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I think just about everything in LALD can be explained without admitting to a reality of the supernatural within the world of Bond if you choose to view it that way. Solitaire might simply have had really good intuition (as Bond considers in the novel), and when she loses her powers it's simply a matter of her succumbing to a self-fulfilling prophecy. As mentioned previously, Baron Samedi appearing on the train at the end could just be fourth wall breaking or perhaps the snakes in the coffin were nonpoisonous. In fact, as a kid I always figured the first Baron Samedi that comes up through the ground must have been an animatronic. I never considered the character was meant to be actually regenerating (though that was probably just because of the control station and mechanical lift we're shown below).
What I always found more troubling than any of that was that Bond himself seems to admit to belief in the voodoo powers when he asks Solitaire to use her ability to help them find the poppy fields. (Though I now realize he was probably meant to be speaking flippantly here.)
That's a lovely thought, yes that would have been great. The Spectre poster got a lot of flak but I always thought the image of Bond in his skull mask was nicely striking. Maybe they could have made Spectre itself into a bit more of a cult; I'd love to see something a bit more twisted and kind of perverse in a Fleming way in them.
Imagine the 'Mickey Mouse' Spectre Rome meeting in the style of Temple of Doom! :D
It could have redeemed that film quite frankly. LALD had spooky elements.
I love the idea of making SPECTRE more cult-like... I mean, they always were a bit anyway with the numbers they give each other, the strange ritual/convention they have to 'shame and kill' anyone who fails... It also works in the sense that this version of Blofeld ultimately killed his father and changed his name, seemingly managed to convince a bunch of criminals to join his weird supervillian cult... I mean, the level of myth making and charisma such a man would have to adopt would be interesting to see played out and would bring out a different side to Waltz's Blofeld. I dunno, the idea of a cult gaining access to surveillance/defence/information technology, staging terrorist attacks, using fear to spread their message, perhaps implant or recruit members within governments is far more scary than simply having a surveillance program for the sake of anticipating MI6 investigating them.
Anyway, I'm all for more supernatural/weird in Bond. As others and myself have mentioned it's certainly there in Fleming, albiet in a grounded way.
And they're called Spectre and have a spooky septapus as their logo...
(Hang on, is that why it's called Spectre in the film Spectre? Because Blofeld/Oberhauser has returned from the dead? The dead are alive and all that? I've not really put that together before!)
I do wish the Craig films had leaned just a bit more into those supernatural and fantasy ideas. I got the sense there were shades of it in both SP and NTTD, but we have yet to really implemented. That actually gives me some hope that they'll try and push it further with Bond 26. Y'know, really give the sense that Fleming did in many of his novels that Bond is slowly descending into this strange, otherworldly territory.
Yes I like that. I guess if you look at something like Batman Begins there's a bit of a hint of that kind of world mixing with the world of the hi tech, with the mystical Tibetan stuff and the Scarecrow hallucinations: make it a bit more twisted and freaky.
I'd have loved for them to have at least done something with Safin's fixation on Japanese culture. There's so much interesting folklore that could have been incorporated into his character. I mean, having read Haruki Murakami's Kafka On The Shore (excellent book by the way) they go into a bit of detail about Ikiryos, which are disembodied spirits from living people, often those consumed by jealousy or rage, who haunt others... I mean, to me that seems not unlike Safin in a broad way. He's this ghost of a man, his body deteriorated, consumed by both rage against SPECTRE and jealously over Bond's relationship with Madeline... he even comes back as that sort of 'spirit' in his mask to get revenge on White and the rest of SPECTRE. Just a little touch of the supernatural like that could have been cool...
Also, apparently the original idea for Safin's mask was a Siberian bear hunting armour. Honestly, I'd love to see this idea recycled for a future Bond film, perhaps give it to the henchmen...
Honestly, can imagine a Bond villain in a Fleming novel wearing that. Looks absolutely nightmarish.
Yeah, it could work.
Why not remake LALD with more emphasis on the horror aspect and perhaps explain Baron Samedi to make sense of why and what happened as to him being perched on the train at the ending of the 1973 film not in the sense as a sequel but in a sense of a remaining that can be applied to the loose end of the first movie.