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@Venutius I really enjoy reading your posts. You and I think much alike about NTTD and Bond. Bond and White should have faced off in Craig’s 3rd move (The Pale King), and concluded it all with Skyfall. No, Skyfall as no. 3 , then Bond faces off with White in The Pale King in no. 4 Spectre. White is the boss of Spectre by then. They agree to meet on an island, and finish it. No Madeline. But I love your idea and thought there. It just felt like we went into soap opera land in the last 2 Craig Bonds. In the end, they really wasted the most talented actor they’ve ever had on 2 films that did not work. Imo. Grandpa White, it sounds so ridiculous. What a plot thread. Smh.
Yes, I was active on the other board then. I thought CR was so hard hitting, and taking so many risks, that they would up the ante for the next one. Instead they hammed it up on the go.
Skyfall IMO re-adjusts, but it suffers a bit in the structure dept. (plus there is that Joker inspired pre-planned subway escape which makes no sense). I also can't help thinking while 007 and Joker slide on the ramp in the subway, that suspension of belief has jumped the shark. I mean we all now there are small metallic stumbling blocks on all ramps to prevent people from sliding (and thus cause accidents).
I accept anything in a Bond film, but to make the ramp slide free makes the scene totally unrealistic.
But back to Bond dying, I'm a big Fleming buff, and I wanted a FRWL style ending ever since they rebooted, as it was one of the last stuff they didn't do on screen from the novels.
IMO they should have done this at the end of QOS, and have Mr White shoot Bond, cut to black.
Of course, they took that idea and made it the Skyfall pre-credits.
But you can see it was floating ever since Craig started as 007.
Agree 100%. All this family stuff is so implausible. Hokey. Waltz and Seydoux give excruciatingly lackluster performances. No energy. Instead of Bond vs White, Bond visits him and he says take care of my daughter-and Bond falls for her. Didn’t he learn anything from Vesper? And this guy is one of the world’s most dangerous assassins, and your sworn enemy—likely caused Vesper to die. That’s just mentally exhausting and dumb.
I always felt like it was a reboot that hinged on the passage of the Casino Royale novel describing his first two kills to Mathis. The toll they took on him and the journey to becoming the Bond we know and love.
When I saw that final M scene in Skyfall, I remember being elated because I thought the last 3 films lead to this, Bond 24 have Bond on a stand alone mission then Daniel bows out. I'm glad he stayed longer but I do wish things were done differently in hindsight
That’s interesting. Why? I was under the impression it was a matter of principle. But it's only a problem because it's Craig?
Yes, but we have had endless discussions about supposed continuity issues, how it "breaks with the spirit of Fleming", how it "ruins the character forever" etc, etc... So if it boils down to "watching a character I like dy made me sad, if it was another actor it would be fine", it kind of defeats the purpose of all that.
Danny Boyle said, that EON paid him and Hodge for the script, therefore they owned it. And Boyle said something like "they can do with it, what they want, use it, use bits of it, or throw it away." But he also said, that if they used even bits of it, they should have given Hodge a mention or a story credit. That was an interview with Boye in 2019 with Ferman magazine "Der Spiegel" in aninterview about his "Yesterday" movie. So I can't give the exact source for that He also was asked about the Hodge script, and his ideas, but he refused to do so, as he said, it would be unfair, now that Cary Fukunaga is doing the movie, and the focus should be on thois movie, not his abandoned film.
Thank you again, for sharing your opinion again. No harm intended.
+ 1
Couldn't have said it better!
The people who've been writing these recent Bond movies have no clue what they're doing. They don't even know what a plot is. All they can do is retcon and create contrivances by having everyone be related to one another, negating the need for actual motivation and tangible goals.
I agree there's a bit of chemistry lacking, but Lea lacks chemistry with everyone and everything. She is glacial, a director who worked with both of them said Monica Belluci was fire, and Lea Seydoux ice. That covers it.
About Daniel Craig, my feeling is that his stint as Bond will be remembered as unique.
Cubby said no actor is bigger than Bond, but I think what happened with Craig is that he equalled the character, which is the first time it happened since Sean Connery. He also got everything that was denied to Sean, a producer credit (thus the money that goes with it), and his way with the directors and the scripts. That's insane, when Pierce had to fight against everybody for days just to preserve a ferocious close up of him looking at the guy he just shot in the pre-credits of WINE.
It's going to be a hard act to follow, and I think they should do something completely different from anything they have done next time.
For example, adapt The Spy Who Loved Me, a.k.a "Motel 007", and keeping the intent (the whole film is told through the eyes of the woman and Bond is just a guest in the story), while going R rated.
Think about it, a stylish noir style 007 film that will be set mostly in one location, done for 100 millions max, where you introduce the actor who will play Bond next, that breaks all the blockbuster rules, while still being quintessential Bond. It's an assured win.
