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+2.
I'm all for character exploration, as long as it stays close to the roots.
Having Blofeld being Bond’s long lost step brother is a crime against Fleming and the series. So unnecessary and so infuriating.
I agree. I love how Bond's character is more explored in OHMSS, LTK, CR and QOS, but in the case of SF and SP I feel that it is unnecessary, forced and it never really feels right.
In SF it wasn't that noticeable until SP came along. Then SP's glaring faults somehow also seem to highlight everything that was wrong with SF too. It managed to bring it to the surface, which now I cannot help but notice when I watch SF again.
Mendes dull direction, Newman's awful score, silly family angst backstories, trashing Fleming, the Scooby gang. It all went too far in SP, but it's all there in SF too, just laying beneath the surface. It just needed SP to bring it to the forefront.
This is a thread about Skyfall, not about Spectre... yawn...
I wonder how you can stay closer to the roots than following Felimg´s very own idea: That Bond was orphanaged in a tragic climbing accident.
In the case of SF, my wife and I decided we wanted to travel to London to see it a week before it was released in Germany (and there, not necessarily un-dubbed, for that matter), and so we went to see it on the first day of public (non-royal) release at the Odeon Leicester Square, which IIRC was also my 56th birthday.
The experience was the best we ever had at a cinema. The crowd was well-behaved, I don't recall anyone staring at their smartphones (yes, I believe they existed even in 2012), no obnoxious popcorn smell etc. It was obvious that this was an audience that knew their Bond.
Just to get to the point, the audience absolutely loved it. There were several cases of cheers and clapping, something I don't think I ever experienced at a movie theatre before, Bond or not. The best reaction in that regard was when the DB5 was revealed, it was close to a standing ovation. Everyone seemed to be elated. Most people seemed to stay for the closing credits, something I also never experienced before. It simply was a perfect evening which seemed to put a smile on the face of all those present. Notwithstanding any plot holes or other deficites that one might find through further scrutiny.
With every watch from Blu-ray I sort of re-live that experience (I don't overdo it, but so far maybe three or four times). It still contributes to my conviction that SF is my favourite Bond cinema experience altogether, while still thinking that FRWL is a very slightly better movie. But to say the very least, SF is firmly anchored in my top four ever since then (the other in alphabetical order: CR, FRWL, GF), and probably at No. 2.
I wouldn't bother this guy can't let it go, be it threads praising or slagging it off, you can be guaranteed that @Getafix turn up to offer is opinion which practically everyone on here knows already.
Yeah thanks for that you've just enlightened us to something new, when really it is the same old rhetoric, SF is rubbish and I'll repeat the same thing over and over for ad infinitum
I can't stand SPECTRE but if I'm banging on about come the amount of time that has passed since SF came out, please put me out of my misery.
This guy loves to slag off SF, he lives for it, I don't think he realises how much he goes on about it.
@Getafix you and Skyfall should get a room.
I’m kind of surprised how few people on here seem to like the Bond movies! :)
I would say that the stuff in the crater felt incredibly like Fleming to me: proper Dr No but actually more Flemingish than the Dr No movie!
Apologies for double post: my phone wouldn’t copy paste.
Also, while it may not seem that way, the team who worked on Skyfall and Spectre brought a lot of deeply rooted Fleming material to a wider audience. Bond's parents, his childhood, Oberhauser.
On a side note, I love to think about how Fleming's creations have become a part of entertainment culture. It's always nice to think about the scale of what that man started. He may have had some outdated views, but god he was a talent. Shame he never got to see where the series went...
Thats why I rather like the new film being named after one of Cubby’s movies rather than being a Fleming reference. Because Broccoli and Saltzman are now just as important in creating what the world knows as 007 as Fleming was.
Yes, @mtm. Ongoing campaigns against Craig Bond films, especially the previous one. Worst fears expressed toward the next one, lots of strictures and demands to be met.
Anyway, yes.
Very well put, I can align with that, @Denbigh.
Likewise the title nod to Broccoli, @mtm. These are things to relish. A great time to be a Bond fan.
Yes, when I heard about it I immediately liked the title even more than I already did.
