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Interesting. Not a fan of Madeline dying personally but it's definitely an alternative. I feel in order for Safin to have worked the film really needed to lean more fully into the revenge plot or just go down this sort of route (ie. he's mad and wants to destroy the world just for the sake of it). The idea of Bond having to team up with Blofeld/him killing Safin is really cool, almost like a little redemption story for the character. A different film than what we got but arguably more along the lines of TSWLM.
Good ideas.
This is my idea of how Madeleine will die in the PTS:
Madeleine would die of Nanobots in the PTS. Have Bond still visits Vesper's grave, but when he returned back, Madeleine's already dead with red bumps and rashes on her body and a blood on her nose, then Bond saw a broken vial behind Madeleine's dead body, so Bond decided not to touch her, and went out of the hotel instead to find who's responsible for her death.
I would have also add:
1. Felix Leiter will not die, he will team up with Bond, Nomi and Paloma.
2 . Blofeld will send Logan Ash to help Bond but he will be killed by Primo, who is Safin's henchman.
3. Have Nomi be a new 00 agent who will team up with Bond, Bond will be Nomi's mentor, have Bond and Nomi be close to each other, but because of a failure, (she accidentally shot a civilian, like what happened to Moneypenny in Skyfall), M decided to put her in office work instead, but Bond was against this idea, Bond believes that Nomi has a potential to be a great 00 agent. And this is where Bond and M will argue.
If Nomi would have been a traitor, that lured Bond to Safin's base and then you could have had Bond vs 007, have Bond kill her in Safin's base and it would have raised the stakes even higher. Or even have Madeline kill her
That way it would make more sense why, she was warning Bond against capturing Waldo in Cuba, her being reluctant for Bond to come back into the service and why she was slow at tracking Logan Ash in Norway.
It would have all served a purpose because Bond would be the one to discover she was working for Safin
Yeah, this works for me as well. Lynch was indeed great in the role, would have been interesting to see her dark side.
I totally agree that she had no purpose in the film but I'm not sure I'd make her the baddie as Bond and her have to start out with an antagonistic relationship: it's not much of a switch to find out that someone you think hates you is actually a baddie. That's why the Ash reveal works: he starts out as Bond's biggest fan but it turns out he wants to kill him- that's an actual reversal.
I'd have preferred it if they'd used Nomi as a story point for Bond to realise something about himself (she is just starting out as 007 after all, just like he was in Casino Royale), or even if she'd actually got one up on him a few times so that it meant something when they agreed to join forces- as it is she 'loses' every single encounter they have in the film.
Or maybe partner them up for a while, with Nomi as M's man on the ground, holding Bond back and going by the book, creating a bit of tension until she realises that Bond's way is sometimes the best way. I don't know, she needed some role in the story.
Yeah that's a fair point mate. I think you're right she did need some role in the story, as it is she just drives Bond around and the takes his family to safety.
I felt for Lashana, she acted well in the film but given how much they pushed her out in front, in the trailers, interviews and promo I thought she would have had more of a part in the film
Perhaps if Bond and Madeline's love story had been better written and more convincing in Spectre, they could have spent more time fleshing out Nomi's character in NTTD
Yes I was surprised how pointless she was; it almost felt like she'd been in an earlier draft of the script and they'd forgotten why they'd put her in in the first place.
My take on it is they filmed the ending (i.e. from when they go to Safin's base) early on in the shooting schedule, and they hadnt quite worked out Nomi's character. Hence is is quite present in the film up until the third act, but which point they basically dump her off on the boat with Maddie/Mini-Bond and off she goes.
I dont think any of the MI6 regulars actually talk to her during the third act. Which is amusing.
I think it was revealed in the James Bond Archives book, someone on here posted some tidbits about NTTD, one was they filmed the death of Bond on October 5th (global James Bond day) not sure when the rest of the climax was filmed though, I would assume around the same time?
@Venutius the idea of making Heracles C's project is brilliant mate. It would have been better than making M responsible
As clear as the ending of the 3rd C Nolan Batman - where it is darn clear - or more ambiguous, like the ending of Inception - did the top wobble ? much ? With the children outside in the same positions and same clothes and same ages as seen throughout the film, it's pretty clear to many folks that he's still down there in dreamland...
I had thought of an ending for NTTP whereby Bond sees a weather balloon - they ARE using a great deal of YOLT, after all - and it's vague...until the Aston with Madeline and little Mathilde rounds a turn in Italy and they both look up and smile broadly. That would mean he'd apparently made it, though not shown to the audience. Of course, for this to work, Bond would have had to have made a switch with the corrupt scientist, and Safin would think he'd succeeded in scratching Bond with the deadly broken vial, until Bond turns his hand, revealing he'd switch the vials, and has the deadly one in his hand, such that Bond was scratched with a vial containing merely colored water. (Use different colors to make it obvious, and allow Bond to keep them straight). However, the point was that Craig - reportedly - said he'd come back only if Bond got the full-on tragic hero treatment. Still, had this been presented to him perhaps he'd have liked it ? Perhaps it was...
