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Newman simply needed different variations of the Bond theme to help himself, I mean how difficult is that?. Am also very surprised a Director like Mendes, who's familiar with Bond's history could be careless with Bond Music....coz Newman obviously knows nothing about Bond, so Mendes should have known this & kept a sharp eye on Newman's music.
I like pierce, but his mid Atlantic “Am checkin’ Out” is a low point in a film littered with them
It’s got a feel like the whole thing was filmed on the backlot of Pinewood or in Cornwall (the beach at the start, the temple at the end, bond climbing up the obviously superimposed ladder in Hong Kong, the ice palace set. I could go on).
Vic Armstrong's set pieces look like they are planned by a man past his prime.
Don’t get me started on jinx’s character. It’s as three dimensional as a postage stamp.
Positives - the Cuban guy. The fencing scene. Bonds entrance to Qs lab.
Otherwise a shocker
I'm pretty sure the little use of the Bond theme was a mandate by EON because of how well CR was received rather than your baseless assumption that Newman "knows nothing about Bond". Keep in mind, QOS used the Bond theme even less than SF and SP did, and that was supposed to be AFTER Bond became fully formed at the end of CR.
It'll be interesting to finally hear the Zimmer score and see how much he uses the Bond theme compared to the Arnold and Newman scores. Heck, I wonder EON demanded he use Arnold's arrangement from CR again.
Maybe you must have seen this before, but this is the main reason I said Newman knows nothing about Bond.
You'll notice Arnold is more Comfortable with Questions & even offers indirect advice to Newman on how to use the Bond theme and what the Bond theme means to the franchise. Newman mentions the Bond theme in the Video, without really knowing what it means. Almost like he did a quick study on Bond music, before this interview.....coz he didn't talk seamlessly like Arnold did here.
And Newman is no Arnold....coz even without the Bond theme, Arnold still creates good tracks. Newman needed the Bond theme more to hide his limited knowledge about Bond music.
Nice post! Spot on analysis. :-bd
I don't agree with your opinion. At least to me I get a lot more exhilaration out of the action build up throughout "Grand Bazaar, Istanbul"/"The Bloody Shot" than the more generic fare like "White Knight". Newman may not be a Bond fanboy like Arnold, but I don't think being a fanboy is a prerequisite for working on Bond.
Agreed. Surrender was a great piece to weave into the main action theme. Much better than the Sheryl Crowe song.
Yes, I love it.
i disagree.. i mean, no one really knows for sure, it's all speculative.. but my assumption, based on how much creative control they've let the directors have since CR - i dont feel as though EON mandated anything, they probably just said "do whatever you feel is right for the film" and then got out of the way... i am only basing this on a response MGW gave when asked about the gun barrel being removed from the beginning of CR, QOS and SF.. he made some kind of remark akin to "i don't know why they like moving it around so much, but its what they want to do" (that isn't obviously verbatim what he said, but it was something close).. what that tells me, is this tightfisted oversight that we think EON has over these films, is a lot looser than we may think it is - because if they aren't mandating the gun barrel MUST be at the beginning of every film, then i highly doubt they care about using or not using the Bond theme with any regularity..
Might just be misremembering, but I am almost certain I read or heard this somewhere.
i thought that was the 007 Theme, not the James Bond theme..
You could be right, but I thought the question was asked in regard to the Craig era not using the Bond theme as often, which wouldn't make sense if it was in regard to the 007 theme because that hasn't been used in decades I don't think.
Either way, they probably have to pay royalties for both, so I would assume it would apply to both.
+1
I actually think that might be a bit much. I am up for a bit more of a fuller statement of the theme but I don't think it quite works there. It makes the scene triumphant when they're not really at that point, the original score actually makes it seem a bit more dangerous and nervous. Maybe if it were just the vamp bit playing as the boat emerges that would be good as it would reflect the MI6 team's surprise that Bond's alive; but they're not whooping and hollering so the full bebop bit of the theme doesn't quite fit; the scene needs a bit more tension than the Bond theme gives it.
The plane chase it would work better I think.
Totally off topic I know, but one thing about that scene I've always thought: I wish that Q had given Bond another gadget gun. Last time he got the signature gun, but if this time he'd given him a special gun which had one high velocity explosive round in it, and Bond pressed a button that made the barrel pop out longer or something so we knew he's going to use the explosive bullet... it'd just make shooting down a helicopter a bit easier to buy I guess.
