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You'd be far from the only one.
For me the beauty of this topic foremost would be welcoming as many voters as possible. Whatever the result may be. The more voters, the merrier, and in fact it would also make the outcome slightly more credible. So I wholeheartedly agree with you that it would indeed be dull to have 100% of us vote unanimously vote for one of the two. It;s not happening anyway...
I've always liked it and almost ten years later I keep finding new things to appreciate about it. In short, it used to look good to me but now I find it...
SP, on the other hand, remains a disappointment. And the worst thing about it is not the film itself but that it's just about killed my enthusiasm for B25, as they will probably continue the Blofeld storyline.
Despite my love for Craig's films, QoS, SF, SP all have problems. QoS has cosmetic problems (the editing), whilst SF and SP have serious issues (mainly the logical lapses in SF and Brothergate in SP).
So put me down for QoS dear @Gustav_Graves. (More to the point I love the look and feel to QoS - the colour palette is superb and I appreciate how lean and mean it is.)
SPECTRE plain and simple is an utter travesty and one of the worse entries of the series.
Preach brother
But yeah SP for me. Couldn't be bothered to give my thoughts on both threads again but here are a couple of old posts of mine I found on each
Here's what I had to say about QoS:
"To me it's a rushed pretentious film with bad editing and a shit theme song and a bunch of pointless irritating characters that tries to cram way too much into it's short runtime and as a result none of these elements really reach their full potential because they're not given enough attention. It's really inchorenent and messy because it tries to do so much, there's a lot going on and not enough time to do it all well, especially since half the run time is taken up by crap badly edited action (which is mostly just chase scene after chase scene). Oh, and the title is awful as well imo. And the gunbarrel is the worst of the series. And the title sequence is crap."
That's the first post I found and I didn't even mention the other stuff that annoys me, such as the theme song not only being a crime against music but completely lacking any sense of melody (meaning it might be the least Bondanian Bond theme of all time, impossible to weave into the score) stupid pretentious elements idea for the action scenes that made them seem even more forced, or the fact that Forster seemed to go to great lengths to avoid making a James Bond film but then included a sloppy misjudged GF homage that's worse than any of the references in DAD. I've tried to like QoS. I really have. And it's not a crap film, there is a lot to like. At one point I did think I'd turned a corner in terms of appreciation for it but I realised I was kidding myself. I really don't have any time for that film at all and while it isn't the worst Bond film it'll probably always be my least favourite.
SP on the other hand I love. Here's what I said on the appreciation thread not long ago:
"SP is a weird one for me because I find it difficult to defend. With a lot of my favourites I can go on all day about why its detractors are wrong but with SP I just find myself thinking "fair enough, can't argue with any of that" for most of the criticism levelled at it.
Yet for me it just works. It's not perfect but it's one of those rare Bond films where everything (well, almost everything) just seems to fall into place and everyone involved seems to be having a lot of fun going all out to make a proper, old school Bond film, while also making sure it's fresh and modern (ala TSWLM and GE).
It also helps that Mendes and co ticked a lot of my personal boxes, it was almost everything I'd been wishing for for the last few years. I was really pleased with the tone of Skyfall and their general direction but there was an air of pretentiousness about it that I really didn't like. In Spectre that's all gone, they seemed to really be embracing the cinematic Bond template. In a way it's the film I've been waiting for since CR. No more origin story and set up. Just Bond in his prime, ejecting out of his bespoke Aston Martin, fighting a massive henchman on a luxury train while wearing a white dinner jacket, escaping Blofeld's clutches with his handy exploding watch, etc. For me it's what the Craig era had been building towards this whole time: an unashamedly old school 007. And it's even more satisfying because of how earned it feels. I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't a huge fan of the first two Craig films (CR I like but felt bloated and the reboot/origins idea put me off, QoS is awful and my least favourite of the series) and the long drawn out journey to get here that they had, but that journey lasting so long made it all the more satisfying when I did get what I'd been waiting for.