You are, sadly, correct.
There were rumours that Hodge's script also had a rookie agent, a villain with a bacteriological weapon and Bond death so maybe Hodge also had an obligation to include these three core elements in his script.
Actually, it sounds intriguing so long as the Fleming estate allows it if a bit too much like Sin City... but without the action "crutch", the new guy better have tons of charisma to pull it off!
Yeah that's very likely.
Now that Joker has demonstrated that you can pull off worldwide R rated hits with inprint characters that are more profitable as they cost way less, it's probably where Babs & Michael are looking to go, at least as an experiment.
Regarding action, there is still plenty in TSWLM, and I'm sure Purvis (what happened to his hair?) and Wade can add plenty extending the film to 2h50 :)
Yeah, we definitely need something really different. Craig has been brilliant but I think they’ll have to radically change course to escape his shadow.
I’m not sure about an R rated Bond though. If it was a more regular series then I’d welcome it, but I don’t think these films are made often enough anymore to justify that sort of experimentation. With four years between films, an R rated film would mean eight years of younger viewers not getting to see a Bond film. And that’s the demographic they’re struggling with in the US.
I’m not really keen on the idea of a TSWLM adaptation either. I think American gangsters were always Fleming’s weakness. But I do love the idea of a stripped down Bond film told from the perspective of a Bond girl. I think there’s a lot you could do with that.
So, the writers, who penned the screenplays for Craig's Bond did not know, what they were doing? So, who would have been a better choice?
LTK got a 15 certificate instead of a 12 or PG certificate (quite adequate), which meant, that actually kids being younger than 15, could not watch it, when it came out. And MGM actually weighes in, that the graphic and gory violence did cost the company a lot of money at least when the movie came out in 1989, which (what we know now) finally lead to Dalton being dismissed, as MGM felt, that Dalton was the person, who wanted that more brutal and violent BNond movies. Four years after Roger Moore, audiences were not ready to that more grittier Bond. In 2006, they were.
People were fighting to see Lethal Weapon and Die Hard. MGM excuse was bull. They just marketed the film wrong. I think the marketing fiasco is recorded in print somewhere.
BTW good evening, Err Doctor. My master!
That much for German efficiency!
And I believe, LTK was the first Bond movie, who did not get the 12 certificate. About PG,, I don't know. And as I said, it was not the darker, more gritty edge of LTK, it was the way it was presented. Leiter maimed by shark, Kilifer fed to the shark, Krests head exploding, Dario shreddered, Heller being impaled by a forklift, and, last but not least, Sanchez dying as a living torch tumbling into inflamed heroin-petrol.
I was on board with Craig from the day he was announced, and through QOS. SF is when I started to dislike him in the role. I didn't think he played "old" Bond as well as played young Bond. I believe that was around the time when he started having direct influence on the movies, as well.
As for the writing, I keep seeing evidence that these movies are being crafted around plot elements, instead of plots themselves, NTTD being a good example.
"We want this movie to include a new 007, DNA poisoning, and Bond's self-sacrifice."
They also apparently wrote QOS around a bunch of action sequences, and it shows, even though I enjoy that one. It also gets a pass because it was made during the writer's strike. NTTD has no excuses. They had years to make it.
The point is that you should develop a story first and then see what fits in it, instead of trying to wrap a story around a few plot elements. Honestly I could probably sketch a better finale for Craig's Bond in a few minutes.
First of all, I edited my post and cut the Craig bit. And regarding QOS, without the writer's strike and a fully crafted, revised and polished scripts, it could have been a very good Bond movie, but as Craig said, he was no writer, neither was Marc Forster. I tend to say, that somewhere inside, there is a great Bond movie in QOS, which only occasional shines through, but too rarely. As for NTTD, I don't think, they wrote the script around some action sequences. More or less it looks like they had the P&W script, and the Boyle/Hodge script, Haggis and Brown handed in rewrites we don't know, then Fukunaga penned his draft, and finally Pheobe Waller Bridge came on board. Like TND, where they had sevaeral mscript drafts by several authors, and Feirstein finally had to merge them to the final script. Brosnan said: "It was like pulling teeth." And apparently there was a problem with the director abnd some actors, e.g. Brosnan, Pryce and Judi Dench. And I reas somewhere, that Spottiswoode was - up til then - the first director, who was not offerd to direct the next Bond movie. I suppose, they also did not ask Tamahori, whether he wanted to come back.
I actually agree with all of this. I think I like Post-QoS Craig better than you do, though, but that's just opinion.
I was talking to a friend of mine after we watched the film, and he was saying that there were basically three different films in NTTD, each one basically a plot point that you outlined, and I tended to agree. Still enjoyed NTTD though.
I *loved* that transition. Very dramatic.