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Comments
So reverting to the Walther PPK and bringing the villain down rings true to me.
I always think it’s a shame Q hadn’t given him another gadgety PPK for this film, maybe it carries one explosive round or something.
Or found in boat by Madeline (next to open box) as left over when Silva take over Mi6 and used as symbol too of weakness Dench M (the reasen why we get Fienes M in first place). Better reference to Silva then that stupid connection earlier in the movie.
I guess part of the issue is that it draws attention to itself by being fairly realistic at first: his first few shots hit it but do no damage, so the audience kind of thinks "oh yes, of course that's what would happen if you shot a couple of tiny bullets at a moving vehicle like that: they'd tap through the bodywork but that's about it" (Blofeld and the pilot barely notice!), so when suddenly just one of those tiny bullets (shot from an even smaller gun!) brings the whole thing down it jars against what we've just learnt.
I think it needed to be some kind of gadget or extraordinary gun: like a flare gun as Talos says (although obviously they couldn't do that again). I wonder what the idea of switching to the PPK was? A callback to the Skyfall shooting range bit? Or just a 'this is James Bond and that's James Bond's gun and he's awesome with it' message? Or did it need to be the gun he threw away at the end?
In the case of the Midnight Run scene, it's certainly physically possible (though it would require a bit of luck) that De Niro could take out the tail rotor of a stationary helicopter, while standing still himself, from fifty feet away with a heavier calibre pistol. I can't remember what kind of pistol John McClane uses in the third Die Hard, but he was similarly close and wisely took down the power lines above the helicopter as opposed to shooting the vehicle itself.
Bond has always pushed the limits of what is possible, but taking down a moving helicopter (that is some distance away) while standing on a boat going full speed over choppy Thames waters while using a pistol renowned for its short range stopping power was a bit much. He may as well have been throwing stones at it.
It doesn't exactly ruin the scene or the film as both were already on shakey ground at that point anyway, but it bugs me in probably the same way the Aston Martin DB5 keeping up with the Ferrari in GoldenEye bugs motor enthusiasts.
I imagine Bond would've used Q's Scubacraft with mounted harpoon seen on his desk, had they still been in the old digs.
Anyway, still adding more NTTD magazines to the stack - the top one is a Hungarian crossword puzzle book with an image of Craig from the NTTD launch at Goldeneye.
Your collection must be sizeable by now, @QBranch?
Very novel.
So, um, why is he on a crossword book? Is there a Bond puzzle? And how in the world do you find something like that, if I may ask?
I would have liked to see a scrap on either the London Eye or Big ben clockface
Following this, a final confrontation with Mr. Hinx, who was thought to be dead, could have been epic, shades of Bond's encounter with Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love or Tee Hee in Live and Let Die.
Ah, yes. Thanks @Mallory and @Contraband and everyone else. I knew it was something along those lines! LOL.
I agree with @talos7 : what leads up to that bridge climax is a mess, but I also think it's partially because the writers were pigeon-holed in getting there. And yes, Bond using the PPK to take down the chopper was underwhelming. I never understood why Bond would let Madeleine walk away, alone at night. It made no sense to have Bond kidnapped and taken to the old MI6 building: the writers should have allowed Bond to get there through his own actions and detective work. It was lazy writing.
I still contend that all the writers needed to do was use the TSWLM as a template. Explosive is a threat and planted by the villain? Check. Bond girl has been kidnapped? Check. Henchman presumed dead is still out there and needs to be dealt with? Well, OK, but it maybe needed to be written in. Thus, Bond needs to fix or disarm the explosives, find the girl, fight the henchman again, and get to the villain (not necessarily in that order). It was really that simple.
As much as I love the helicopter fight in the PTS, Mendes would have been better off moving that to the end, with Hinx, over London. This would have maybe forced the train fight to be a little less climactic, but that would have been fine. Just my two cents.
It also makes Madeline look quite selfish: she's travelled back all this way to London with Bond and this is the moment she picks to say she's going? Bond has his hands pretty full with trying to save the world as she's just heard.
I don't think it's lazy writing as such, it's just that when they were shooting the film the last act 'fell apart' according to Mendes: I think he just found himself stuck.
Ha! How does he see? :D
I have no idea..
@DonnyDB5 DM me
Light hitting the hologram from different angles:
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