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QoS = terrible. straight to DVD Bourne ripoff.
SF = underwhelming (some good scenes, some really cringey.)
SP = mediocre. draining and uninspired, but with just enough going for it.
That's not controversial here except for QOS.
Why? Qos has a great plot. There are no holes like skyfall. The villain plan makes sense and would work in the real world. All very suprising for a film without any real script
I love QOS but it's a controversial movie here.
But some of it also has to do with fear. Initially doing away with Q and Moneypenny, refusing to open with the gunbarrel, the resistance towards using the Bond theme, it all stems from a fear of being read as mawkish and hackneyed. This is the same root fear present in a lot of media now, particularly in any property focused on a character born out of a different (earlier) cultural landscape. Can you imagine a Superman film today telling you, entirely seriously, that Superman stands for "truth, justice, and the American way? It's almost unthinkable. It would be mocked out of the box office.
The only way it could feasibly be done is ironically, because that's where we're at. It has to be regarded as ridiculous. Accepting sentiment sincerely on its face is tantamount to admitting naiveté.
You hit the nail on the head. well said.
One can bring back some of the classic cues in subtle ways and reimagined. Bond commenting on his martini being 'perfect' at the casino in SF is another example.
Eventually they can drop a "shaken not stirred" into a future film, as long as they don't overload the same film with a lot of other tropes. The trick is to apply these things sparingly and in new & different ways.
When one has a gag or scene focused on an ejector seat twice in two successive films however, one has lost the plot.
It's the same sort of thing as Bond in THUNDERBALL being treated like a red-headed stepchild at home when he's out in the world doing his best, just on a larger scale. By the time of SPECTRE they're ready to do away with the Double-Oh Section itself, and now Q knows better. Plus it's good for the story.
It's called the Double-oh Program now mate. Get with the err program.
Come to think of it I think that was actually more offensive than the stepbrother thing.
And you're easily offended.
Not really. Only when people shit on Fleming with dismal Bourne-esque Americanisms.
I think this is my point. That it has to be reimagined in a way that allows people not to scoff at it, per the scene in SF you cite.
"Shaken not stirred" is interesting, inasmuch as Rog's Bond didn't say it. I think there was something of the same fear I'm speaking about now operating even back then, though perhaps more localized since the franchise was that much younger at the time.
In citing examples earlier when it came to Bond, I confined myself to mainly surface-level items—Q, MP, gunbarrel, theme, etc., but cited something more attitudinal as it pertained to Superman. So let me back up a few feet and shift gears, because the supposed mawkishness I'm teasing out doesn't necessarily end at surface level elements like the martini. It extends to certain beliefs.
I think, for example, of Paul Greengrass commenting on Bond working for "Them" (the state) and not "Us" (the people), and how his supposed distaste for Bond stems from its ideas about power and masculinity. It makes me wonder how many others you would find in a general audience who shared that distaste, yet were present in the audience nevertheless. There's an asymmetry there. So why attend? Well if they were fans before a certain time (we could try to figure this out; let's say GE for argument's sake), if they were fans pre-GE, probably because they're lifelong fans. If post-GE, maybe something else is at work.
For instance, if anything the most recent Bond films have largely played Greengrass's encoded messages in a way that I should think Greengrass would favor. I look at QOS, for example, and see a Bond working mostly independently and a villain who is less Greene (he turns out to be more or less a secondary character that got in Bond's way) and more government-in-general (Medrano and Beam). SF is arguably the most patriotically received Bond film in recent memory, yet is ostensibly about how destructive are M (causes two deaths before the pre-creds alone) and MI6 (M talks of Britain's biggest threats coming from the shadows, which implicates her very own organization, whose conduct and foundational attitudes as they are portrayed are chiefly responsible for all the suffering in the film). SP, meanwhile, despite narrowing down the villainy in MI6 to one man alone takes what was described by one reviewer as a "pro-Snowden" stance (and that the reviewer said this probably matters more than whether or not the film really did take that stance).
