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Has Craig's 007 became way too fashionable?
I just finished watching Spectre again and I am still unable to appreciate that film.
Maybe the passage of time would have altered my perception, but it did not.
I'm not going to write about this though, or at least not broadly. I would like to focus on the clothes, the too many clothes, showcased in the picture.
Am I the only one who was bothered by the fact that Craig's Bond is constantly changing outfit, almost transfiguring his dull and bad written adventure into an enormous commercial?
I have nothing against product placement in TV or games. However Spectre really crossed the line.
Let's examine the Morocco Express scene and the following encounter with Blofeld for example.
007 and Dr. Swan decide to go to Franz Oberhauser's hideout to confront him.
They take a train that stops in the middle of a desert and they both carry a dinner dress.
Strange enough, but acceptable because we are in James Bond reality.
However it's extremely odd, to say the least, that 007 changes his clothes three times in this location. First when he and Madeleine talk about guns, then when Mr. Hinx invites himself to dinner and last when they get off the train.
Three suits in twenty minutes or even less of screen time.
Afterwards they take a very old taxi to Oberhauser's place and there they change dress again.
I know it's supposed to be a reference to Dr. No, but it does not work.
In Dr. No the main protagonists' clothes were all torn apart and probably radioactive as well.
Dr. No offers James Bond and Honey Rider new clothes, because he wants to astound them with a grotesquely polite dinner invitation. He halts threatening them in a physical way and he decides to welcome the enemies in his lair, to study their behavior and to defeat them using psychology.
Moreover Connery dressed with a kimono like jacket tells the audience that he has left his comfort zone and he will have to survive the guest's exotic evil manners.
In Spectre there is none of this: no tension, no subtlety about the characters' motivations and their actions.
I honestly don't understand how a blue dress could have upset Madeleine.
Not only the clothes draw too much attention on themselves, but their introduction in the story feels random at best and mandatory at worst.
Maybe the passage of time would have altered my perception, but it did not.
I'm not going to write about this though, or at least not broadly. I would like to focus on the clothes, the too many clothes, showcased in the picture.
Am I the only one who was bothered by the fact that Craig's Bond is constantly changing outfit, almost transfiguring his dull and bad written adventure into an enormous commercial?
I have nothing against product placement in TV or games. However Spectre really crossed the line.
Let's examine the Morocco Express scene and the following encounter with Blofeld for example.
007 and Dr. Swan decide to go to Franz Oberhauser's hideout to confront him.
They take a train that stops in the middle of a desert and they both carry a dinner dress.
Strange enough, but acceptable because we are in James Bond reality.
However it's extremely odd, to say the least, that 007 changes his clothes three times in this location. First when he and Madeleine talk about guns, then when Mr. Hinx invites himself to dinner and last when they get off the train.
Three suits in twenty minutes or even less of screen time.
Afterwards they take a very old taxi to Oberhauser's place and there they change dress again.
I know it's supposed to be a reference to Dr. No, but it does not work.
In Dr. No the main protagonists' clothes were all torn apart and probably radioactive as well.
Dr. No offers James Bond and Honey Rider new clothes, because he wants to astound them with a grotesquely polite dinner invitation. He halts threatening them in a physical way and he decides to welcome the enemies in his lair, to study their behavior and to defeat them using psychology.
Moreover Connery dressed with a kimono like jacket tells the audience that he has left his comfort zone and he will have to survive the guest's exotic evil manners.
In Spectre there is none of this: no tension, no subtlety about the characters' motivations and their actions.
I honestly don't understand how a blue dress could have upset Madeleine.
Not only the clothes draw too much attention on themselves, but their introduction in the story feels random at best and mandatory at worst.
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Comments
Regarding the Connery example, if you go a minute before the jungle-journey-to-a-kimono-at-Dr.-No's-lair period, that would be 3 different sets of clothes as well in about 20 minutes' screen time. Blofeld in Spectre was surely using psychology on the two, just being different from Dr. No doesn't signal failure to me.
How long were they on the train? Overnight at least. Is it expected they'd change clothes after dressing up for the dinner occasion and making passionate love? To me that's a given. But obviously I like the movie and have a different take on it.
So I don't have a problem with the changes of clothing for the two. It was great to see OO7 in a white dinner jacket and the Silver Wraith. And Madeleine looks great in everything. Nice visual flourishes for a Bond film.
