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And that's the thing: Barbara, or Kevin Feige, are figureheads, but they have to answer to so many powers-that-be...
But we fan-boys will say it's all Bab's fault...; behind the scenes, there's 20 executives giving notes to Babs to deliver to her writer and director.
That is awesome! Thank you! This sort of flies in the face of what Field and Chowdhury reported in Some Kind of Hero, which I (rightfully or not) consider my Bond Bible. At the same time, Wilson also indicates that they (he and Babs) thought it was time to bring back Spectre, too. I wonder when they thought this and if those 'thoughts" predated Mendes and Logan saying, "Hey, we want Spectre and Blofeld back in this." My suspicion: Wilson and Babs had private thoughts on this, but never really shared it with anyone; then along came Mendes and Logan, and that's when it came together.
What still remains interesting is that Mendes/Logan had ideas on Blofeld, but it would seem that Mendes let Logan run with it. Hence, the script Logan delivered was deemed unacceptable, and in came Purvis, Wade, Butterworth.
In short, the story OF Spectre is more compelling than the story IN Spectre.
But I'm happy to agree thst it's no one person's fault and file a suit of corporate negligence in the case of the SP script as even the boy who makes the tea had a duty to speak out that the script is terrible.
Clearly you've read a lot more about the leaks than me @peter. I've only scanned a few emails. Can you please send me your link as I think it's time I informed myself fully of who said what. Bizarrely it's P&W who we should be grateful to it seems for salavging as much as they could and they almost emerge from the whole mess without a stain on their character.
And yes, I do think P&W came in and saved the day-- up until they came on board, everyone was really down on the drafts being submitted.
When P&W came on board, the first one hundred pages were celebrated. The final act is where everyone fixated their attention in the last couple of months leading into principal (as an outside observer, I think this was a mistake since; it's my belief that they kept re-working and re-working and re-working a story that was never holding together; but business being business, they plowed ahead).
Which is more than enough for some.
I gotta say i enjoy TMWTGG a lot :D
As beautiful as it's useful.
Thank you. There is one email by Amy Pascal which is especially interesting. She notes that Oberhauser (who was still named Stockmann back then) feels like a petulant kid, and the whole brother angle doesn't mean anything to us because it doesn't impact Bond any how (like many of us have been saying for 2+ years). I don't get why the writers nor the producers still decided to have it in the movie and even expand it by introducing it as early as the Rome meeting scene (since originally Bond and the villain's relationship was only revealed at the latter's lair).
TBH, most of the SC Bond films operate under ridiculous plots. FRWL is by far the best of those plots.
DN is ... so so.
GF, TB, and YOLT are beyond ridiculous.
Thing is: who cares? GF and TB are in my top 5, and I overlook the plots.
Exactly...it's Bond !!
Now if you want to throw in a cloned Derval, the coincidence of Bond being at Shrublands at the same time the hijacking is about to go off and his being in the Bahamas where the whole thing is unfolding, sure, that's twisting things in a big way.
Otherwise, having a terror group hijacking bombs is certainly more plausible than knocking rockets off course, irradiating the gold in Fort Knox, hijacking space capsules in space and launching a diamond-powered satellite, etc.
After all Babs had enough clout to force the casting of Dan through when pretty much nobody (including Martin Campbell) wanted it but here she's being portrayed as a helpless victim of circumstance? Credit for the good decisions but no criticism for the bad ones? Can't have it both ways.
I take @peter's oft repeated point that the start of filming was due and postponing the release date is simply not an option on projects of this size but, given Paul Duncan states above (in an EON sanctioned publication) that Logan submitted his notes for SP in 'December 2011', I still find the fact that in late 2014 they are scrabbling round for a serviceable script as extremely poor leadership. It's all well and good saying there's loads of people chipping in but at some point somebody needed to grasp the bull by the horns and make a decision because when it all goes tits up all those executives will disappear into the ether and EON will be the ones left getting slated on here.
TMWTGG is a fun film I agree.
Vs
The former is considerably more talented ;))
Okay I was wrong she's not to blame for that and indeed brings good points about it. I think Blofeld introduced early on is a good idea. It's the stepbrother thing that is useless and tacked on. I agree with @TheWizardOfIce that it could have easily been taken out without any difficulties.
