If Die Another Day had featured Wai Lin again instead of Jinx -OR- could it HAVE been fixed at all?

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  • Creasy47Creasy47 In Cuba with Natalya.Moderator
    Posts: 40,976
    chrisisall wrote:
    Creasy47 wrote:
    That's what we're talking about: an improvement. DAD wouldn't have skyrocketed from what some call "the worst piece of trash ever" to "Oscar-worthy material," but the film would've been improved by that.

    Thank you sir!

    Anytime!
  • edited October 2013 Posts: 15,125
    Creasy47 wrote:
    Dragonpol wrote:
    Well it would have been an improvement over Jinx, but I doubt unless there were a new script written that it would have made much of a real difference beyond that fact.

    That's what we're talking about: an improvement. DAD wouldn't have skyrocketed from what some call "the worst piece of trash ever" to "Oscar-worthy material," but the film would've been improved by that.

    I am not even certain of it. The main Bond girl would have been better cast, that's about it. But the character would have been written differently to fit the tone of DAD, so who knows how changed she would have been. Maybe even the fact that Wai Lin was better would have stressed how much the rest was horrible.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    Ludovico wrote:
    Maybe even the fact that Wai Lin was better would have stressed how much the rest was horrible.
    I'd much rather have a lousy cake with great icing than a lousy cake with lousy icing.
  • Posts: 15,125
    chrisisall wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    Maybe even the fact that Wai Lin was better would have stressed how much the rest was horrible.
    I'd much rather have a lousy cake with great icing than a lousy cake with lousy icing.

    But why waste good icing on a bad cake? And at best, Wai Lin would have been one good, okay cherry among a very badly baked, very badly made Black Forest gâteau.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    Ludovico wrote:
    Wai Lin would have been one good, okay cherry among a very badly baked, very badly made Black Forest gâteau.
    One good cherry can make all the difference.
    See: Solitaire.
  • Posts: 15,125
    chrisisall wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    Wai Lin would have been one good, okay cherry among a very badly baked, very badly made Black Forest gâteau.
    One good cherry can make all the difference.
    See: Solitaire.

    LALD is not my favourite, but it had way more good things about it than DAD and it was not only Solitaire which redeemed it.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    Ludovico wrote:
    LALD is not my favourite, but it had way more good things about it than DAD and it was not only Solitaire which redeemed it.

    My POINT was that her presence in it sweetens it. Redemption isn't possible due to one factor alone.
  • Posts: 15,125
    My point is that she may not have changed anything, given the weakness of the ensemble, and at worst she would have been turned into a caricature.
  • saunders wrote:
    On reflection, the only part of DAD I do like is when Jinx in her orange bikini walks out of the sea in slo-mo, take that away from me and I may as well throw the DVD away!

    The scene on the boat with M? The Cuba stuff before Jinx starts talking? The fencing? The Clash? The car chase?

    DAD is shit overall but it does have good bits imo.
  • saunderssaunders Living in a world of avarice and deceit
    edited October 2013 Posts: 987
    saunders wrote:
    On reflection, the only part of DAD I do like is when Jinx in her orange bikini walks out of the sea in slo-mo, take that away from me and I may as well throw the DVD away!

    The scene on the boat with M? The Cuba stuff before Jinx starts talking? The fencing? The Clash? The car chase?

    DAD is shit overall but it does have good bits imo.


    Umm...nope, I'm going to just stick with Jinx wobbling in a bikini, thanks all the same! ;)
  • TheWizardOfIceTheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'
    edited October 2013 Posts: 9,117
    Ludovico wrote:
    chrisisall wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    Wai Lin would have been one good, okay cherry among a very badly baked, very badly made Black Forest gâteau.
    One good cherry can make all the difference.
    See: Solitaire.

    LALD is not my favourite, but it had way more good things about it than DAD and it was not only Solitaire which redeemed it.

    But if you swap Jinx for Solitaire in their respective films its still not enough to pull LALD below DAD. Jinx is the iceberg upon which HMS DAD founders but it still takes factors such as the captain going full steam ahead into an ice field, no binoculars in the crows nest, not enough lifeboats and the Carpathia taking hours to reach the survivors to create a catastrophe with all hands lost to Davy Jones locker.

    Nearly all great disasters are built from a cumulative effect of human errors and pieces of ill luck on the day. The likes of the slide whistle over the car jump, the double take pigeon or the Tarzan yell are, at worst, like losing an engine; but you can happily continue flying on three. DAD loses all four - and the flaps, tail and landing gear. They even run out of those little packets of nuts.

    Jinx for Wai Lin might buy you a few more minutes flying time but you're still ploughing out of control into the ground at some point.

    The scene on the boat with M? The Cuba stuff before Jinx starts talking? The fencing? The Clash? The car chase?

    DAD is shit overall but it does have good bits imo.

    The scene on the boat and the pre Jinx Cuba stuff is what? 10 mins out of a 130 min film? That's a grand total of 7.7% of the screen time.

