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Bond being tortured and held prisoner is great. Everything from the gene clinic on is bollacks.
It's ludicrous but it knows that it is. Same goes for MR, it makes no sense at all but it knows that it makes no sense at all. These movies were never meant to be indisputable masterpieces, embracing their own madness with gusto.
The Mendes films on the other hand are also full of incomprehensible writing while pretending to be the best things that ever happened to the franchise.
I'd say it's DAD too, if only for how inconsequential everything is. The destruction of a fencing club? It needed redecorating. Bond six months in a North Korean jail? No effect whatsoever on him once he's out. He shows up looking like a hobo in a fancy hotel? He checks in as usual! It takes six months for moon to be accepted as Graves and being knighted.
I've heard that some think Skyfall is one of the worse but I think like SP that the scheme is secondary to the actual real point of each films.
With SF it is really M's past coming back to haunt her and Silva coming back into her life and how Bond enters into that equation so the list etc is secondary to that.
Though I know some don't like it but I feel like this element is done brilliantly and Craig, Dench and Bardem compliment each other beautifully, so the scheme while questionable the other element is carried off with real conviction unlike it's follow up.
The same with SPECTRE it is really about Bond discovering his childhood nemesis is the guy who has been pulling the strings and being the author of all his pain.
Now the 9 Eyes thing is totally lame, both @peter and I discovered this while working on our version of Bond 24 and have now junked it entirely because you just can't make it that threatening it just isn't that exciting at all, what do they actually intend to do once they have this.
The idea of ticking time bomb element is what we have gone back to ala TB and YOLT.
Though unlike regardless of how sacrilege of turning Blofeld into a character that is pissed at Bond as his Daddy had more time for him than his own son.
There is also the element that even though this is just an outright terrible idea that it isn't even done with any conviction that it even being there is pointless as it does nothing but harm to the film.
So the scheme is lame, maybe not the worst of the series but then throw in the brothergate element and it really is hard to beat as a whole as being the worst in my view, hence why it continues to languish at the 24 spot on my rankings.
Regarding the Craig era I think the worst plot can be found in SF. But SF is very good capitalizing a character like the late M and has the best performance by Craig, if u ask me. Emotionally speaking everything works and the characters relationship are poignant. SP is weaker from this standpoint, even tho I like the plot more. I have nothing to complain regarding the 9 Eyes. Felt urgent back in 2015. Makes sense from Blofeld’s perspective, the notion of having total access and control to the people supposed to chase him. Plus, all this surveillance master plan nicely connect with ESB’s portrayal: a voyeur too scared to join in.
LALD is a personal favourite but its plot is a bit weak.
Hope it’s not too off topic but the best plot by far is FRWL, partly because it’s the only one that turns on Bond himself, as the novel makes clear. The novel has a superb chapter in which the Russians select Bond as their target, choosing him specifically rather than other spies, precisely because of who he is, his importance to Britain as a hero, his weakness for women, his instinct to enter danger rather than run away from it, etc. If the Russians had chosen a different secret agent to target, or if Bond had had a different personality, then SMERSH’s plot could not have gone ahead in the way that it did. Brilliant, just brilliant.
Exactly, @Gatecrasher ... the problem is the script was an absolute mess... No one could agree on the script/story. Not the writers, the director (who almost walked away); not the producers or distributors...
There seemed to be a few smart ppl at Sony (and I'm assuming junior guys, coz no one listened to their heeds), who warned about Brothergate earlier on in development. But no one was focusing on Brothergate, when the rest of the script was such a mess.
There were other smart ppl, if memory serves from the leaks, who were concerned about a weak third act... But... we got that terrible terrible terrible ending... not quite as bad as DAF on the oil rig, but--
Bond running around like an idiot, screaming for maddy, conveniently finding her in a closet-- the damsel in distress, tied to the "railroad" as it were-- was just so bloody contrived... Idiotic. Lazy...
However, I will say this, and I admit I am too emotionally connected to Craig's interpretation that, although I found Sp's third act sooo bad, and so stupid when he finds Maddy, I get shivers when he hoists her in his arms, cradling her and is about to jump into the convenient net below, she asks "Do I have a choice?", and DC's Bond, who has lost so much, and whom I emotionally connect to (although I know the scene is stupid), says, "No"... and he jumps.