The stuff at Blofeld's lair is fun but I'll admit it's a bit silly and pointless. Nonetheless, he changed clothes there because Blofeld had new clothes for him and disobeying your captor who could kill you if you don't cooperate isn't the smartest thing. So again, it's not like he was changing clothes out of the blue for no reason.
Craig's Bond dresses down more than any other Bond, so if anything I wish he was more fashionable and dressed more formally like Connery.
SPECTRE like Skyfall is more about the look of things than substance.
I still like Skyfall a great deal though, it's my No 10 in my current ranking. Probably due to Judi Dench and the whole Skyfall sequence in Scotland.
As for the change in dress at Blofeld's, that moment is meant to underscore the man of control Blofeld is. He prepares Bond and Madeleine's rooms with what clothes he wants them to wear, not what they want to, and has included pictures of their past to show them that he knows all. Once Bond and Madeleine touch down they're at Blofeld's hotel, and he tells them what to wear. Well, first off, all Dr. No wants to do is recruit Bond, not "astound him" with a discussion over dinner. He's recruiting a man he finds to be impressive, but it's only until Bond mocks the man and denies his request that No then realizes that he must kill Bond and Honey.
But even still, the comparison between DN and SP here doesn't really work, or make sense. In DN Bond and Honey haven't been traveling for scores of days across the land, where a change in clothes would be natural, like Bond and Madeleine were. Instead, Bond and Quarrel went to Crab Key with nothing on their backs and never changed because they couldn't change, even if they wanted to. There were different circumstances along the way for each respective pair and No and Blofeld has widely different goals; the former wanted to recruit, the latter wanted to gloat and kill.
The swapping into suit after suit is a Bond staple, no different in most of the other movies as it is in SP. Budget in the old days seemed to have been a factor, as, while Bond doesn't wildly change his style much in DN, in FRWL he changes a bit more and by the time we reach GF and TB (ie. full Bondmania) Bond is constantly moving in and out of casual and formal style in no degree smaller than what we see in SP.
In GF, from the time that Bond gets his briefing from M to when he tracks Goldfinger we've got a similar amount of film time as the time you allot to Dan's change in clothes in SP, and in that time Bond goes from a brown three piece with M to a tuxedo for dinner, back to a blue suit and black tie to meet with Q, into a casual golfer's attire to meet Goldfinger and then a tweed jacket and slacks right after the golf game. That's five style moments for what could be even less screen time than the time that Bond goes from a jacket and dress shirt to dinner jacket and suit jacket and khakis in SP.
But that's also because, like SP, GF is jumping in time a lot to speed up the adventure. We don't see the rest of Bond's day where he goes from the MI6 offices to dinner with the Bank of England, nor do we see his night and early morning before he goes to see Q, so his fashion changes all mash together and makes it seem like he changes every second of every day even though we know that's not the case. In the same token, in SP we don't see every minute of Bond and Madeleine's travels by train and so it will appear to us like they're changing more than is plausible, when in reality their clothing changes are quite ordinary (especially in comparison to GF, for example) and only seem otherwise because the film must speed up time to tell a more focused narrative.
Adding to the GF example, just look at how much stuff Bond wears in TB, both in formal and casual style:
The same time frames of quit changing in clothing are common in TB as in GF and SP, but bumped up to eleven in what represents some of Bond's most expansive style libraries in all the films. Bond changes style because he's stylish, and fashion is a massive part of the films and who the man is. What makes him different from all the rest is that he can do everything everyone else does better, but also look good while doing it.
As someone who loves the fashion of these films and to some extent is influenced by men of style like Sean and Dan, I personally love it when we get to see Bond in all kinds of different clothing. Part of what gets me excited for each film, along with casting announcements, is seeing what brands Dan has suggested for the movie that he'll wear, and the Connery films have made me treat Anthony Sinclair as a sanctified god because of how he dressed Sean. So the issues you address in your OP, while interesting and worth pondering, never register to me. Instead of wondering if it's logical how often Bond is changing clothes while matching each change to a specific time frame, all I'm thinking is, "I want that in my closet!" ;)
It's simply not logical or realistic for someone like Bond to wear clothes that tight and be able to perform his duties comfortably, without restraint. I expected his buttons to pop if he had let out a sigh while he was sitting on the couch in SP.
It seems you can't win 'em all! ;)
I realized that maybe my issue does not lie in the quantity, but in the style of the clothing.
I think that Craig's wardrobe in Casino Royale and in Quantum of Solace was more fitting to his persona.
Since Skyfall they made him wear outfits a bit reminiscent of the sixties and of Connery's style.