    I don't agree that the fencing or the car chase are that good (too choreographed and silly in places) and if you're reduced to listing a 10 second burst of the Clash as a highlight you're not so much clutching at straws as hoarding bales of hay in a Swiss vault.
  • Posts: 15,125
    saunders wrote:
    On reflection, the only part of DAD I do like is when Jinx in her orange bikini walks out of the sea in slo-mo, take that away from me and I may as well throw the DVD away!

    The scene on the boat with M? The Cuba stuff before Jinx starts talking? The fencing? The Clash? The car chase?

    DAD is shit overall but it does have good bits imo.

    I am TheWizarsofIce in that, the fencing and the car chase are not very good. Actually, I find them horrible. They are ridiculous, laughbly silly and overlong.
  • edited October 2013 Posts: 12,837
    @Wizard Well I quite like the PTS too but @saunders had already said he didn't like that.

    For the most part I like the first bit of DAD. It has crap bits (the theme song and the CGI bullet), but I think it's enjoyable enough until Jinx speaks.

    London Calling playing is one of my favourite musical moments of the franchise. Yeah it's too short to be thought of as a highlight and it doesn't come close to redeeming the film but I like The Clash and I like James Bond so I enjoyed having the two together.

    Wish they'd used it in a better film though.
    Ludovico wrote:
    I am TheWizarsofIce in that, the fencing and the car chase are not very good. Actually, I find them horrible. They are ridiculous, laughbly silly and overlong.

    If you find the fencing too ridiculous and silly then you must find the majority of the Bond films horrible.
  • Posts: 15,125
    Let's look at it this way: had Dr. No been the main villain of DAD would the movie have been any better? Let's say we cram him in, he survived his boiling end in DN for 40th anniversary's sake, he gives orders to or replace Graves, or he IS Graves after going through gene therapy (Toby Stephens taking the role of Joseph Wiseman!), etc. Could it improve in any way DAD?
  • edited October 2013 Posts: 15,125
    Ludovico wrote:
    I am TheWizarsofIce in that, the fencing and the car chase are not very good. Actually, I find them horrible. They are ridiculous, laughbly silly and overlong.

    If you find the fencing too ridiculous and silly then you must find the majority of the Bond films horrible.

    That's a slippery slope argument AND a straw man argument. The fight was too long and quickly turned into a demolition derby. Silly, even for a silly Bond. There is nothing silly in the golf game in GF, in the hand to hand combat in FRWL, heck, I'll take pretty much all mano a mano fights of the series over the fencing, including the one against NicNac.
  • edited October 2013 Posts: 12,837
    Ludovico wrote:
    including the one against NicNac.

    The fencing is silly but Bond chasing a midget around the sofa before ultimately stuffing him in a suitcase is better?

    If you honestly think this then there's no point discussing this anymore. We'll just agree to disagree.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    Ludovico wrote:
    The fight was too long and quickly turned into a demolition derby. Silly, even for a silly Bond.
    I disagree- I thought it was full of drama & energy. And it was believable that no one stopped it, they most likely couldn't process the escalation.
    Then Frost has her line, and I'm practically in tears laughing every time.
  • timdalton007timdalton007 North Alabama
    Posts: 155
    chrisisall wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    The fight was too long and quickly turned into a demolition derby. Silly, even for a silly Bond.
    I disagree- I thought it was full of drama & energy. And it was believable that no one stopped it, they most likely couldn't process the escalation.
    Then Frost has her line, and I'm practically in tears laughing every time.

    Same here. I think that the film goes fairly well up to after the fencing and then it starts going off the rails as is definitely after the film goes to Iceland. That's not to say the first hour or so is perfect (CGI bullet in the gunbarrel, some of the dialouge but especially Jinx's) but it's definitely better than what follows!

    timdalton007
  • Posts: 15,125
    Ludovico wrote:
    including the one against NicNac.

    The fencing is silly but Bond chasing a midget around the sofa before ultimately stuffing him in a suitcase is better?

    If you honestly think this then there's no point discussing this anymore. We'll just agree to disagree.

    Oh don't get me wrong, I dislike this part of TMWTGG. But I don't expect more from an aggressive dwarf in a movie marred with problems. I would, however, expect far more from a fencing champion fighting a 00 agent than the overblown, overlong comedic sword fight we had in DAD. At least in TMWTGG the combat was shorter.
    chrisisall wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    The fight was too long and quickly turned into a demolition derby. Silly, even for a silly Bond.
    I disagree- I thought it was full of drama & energy. And it was believable that no one stopped it, they most likely couldn't process the escalation.
    Then Frost has her line, and I'm practically in tears laughing every time.

    There was no tension in it, it ended up with Graves running away from Bond and the both of them breaking stuff. I guess at least he didn't have his RoboCop suit.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    Ludovico wrote:
    I guess at least he didn't have his RoboCop suit.