The air balloon idea would play too campy, I worry.
NTTD was tonally all over the place, I don’t think lifting the weather balloon escape from YOLT and placing it in NTTD would have made much difference to the tone of the film.
In some ways, that NTTD ending is as brave as the end of OHMSS the film. Some people may not like it, but it is definitive.
I agree with this. Personally I would have preferred the tone of the Norway scenes in the PTS, but that would mean toning down the Cuba scenes (giving them more of a sense of actual danger) and Waldo.
I also think I would have put Felix (and possibly Ash) at the birthday party, to give Felix's death more punch.
On my last viewing, I really disliked the moment of impact (the shot from behind Bond) it felt a bit gratuitous to me. Seeing Bond obliterated felt a bit over the top in my mind.
It felt like it was done to leave no doubt he died
A lot of YOLT already exists in NTTD, so perhaps it would have been fitting to have seen a bit more of it in there. The air balloon could have worked but only insofar as the set design and feel of Safin's Garden of Death was closer to that of Blofeld's (ie. a more dark, otherworldly quality to it, lots of Japanese masks and samurai suits about to really hit home the villain's odd fixation with this culture/the nature of power etc.) I wrote about this in my opening post but I'd have liked to have seen more of Safin's personality reflected in the lair - have the garden (the only living memory of his family) preserved in these oddly shaped domes, a mixture of lush green plants inside cold looking glass spheres, more influence from Japanese design etc. An idea as odd as Bond trying to jump at an air balloon feels a bit more justified in tandem with that more surreal presentation, provided it was taken seriously.
I don't like the idea of Bond switching vials, however. Again, as per my first post I would have liked a fight within the Garden of Death itself which could have ultimately caused Bond and Safin's death. It would have been a more fitting death for Safin as in this version he's ultimately killed by the embodiment of his obsession. The air ballon idea could have worked too in this scenario perhaps, but I do feel we needed the goodbye between Bond and Madeline rather than Bond trying to save himself by running up to the balloon. I suppose it negates the theme of self-sacrifice that is inherently there within the end of NTTD. Maybe if he'd have blown up the base himself as in the novel?
Yeah, I absolutely respect the filmmakers for committing to killing Bond, and not comprising with that. I can't bring myself to like it, but I respect it.
Something about Russia, Bond's past and him being in a modern gulag for a chunk of it from what I understand. At least from what I've read from other posters on here.
And there's Tomasz Kot that's intended to be the Bond Villain.
This is why I dislike the idea of a female 00. Female 00 has no real credibility in fighting a serious villain (like seeing female footballers taking on male footballers, or a female boxer in the ring with a male boxer), and there something unpleasant (at least, for me) at seeing her being beaten up
Yes, I know dear old Roger Moore had no credibility in AVTAK, but he had earned it in the early films and was RM - he wouldn’t have got away with it if AVTAK in 1985 had been his first.
Then about Madeleine, it would be good to have her and Bond just break up, like what happened to Bond and Tiffany at the start of From Russia With Love (Novel), no more reconciling, it just didn't worked out, and that would be unique for the franchise instead of just killing her off.
And Safin should just be a villain with no personal connections, just a standalone villain that Bond needs to defeat.
Have Bond died because he didn't give up but he ran out of time, he got stuck inside of Safin's lair and there's no way out, and since Safin shot him he's now weakening and can't move that fast and the missiles was already destroying the island, so he ran out of time. That's heroic because instead of his personal reasons that he can't touch Madeleine and Mathilde, he dies because it's the destiny who have decided to kill him, he went there, defeated Safin and died for Queen and Country, he tried to find a way out, but he's really destined to die (He's shot and weak, and the missiles are destroying the island).
Yes, Boyle said in that Esquire piece that 'it was all set in Russia and...went back to his origins' and the Cold War. Also, that it was Hodge who had the idea for Bond to have a child that he hadn't known about. Presumably, not Madeleine's if the kid was in Russia. But we knew this already - it's frustrating when the Radio Times interviewer had the chance to ask for more details and, in all likelihood, didn't.
All actors will want an input into their characters and the script, its a balancing act on the producer's part to balance that with all the other opinions on the script - the studio, director, financiers, themselves etc.
I think it was Saltzman, around YOLT time and the departure of Connery, who commented "007 is bigger than any one actor". I think it was in the Everything or Nothing documentary.
Clearly with the Craig-era, that dynamic had changed.
Craig did have an unprecedented amount of official control to be fair, given that he was a co-Producer on SP and NTTD. Actors having a say in the script/creative decisions actually isn't a bad thing for something like Bond, although whether their involvement should be the same as Craig's is debatable.