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Comments
That's a good point.
What wasn't necessary?
Bond five years after retirement.
If the choice is death or accidie...
Yeah. Agreed. Cubby never liked anything unorthodox. But I think Dalton was the only Bond who told Cubby how he wanted his Bond and Cubby agreed because, he had always wanted Dalton as Bond. But luckily, Dalton did it exactly as Fleming wrote Bond.
Bond has been on his knees in front of a ruthless assassin, he has a spear gun pointed at him by a villain, he's had his wife murdered in front of him by his mortal enemy. Bond has survived a duel with a deadly marksman, faced a giant of a man with steel teeth. He's been pushed out of airplanes without a parachute. I could go on.
To see him simply give up and let death happen doesn't ring true to the character. Less true to the character is giving him a daughter and a girlfriend that he apparently loves to no end. They crammed in stuff without really thinking of the emotional impact. I left the theatre with a hollow feeling. I felt meh. For a character that I have watched since the 80's in theatres. For a character that I have hero worshipped for as long as I can remember, the death was meh. I felt nothing. This means the death was not impactful or emotional.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed Daniel's films and portrayal of Bond. Sure this Bond didn't know or appreciate the finer things in life. He never showed his superior knowledge over dinner with a villain. But he was Bond, James, FUCKING BOND" He needed a emotional send off. We didn't get it and I hope the film series can come back and
For NTTD it would have still been the gutsier ending.
In OHMSS the whole point is that Bond will never be able to find peace, it's a recurring theme in quite a few novels. I think that would be the wrong ending for Bond. He's not only the glamour spy with the exciting lifestyle, he's paying a price for it.
I think the whole Craig era is a very good deduction of what Fleming intended Bond to be.
Not sure, Cubby had wanted the rights for CR for years. I don't know what he'd have done if he'd gotten them. I think he'd have made a faithfull adaptation, so, a Bond begins story.
No matter how NTTD ended, Bond 26 will face considerable writing challenges as many viewers will be baffled by his death in the previous film. Once they hear Bond, James Bond, they'll forget the previous film quickly and all will continue as normal.
For many of us long term fans, it was a disappointment and will remain so.
I wonder if the producers of future installments of John Wick, Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan, and Ethan Hunt among others will decide killing off their main character is a direction they ought to go.
Well, to start with the last, I think you can only do that after a few actors have played the role, so no. That wouldn't work. I understand people not liking it, and I'm no big fan myself. But it is what it is and I think for the general public it's far less a thing than for Bond fans.
I'm just curious where they'll take it as the geo-political landscape has changed so much, they'll have to make some hard choices.
I can't see it myself. Repeating the ending of the last film, right down to doing it again with the same female lead, wouldn't have felt very gutsy to me at all. In many ways quite the opposite: it would have been playing safe.
And for many of us long term fans it worked very well.
But ultimately this is all pointless, because Craig would only do the movie if he got the ending he wanted.
Edit: honestly, @slide_99 , this is like me criticizing Dead Reckoning, a film I will never watch. This is like critiquing a book where I flipped through a few pages, and not bothered with first page to last. It’s absurd. I’d like to actually hear your opinion on a film you watched, from first to last scene.
Anything you say lacks any credibility because, by your own admission, you’ve never watched the film that you have such a deep distaste for.
I respect that some can’t stand this film,— they have valid reasons (which I don’t have to agree with), because they watched it! Some have even seen it more than once!
But your perspective comes from a place of great hubris.
But then again, it would repeat the same with Vesper in CR, so turning Madeleine into Vesper 2.0?
Remember, the early drafts of QoS have Bond finding out Vesper's kept child and he would adapt that child to raise, so basically echoing it here?
Good to read. I might remind you of that next time you're telling people to "get over yourself", simply because they don't like a movie.
It’s all in the way someone expresses themselves. I’ve had many posts on this forum with me exchanging dialogue with those who are respectful of my views and me of theirs. It’s always interesting and enlightening.
Unfortunately that’s never been with you, so….. maybe be a little kinder in your words!
Thanks buddy!! Have a great day! 👍🏻
Yes it's funny how pretty much all of the other endings have been done: he's lost his lover, left the service, faked his own death, retired to seclusion in paradise, rejoined the service, gone off into the sunset with his lover... him dying was almost the only ending they had left! :)
I'm glad they didn't do that thing with Vesper having a child though: I wasn't keen on the idea of her killing herself and leaving her child in danger. Maybe you could have spun it that she thought if she removed herself from the equation they'd have no more reason to threaten her child, but feels a bit strained.