In that one second he says he needs her. That one second scene maybe the best and most important in the film about their relationship (coz outside of her animosity for him, I never bought their romance-- until this moment)
Agree. I think Moonraker and Die Another Day are unashamedly stupid, whereas a lot of the other films in the franchise such as Spectre attempt to be thrilling and dark and instead we get "New York, New York" playing when Bond tries to activate a gadget in the DB10. Then there's the Blofeld becoming Bond's brother story line too.
They were obviously trying to inject humour into the car chase, and also insert some info-dumping, which both detracted from the chase. But they also didn't seem to connect that chase to the meeting scene just before it. A real clash of styles.
Agree. It came across contrived and Craig’s reaction feels forced and out of character.
That ejector seat/parachute bit would have been stupid in a Moore film, let alone a Craig one!
Whoever came up with that idea shouldn't be let near a Bond film ever again!
Because Silva being able to predict someone would've been able to find the key to spread his malware right in time for him to be at M's testimony? "Years in the making" lol. This is lazy.
Or Tanner who doesn't evacuate M because she had to finish his poem? This is idiotic.
And there are more...
Blofeld put Swann in the farthest place inside the MI6 building from the exit, aka, salvation. Simple.
I don't think it would have taken much work to edit down the meeting (perhaps they were trying to meet the release date?) and to come up with a better, more suspenseful connection to link the meeting to Bond tracking down White.
Also, who writes a SPECTRE scene without a proper Blofeld-ordered execution?
Ugh, the botched opportunities in the film...
SF is certainly a far more emotionally poignant story than SP. It is also more engaging, yes. The character work by the writing team is better, for sure. If we speak about basic plot issues, that's another story. SF is rather absurd to a point sometimes I feel quite offended. Silva is no Joker. SF wasn't built around the notion of a villain impersonating a kind of metaphysical agent of chaos. Mendes tried to mimic what Nolan did, with ridiculous results (from this particular standpoint). Kind of funny that SF is a classic with such a silly plot behind it.
Even with those issues that SF has like you said it is more emotionally engaging and poignant, the character writing is better.
Thought SPECTRE isn't any of that and it has a lousy plot with Brothergate and that daft scanning of rings nonsense, where Q has his natty convenient graphics package to tie things up.
This is the plot I don't need to get into after the PTS all the action sequences totally lack tension.
MR was pretty bad. They create an orchid that doesn't exist. (though I give them props for all the effort into making it look fully realistic.) Then instead of just building another Moonraker (which he already had what 7 of them?) Drax decides he needs to hijack one that is on loan to the English. I haven't heard much about the English space programme circa 1979 but why would they need a space shuttle? I could go on, like how the hell did the space station get built and what sort of tech allows you to jam a radar signal from space. I know Broccoli said Bond is based on science fact, but come on. Oh yea and the laser guns! LOL!
DAD to me has an interesting plot. Yes OTT but somewhat believable. A malevolent billionaire claims his invention is for good and then weaponizes it and uses it to topple a government in Asia. At the time picture Richard Branson type.
I must give a shout out to AVTAK for worst plot, or maybe it's worst villain plan. So Zorin is going to flood Silicon Valley. Cool! Now somehow that wipes out all the people that know how to make a microchip. He then builds a consortium who must pay him for his microchips and he gets profits from their companies. Like this flood wipes out anyone else capable of making a microchip.
To be fair Silva never said he planned all that years ago. It was Q who assumed it while talking to bond during tunnel Scene. Silva simply planned to get out of the prison and kill M wherever she was at the moment. He improvised it imo.
Mendes wasn't the only one who mimic joker or Nolan. Even Nolan copied a lot from previous bond films such as opening plane Scene from TDKR is straight out from LTK.
TDK and Brad Pitt's Seven movie are lot more common than people might know. Here's a video which explains in details. Take a look
There’s no room for improvisation in his plan, as showed in the film, sorry sir. The metro bomb in the exact spot Bond catches him, allies who bring him a cop suite in order to enter the building where M is being interrogated because of his attack at MI6 etc etc...
