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Yeah the one minor complaint I have with the action in NTTD is the momentum of it. In Casino, QOS and the PTS of Skyfall, its continuous and if it slows it's too build up the tension. In NTTD, it's like a flurry of action rather than continuous
I think the best action of the film is in the pre-title sequence. I like the other action scenes, but I feel the Norway chase and the stairwell shootout could have been more varied and inventive. The chase could have also been longer. I like seeing Bond pushing the vehicles toward the hills to take them out, but I think the scene could have gone on to other situations before coming to an end.
At least the continuous take in the stairwell scene imbues it with a sense of immediacy and danger, and the fight with Primo provides a clever resolution in the use of the EMP watch. And the Cuba action, while admittedly a bit monotonous when it comes to gunfire, has more things going on, such as Bond stopping Valdo with the tray, Bond fighting the guy on the second floor, Paloma using the car, Nomi keeping the police at bay...
Even from being a kid, Madeleine's had a bad habit of always emptying the clip when she shoots at anybody, too...
Well yes, they've always been a female fantasy too, because the women in the audience appreciated seeing independent female characters who weren't housewives or wives, who weren't tied down by family and kids and home-life.
How is that any different than in 1962, when the family was arguably held in even more respect?
And it's possible to give human touches to Bond without going down the drastic route of giving him a kid to be nice to, as the filmmakers and Fleming have proven on various occasions. This scene might have sentimental appeal to Dads in the audience, but it has little to do with what has been the core appeal of the series. Furthermore, I can view family drama in plenty of other places and films--Bond has been special and enjoyable because it was free of that stuff or any family values pablum. And it's not as if NTTD had anything profound or special to say about family life in the first place.
Dr. No wasn't trying to be art. The filmmakers would have laughed at anyone who said that. What the crew wanted was to make a very well-done genre film, a great piece of entertainment. They succeeded, and the product didn't have the self-seriousness, self-consciousness, or occasional pretension of the Craig films.
To be fair, fathers didn't seem to be too fussed about spending time with their kids in the 60s. It just wasn't a thing - the mother dealt with the kids and the father didn't want to even be mithered by them, let alone actively spend time with them. I'm sure there were some who were different, but that was far and away the prevailing way in the working class North of England, anyway. I'm not sure parenthood in itself was seen as something to aspire to either back then - I'm not sure much advance thought went into it. People got married and banged out kids. It was just the way of things. Or maybe that's just the way it was on our street, I dunno! ;)
Yeah it was like he was playing a Bond video game on agent difficulty.
Hmm… the segue from the outline in the opening (three blind mice) alone shows that Dr.No was attempting to be art, especially for the time.
I didn’t say the family was held in respect, I said it was aspirational. These days, being in a position to choose to have a family/time with them is as financially aspirational as an Omega or Rolex, possibly more so. (It was in part a tongue in cheek joke.)
And I didn’t say the films were female fantasy, I said Bond always has been. It’s half of why Connery was cast, and I don’t think all the shirtless scenes were for — what at the times would have been called — the lads.
As to Dads in the audience… I would never underestimate how much Bond was once seen as something passed down father to son. My Dad wore a submariner homage in much the way I now wear an Omega homage. Besides which, the whole thing was thematic to what they were putting on screen, and three out of five of the Craig films have dealt with parental relationships as key themes. This one was the logical end point. (Also, Bond had a kid in the books.)
No, just well-crafted entertainment. People who made thrillers in 1962 didn't consider themselves artists and weren't considered as such. At the time even Hitchcock was still regarded as a great entertainer rather than great director.
Having a family certainly costs more these days, but the concept still involves "settling down" and that will never be as powerful a fantasy as being single and sowing one's oats in style. The average Rolex ad shows a handsome, well-off single man.
They're both. Women not only admired Connery, they lived vicariously through independent female characters who weren't tied down by domesticity (and who had the pleasure of making love with Connery).
Yes, and in this case the link of tradition was a consumer good was the link of tradition--part of Bond's appeal as high-living fantasy, not family melodrama. Bond has been passed down from father to child for decades without any need for the films to bother showing family life. Explicitly thematizing this in NTTD was like putting a hat on a hat.
Who was never seen and was promptly forgotten about in the next book. And since Fleming never featured children as characters, I doubt Bond's kid would have played a major part in future novels. Fleming took Bond to the edge of domesticity but released him each time, because the fantasy had to continue. Vesper had to kill herself before Bond could propose; Tracy had to die before Bond could enjoy a full day of marriage; Bond had to recover his memory and leave Japan before he could learn he was a father.
Personally, I think the films are better for having made a few decisions, and your ire is misplaced. The film wasn’t suddenly Spy Kids or The Railway Children, and it worked fine. Things still went boom. (And how do you know the Omega ads all feature single men? Didn’t think they had enough time to get into that… )
My same thoughts exactly, I'm not the only one, the action scenes felt like a video game.
The unrealistic action scenes really started in SPECTRE when Bond starts machine gunning those bad guys in Blofeld's crater lair before escaping.
Then you have now Bond shooting Blofeld's helicopter using his little pistol.
And it has continued in this film, the shooting scenes, Bond dodging the bullets, the car flipping and rolling very easily after Bond's little car touches them.
The action scenes were beautifully shot (though it looks like a commercial already), but unrealistic.
And Tiffany split.
You're right, I forgot to include that. Bond's first flirtation with matrimony after Vesper and the first time (as far as we know) that he co-habited with a woman. Fleming wisely didn't bother showing us that--he skipped to a point after the breakup.
I rewatched this small teaser recently and it brought back really happy memories of my excitement for NTTD. The teaser came out weeks before the initial 2020 release date. This probably got me more excited than the trailers did
In hindsight, I wish the film reflected more of what Cary was saying, Bond being a wounded animal, the race against time and how espionage was darker and more dangerous. They were the things that caught my attention, I wish they would have been explored more deeply
Yeah that's what it reminded me of. I enjoyed SP but the drastic change in tone from Skyfall was jarring to say the least. It was a bit of a disappointment given the trailer seeming to tease a darker retelling of Spectre as an organisation
They've promoted the tourism of Faroe Islands.
Beautiful, why not?
But I really don't like their culture of killing and hunting dolphins, I'm really against that practice of theirs.
It's like, EON supported and promoted this country, and the Killing of dolphins was something that they didn't condemned.
I think White Cliffs of Dover (It's been used as a location in the Moonraker novel) would have been a much better location for Safin's lair and the final act in general.
* I'm just voicing out my opinion on this.
Good points that illustrate why the books and films have endured for nigh on 70 years.
Did it? I hadn't heard anything about the Boyle/Hodge script, other than Bond was going to spend a lot of the film in a prison/gulag
I would have preferred Ring of Kerry. Anti-clockwise.
Yes, the article is on the main page. It appears that the child from Boyle/Hodges got grafted onto the P&W script. I wonder if the original P&W script ended like the Fleming novel?
That's news to me thanks for the update mate. I wasn't excited to see a Boyle Bond film and I was relieved when he left, but I'd love to know what was in his script
Same here. We dodged a missile there.
It sounds very 127 Hours. Can just imagine Boyle integrating some weird sequences with Bond hallucinating and imaging people from his past or something. It would have been a bizarre film, especially with the added subplot of the child and Bond dying. Add to that the fact that it was meant to be set in Russia, which even in 2018 was politically questionable from a PR point of view. I can certainly see why the Producers and even Craig were getting twitchy.