Reporting For Duty
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Categories
What direction would YOU have gone?
CraigMooreOHMSS
Dublin, Ireland
Okay, something popped into my head after talking to someone extensively about Die Another Day yesterday. I have always wondered how the fans would have went storywise with there least favourite entries? Just for fun, I wrote up a new plot synopsis for Die Another Day, and I tried to keep all the good bits of the story so it's not totally different to the original. I'll stick it up here when I have a chance.
Anyone else ever had any ideas as to what direction they would have taken the story of their least favourite entry?
I'm not talking specifics, just general story direction.
Anyone else ever had any ideas as to what direction they would have taken the story of their least favourite entry?
I'm not talking specifics, just general story direction.
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
But since the didn't, the second half still had some potential with a few minor changes:
*as touched on above, Bond remains rogue throughout the whole movie (hence, no invisible car)
*Little to no CGI (I'm looking at you, Glacier Surfer....)
*switch Halle Berry and Rosamund Pike's roles (just think about that for a second and how awesome it would have been)
* climax takes place at the Ice Palace. It was such a unique location, and by the time we got to the plane I was bored and itching for it to end.
* no 'RoboCop suit'
*good they deleted that loser spammer
Took the words right out of my fingertips.
Anyway, back to Die Another Day
What direction? Well, to be brief they tried to do too much with a storyline that actually isn't all that bad on the surface. Like Moonraker, there were so many gaffes made between the script and casting and stunts that you'd have to redo most of the movie. I just don't have the time to pick apart every scene to tell you what I would change. Just settle everything back to some sense of normalcy, Bond movies can definitely have elements of fantasy such as the great sets that Ken Adam created in the past, but movies such as this are like adding too much spice to a recipe- you might like the dish a lot but too much heat, salt, sugar can render the dish unpalatable.
Okay. So a majority of the plot remains intact. Bond, while on a mission to assassinate high ranking Colonel Tan Sun Moon in North Korea, is double crossed, captured and tortured for 18 months. He is then set free in a trade between the West and the Koreans, a trade of Bond for Moon's henchman, Zao. M denounces Bond's ability to work under the assumption that he cracked under torture.
Bond, in an attempt to find the person who set him up, escapes MI6 custody in Hong Kong and tracks Zao to Cuba. There, he crosses paths with NSA agent Jinx Johnson, and the two become lovers. Bond infiltrates a Cuban gene therapy clinic, and finds a recovering Zao - disfigured from their earlier encounter in Korea. The two fight while Jinx also appears at the scene, and Zao is able to flee in a helicopter. Bond searches the Clinic's computer records and finds that Zao's reconstruction surgery was paid for by British millionaire Gustav Graves, prompting Bond to return to London.
Revealing himself to Graves at his fencing club, Bond challenges him to a duel, which escalates into a full blown sword fight through the club. Bond wins the battle, and Graves invites him to attend the opening of his new Ice Palace hotel in Iceland in return. Bond also makes contact with Graves' secretary, Miranda Frost, who seems immune to his charms.
Bond meets M in the underground, and she is more than impressed with his actions, but reveals to Bond that Graves is formerly Tan Sun Moon and has defected to the West, promising to reveal North Korea's nuclear programme plans in exchange for safety, and has requested Bond be the man to ensure that safety. M instructs Bond to go the Ice Palace opening and protect Moon from any danger he might face. Bond however, smells a trap, but M instructs him to follow orders and not allow a thirst for vengeance influence him.
Bond goes to Iceland, where he faces Graves for the first time knowing his true identity. Jinx also shows up, but Bond is hesistant to trust her again after her actions in Cuba. After Graves speech at the Hotel launch party, Bond snoops around the palace, and causes an intruder alert. He is saved by Frost, who reveals herself to be an MI6 undercover agent, and tells him he's right to be suspicious of Graves. That night, the two sleep together. Meanwhile, Zao also turns up, and captures Jinx when he finds her snooping around Gustav's office quarters.
Bond leaves Miranda, and goes to find Jinx, intent on discovering Graves plan. He rescues her and kills Graves' henchmen. Bond confronts Graves in his living quarters, where Graves reveals that the whole defection was faked to draw Bond to Iceland, in order to get revenge for disfiguring him. He also tells Bond that he and a group of rogue generals have seized control of several North Korean nuclear missiles and intend on using them on the West, and unite all of Korea. Frost arrives, and reveals herself to be the imposter who sold Bond out during his time in Korea. Jinx becomes trapped in the palace hotel rooms. Bond is about to be killed by Zao, but uses his EMP ring to escape. Zao pursues Bond across the ice in the Jaguar vs. Aston chase, while Graves and Frost escape the palace and rig it to explode. Bond gets the upper hand on Zao, and eventually kills him by dropping a large block of ice on his Jaguar using a mine from his Aston Martin. Bond saves Jinx again, and they flee the collapsing palace.