I totally agree. I didn't like the fact that so many people just happened to meet themselves in a giant room, especially if the very head of the organization is there. Compare it with Quantum's meeting in Austria. That really felt like a spy meeting, with only the heads of the organization being there and not actually meeting by person. Rome's meeting felt like any casual person could simply walk in. In my opinion the Eyes Wide Shut-like meeting, with people wearing Carnival of Venice masks was much better. Also, I liked how Bond, after SPECTRE's leader mentioned his name, took out his gun and aimed at another masked man shouting: "There! Do not move!". Here Bond creates a diversion, takes advantage of it and escapes using his wit rather than simply punching Peppe Lanzetta in his face.
Also, I felt that Blofeld should not show up until very late in the movie. Dr. No and Silva didn't, and both felt like truly menacing and out of reach, as if Bond had to work a lot before he could finally get to them.
Perhaps that's some poor wording on my part. Blofeld was introduced early on in the first scripts, but the "Moneypenny, research all files about Oberhauser" stuff was not in the script, and the fact that Bond and the villain knew each other was only revealed in the third act.
@TheWizardOfIce, I get what you're saying, and success and failure rests on the shoulders of the figureheads. But what we don't see behind the scenes, is that filmmaking is a collaborative industry. There are many players. Many voices. And yes, the leaders have to lead. However, and this point is not to excuse, but to clarify: there was an exceptional list of major issues during the development of the script. And, from what I have seen, foster-brothers was perhaps near the bottom of this very long list-- yes, some noted their issues with it; it seemed not to register at all for others.
But, during various stages, there were enormous and glaring weaknesses to the entire script (as I pointed out in a previous comment: one executive wrote another saying the latest draft was even worse than the previous one-- that would mean that there weren't just a few really crappy scenes, but the ENTIRE thing was reading as shit).
Most here don't like the foster-brother angle. I get that. But, my theory is, there were bigger issues with the script than this one d-plot; that as they tried to fix the bigger issues, this thing kept slipping through into draft after draft...
You say that brothergate slipped through while they were busy fixing other issues. As far as I can see they fixed nothing. If this is the 'fixed' script how dismal was the one described as 'a mess'? Is that version of the script online for the masochists amongst us?
Yes, that it is what I would be getting at, not to mention that the facial reconstruction surgery angle was 100% unnecessary, given that Spectre had Domino under its thumb. Blackmailing Derval into doing what they wanted was a far simpler, more realistic approach. I am always reminded of Thomas Harris's brilliant thriller Black Sunday, which takes a better/more practical approach to getting a pilot (played by Bruce Dern in the film) to act as political martyr.
I understand your frustration, and in a perfect world this would have been scrapped and re-started.
They reworked and reworked and reworked a story that wasn’t working from its earliest inception.
I don’t know why, other than the stubbornness of trying to capture lightning in a bottle again— which is, I can only imagine, what all of us would do. Afterall, Logan was a big part of SF. So was Mendes. And Logan, as his credits prove, was/is a big A list writer. Producers weren’t being negligent letting the man have space as he and his director (a man he had worked with before SF), whipped up their magic.
And when they saw the direction of the script was going off the rails, there was a collective belief that they could right the wrongs, again with the two men who delivered SF.
Much of filmmaking is taking educated gambles, and they lost on this last bet. They couldn’t turn it around.
And with a start date fast approaching, they hired and went back to two writers from their recent past to salvage what they could.
I really do believe the take away from all of this, and also from reading the reactions from development: everyone went into filming with eyes wide open. No producers in their right mind would want to repeat these steps again.
And as I said before, I think we’re seeing that payoff: EoN has a P&W script ready to go. But they put it to the side to listen to a pitch. A pitch that sounds like it’s radically different than what they already have. And now, since there is time, they have commissioned this script to be written.
Which means they are giving themselves choices— a luxury they didn’t give themselves last time out.
He was a businessman extraordinaire and renowned philanthropist. He was nothing short of the definition of "success", in the largest possible meaning of the word.
But he had some tremendous stinkers. Stinkers in risks and investments that came closing to wiping him out, several times over.
And this is what his daughter said of him:
"To my father, deals that went south, share prices that collapsed, companies that went bust were merely blips on the path to success. He never doubted he would make it all back, and then some."
And, that's how I see great producers: no one is batting .100 in the film industry, the business community, nor in life. The challenge, though, is not to have our mistakes devour us, and use it instead to learn and create success from failure.
And this is EoN's story. They have had blips, and they usually come back stronger than ever before... They will rise to high standards for B25, not only because that's their job, but it's because they- like all business people- are driven and are addicted to success, the success of overcoming all the obstacles laid in front of them, and making something that was worth two years of their life, that now others (their audience), will flock to see and enjoy, and, for two plus hours, forget about their own lives and be swept away on this journey in front of them...