Knowing that Silva had SP resources behind his back at least makes his masterplan slightly more believable...
The metro bomb is somewhat weird and seems out of context but allies bringing him cop uniform was to get him mixed in the metro crowd and with other police officers after escalator scene not for courtroom.
Couldn't he planned to escape from prison and got news from his allies where M is ? so that he planned to attack at courtroom, it isn't that difficult to improvise to be honest.
Imagine if he got a bit late while escaping and M has left the courtroom, he would have attack her somewhere else. Escaping from prison and attacking in the courtroom are two very different scenarios which seems more coincidence than masterplan to me.
Much as i enjoy and like SF, i do hate it when fans try and justify the ridiculous chain of events after Silva's incarceration. They're indefensible. They happen because that's what the scriptwriters need to happen, so logic and consistency are thrown out of the window. Presumably the writers think the audience won't notice or won't care.
Yeah the idea that Mendes , Logan & P&W copied Nolan's Bat films is laughable when you consider the lifts he takes from Bond for that very trilogy ( and I love them on a whole).
Never thought of Se7en but yes the Joker's scheme definitely owes a debt to Andrew Kevin Walker.
SF detractors just use it as another stick to beat the film with.
Q is clearly new thinks he is clever and is all about logic and intelligence so would possibly jump to this conclusion, its not like anyone else validates this opinion anyway.
I agree it is a flaw and would be better without and misleads the viewer to possibly think this but Christopher Nolan isn't the pioneer that some of his fans make him out to be when it comes to blockbusters.
I say that as a fan, though I think his more original ideas are in his smaller films, Nolan is yet to top Memento for sheer originality, even Inception (which I also love) he has borrowed from other sources.
Agreed. I think Skyfallis grossly overrated for this reason. I don't think it has the worst plot of the franchise, but it's pretty weak. I don't like all the exposition either around Silva and M's connection either.
The only laughable thing is denying the strong similarities between Joker and Silva. The fact that Nolan “copied” stunts from old Bond movies doesn’t mean Mendes didn’t take TDK as a strong reference for SF. And surprise, he even admitted himself. So what are we talking about? Even 1917 seems a sort of response to Dunkirk: two autorish war films both dealing with the perception of time, even tho in opposite ways. I’ll tell you another thing: pointing out those similarities doesn’t automatically make the person questioning a “detractor”. SF is a top 10 Bond for me, just for the record. But those issues brought up here are just facts.
Joker is a psychopath lives without any rules who isn't afraid to hurt anyone and murder random people just to get batman out of his cape. He simply wants chaos.
Silva on the other hand only wanted to humiliate and take revenge on M. He never lost his mind. He didn't even harm bond on multiple occasions while he had the chance and only fire gun on kincade to stop him not to kill him. While bond was handcuffed he could have tortured him before turning him against M but he didn't. If anyone notice closely, silva even had a hard time pulling trigger against M in the court and the church. Silva is much more human imo. maybe that's why i am having a hard time making up my mind if he was actually a Villian.
We are also misinterpreting Mendes words, he never said or admitted he was inspired by joker specifically. Here's what he said :
https://metro.co.uk/2012/10/25/skyfall-director-sam-mendes-i-wasnt-directly-influenced-by-dark-knight-608485/
"Well, you can’t ignore Chris Nolan’s way of film-making, but I don’t see an enormous number of parallels in the story, particularly. It makes it possible to tell stories that way. But I would have made the movie the same way had I seen The Dark Knight or not. I didn’t feel directly influenced by The Dark Knight. It’s really just the fact of The Dark Knight that helps to make this more interesting, to be able to bring more layers to the story, and maybe take it into areas that wouldn’t have been possible 10 years ago" .
Nolan also used imax cameras for TDK but Mendes never used it because he never felt the need but Cary is using them not because he was inspired by someone. One can still use some props and techniques here and there but bond film's hardly copy something frame by frame.
Mendes also made Jarhead in 2005 way before Nolan even touch that war concept.
SF is also in my top 10 . I just feel weird comparing SF & SP to decide which one is worse.