Don't get me wrong: I really love Sean Connery's sense of elegance, but I don't think it suits Daniel Craig well.
The way Sean moved is very different to how Daniel moves. Therefore this contrast should be acknowledged by the tailor too.
Except for Dalton, all the Bonds had their own style and even Craig's had a very distinct one before Skyfall. I remember watching an interview where Lindy Hamming said that the idea for his 007 was to make him look like a former Iraq soldier: someone precise in his dressing manners, with just a very light touch of snobbery and refinement.
Actually even Dalton had a sort of style, he was badly under dressed.
For the most part I enjoyed the transition from the frugal Bond of the origins to the more sophisticated one in Skyfall. However I did notice some of the issues aforementioned, but the proportions were not alarming yet.
Spectre tried too hard to achieve this strange modern classic look. Part of the fault is probably due to the shrank sizes.
It's not timeless like Connery's, it came out as an emulation or fan service.
For instance I would take Bloodstone wardrobe over the Spectre one without blinking. The dresses do look great, but not on Craig, not undersized.
However, I wouldn't say that SF was where the 60s style kicked off, as the suits of QoS (at least in fit) are far truer to how you'd expect a Sinclair suit to look and what Sean wore during his films. That being, a focus on a more hourglass shape, a fit that was a nice compromise between tight and loose. While the colors used for the suits of SF and SP were absolutely more reminiscent of the 60s, where simplicity ruled the day, the fits are not immediately 60s inspired to a high degree if contrasted with the fits of QoS. I like all I've seen in the past three films as far as suits go, but QoS was the height for me fit-wise and I think the truest to the vintage style of Sinclair's time. I didn't know Hemming said that, but I do sense that in Dan's Bond, not only in how he looks but how he's played, even down to a sort of militaristic run and very restrained demeanor. I think you do see some important individualism in the clothing Dan's Bond wears, which is vital to the Bond character because even Fleming's original was a man who was stylish but who also broke style rules or made the clothes his own.
It's important to look at how a Bond actor is dressed and sense a sort of character there, to have them set apart from the rest in some way. A Bond like Dan's who keeps things closer to the chest also has slimmer suits tailored to the chest, but I also think it suits Dan's body type more than looser fits would, as in CR he sometimes looks even bulkier because they were trying to hang loose fitting suits off a man who was already very large and sculpted. I won't go so far as to say the tailoring in SF or SP is perfect, as everyone has different tastes and expectations, but I would argue that overall they suit his character more faithfully than what he started out in. Maybe I'm alone in this, but I see the suits of SP as an extension of SF, so I don't think one can take the latter and discard the former. There's style carry over in fits and palettes, making them sister films not only in content but in fashion in many ways.
I certainly agree that SP hits more of a vintage sweet spot in the usage of a dinner jacket for the train scene that is distinctly classic and attached to old Bond and old Hollywood, but in other areas the suits are very much an extension or continuation of what we saw in SF. I don't think the fits are any more or less pleasing than in SF, and in many ways the fits are better from my view, just by comparing the tighter grey suit Bond starts SF in with the blue one he has in the SP PTS; a slight change is seen. But again, to each their own.
There's a certain fan service to some of this, in a way (the dinner jacket, possibly), but I also see the color choices of Dan's Tom Fords as a simple attention to what works, fashion wise, and not as an attempt to ignite Sean's style. Yes, like Dan Sean was always wearing variations of blues and grays, but that is also because those are timeless palettes and work the best on most men. Additionally, Dan is commonly dressed in blues because his eyes and complexion pop on the screen while he wears them, and the grays with blue accessories (pocket square, shirt, tie) work in much the same way. Sinclair and Tom Ford are joined in the sense that I believe they would agree that restraint and simplicity is often the best route to travel down, and that extends very much to color and how you dress a man in those colors. Dan is dressed in colors that suit him just as Sean was, as the Scot's brunette hair struck out nicely in blues and gray suits with blue ties became his default Bond attire, and in both cases those kinds of style choices were both suitable to them and also timelessly appropriate.
This all being said, I look on the whole of the fashion in the Craig era as being very positive. I think QoS was the high, as many would agree, but I still find the last two films a step up from CR and more in touch with the individual nature of this particular Bond actor because he's not being dressed in someone else's clothes. I'm equally impressed by how Dan has carved out a style for his Bond in casual attire, making polos a trademark of his interpretation that really sets him apart, in a addition to wearing a lot of great jackets and shirts that recall McQueen's day and another aspect of timeless style and some peacoats and winter ensembles that we've not seen the like of before.
