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Atleast i have liked that Bond and M end with more drama and there not wait to give us that with Bond 24. Kind of samething happend with QOS where we see more about what Bond feel about Vesper then in CR.
I tend to agree with this. Dench was certainly the leading lady, but the Bond girl? No. At bottom--so to speak--a Bond girl must be eye-candy, and she must be, well, a girl, i.e. young woman. And she cannot be a recurring character. Thus, it's Severine by default.
Indeed. And I might add that in a way, SF seems to be emulating the novel TMWTGG, where Mary Goodnight is the Bond girl, but overall used very little, compared to the Bond girls in the other novels.
If she had gotten another 20 minutes of screen time, she might well be my favorite Bond girl of all time. As is, she makes my top five.
Maybe she should have survived the shooting, then testify against Silva later, or something. But then what to do with her? Oh, maybe have her like Tiffany Case in the novel, with Bond breaking up with her between SF and Bond 24. But wouldn't it destroy the whole point of her character, who needs to be tragic and ultimately fail at her attempt at redemption?
I agree with your final sentence. As much as I would have loved more Severine, I think they handled the character very well, and I'm not sure I'd change a thing. Severine's death sequence is one of the most memorable sequences in all of Bond, IMO. Would be a shame if it had never been shot.
That's a possibility. Another couple of 10-minute sequences featuring Severine between the casino sequence and her death might have worked. But SF would have become a rather longish film in that event.
Then you could have the final scene with M going "00-Seven!' in a whole new context.
A missed opportunity.
She absolutely did not have to be written out in such a way and I could have definitely stood for a lot more of her. Every scene with her was like virtual nectar rolling around on my tongue. I'd like to think Mendes would have liked more of her in the script as he's said he absolutely loved her looks and ability, but it's apparent that the writers had her pegged for the sacrificial lamb and that's what we got.
Severine/Marlohe will always be among the most iconic Bond girls of all time =D>
It is because EON is longer interested that the Bond movies are for "warm blooded heterosexuals in railways trains, airplanes or beds" .
A statement entirely based on the last two films and their scripts, which everyone knows you feel are the worst two. I suppose shagging two of them last time around was something that interferes with your view and thus your reason for omission.
And I see you backpedaled and amended your post to include beds, which is exactly where Bond and his Turkish girl were seen. Better fix that too :))
I amended the Fleming quote to include the entire statement, not to backpedal. I do remember those two scenes, eventhough they lasted a combined 2 minutes of screen time at most and they appeared to be more perfunctory than anything. I do not think the producers are interested in having Craig-bond as the ladies man as the previous Bonds, in fact Babs has pretty much said so.
This stance by the way isn't without precedence. They looked at it this way when Dalton was Bond too. He had Kara and Lupe for sure, Pam is up for debate as Carey Lowell stated in "Bond Girls Are Forever" that her character did not sleep with Bond. Craig Bond had Vesper and Fields, the same exact amount. This time he had two, so strictly by the numbers this hardly counts as a step backwards.
And Ian Fleming having Bond's personal secretary Mary Goodnight in the field in TMWTGG novel is also a bit like Moneypenny being a field agent in Skyfall before she becomes a desk agent/secretary. In this way Miss Moneypenny being a field agent makes sense and better still, has Flemingian precedent.
Well said. It's very clear to me and always was that M was going to be the focus as it was her last film, and that they weren't going to do a perfunctory cold type of reintroduction of Moneypenny and Q, let alone not give Mallory some type to establish his future relationship with Bond. Beneath all of that, an honest examination reveals it is very much a Bond film and more of a classic type than CR was at the same point in time. It is different than the usual formula, and for some they don't want a Bond to take these sorts of chances. It if isn't mostly formulaic, they are probably not going to enjoy SF as much because they want their Bond movies to be a certain way. It's their opinion and they can have it no matter how messed up and illogical as some may express it.
@Ludovico follows nicely on my above point. Four of the 6 previous Bonds would sleep with anything that had a pulse, and focused on womanizing. Dalton and Craig have been a little bit different in that regard, they are more "one woman" types of Bond in the course of a mission. But very much Bond underneath it all.
Thanks for the rear guard back-up, Sir Henry!
Correct on Dalton and Craig and while the AIDS scare of the late 1980s may have accounted for Dalton's monogamy, Kingsley Amis made the point that on the whole the literary James Bond had on average only one girl per Bond novel adventure (i.e. per year) and that this was not womanising so much as per the normal untied bachelor of the Swinging Sixties and its promiscuity. Fleming's Bond was not the women-coming-out-of-the-woodwork excesses of say Roger Moore's Moonraker (1979) but that is the image James Bond unfortunately has universally as a result of the hugely-popular Lewis Gilbert Bond films of the 1960s and 1970s. This image started to be chipped away a little bit but I'm glad to see a more mature and Flemingesque approach to Bond and women in the Craig era.
You're welcome!
