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I wish EON had never acquired the rights to SPECTRE and Blofeld. He was the most boring villain in the books anyway!
Instead we get some compelling aesthetic choices, some botched editing, and a production rife with struggles due to the writer strike.
I agree with you. We know by the end of CR that Bond has hardened/is less vulnerable and has become the agent we know and love. We also know from M that she made a deal to spare Bond life.
I'm not sure what, emotionally, QoS adds to all of that, other than confusing trust/non-trust issues. And then we could have had two standalones in the Craig era.
I don't know if it was an intentional move, but Bond sparing Blofeld at the end of SP could be traced back to this QOS arc.
I'm pretty sure he knows he's consigning Greene to death.
The Bond standing over White at the end of CR does not emotionally match the Bond at the beginning of QoS. It's jarring.
I think he was referring to Yusef, who Bond decided to let authorities take over rather than just kill him.
Yes. Quantum was made because of the lack of rights to SPECTRE at the time. It was pretty awkward how they tried to kind of sort of explain it in SP, but yes. That's why I was cool with Quantum being part of SPECTRE. I also thought about how it would have been interesting if they had been two separate organizations that had a war and SPECTRE won + took them over, but it seems we might get a similar idea play out in NTTD with Safin and his forces vs. SPECTRE.
It makes all the difference though when you consider the Blofled brother angle could've been completely avoided. Quantum had potential. Whether or not it would've been fully realized is up for debate, but at least they had the chance to do something different once Bond made his way to the top.
The brother stuff was dumb, but in the end they’re both secret organizations trying to gain control of multiple governments via access to information and make a profit out of them. Spectre could have still been named “Quantum” and it wouldn’t make a difference.
Besides, “Quantum” is just an utterly dumb name to use and confuses with the title of Craig’s second film.
Yes, he knows he's consigning Greene to his death, but he doesn't kill him. QoS is all about showing the public (and M) that Bond isn't just some hard case set on revenge, but a scarred man actually capable of putting his profession at the forefront, instead of his personal feelings. As Fleming wrote 'two different compartments, with no connection' (LALD). It explores this, and the difficulty for others to understand this. Hence the discussions between Bond and Camille, who's dead set on her revenge.
Further more, QoS, like DN, introduces some proper spying 'Bond style' (Tosca scene) to actually start to understand what's going on, instead of having MI6 spell it all out for us and just sending Bond in 'for the kill'. I like the fact that Greene isn't that obvious a villain. It makes him all the more creepier when you start to understand what he's actually doing.
Same goes for Quantum. QoS actually set us up for a few films to come with an organisation which has 'people everywhere' (even to the level of special envoys to the Ministries in the UK). Sadly, SF nor SP used this basis.
I disagree on the notion that QoS is stylistically too different from CR. I think it shows us the opposite: what you can do with a fairly straight foreward setup as CR and give it more dimensions. QoS for me is somewhere near the top of my non-existent favorites list.
One of my biggest thrills during in 1983 was getting Starlog Magazine's Double Bond issue in February or March that had Connery and Moore on the cover and articles on visits to the sets of OP and NSNA with lots of great photos and no spoilers. Younger fans won't get it, but that was huge to get that type of access unless you were in a fan club in those pre-Internet day.
007inAction also mistakenly makes it sound as if they were out at the same time. OP and NSNA were originally supposed to come out within weeks of each other in the summer of '83 and only OP did. NSNA was moved back to fall in the U.S. and I understand it didn't come out in many other countries until December and early '84.
It was the press that tried to make it into a battle of the Bonds, with the fans and moviegoers being the winners. I admit NSNA was a disappointment when I finally saw it, but the excitement of having Connery back for one more go as 007 was great at the time was enough to get it hyped more and I actually thought it would be the one to beat.
I hate McClory but don't hate NSNA (which McClory ultimately didn't have much creative input in). And I have never understood the loathing the film has attracted. It doesn't have the gloss of the EON entries, but it's got a mostly great cast, a witty script, and several standout sequences. Some of the EON films have none of those.
My other issue is that SPECTRE as an organisation is so poorly defined in the film, I dont know why they bothered really.
Why do you hate McClory ?
TERRORIST ORGANIZATION OF COMFORT
It's as nonsensical as turning TOMORROW NEVER LIES into TOMORROW NEVER DIES.
It is all the more curious that the Fleming's title came very late in the production process and the first drafts were titled "Sleep of the Dead". I wonder if the organization had another name in these early versions.
It's likely it didn't even have a name in earlier versions, much like how they were nameless in CR. I wish they had remained nameless, at least that would have made SP more seamless. I think QOS is actually a good title given the context of the film is Bond looking for solace in understanding what made Vesper do what she did, and by the end he found it.
Before the film came out, I assumed Mathis would be the character to coin phrase "Quantum of Solace" like the nameless Governor did in the short story. It could have easily happened during the scene where they're on the plane together where Mathis finds Bond not being able to sleep. In the end I was surprised that never came up.
This was exactly my thought too at the time. It was one of the reasons I rated it so poorly. It was just a mess and seemed willing to throw out too much of what people wanted from a Bond film. And to think they could have so easily included this piece of Fleming too (they wouldn't even have had to have Mathis say the title either, that bit could have been left unsaid).
Same goes for THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS.
The real mystery for me is why the short story FROM A VIEW TO A KILL wasn't adapted. That could have easily been adapted much like how FYEO and TLD were. Kind of an oddity given how the 80s tried to return to Fleming for the most part.
I imagine Mickey G had difficulty seamlessly connecting an assassinated motorcycle dispatch rider plot with Haley's Comet. Then later with microchips and Silicon Valley.
Still, I'd love for the FAVTAK plot to one day be adapted for the screen. That was one of my favorite short stories in that collection.
LOL! Post of the day.