoo."
I would agree that Blofeld probably doesn't start SPECTRE to go after Bond. Whatever Quantum is up to prior to Casino Royale probably has little, if anything to do with messing with Bond. But, come the events of Casino Royale, at least as it relates to the film Spectre, once Bond dips his toes in the water of SPECTRE's dealings, Blofeld's focus shifts to messing with Bond. Yes, he's clearly psychotic, but it is Bond that gives him the push over the edge to actually follow through with killing his father. The retconning of Silva's plan in Skyfall also shows a willingness to want to go after Bond, by attacking the very institutions that he has built his adult life around with regards to MI6.
This was exactly my point.
He very well may have gone down a similar path of being some sort of criminal mastermind. That very well may be true. But once the events of Casino Royale begin and Bond begins to get involved with uncovering some of what Quantum/SPECTRE is up to, it becomes about settling that score with Bond. He's clearly bitter about what Bond's presence in his childhood meant for him personally and later delights in destroying Bond's life when given the chance years later, even if those actions are intertwined with their professional dealings.
Apologies, I missed that. You articulated it far better than I did!
That's a pretty interesting read of it, @dalton. I suppose you're right that Waltz' performance leans heavily into those personal angles and it gives off the vibe that it's always been inevitable that he and Bond would cross paths again. Maybe that's a mismatch between the material and the delivery of it onscreen, as much as anything. But that's the film all over for me.
I agree that a lot of it is down to faults in the material. The film builds itself on the faulty premise of discarding Quantum in favor of SPECTRE, and trying to tie the previous films' narratives into its own when there was no reason to do so.
No, there isn't really any reason at all to think this.
He can do those things and also run an international criminal organization. I don't think they have to be one in the same, personally.
Destroying Bond's life is just his side hustle, made a little easier due to the fact that he has Spectre, certainly, but I wouldn't say it's Spectre's prime directive. In the meeting in SP, Doctor Vogel is talking about all sorts of crazy stuff Spectre is doing that has nothing to do with Bond at all.
And as pointed out several times, prior to that, Bond was a major factor in him going the direction that he did.
Yet, he's "the author of all [his] pain". I'm guessing one team of writers wrote one of those dialogue exchanges and another team wrote the other. Notes, apparently, weren't shared between the teams it would seem.
Finding anything resembling logic in Spectre's script is pretty much a waste of time. It's the same film that turned what should have been a cool car chase into an exposition dump that's occasionally interrupted to show us what amounts to a drag race through empty city streets.
SF I gave three chances, not again.
N!TTD, not even a second chance.