Yes that is quite funny. This is pretty much never known as 'the one where James Bond has a child'. It's interesting in a way; you'd think there would have been a big fan kickback to that, but I think most folk accepted it fine..?
The filmmakers cleverly distracted from the child character by using
I still spotted it; she was right there with the bunny ;)
Killing Felix in the same story is a bit annoying, though.
While I love the last third of NTTD much more than most of the other members, I think that the biggest plot hole for me is the departure of Nomi. Why should she leave in the boat? This feels very forced. I would accept it if she would have been shot in the leg or something...
Like what I've said, I really liked the concept of Bond dying, it's unique, yet risky and interesting, the problem perhaps is the execution, or how the film handled it.
It doesn't helped that the romance of Bond and Madeleine was just meant to reference OHMSS instead of creating an original romance, the use of the We Have All The Time In The World theme for example, it felt cheap and lazy and removed any of the supposed genuinity of the Bond and Madeleine romance, I mean I would've possibly bought the relationship had they created a new and original theme song for Bond and Madeleine instead of stealing OHMSS and instead made people reminded of Bond and Tracy romance instead of the romance of Bond and Madeleine.
Look at Bond's relationship with Kara for example, why I bought it? Because their romance was given originality, their own identity, so instead of Kara coming off as another Tracy, she comes off as another lover, a second chance for Bond to fall in love again (If There Was A Man really worked as their love song).
So, instead of me feeling for the death of Bond because of investing for his relationship with Madeleine, it reminded me of OHMSS instead and realized that the film failed in handling the ending.
There's no originality and it's already an anomaly in what they're supposed to show or what they're aiming.
If they've gave the romance of Bond and Madeleine some originality instead of relying on the past romances, it would've worked.
Because for me, that death of Bond was a symbol of Bond's love for Madeleine (sure, there's the daughter, but the final scenes before him getting killed already closed the envelope that it's still because of his love for Madeleine).
Not even the daughter thing was given emphasis other than to act as a shock to audience, even Bond doesn't have that much time with his daughter, there's no time of them together, the daughter thing was just a foil, it's not natural there in the narrative, if one may remove the daughter thing, nothing in the narrative or the story would've changed, so again, interesting concept but failed execution.
Second, the death of Felix Leiter, again, good concept, but failed in execution again, why? Because it brought no weight, it carried no weight at all, because the relationship between Bond and Felix wasn't fleshed out enough, it's been years since we've seen Jeffrey Wright.
In Licence To Kill, the near death experience of Felix was really felt because his relationship with Bond was at least developed, we've seen him more in so many films in the past, how many films he'd appeared in before LTK? Many.
Here, he made an appearance in CR, then he's almost like a guest or cameo in QoS, he'd just appeared in that bar then he's gone (but you can correct me here as it's been a long time since I've seen the film), then since 2008, it's been 3 or 4 years, and he didn't appeared in Skyfall, then another 2 years in SPECTRE (he didn't appeared again), then another 5 years before he appeared again in NTTD but he appeared there just to get killed.
And yes, Nomi, again, the concept behind the character was interesting, but failed in execution, again.
I liked Nomi, and I think Lashana Lynch was fine in the role (she did her best), but she's underused, she's wasted, I liked the idea of having a replacement for Bond's number, it's interesting (though, I wished the film explored that more), but, she's not used well in the film, she's just there like a prop.
This film had many interesting concepts but failed in execution.
Film's end rightly focused on Bond over everything else. Nomi's value to the story already played out.
Credit to actor-producer Daniel Craig for apparently demanding the happiest Bond film ending ever in SP.
You say that, but I think we already had a few oo6’s didn’t we?
There’s a nice implication that there are only *ever* nine people with the full ‘license to kill’ (double oh ten doesn’t work, and no one would want to be double oh thirteen, and that’s just how we brits work) and it sets up the football shirt-esque quip aboit retiring the number. (Bond is the Ronaldo of double O agents.)
Not sure about that. More the case that Bond's death completely overshadows and eclipses everything else before it, so it's known as the one where Bond dies.
Had there been a less controversial ending to NTTD, then I think more would have been made of the daughter storyline.
They could have had an Fleming-esque amnesia scene of Bond at the end but that would mean that they would have to excise the missiles and the nanobot storyline entirely, which would change the movie including Safin's revenge on Bond and Blofeld's death. If you start pulling down the nano scaffolding as some here would prefer, you end up with a different movie entirely.