But it's not just a box ticking exercise. It takes classic Bond and places it in the real world context of the Craig films. So we get a flawed, human, fleshed out Bond in an epic old school adventure. He isn't a cartoon like Connery and Moore and to a lesser extent Brosnan (who were all brilliant in their own way, definitely not a criticism because unfappable Bond can be just as entertaining). The gadgets on his Aston Martin don't always work. He gets shutdown after ordering his signsture drink because the bar doesn't serve alcohol. He practises his interrogation technique on a mouse when he's bored and half pissed. And the threat feels modern too: Blofeld's plan is brilliant. The film doesn't really give it the stakes it deserves but a villain orchestrating bombings to play on peoples fear of terrorism to drive forward their own government initiatives is a simple but relevant, modern evil scheme.
I don't agree with all of the criticism. I think Bond and Madeline's relationship for example is perfectly fine. She loves him, probably because of her daddy issues. Bond never says that he loved her back. It wasn't supposed to be a love story. To Bond, Madeline is just a way out, a girl who he can leave the service for because she's already the daughter of an assassin. If he retired for a Bond girl like Natalya, it wouldn't be fair. He'd be burdening her with his world. But Madeline is already a part of that world. Another bit of criticism I don't agree with is the finale: I don't think it gives the Nine Eyes plot the stakes it deserves and Q hammering away on the laptop doesn't really give off much tension but in a way that's sort of symbolic for the Craig era as a whole, sidelining the plot for the characters and themes. And I think it works. I really like the MI6 funhouse (wish they'd kept the city wide blackout from the script though), I thought it was a cool, original finale and while it didn't feel epic, that worked well because it felt intimate and personal. I also loved the ending and personally I think the whole film served as a great end to the Craig era.
There's a lot to criticise in SP. The score is a boring Skyfall rehash and Skyfall didn't have a great score anyway, Waltz phones it in, Belluci was woefully underused, they still can't get the gunbarrel right, the plane sequence was a bit of a let down, the SF retcon was contrived and unnecessary, and even as downplayed as it was the brother angle was still unjustifiable. And whenever I read some of the posts from @bondjames, @TheWizardOfIce and @Birdleson for example I can't help agreeing with them. It isn't unfair criticism, it's all fairly thought out and well argued. But for me the film just really works despite its flaws. I think last time I ranked the films I had it at 3. It's certainly top five and Craig's very best for me."
However, I'll concede that Craig himself gives a stronger performance in QOS.
So, is it SP or QOS :-). Is it the 22nd Bond film or the 24th Bond film?
I think it's pretty clear he's in the SP camp. Conceding a point is a way of saying "I like this thing better, but that other thing does have that one good thing, I admit." In my experience one concedes a point to whatever they are arguing against, or are not in favor of in comparison to another thing, to show that they can see good elements in products they largely don't admire.
Didn't mean to speak for you there, @BAIN123, I just thought it was obvious what your stance was and spoke up.
...Put together. Not that it counts for anything, but nice thought. And it also throws dirt in the idea that he hates being Bond and is embarrassed or thinks low of the work, as some members and the tabloid rags would have you believe. Utter tripe.
I will say Spectre, because at least it wasn't chopped to bits by an editor.
The tragic irony being he made an embarrassing Bond film (well third act if I'm being fair).
Quantum Of Solace is a horrid attempt at making an Arthouse movie thinly veiled as a Bond film.
Case in point: The Spectre (Quantum?) meets in both films. I found the QoS one to be quite inventive, and a modern reimagining of classic Bond (including the subject matter of water etc.). I found the SP one to be dated in comparison (right down to killing off of operative and Blofeld in shadow). It went on forever too which belaboured the point.
Same goes for the oil drenched Fields, Guy Haine's Bodyguard fall and Bond/Camille in the desert in QoS. All certainly reminded me of the great GF/TSWLM but without making me cringe. The ejector seat, Frank Sinatra gag & couch gags in SP made me cringe. I'm not sure if that's because I wasn't invested in the film by that point or not. Perhaps it was.
Ideally, I want to see far less of these types of 'callbacks' going forward. Create new iconic imagery.