We all complain about how increasingly personal the stakes have gotten for OO7 since LTK. I have to wonder if that says less about a lack of ideas and more about an avoidance of confronting a fading ability to take sincerely the kind of belief in Britain to which Bond owed his existence in the first place.
Could Bond parachute off a cliff and open a Union Jack parachute now? Would the audience cheer, snigger, or cringe? I don't know.
To be clear I'm not suggesting Bond be read politically or be political itself. I don't even mean to endorse the readings of the films as I gave them. They are each one singular reading of many. I'm simply trying to provide an example of how difficult sincerity has become in general, and how that has maybe shaped Bond. I hope I'm not talking applesauce.
Quite agree, there, my friend. ;)
Yes, I see your point about how Bond films during the Craig era (and perhaps as early as LTK) have subtly embraced anti-establishment & even rebellious tendencies. Regarding your question about whether overt patriotism and belief in Britannia is possible going forward, I think it is.
While you're correct in stating that M, MI6 and even Bond were partially responsible for a lot of what happened in the film, they were also responsible for ultimately eradicating the threat. They did this by coalescing around values of trust, core loyalty and in Bond's case, his own ancestral home. Silva initially mocked Bond's loyalty to country but eventually he ended up the loser. I took it to mean that even though Britain is older and weaker, it can still rebuild and resurrect (like Bond, and mirroring Tennyson). Nothing is written in stone.
Arguably SF was a film ahead. If it they had released it in 2019, I think it could have been an even greater success (in the UK at least) on account of Brexit. While one perhaps can't have something as flamboyant as a Union Jack parachute today, one can certainly have a Royal Doulton Union Jack bulldog as a stand-in. ;)
The threats have been more nebulous of late. Non state actors as it were. That has impacted Bond films perhaps. Now that Russia, North Korea and Iran are coming back into the frame, it's possible that a more traditional take on things is in order with her Majesty's loyal terrier just following orders for once.
Interestingly, Richard Donner had pointed out when making Superman: The Movie, that when he did put "truth, justice and the American way" in the film, it was ironic just coming from Watergate, Nixon and the Vietnam War. I suppose the irony was that Superman actually meant it.
They never would have pulled the step-brother crap in the Brosnan era, nor would they have done the lame love story. Brosnan-Bond never rode off into the sunset with a woman or allowed his feelings for her to prevent him from killing the villain. This is the over-emotion of the Craig era. That said, SP would have been better with Brosnan in it.
Ending a film with a Bond girl isn't "riding off into the sunset." Riding off having quit MI6 to be with Swann is. Also, Brosnan-Bond never had a more personal connection to a villain than being former colleagues (Trevelyan) or knowing the villain's wife (Carver), both of which are far more reasonable and less soap-opera-esque than "Brofeld".
The Brosnan era had his it's-what-keeps-me-alive moment. The Paris encounter with did I get too close, and his farewell kiss to her corpse. The Elektra touch her tear on the computer monitor to his last embrace of her lifeless body. DIE ANOTHER DAY set him up with professional failure getting captured in North Korea. I don't have a problem with those story elements.
Brosnan was reportedly itching for an ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE or CASINO ROYALE story to tell. So I don't think he'd skip a beat with the Brother-howsie stuff, as it's called. But we'll never know.
Exactly. Those elements worked within their respective stories. The love story and step-brother-gate in SP feel very awkward and shoehorned in.
Where they have gone wrong is in the other direction. Overdoing and relying heavily on old tropes like the ejector seat gag and the DB5. Even those who adore the car (I don't care so much) must be getting tired of it by now?
'wohoo, i'm an Austrian, I'm a legal Austrian I'm an Austrian in New York'
love that title song...
Now, I am certainly not trying to say that the Broz era was some kind of perfection as it most certainly had its own issues. But at least they where not scard to try to make a proper Bond film, even if they failed on a couple of them.