It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ 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
I'm all for the human Bond, and I hate the comedy Moore or Brozza interpretation. Bond has fears in the books, he regrets killing. He is even a romantic.
All that I am 100% for. But nowhere, NOWHERE does Fleming ever hint at having to confront a childhood trauma or Mommy issues.
Yes, they never overdid it. I was honestly a bit worried going into SF for the first time. I knew there would be some exploration, and every other movie was doing deep dives into backstories (Batman begins spending close to half an hour on Bruce's childhood etc.)
But when i watched the film it was so clever... really, you get a glimpse of a tombstone, one line of 'orphans being the best recruits', and a couple lines of hiding in a tunnel... after that there is tons of other stuff for us to decipher OR NOT, depends on what you like. A lot of things are only hinted at. Nothing to get offended by.
Also i remember talking to some guy one day, who got really upset about the tombstone in SF because "they destroyed the code name theory, that was stupid".
That put a big smile on my face lol.
I'm one of them, sadly.
Don't me wrong I don't have anything wrong with some of the "general ideas" Spectre introduces, (a pre-title sequence during Day of the Dead, a SPECTRE meeting in Rome, a Bond girl who questions his lifestyle while being the daughter of an assassin, a villain connected to Hannes Oberhauser, a third act finale set in the ready-to-be demolished MI6 building) I just have a serious problem with how they were executed.
Careful mentioning SP on here mate. You'll get hammered for it, as many of the SF fan brigade cannot see the obvious link between the 2 films. They think we SF/SP/Mendes/Newman bashers are imagining it all. ;)
Lol should we trash GF now because DAF was such a weak film?
Or trash TSWLM because MR sucked?
I'm game if you are.
You really think GF and DAF are as tightly linked as SF and SP are? Really?
Or are you just pulling me leg.
As for trashing TSWLM, I'm game if you are. I hate that film.... ;)
Anyway, i like SP, i don't love it but i like many things about it. The heavy handed continuity from SF, especially with Silva, is not one of them. If Mendes hadn't returned, SF could have easily remained a stand alone film, only linked to future movies by M,Q and MP returning.
But this is what we've got now.
Also i firmly believe that the latest Bond film can only really be judged after it's successor comes out. Just to see what they kept and what they disgarded. I think NTTD will be very different from SP in asthetics, and narrative, even with all the links. I think a lot of people will change their opinions on SP drastically after NTTD comes out, for better or worse. See QoS.
And TSWLM was a film i used to really hate, but it's just short of my top 5 now. ;)
But I really enjoy the film on the whole and I think it's one of my favourite's in the series
I think people would look at Skyfall differently, if it was either the last film in Daniel's run or if there had been a great film with more of a classic Bond feel in 2010, because admittedly Skyfall did feel like it robbed us of a classic film with Bond in his prime.
Although that doesn't really bother me because I really loved the dive into Bond's past and Daniel was faultless in this film, it was great to see some of the unmined plot points of the YOLT novel on screen
I feel the same way about QOS and SF. QOS set everything up really nicely and then SF just took all that potential and gave us what to me is a Brosnan type film.
With 4 Bond films in-between, another actor came and went, a visibly different Connery in both appearance and performance, and a total change of direction from relying on a faithfully adapted Fleming novel, to a camp 70's romp that would set the standard for the Moore films that followed, and had very little to do with Fleming.
Otherwise they are like 2 peas in a pod. It's hard to tell the difference where GF ends and DAF begins, they are so similar... ;)
There I agree. She felt like a Fleming character. The scene where Silva taunts Bond to shoot the glass off her head also feels very Fleming (it is actually loosely based on a scene from TMWTGG).
nothing sad about it, we all have different opinions sometimes ;)
SF had lots of great moments as well, you should also point out them to have fair criticism imo.
I have read Fleming books only once so you know/remember about it more than me. What if Fleming would have gotten into childhood trauma in his books, would you be ok with it?
The reason i am asking this because i am sure there have been a lot things in the books that people might not have liked not just in film's. Controversial opinion i know but are all his books perfect?
@Jordo007 that train scene wasn't CGI. They actually shot it completely real.
If the complaint is just ‘this wasn’t in Fleming’ then I don’t think you’re going to like the other movies.
Well there is some truth in that. There are more than half of the films in the franchise that I'm not a huge fan of, because of this.
The films I do like are rather telling - the early Connery films, OHMSS, the Dalton films, and CR.
My guilty pleasure is the early 70's Bond films, including the first 2 Moore films too, mainly because of the era its set, and gives a nice glimpse into retro travelogues and 1970's hotels in Las Vegas, NY and Hong Kong.
But the majority of the Moore films, and the entire Brozza era I could do without.
I love everything Fleming wrote. I'm a massive fan. As far as I'm concerned, he never did anything bad. Even his last novel I'm a huge fan of (in fact its one of my favourites).
What upsets me more is the fact there is decent material still untapped from the books, and is far superior to anything passed off as`original' written by P&W over the past 20 odd years, which is why I am reluctant to embrace anything `new' until everything from Fleming has been properly used.
Cubby got this, understood this perfectly, after he went off the rails in the 70's by abandoning the books and just using them as a mild reference for locations and characters.
By FYEO he knew if he was stuck, he'd go back to Fleming, which is a trend he started doing in the 80's. Adapting Fleming scenes or short stories into films.
His daughter has been quoted saying the same thing, yet she is not taking her father's advice, instead giving us things that Fleming MAY have hinted at or suggested, or completely re-writing the books completely, as `Fleming re-imagined', in very crude retcon crap.
Utterly disgraceful!