All and all, Fleming and the Broccoli/Saltzman inheritance has been very much alive throughout the Craig era. And we are lucky fans. Like @RichardTheBruce said, it's a great time to be a Bond fan. And frankly, it always was, one way or another.
Yes it's all got a bit joyless and Nolanish.
Wish DC had tapped a bit more of his relaxed and positive side for his Bond.
When it comes to older fandoms like Bond, I’ve noticed there seems to be the sentiment with a subset of fans that anything Fleming never touched should be verboten. As if because Fleming never delved onto Bond’s childhood should mean no one should EVER touch that. It’s the kind of rigid mentality that allows no imagination. For as much as we all love the Fleming books, we should all acknowledge that EON has long left Fleming behind for quite awhile and only occasionally looks back as a reminder of where it came from. Whether it’s a jet pack, a submarine car, a resignation from the service to follow a vendetta, playing Texas Holdem, a lodge named Skyfall, etc, these films will always bring on their own iconography to Bond that doesn’t originate in the Fleming texts.
So especially the way I learned to watch Bond films, I don't have that limitation.
Oh that's so very true.
I blame part of my lack of enthusiasm for SF due to the expanded focus on M. The credits may as well have begun with Judi Dench is M in Skyfall, followed by Starring Daniel Craig as James Bond.
Since she was introduced in GE, the character comes off as more of a ballbuster, always trying to prove herself and putting Bond down when some of the best previous incarnations showed a tough side while displaying a paternal side that worked nicely, especially with the Moore Bond.
Besides that, the Dench M's decisions do more damage to Mi6 than Quantum and SPECTRE combined. I had reservations about Dench being brought back for CR, but the character as written here and in QoS came off fine. Then SF highlights these problems even more. This is no reflection on Dench, just the way the character is written. Not that the Fiennes version is much better. Can't anybody in power just appreciate Bond?
So I'll stop commenting here.
Maybe it's because Dench's is given a much larger role in some of these films than Lee or Robert Brown ever were. In most of those films they'd appear at the beginning or a brief scene or two later and that was it. Maybe it's also a tribute to Dench's acting. It's just harder to take for me, almost a byproduct of the world we live in that they had to portray the character this way.
I've enjoyed your posts in this thread for what it's worth, @RichardTheBruce.
Yeah it’s the boss vs. maverick detective relationship from every cop movie ever. They always have a respect for each other in the end because both of them know the other Gets Things Done Dammit. :D
I love Bond movies. Why, do you not like them?
This is what I find surprising too. The universally recognised highlights of the entire franchise still are the films which are closest to the novels, yet for some reason people are starting to think that Fleming wasn't all that. P&W can do a better job reinventing Fleming, no need to go back to the novels.
Truly bizarre.
In some cases I get the feeling that Bond fans who don't rate SF almost need to prove to the greater public that they are wrong in actually liking the film.
That staggers me. Any love for the Bond films beyond these four walls should be embraced and encouraged. I love the film. Always have and always will. I don't like LTK much but if that film was held in as much esteem I'd be delighted. It's only good for the series to have so much recognition in the wider community.
When I saw 'From the director of Skyfall' for '1917' trailers I felt so damned smug. A Bond film being held up as an example of this man's work, in order to get people in to the cinema to see his new film? Terrific.
Feel free not to like SF, but seeing people explaining its success away by talking about the Olympics and the Queen's Jubilee and therefore SF's success could only be explained away by the feeling of goodwill in 2012 actually bugs me.
Maybe, just maybe, the public actually loved this Bond film, because it was a good film. And for a short while Bond was relevant again, and was on top of the world, leaving Bourne and the others in its wake.
That's my theory anyway ;)
This is what I have issues with. For all the faults of the Moore and Brozza era, at least there was no attempt at reinventing the character, tampering with Bond's history, having Blofeld be his brother, etc.
This is the biggest fault of the Craig era. The reboot worked find in CR, but then EON went too far.
Didn't Fleming start out having Bond a bland assassin with no history? And he built on his background later, encouraged by the films?
I'm no Fleming purist believe me. I was obsessed with Bond films from the age of 5 and didn't read Fleming until I was about 14. So, for me the films are everything.
When you say 'attempt at reinventing the character, tampering with Bond's history, having Blofeld be his brother' do you basically mean the brother bit? Or is there more tampering you don't like?