    Dead or alive, you're fencing with me.
  • edited October 2013 Posts: 6,396
    chrisisall wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    I guess at least he didn't have his RoboCop suit.

    Dead or alive, you're fencing with me.

    :))
  • saunderssaunders Living in a world of avarice and deceit
    Posts: 987
    Having mulled this one over I've come to the conclusion that replacing Jinx wouldn't significantly improve the film, after all Barbara Bach was almost equally dreadful in TSWLM but the film is still considered a successful Bond film.
    Though as I've made abundantly clear I really dislike this film, I'm willing to concede that a few changes would significantly improve it. I would suggest that the removal of the poor CGI would have a far greater effect of enhancing DAD than the removal of Jinx, after all she's not actually in that much of it really, she's not really any worse than some previous Bond girls and she's much easier on the eye than the dreadful CGI.
    If you got rid of the rubbish icebergs, rubbish ice palaces, rubbish invisible car, rubbish holodeck, rubbish Graves electricity thing, rubbish lasers, rubbish Icarus etc... at least the film would be bearable even with Jinx and all her sassiness.
  • Posts: 6,396
    saunders wrote:
    Having mulled this one over I've come to the conclusion that replacing Jinx wouldn't significantly improve the film, after all Barbara Bach was almost equally dreadful in TSWLM but the film is still considered a successful Bond film.
    Though as I've made abundantly clear I really dislike this film, I'm willing to concede that a few changes would significantly improve it. I would suggest that the removal of the poor CGI would have a far greater effect of enhancing DAD than the removal of Jinx, after all she's not actually in that much of it really, she's not really any worse than some previous Bond girls and she's much easier on the eye than the dreadful CGI.
    If you got rid of the rubbish icebergs, rubbish ice palaces, rubbish invisible car, rubbish holodeck, rubbish Graves electricity thing, rubbish lasers, rubbish Icarus, rubbish script etc... at least the film would be bearable even with Jinx and all her sassiness.

    I've amended it for you @saunders ;-)
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    As long as they were going all sci-fi, they just should have just had Bond fight a Predator...
  • saunderssaunders Living in a world of avarice and deceit
    Posts: 987
    saunders wrote:
    Having mulled this one over I've come to the conclusion that replacing Jinx wouldn't significantly improve the film, after all Barbara Bach was almost equally dreadful in TSWLM but the film is still considered a successful Bond film.
    Though as I've made abundantly clear I really dislike this film, I'm willing to concede that a few changes would significantly improve it. I would suggest that the removal of the poor CGI would have a far greater effect of enhancing DAD than the removal of Jinx, after all she's not actually in that much of it really, she's not really any worse than some previous Bond girls and she's much easier on the eye than the dreadful CGI.
    If you got rid of the rubbish icebergs, rubbish ice palaces, rubbish invisible car, rubbish holodeck, rubbish Graves electricity thing, rubbish lasers, rubbish Icarus, rubbish script etc... at least the film would be bearable even with Jinx and all her sassiness.

    I've amended it for you @saunders ;-)

    Most decent of you @WillyGalore :)
  • Posts: 15,125
    Overall, the crux of the failures of the movie I think is the importance of scifi elements in it. TSWLM had them too, but for some reason it worked better. Maybe because they really pushed the scifi envelope with DAD.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    Ludovico wrote:
    Maybe because they really pushed the scifi envelope with DAD.
    It was the additive effect; just when you almost kind of accepted one thing, they piled on another, and another...
    By the time RoboGraves showed up, many were understandably tired.
  • Posts: 15,125
    chrisisall wrote:
    Ludovico wrote:
    Maybe because they really pushed the scifi envelope with DAD.
    It was the additive effect; just when you almost kind of accepted one thing, they piled on another, and another...
    By the time RoboGraves showed up, many were understandably tired.

    The Hulk's TV show creator explained it like this to Stan Lee: there is one thing the audience will let you go away with. In this case, that a man can turn into a green monster. That is why they didn't have robots and monsters at every episode. In DAD, which is set in "our" universe, i.e. a semi-realistic contemporary one, not only you have gene therapy, but you have an invisible car, a RoboCop suit, Bond willing himself into cardiac arrest, the RoboCop suit, etc. I think they would have got away with the lazer satellite, even though it was recycled from DAF. That's about it. The movie would have still had problems, but ditch all the scifi, and you have something better, at least somewhat plausible. Ditch the scifi elements, you are also less tempted to have so many CGIs to make them, you are less tempted to disregard physics, you sober things up a bit. To get back to the OP, Jinx was a symptom of all this, not a cause.
  • chrisisallchrisisall Brosnan Defender Of The Realm
    Posts: 17,804
    Ludovico wrote:
    To get back to the OP, Jinx was a symptom of all this, not a cause.
    Quite right, of course. I suppose I just found Brosnan's Bond to a partial anchor in this rough sea, and I felt that if his leading lady had been on Wai Lin's level, much of the nonsense in the rest of the film would have more... forgivable.
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