Granted, Bond taking down an enemy with his sidearm is one of the most Bondian things he can do, but he may as well have been throwing stones at the helicopter for all the stopping power the Walther has.
It's a nice bit of movie magic but it's 100% impossible.
The problem is that the calibre of the gun wouldn't be powerful enough at that distance, even if he could pull off a shot in a boat travelling at that speed bouncing off the water.
Yeah exactly; as I say, I think I'd have preferred if it he'd had a special gadgetty gun to make it a bit more understandable.
It needed a bit of Bond lateral thinking there, even the flare-fired-into-the-cockpit thing from the beginning of AVTAK would have been a bit bigger and a bit Bondier.
I dunno, it's got competition from stuff like LALD and TMWTGG if you ask me, even TLD ends on a bit of a whimper; and I do like the explosive MI6 and Bond actually giving up, getting ready to be blown up, looking Blofeld in the eye. But yeah, the boat bit is a bit perfuntory and it all just sort of ends. Maybe if the helicopter had gone down in the Thames and there could have been a bit of sinking-helicopter peril. Maybe he could have crashed into one of the upper gantries of Tower Bridge, I don't know.
Yeah, the Boat Chase should have been more inventive, that's what makes Bond action standout. Maybe even a proper, aggressive & explosive boat chase between Bond & Blofeld, that ends up in an underwater fight between the two, before Bond is then triumphant.
But there's inventiveness in LALD, TMWTGG & TLD's finale. In LALD, Bond uses his Watch's Saw to escape the sharks. In TMWTGG, he poses as his Mannequin and kills Scaramanga & In TLD, after the Cargo Plane fight, there's a mean but playful Gunfight in Whitaker's War museum....and instead of Bond just shooting Whitaker, he uses his key-ring Gadget. And LALD, TMWTGG & TLD all have ear-catching scores to lift their scenes.
I was going to say it'd be difficult to write that in considering Bond had been captured and disarmed by the Spectre goons prior to going into the MI6, but then again he managed to produce his Walther despite the same!
Yes, I agree. Something a bit more interesting. If we were going to go that route, a harpoon gun would have been a fairly exciting way to do it I think. Fired from the boat, possibly even mounted to it? Hobbs And Shaw did an overblown version of it in 2018 during its finale. A tug of war between the boat and the helicopter would have been quite fun to watch, and they still could have brought the chopper down on the bridge.
Yeah that's a good point, didn't he just get it back off them once he'd escaped from them? I do really like that bit: he beats them up with a hood over his head and his hands bound. Spectre has many problems but I do like how James is absolutely double hard in it.
:)
Yes, maybe a bit of a stretch for a boat to have a harpoon gun I guess (and for it to be powerful enough to hit a helicopter) but something like that would be good.
Yeah, that is certainly possible I suppose. I also like that moment too, mainly because of how effortless Daniel Craig makes it look.
I don't know, I've fired some powerful harpoons myself! ;) But I take your point.
I must admit that one of my favourite action film endings in recent years was the climax to Mission Impossible Rogue Nation, which wasn't all-action at all but actually rather small scale and just dramatically really satisfying. And I know that sort of thing suits MI more than Bond because it should really be about the con rather than blowing something up, but equally I don't hate that Spectre doesn't have armies descending from the roof on zip lines. But it's not, sadly, as well-written as M:I.
What Bond should have though, as Gadget Man said, is just that little hint of something clever. He sees a tank as a perfect pursuit vehicle, a plane as something he can pilot down a snowy hill: he sees opportunities where the rest of us would see death. And his jump into the demolition net in the MI6 building has a bit of that, but Blofeld's capture certainly could have done with a bit more because it's the line being drawn under the plot of the whole film. Even a bit of dramatic irony with him being caught by Bond locating him on security camera or something (I don't know! :) ) would have helped.
Yeah and apparently that's how you deal with zip ties around the wrist, although I think I'd break my wrists!
My top favourite moment in Spectre is similar to that one: when he's at the Hoffler clinic and disarms one of the guards very easily, and then the other one starts to make a move on him and he simply says "No" to him and makes him 'stay' like a doggie! :D That's wonderful because it's obvious he's just in a different league to these guys.
None of that matters to me in a Bond film.