That's a good point about Dalton and the AIDS scare, that was exactly why they took that approach at the time and it was publicized. I remember a lot of people groaning about it then, and even I got caught up in that until I saw the same mature approach we're getting now. Connery, Lazenby, and Moore could get away with that, it was a different time when the worst thing you worried about was syphilis and that was not a death sentence with the proper treatment.
It got me to thinking about the in-between era of Brosnan's and the numbers there, where the issue of AIDS seemed to take a big backseat for throwaway moments that were shoehorned in out of some sense of homage to the past. Yet another reason to consider the era a "greatest hits" package. I think most of Brosnan Bond's affairs of the heart lacked depth and meaning and the charm of the old days.
GoldenEye- there was Natalya and that giddy Caroline. The pathetic drivel there that they shoehorned in with the latter hardly counted as we never see them sleep together, so it really came down to being all about Natalya. And this relationship and the accompanying dialogue was easily the best done of the era as far as a real chemistry between the two actors, a sense of humor, and some emotional content. We needed more of this in my opinion during this era. Alas, it was not to be. But it makes GE all the more enjoyable for me.
TND- Here we get three, Paris, Wai Lin, and Inga. But considering the "retro" feel of this film, which I always considered to be a tribute of sorts to both the past as well as Cubby, this was OK because it fit the theme of the film. And the dialogue was good too. I really liked the Paris part of the movie most of all that revealed the human being beneath Bond and some surprising revelations about his feelings. If only Monica Bellucci had played her :(
TWINE- We get three girls again and now things go off the rails a bit in this area as we've clearly retreated into the past in this aspect. First off is the dreck of Dr. Warmflash. Schlock and hokum at nearly it's very finest here. The best of schlock and hokum was still on it's way. I guess someone must have been pissed off at doctors because we have two of them looking like complete fools in this movie. This was mostly about Elektra and the awkward computer tears moment aside this was well done. Why couldn't it have stayed this way? Well, there was Dr. Jones and her copious rack yet to consider, which delivered nothing in the way of charming dialogue or characterization. Just one good classic line after they survived the pipeline bomb, only to be ruined by the X-mas comes once a year.
DAD- Well, we're back to two since poor Peaceful Fountains never stood a chance. And I must honestly say that the whole deal with Miranda Frost was well done. The part was well written and well acted by Rosamund Pike. Now we (cough) get to Jinx. I thought Warmflash and Caroline were poorly written in until these lines started seeing the light of day. After this, I laugh out loud at any poster who would criticize Bond and Vesper on the beach. They lose credibility points if they think the Jinx thing wasn't far worse. The "stripped my armor" was a misstep for sure, but with P&W you always had to be ready for that.
In summation, Brosnan Bond doubles Dalton and Craig for women by a 4 to 2 margin in their respective first two films and leads Craig 7-4 after three. But let me be clear. I didn't write this to bitch about Brosnan himself and criticize what the script called for him to participate in. What I am trying to say is in defense of the principle that "sometimes less is more". Take out Caroline and especially Warmflash and you have a Bond more in line with Dalton and Craig, and one more appropriate in the spirit of Fleming as well.
One amendment: Fleming's Bond was more a product of the straight-laced fifties than the sybaritic sixties.
I am not suggesting that Bond conduct orgies in his Chelsea flat, but we can also agree that the Fleming-Bond was a real romantic rather someone who just wanted to have sex with the Bond girls. The Bond movies past TWINE have really gotten away from this. I really do not see any comfort level in having the new Bonds including this attitude, generally. Yes he falls in love in CR, but that was almost out of place contextually.
He was more emotionally involved in some of the books than in the movies, but not always. And certainly not to the point of labeling him a romantic. Let's not forget that he has no problem having affairs with married women, he seems rather detached about the situation.
How true that is. I'd say well over 90% of the time Bond is definitely out more for his own sexual gratification than serious romance. In fact, only Tracy and Vesper truly count in the ultimate level of his true emotions. These are the only two times he wants to quit his job and give up his bachelor's lifestyle because having sex is a release from the constant tension and danger. The books point more to him having one woman at a time, but rarely do we see the cinematic version truly mirror that from film to film. Perdogg's rationale here "the Bond movies past TWINE have really gotten away from this. I really do not see any comfort level in having the new Bonds including this attitude, generally" wants to herald some big recent change, as usual due to his personal issues with the past 4 films, but when you can be objective TWINE clearly got away from Fleming with all the sexual romping about with Warmflash there, as did many other films before it that was very prominent from 1962-1985 including all the fun Bond has at Piz Gloria despite every indication that he had fallen in love with Tracy. Yet he singles out Vesper as not being "contextual" when just like Tracy, the minute he appears to realize this is a life changing event, he never considers another woman until their untimely deaths. Fields in QOS is nothing more than a sexual distraction, and he clearly avoids several passes made by Camille knowing that she is a rebound tailor made to happen with all they have in common. I suppose (sigh) I will have to soon rebut some dreck theory about Skyfall next.