It seems that Honey Rider had the right idea then, apart from the know strap.
I think @Creasy47 's point is Bond dressing in those very tight clothes asks for great suspension of disbelief. The fact the Bond films are a fantasy doesn't imply everything about them can stretch believability. Slightly looser fits would be more believable as well as more inviting to look at.
Save for a holster, well, you'd want to keep your piece secure, wouldn't you?
"And then Bond kicked the villain into space, shot the approaching enemies with his laser gun and jumped in anti gravity down the bunker to stop the world ending bomb from launching..."
"Man, that was sooo cool. But you know what? I think Bond's pants were just too tight in that scene. Not realistic. LOL."
When you watch these films you sign up for certain ground rules that are demanded of you as a consumer of entertainment, and one of those such rules would be not treating like a heart attack the waist length of Bond's trousers. When watching TSWLM I could complain about why Bond drives his vehicle while being chased by Naomi instead of using his bell-bottoms to fly up there and shoot her in the head himself, but I know what I'm watching and realize that's a ridiculous question to ask about a ridiculous film. ;)
Part of why I like hanging around Bond fans is because they can sometimes be their own entertainment. Only with this franchise can Bond going to space and saving the day from a cartoonish Hitler with the help of a giant, pig tailed girl with braces and an astronaut be called fun and mindless entertainment and a movie decades later where Bond takes a bullet that makes his aim screwy is deemed insulting to the audience's intelligence. You really can't make it up. The OP similarly backs up my point because this thread was predicated on the supposed implausibility that Bond would have at least three changes of clothes packed in his suitcase, when in reality it's one of the most banal regularities Bond has expressed on the big screen.
Not judging, but all of us are capable of wacky antics and mental gymnastics at times. But I wouldn't have it any other way most times, since it never makes for a dull day on the forum.
But no I don't think Craig's Bond is too fashionable. Apart from the tight suits in the last two and a couple of the outfits in CR looking too baggy, I've got no complaints. I think the casual outfits in particular have been great, especially in QoS (although I don't envy DC having to run around in jeans and a harrington jacket in the middle of the desert). Is he the first Bond to have ever rocked jeans actually? I like the casual outfits because he still looks effortlessly stylish but it feels a bit more down to earth. Still feels like James Bond, but makes more sense for a secret agent to not be wandering around in a saville row suit 24/7, at least in the "grittier" films.
Each film is a fashion time-capsule to me.
But Craig looked awesome in QoS Tosca scenes and he wears the casual stuff better than even Connery: The blue swim shorts from CR became an instant Bond icon like the Goldfinger Suit. The polo shirts from QoS along the Harrington Jacket are top notch „modern Bond“ items - imho. The suits may seem dated earlier (some others here and elsewehere pointed that out) but imho the casual items Craig wore will still look great 20 years to come.
With all due respect, but this is simply nonsense. In the environment in which bond usually moves ( especially when he was conceived by Fleming )a suit is not worn for fancy but was/is simply expected.
Hence why I've been happy to see Dan's Bond put in more casual clothes than perhaps every other Bond before him, which he wears wonderfully. Not only does it make more sense for the more grounded portrayal of the character and the modern Bond, but also makes sense for function, practicality and inconspicuousness.
@thelivingroyale, Roger wore some denim like stuff in his early films, like the L&LD leisure suit, but I think Dan is definitely the first Bond to really make jeans a part of his style. Fleming also had Bond wear them even back in the 50s/60s, which is interesting.
I agree about the great harrington, as well, and you can tell that both Tom Ford and Dan are big McQueen fans. The popularity of the Tom Ford harrington in QoS actually made the original producer of the harrington, Baracuta, relaunch the jackets in 2013, which is pretty cool and shows Bond's effect on the fashion industry to an extent. I agree that it's a bit hot in the desert scenes for Bond to wear a harrington, but I guess the thought was that it made more sense to have him dressed for the elements (combat and fire) that would be coming during the finale instead of a shirt. There's actually a set picture of Dan in just the polo he wears underneath the jacket, but I can't tell if the finale was ever going to be filmed with him only in the polo or if it was just a test picture taken before filming commenced:
https://bamfstyle.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/qosbc-shirt1.jpg?w=581&h=413
Either way, I love the look of it in the final product.
Well, I did make it sound like a very big deal, didn't I? :))
Some threads here definitely fall into that category but as you said, "I wouldn't have it any other way..."
We could open up our very own James Bond University with a considerable number of subjects to study about Bond.