It's hard to tell if Bond and Blofeld remember each other from their childhood. How long were they foster brothers? Why didn't Bond say hey Oberhauser, brother why are you running this secret organization to sabotage me? Still bitter your dad preferred me over you? It is just a lot of unanswered questions that became a jumbled mess.
They extended this continuity back to Casino Royale with I was the author and evil doer all along, James your foster brother. It put a big hamper in the Craig timeline. SPECTRE has definitely ruined the arch connecting the films. It also ruined Silva's vendetta against M when you find out he was a SPECTRE agent.
Just to clarify, Blofeld never states that he created Spectre to target Bond.
Blofeld says "a nice pattern developed, you interfered with my world so I destroyed yours" Bond was just an outside nuisance, not even on Blofeld's radar until the events of Casino Royale.
Sorry, just had to put that out there, people always seem to imply that Blofeld created Spectre just to get revenge for stealing his fathers affection, which is incorrect. I will also point out that Blofeld never tries to kill Bond alongside his father... just saying.
I also think it says a lot about his character (killing his father), always needing to be number one, he refuses to play second fiddle to anyone. Sounds like Blofeld to me.
I'm not saying that they couldn't have addressed the drama at all, but it should've been weaven more into the plot and the other characters. One of the reasons Silva worked so well is because he was the best villain for the story; integral to the plot, its theme and the emotional arc of the main characters. Was Blofeld the best villain for Spectre's story, was he integral to the theme and the emotional arc of the story? Nope, it just had this family drama next to a quite weak scheme regarding surveillance, then they just tried to play it off with an oddly placed thematic quote or whatever it was at the beginning, while altering a lot of what came before because for some reason they felt the need to complicate things with creating two sequels in one. A sequel for CR/QOS and also SF...
...this is why I say they should've started fresh like what the end of Skyfall hinted at.
I can agree, the problem still exists.
I was just arguing that some of the criticism is a bit exaggerated and in some cases false.
I have to agree with you, although I'd argue QOS is guilty of starting the exact thing that we've been debated these last few pages. Things like putting the GB sequence at the end of the film was Forster's way of indicating to the audience that Bond had come full circle and found solace in Vesper's demise. It's more warranted here given it's a follow up of the events of CR (although I see QOS as a bit of a missed opportunity) it's there nonetheless. In SF and SP it's amplified further.
I agree with you that Bond requires character development and I'm all for that. You only need to take a look at my top 10 favourite Bond films (OHMSS, TB, DN, FRWL, GF, CR, TLD, LTK, FYEO & GE) that I'm an advocate for the development of James Bond as a character. However, as many have alluded to I much prefer the subtle approach in which the these films go about it, they don't consistently hint to the audience that he's traumatised or has unresolved physiological issues. The narrative of these films (there are exceptions) are what carried the arch of the character. I think Casino Royale is a perfect example of a modern Fleming adaptation to the silver screen and it allows Craig's portrayal of Bond to develop with the events of the story.
+1
I think its because it appears as though Babs wears the pants in that relationship, so-to-speak. She is the one calling the shots, or so it appears. I get the impression Wilson is a back seat passenger now with decisions made (I could be wrong), adding very little input.
He also gets a free pass from me for co-writing LTK, easily the best `original' script that isn't taken from a Fleming novel (even though it does loosely adapt TMWTGG, and nicks a couple of scenes from LALD).
The LTK script is one perfect example of how to do what P&W have been trying to do for years, and falling short every time.
Agreed. I'm sure Dalton's influence is partially to credit to these Fleming elements being introduced into the script.
Spot on, on all points. In CR and QoS we see Bond bleed and feel pain. All that hard work was undone by the time Mendes was finished with the franchise (none moreso than that ridiculous spectacle of Superman Bond shooting and fighting fit seconds after having a drill inserted into him in SP).
You are right about Dalton influencing the LTK direction. What I'd give for the next actor to be like Dalton, and state loud and proud `I'm a huge Ian Fleming fan, and I want the next film to return to the spirit of the novels'.
Then I would be on board 100% with everything EON did.
Then there's my all time favourite - Bond doesn't shed a tear when Tracy dies (Peter Hunt telling Lazenby that Bond doesn't cry) but when M dies he starts crying? M is supposed to be Bond's boss, but making her representative of Bond's paternal figure in SF was a misguided decision and not one Fleming would've endorsed.
Exactly! I see so many people interpret it in such a way that his grudge with Bond is Blofeld's only motivation for becoming a criminal in the first place. I find that quite baffling. Was that ever hinted at? Not at all, I'd say. I think it should be quite obvious that Blofeld is simply an evil, power hungry person who just happens to also have a personal vendetta against Bond. Those are not necesarrily linked and Bond does obviously not make up all of Blofeld's evil intentions.
Of course Fleming wouldn't have been on board with this ridiculous notion. It all stems from Babs, and her agenda, her influence on making her statement on women being more powerful, more dominant. And it looks like we are in for more of the same in NTTD (SF part 3/SPECTRE part 2).
There is a misconception here about Bond being human. I think we are all in agreement there. Yes, make Bond more human. Let's have him showing fear, feeling pain, watch him bleed, show emotion, anger, revenge, sadness. In other words, the Fleming Bond. In CR Craig got it spot on. Even in QoS he had his moments.
But then EON/Mendes go and balls it all up in SF and SF Part II - personal angst, childhood trauma, weeping over a surrogate mother, etc. and yet in the same token, having a Bond who recovers miraculously after a fight, doesn't bleed, and is 100% miraculously recovered and fighting fit nano seconds after inducing a brain seizing drill torture by his long lost brother.
And fans here claim this is making Bond more `human'. Give me a break. Even Moore showed more physical duress after an ordeal (MR centrifuge anyone?).
In the words of Edmund Blackadder - Utter crap!