Graves flees back to a North Korean airbase, where he and his group of rogue generals have seized power. Bond and Jinx secretly infiltrate the base, and engage Graves and his men before the missiles can be launched. Jinx takes on Miranda in a sword fight, while Bond ducks it out with Graves. American and British forces commanded by M and Damien Falco, obtain authority to launch a missile strike against the base. Jinx kills Miranda, and Bond takes out Graves, and the two escape in a helicopter while the missile destroys the base.
The end.
1. Eliminate the Jinx character altogether
1a Toss out the gene therapy shytt and keep Moon as a rogue North Korean officer.
2. Take away the silly gadgets starting with the invisible car and robo cop suit
3. Take away the stupid sattelite, like mentioned earlier that idea is tired and used up.
4. Bond remains rogue and M dispatches a female 00(played by Rosalind Pike) to bring him in or terminate him using extreme prejudice.
5. In the end Bond and the female 00 join forces to bring down rogue North Korean officers, Zao and Moon
6. Bond is reinstated by M and he and Pike get real cozy.
Where's this picture from, exactly? Doesn't look familiar to me, but I love it.
lol me and him grew up on Bond and would constantly talk like Roger to one another
( sorry about the off-topic post.... but I felt this statement had to be said )
I just wish I could have lived back then, in my prime, where smoking was the norm everywhere. Shame.
I agree with this. In my opinion, Iceland is the biggest problem. Ditch the satellite plot. Find some other military threat--dirty bomb in London and maybe also in the DMZ? Anything would be better than the rehashed "killer satellite" from DAF.
Use the MR novel more explicitly. Swap in Dover for Iceland, which makes sense since Graves has remade himself as British. Tone down the gene therapy plot; make it more like plastic surgery, which is more believable. Make Miranda essentially or actually Gala Brand: she works for MI5. She can still remain a traitor.
Or flip the women's roles: Jinx could be Eurasian, the daughter of a liaison between a Korean woman and an American soldier during the Korean War. Jinx works for the NSA but is secretly on Graves' side.
Oops. Now it's looking like a full rewrite of the second half. ;)
I agree that the Die Another Day finale should have taken place in that wonderful ice palace.
I know we have been trying to improve on DAD the film we all "love to hate", but by all means don't be shy. Feel free to share how you would have done QoS.
I have a few ideas of my own.... :-0
I had a few ideas for Quantum too.
Please, feel free to go first :P
Basically you made it turn into a great film resumed in almost 60 lines. Amazing.
That's actually really good. Well done.
I can really see, if you were the director/official author, DAD could be best Brosnan's Bond film.
-less shakycam
-less action scenes (could possibly do without the foot chase, boat chase, and dogfight; introduce other action scenes, if necessary)
-more character development/plot exposition
-more "breathing time" (an issue I thought was far less prevalent in CR)
In regards to specific scenes/plot points/etc:
-Don't necessarily let White get away, at least not so soon. I've felt that it kind of spoils the victory that was supposed to accompany "Bond becoming Bond" at the end of CR.
-On that note, car chase>titles>brief dialogue>foot chase really does not work for me. I'm hesitant to get rid of the car chase (as I thought it was pretty good), but maybe start like this: After the gunbarrel (with the eerie opening music playing softly, punctuated by the PPK's gunshot...minor detail), a number of shots alternating between the Palio and the safehouse build dark tension until Bond is revealed, setting White down to interrogation. After an intense dialogue, Bond realizes a sleeper agent is present and kills him right as he is to be activated (maybe a very brief bit of action at the end of it, but with the overall idea being to go for tension over action). The pulse-pounding opening sets the shady, seat-on-edge tone for the rest of the film. Alternatively, start with the car chase and have a post-titles interrogation scene that has perhaps less tension (perhaps not), but still with acknowledgment of/emphasis on Quantum's infiltration of MI6/intelligence agencies.
-Don't make M the go-to for showing up wherever Bond goes. There's an ostensibly rogue agent with an itchy trigger finger on the loose, so let's put the head of MI6 in the same room with him? Great idea! I understand the dramatic effects, but there still may be ways to get around it.
-Less frantic globe-trotting. The film seems to move like this: get into a car chase and a foot chase in Italy, then leave; go to London; go to Haiti, get into a boat chase, then leave; go to Austria, get into a shootout, then leave; etc. Haiti could be replaced with a longer stay in Austria, or at least extended by itself. Have following Slate, followed by the introductions of Greene, Medrano, Camille, Elvis, and their stories, take place over the course of a few days. That way, we also get more intrigue, rather than everything coming to light at once in a difficult-to-understand mess. (I understand a lot of people don't see it this way, but then, a lot of people do.) Anyway, more time means more opportunities for good scenes, quality dialogue, etc.
