Reporting For Duty
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Categories
Was the invisible car that bad???
I'm not really a fan of DAD. I don't think there's a terrible Bond film, but the whole Icarus story, the bad CGI and the massive drop in quality once we get to Iceland (after a brilliant first half), make it bottom of the pile for me. So I'm far from a DAD fan, I agree with most of the criticisms against it.
But what I don't get is the invisible car. People say how bad it was, but is it really any less far fetched than an Underwater car, a remote control car, a car with lasers in the wheels, etc??? Was it really that bad considering what we had before?
But what I don't get is the invisible car. People say how bad it was, but is it really any less far fetched than an Underwater car, a remote control car, a car with lasers in the wheels, etc??? Was it really that bad considering what we had before?
^ 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
When Bond is following the Mr Kil (ugh!) and his goons at the ice palace why can't they hear the rumble of the engine behind them? Yeah its invisible but surely they'd still be able to hear it.
Nope, Bond was in his invisible Prius that time. Tamahori's decision.
Next week we have a Aston Martin made out of blue cheese and Miss Moneypenny is really a magicked white mouse.
Didn't we do that before though? My point is, is an invisible car really any less realistic than any of the past cars and gadgets? Is it really that much worse than an underwater car?
I agree with this.
They were still wrong, IMO, to do it even if we are trying hard nowadays to bend light using materials with a negative refraction index and so on. Ever since Wells (or even before), invisible men have been part of our fiction, our secret dreams and fantasies, our horror stories and popular science projects. It's the first 'gadget' a four year old would think off. I bet that many folks during the spy craze of the 60s would have suggested this as the next thing for Bond after the jetpack in TB. To 'catch up' with that rather obvious bit of fantastical trickery (nevermind how realistic it might become in the next 20 or so years) in the 21st century actually feels rather lame to me. Though I think the car works in some scenes and isn't in fact DAD's worst problem by far, I'm not entirely convinced it pays off as well as it might, nor do I praise that particular spark of 'creativity' any more than I am disappointed in how much the original stuff had caught up now with its own parodies.
Yes it really was. And I dont remember being able to see it all in the Q scene when it rolls out (well not until John Cleese walks around it and for some reason it refracts his leg. Something it singulary fails to do in the rest of the film) so I dont know where you are coming from with that. OK it leaves some tracks in the snow later on and theres an outline but the bit in which Bond kneels down and opens the door when it is invisible is really quite embarassing.
The biggest problem with it is not in execution (although this is also flawed) but that peoples immediate perception of it is that it is just ludicrous. If you present a gadget that people immediately think is just too ridiculous to be true then you have already lost the battle.
Take the watches in LALD, GE or TWINE. I hardly ever hear criticism of those on a par with the invisble car.
In LALD theres no way something the size of a watch could generate such a strong electromagentic field. Wheres all the power coming from for a start?
Lasers that can cut through solid metal with ease are a myth propogated since GF but people see it as credible so they let things like the GE watch slide.
In TWINE the watch has a winch with enough force to lift a man into the air like Superman which again is ludicrous but as it instinctively feels plausible we let it go.
The Lotus although implausible also feels like it might be possible and thats all you need to go along with it.
The main problem with the invisible car is that the moment you saw it it felt silly and once the audience feel it has no plausibility you are in trouble.
And for all those people who keep saying its actually not that far fetched as we have similar technology, ten years on this is still the best we have:
I dont remember anyone in DAD mentioning that all Graves henchmen were afflicted with infra red vision which is the only way that tank is invisible.
The reason it is sooo bad is that things like the CGI parasurfing do not sound that bad when discussing it ni a preproduction meeting. Personally I would throw out any stunt that couldnt be done 90% for real but theres nothing wrong with the actual concept its just that they went and hired a company still working with Commodore 64s to do the CGI. If ILM had done it we might still have been complaining that CGI was used and not real stuntmen but we'd at least have had a spectacular stunt and not a SNES game.
The inivisible car however just sounds shite the moment you pitch it. Just imagine that meeting:
Purvis - 'We've got a great idea for a gadget'
Babs - 'Whats that?'
Wade - 'A car that turns invisible'
Babs - 'Are you winding me up? Thats the biggest load of bollocks I've ever heard. We're making a serious film here where Bond gets tortured for months in North Korea and you come up with this crock of shit? We're not making an episode of The Man From UNCLE. Why dont you both get your coats and just get the f**k out of my sight.'
MGW - 'What took you so long love?'
The fact that instead she said 'Brilliant stuff guys and we've already got a really good CGI company on board so they can knock it off when theyve done the parasurfing scene which is looking really impressive by the way' should really have been a resigning issue for me. It just staggers me to believe that no one in that meeting stood up and said 'this really is a woeful idea that will see the audience openly laughing at the film.'
I remember Paul Merton ripping the piss out of the invisible car on HIGNFY before I saw the film and all the were laughing along and I thought 'No it cant be that bad. I'm sure they will present it credibly and it wont be totally invisible. I trust EON not to make a mockery of the character.' How wrong I was.
The invisible car is just the cherry on the top of a massive shit pie of a film.
Just so you know, that was a reference to Monty Python put in by...
Also Vanquish, the car name, sounds like vanish. You can bet that's how the idea came up and I reckon there's one person to blame for that. Mr. ThisIsHowCGIWillBeUsedInTheNextGenerationOfBondMovies.
What's your source for this?
Everything I've read indicates that it's MGW who is most concerned about having up-to-date gadgets in the Bond films.
I've never realised that before. Pretty obvious when you think about it. I guess my disgust at the whole thing stopped me picking up on it.
I briefly met Babs at the screening of YOLT last year at the BFI (incidentally Ken Adam was also in attendance signing his autobiography) and she told me thats pretty much how they came to the decision.
I think part of it is the fact that it's a Vanquish, a brilliant car. If it were the 750 from TND, it would only be worse.
DAD was made in 2002 so I can fully expect invisible cars as they are portrayed in the film to be on the streets by 2017 can I?
WE may have stealth aircraft but the craft is never actually invisible to the naked eye. It is invisible on radar screens and whatnot but the thing is never actually invisible. I can accept cloaking devices in Star Trek, and I can accept the Predator bending light to make himself invisible but thats alien technology and Sci Fi . Bond is not Sci Fi.
It's better than the watch laser in ge,or back to tld laser car that slices the car in half.
You can't say these 2 gadgets are more beleivable than the invisible car in dad.
Thank you sir. Some sanity around here amongst all the apologists.
Yes, maybe the car was too futuristic for 2002 Bond, but making it invisible is definitely not out of the realm of possibility.
http://www.mi6community.com/index.php?p=/discussion/comment/80632#Comment_80632