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Nothing really.
Some people die when they slip on a pavement. Some people survive after they got a bullet in the head. It happens.
I know crazy stuff happens. That's not really the point I was trying to make. I'm okay with crazy, implausible things happening in Bond. It's just when there's no explanation that I find it annoying. My point is that when we leave Bond at the end of the PTS he should be dead or about to die (unless someone pulls him out of the water, he's going to drown). But soon after he's up and about, right as rain, no explanation needed of how he gets from A to Z. That's different from showing him survive some crazy fall or explosion or being shot. It's not how 'most' films are made. I.e. if a major character goes through something like this, you usually have some explanation of what happened and how they made it out alive.
In DAF Bond survives the crematorium. It's totally implausible, but we see the coffin being opened and him climbing out. There's some explanation, no matter how daft it is.
On a side note, a very good scene I love where you are 100% left to imagine what happens is in the movie "Signs" when Mel Gibson is looking terrified outside his house. What is he seeing? My imagination ran wild the first time I saw it.
It must have been a conscious decision as it happens twice. In the PTS and later when Bond is under the icy lake. For the sake of a two second scene showing Bond's head bursting out of the water we have this issue about him surviving.
I guess Mendes must've decided to let the viewer have a bit of dramatic tension for what it's worth.
The lake moment is resolved when Bond fires the flare and it reveals the hole in the ice. We don't need to see him clambering out.
I understand what you mean. A few contrived things bothered me about SF, not this one. But I blame Logan for the plot holes and sometimes contrived scenario. He make great dialogues, sometimes great characters, but often uses shortcuts when he writes the story.
No, but I recall it was one of the many issues the nay sayers had with the film when it was pulled apart at the outset. Mind you it was a time when they were pulling every frame to pieces.
You're right - it was one of the things I picked up on at the time. I think one of the observations I made was that half the fun of the best PTS and action scenes in Bond is seeing how Bond survives these scrapes, and Mendes/Logan denies us that little pleasure. I don't know if that was deliberate to move the focus away from Bond, or just lazy writing, but I didn't appreciate it.
For me Bond's non-escape from the lake was a missed dramatic opportunity. Purely from a practical perspective, Bond is going to need some ingenious way of escaping - getting out of a hole in a frozen lake on your own is notoriusly difficult, and many films have made dramatic mileage out of just this scenario. Mendes/Logan just decide to skip it. At the very least seeing Bond stab his 'old ways are the best' knife into the edge of the ice would have been a nice touch. I just think seeing Bond's persistence, as he hauls himself out of the lake and follows off in pursuit of Silva across the moorland, would have actually added to the tension. A view of the knife also perhaps helping set up the 'kill' in the chapel.
May be everything I'm saying just helps explain why I'm not a director, but I just would have liked more.
As with a lot of SF, I loved the whole concept and scenario at the end of SF, but I personally found the way the final act is constructed and executed lacked tension. It's all a bit plodding and without real sense of danger. I don't know if any one here has seen Hitchcock's 39 Steps from 1935? I cannot believe that Mendes was not in some way paying homage to some of the Scotland sequences in that. But by comparison I think SF actually comes up short. Perhaps it's not fair to compare to a master like Hitchcock, but I really did expect more from Mendes. To me it just underlines that he's not that great at action - but I would still have expected better storytelling.
Of course the explanation of how Bond survives can sometimes be as bad as not showing anything I suppose. I was never a fan of Bond flying through the air to catch the plane in GE, but it would have been odd if the PTS had just ended with him flying off a cliff. Ditto , imagine the TLD PTS with Bond just floating unconscious in the waters around Gibraltar. Or Bond skiing off the mountain, but no parachute in TSWLM. Just would have been really odd.
Now as far as the topic that has been consuming recent discussions is concerned: Bond's means of survival of the PTS is subtly but definitely given, at least in my eyes. As Adele begins to sing the theme song of "Skyfall," a normal sized woman's hand grasps Bond's wrist. We then see Bond being pulled deeper into the water by two fingers of a gigantic female hand, grabbing him by one foot. The PTS is in full force now, showing us what we can assume to be Bond's hallucinations as he succumbs to a watery death. But my perception of the normal sized woman grasping Bond by the wrist...followed by Bond's next real scene, a little ways into the movie as he makes fairly desperate love to a woman who is never really identified to us...is that this is the woman who saved Bond's life, pulling him out of the water at the last moment and nursing him back to health. You can argue that this point should have been made a little more plainly, but the question at least has been answered.
It's funny that I always feel that Pierce stole the role from Tim, as actually you could argue that the opposite is true. But Tim was so much better. Sorry Pierce, you're a nice guy, but Dalton wipes the floor with you !
;)
Not sure about that, but Dalton was a breath of fresh air after the highly entertaining Roger era. That is not a criticism of the legend that is Rog , just a statement that Dalton was just what was needed.
Like Reeve nailed Superman or Keaton nailed Batman, or my carpenter nailed the boards to my bathroom walls.
Others can do great work, but awesome is awesome.
By hinsight Dalton was needed, although I suspect that what people wanted at the time was more of the same, even if it meant a poor man's Roger Moore. On long term, however, the franchise would have suffered from it.
Dalton may not have been what people wanted, but at the very least nowadays his short era is a beacon of light for many Bond fans who watch the entire series in order.
Lazenby gets all my respect for basicaly nailing the part in his first movie role.
Moore gets all my respect for make the role his own and staying classy and enteraining no matter what crazy stuff was in the script for 7 movies.
Dalton gets all my respect for acting his heart out to make his own personal take on the character.
Brosnan gets all my respect for being the Bond of my childhood and being a total legend on and off the screen.
Craig gets all my respect for completely reinventing the role and making Bond relevent in the post 9/11 world.
^^ THIS^^
Think it would have been easier for Brosnan to return in 1995.
Dalton was indeed a much needed shot in the arm to the franchise.
Much as I retrospectively like his performances, I also don't think however that he would ever have been commercially viable to the degree Brosnan was, even with a 3rd film under his belt. I think the jury is also still out on whether Lazenby would have been commercial viable in the long run as well, even though many idolize his performance on these forums. What these actors two did was deliver that needed serious jolt to the series - a sort of creative reawakening - that is needed in any long run endeavour.
Similar to the shaking up of composers from time to time, or directors, any long standing operation needs a one shot drastic change in tone to keep it alive. In fact, it keeps everyone on their toes
Arguably Roger Moore's long tenure received that with FYEO and I contend that this is why he was able to stay on for another 4 yrs as Bond and still be viable. A series of FYEO type movies in succession wouldn't have set the box office alive however, and may have jeopardized Bond in the long run.
QoS also did that for Craig's run. Initially boo'd by many, it is already being looked back on as a creative burst. However, a movie with that tone is only really viable as a one-off.
Ultimately these are commercial endeavors, and so must appeal to the masses. Many times, that is not the same as quality. Craig's era has balanced it brilliantly so far, only done better during Connery's time. Whether it can be sustained remains to be seen.