-Possibly make Camille more of an enigma by having her run away (figuratively) after her attempt at killing Medrano is spoiled and having Bond try (and fail) to go after her to try to find out more about Greene. (Actually, before hearing about
-There's relatively little time spent on Fields in the film, so some have found it hard to care much when she gets killed. To amend this, possibly have a scene where M assigns her to reroute Bond (also helping to fill the Judi Dench screentime quota that one has to admit the producers would never neglect), and another, frightening scene where she returns to the hotel room some time after the party to find herself seemingly alone, wondering where Bond is. Then Greene and his cronies show up, a menacing henchman (note on that below) puts his arm around her neck, knife to her throat, and Greene berates her for interfering in a scene that makes him both incredibly creepy and incredibly despicable, playing on his capabilities to perform evil in spite of his "weird fellow in the corner" demeanor (again, a note on this below). They show her something (which we do not see, but which she looks at in wide-eyed, cliffhanger-y horror (hint: it's the oil)) before delivering a snide (and obviously evil, duh) line.
-Now, about the villains: I think the idea of Greene's aforementioned irony (in that he's capable of more than what he appears to be) is fine, but maybe play it up in a better way, and have him draw actual power from what he sees as his capabilities that come from being a villain (or, if not actual power, then perceived power that proves to be Greene's downfall: he is physically overcome by Bond in a moment of self-overestimation in the finale). If you're going to have Elvis and make him goofy, do it in a better way: have the humor turn to rage, have his demise be almost tragic in the loss of an "innocent," whatever. Just do it better. Otherwise, have a more menacing character take center stage as Greene's man (the stone-eyed, brown-haired one, maybe; the brute, silent aspect to him could be his "thing").
-I don't know that I like the idea of Bond and Camille getting into a dogfight so soon after the affair with Mathis; it feels repetitive. Honestly, the film could conceivably have had the two check out the sinkhole without the dogfight and without even having to jump out of the plane. They could have gotten in and gotten out without conflict, and the "revenge" dialogue between them would be perfectly intact. Not terribly easy for the bad guy to find you in a sinkhole, so this provides some of that "breathing time" for a while.
-Okay...maybe have M show up to the hotel. There's drama and friction that comes with in-person confrontation that can't easily be replicated by, say, a phone call, but who knows? By this point, the film should have done a better job of making clear that Bond is only being manipulated by Quantum and the CIA to look rogue, but that he's really under control. (Maybe a line by Bond like: "You've been in this line of business long enough; I'd have thought you'd be able to tell the difference between a man who wants revenge and a man who wants answers.") I suppose Bond could be combating feelings of revenge, but that seems to counteract him learning to be dispassionate after the last film.
-To close the story arc from CR, maybe have Bond end up with the girl. At a Bolivian hotel, after he and Camille have rather obviously "been together," Bond makes a call to M, used in partly to allude to "a loose end that needs to be tied up" (cut soon after to Russia). After leaving the apartment (and maybe M), Bond meets Camille at the corner of the street. As they walk off, Bond drops the Algerian Love Knot in the snow. (Camille: "What was that?" Bond: "Just a memory.") Vesper plays softly for a moment before the film fades out. Endit. Alternatively, leave Camille in Bolivia and have things end the way they did.
Sorry; I know that took a while and had a lot of "maybes", but I tend to imagine these things in detail and don't always know when to take the alternate route or the preexisting one. In any case, thanks if you read that monster!
1. Get rid of the Dominic Green character and that crazy plot.
2. Lose Camille and the Latin General revenge thing
Mr White escapes and Bond has to go after him. He does some real spy work and track him down at his fortified mansion. White has a beautiful bodyguard/henchwoman. (she could be played by Chalize Theron or Stacey Dash :) )
Bond infiltrates and after some run ins with the hench woman he turns her over to the good side.
Bond and the hench woman take down Quantum and kill Mr. White.
Bond has sex with her near the pool, however he is still haunted by his lost love of Vesper.
End Roll Credits
Alternately, cut the entire Camille/Greene backstory and have her working for him as an environmentalist.
Quantum's scheme was not nefarious enough. Add more stakes to the water conflict. Set it in Argentina or Brazil, both more Bondian locations than Bolivia. Or extend it to all of South America. Or have Quantum poisoning the water supply.
Instead of M popping up constantly, somehow involve the CIA in Bolivia (who apparently have a stronger network there) keeping tabs on Bond. This could add more conflict between Bond and Leiter.
Extend Bond's time in Talamone, have the Bond/Vesper dialogue there, and don't send Mathis to Bolivia nor kill him off!
I think i have yused the wind as excuse to show Bond his landing a litle bitl late