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DC had internal charisma....he didn't rely just on his looks like PB or a lot of others did....he was a true actor. Funny thing is that both he and SC were playing the role in a way that didn't make it too obvious whether he was the good guy or not. The versatility and hard acting work, in addition to all the creative investment behind the scenes defined DC's era as one for the record books. And yes, there should rightfully be much pressure for the next guy. It's not like the franchise can afford to churn out a movie just to milk the cash cow in this day and age.
DC is English and yet he could play a convincing character from different cultures like Russian, Swedish etc...it's not only because of his looks but his thespian artistry of effort which made it count...hopefully he can play a spy in another movie for an Oscar contender style film.
@CommanderRoss Bravo! I absolutely agree with that vision of the film.
He didn't want to be left alone and it's still frustratingly confusing among many at why Bond left him in a dumpster...yet one can argue it's better than leaving him on the street while on the run.
The Vesper notes playing at that scene and Bond's expression really press the darkness of how Bond's actions have consequences and him having left both Mathis and Fields surmounted to their demise. These were folks willing to become like family for Bond and he failed them. The transition sequence to the next scene leaves one feeling empty inside.
Nah, I’m still disappointed at how they wasted his character in QOS.
A lot of that has to do with the actor who played him so charismaticaly well....he played a detective in Hannibal who also met his doom. The guy stole every scene he was in during QoS. The intro to his villa was shot incredibly well. It was shot so closely in style to CR. It was a nice way to bring back the character with his signature class and style.
After addressing Bond, Mathis expires before anything more can be expressed. I expect his thoughts would go to Gemma. And that she's taken care of as arranged by him.
With that, to me Bond showed greatest respect to Mathis in life. Then the realities of the business took over as stated in the dialogue. And the dead don't care. A very well played scene.
"Forgive me for getting my blood all over you."
That’s not enough for me to connect with the character and feel upset that he’s killed off. It would be like if we only had five minutes with Kerim Bey and the movie tried to make us feel bad about his death, just before Bond tosses him into the garbage dump as if he was worth nothing.
Rene Mathis is a favorite character from the novels, so great to have him appear in the films after so much time passed.
The filmmakers surprised me with the golden content in CR, then putting Mathis' motives in question. Then redeeming him in QOS, and his serving as a passing of the torch from old to new. It's also on my mind Bond inherits this path in NTTD, to different effect.
Regarding screen time or number of films, I appreciate the focus the Mathis character enjoyed. To me it recalls the Blade Runner sentiment of: "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly,."
Good thing they cut the scene in SF where he puts M in the dumpster outside the chapel.
Instead he joked about wasting vodka when a human trafficking victim was shot for target practice and no blood was dripping on the ground thanks to a fanboy directing the film.
And it wasn’t vodka, it was scotch.
That damn writer's strike....
You clearly have never seen DCs performances in Lara Croft:Tomb Raider,The Dream House,or Knives Out.Someone needs to tell him he can’t do accents.
Wow! Makes sense.
At last someone gets it! It's a message telling M exactly this. Look at Craig's face when he realises how badly hurt Mathis is and again when he dies. That's not cold, callous indifference. By putting Mathis's body in the dumpster, Bond's introducing an element that will stand out and jar with the official story that M's going to hear. People protested 'But Bond just wouldn't do that' - and seemingly missed the point that that's the very reason he did do it! Because M would also know that 'Bond wouldn't do that' and it'd alert her to the 'trumped up charges'.
Similarly, I never had a problem with the SF scene, as it's obvious that Bond made the 'waste of good scotch' quip so that Silva wouldn't have the satisfaction of thinking that he'd got to him. Of course Severine's death is a blow, but he's not going to let Silva know that.
That’s just an excuse, it doesn’t give QOS a free pass, especially when that’s all on Forster having scrapped the drafts that Purvis & Wade were already working on when he got the job. And all just so he could implement his pointless “earth, water, fire, and air” motifs into the scripts.
If that was actually indicated in the film itself rather than just your supposition, it would have made a difference.
As it is, that never made much difference because the fact that he was found in a dumpster isn’t even conveyed to MI6. All Tanner tells M is that “Rene Mathis is dead, the police claim it was Bond” which wouldn’t have been any different if he were found on the street. There’s never an indication that she realizes something is amiss with Mathis’ death and that Bond is actually onto something, because the next thing she does after seeing the secretary is coming to have Bond arrested. It’s only AFTER Bond escapes the security and personally tells M to give Fields full posthumous compliments that she finally thinks Bond IS still working for MI6 and decides to trust him.
MI6 is operating under the assumption that Bond has lost it and is chasing after some phantom organization they've never heard of. Mathis is helping Bond. If Mathis ends up dead and the cops say Bond did it, they might buy it, but the story raises questions. If Mathis's body is found robbed and laying in garbage, MI6 has reason to doubt Bond was responsible. Like Camille says, it's not something you do to a friend. Bond was just doing what he felt he needed to do to give himself some breathing room. The fact that it didn't work out for him doesn't mean his actions didn't make sense at that moment. The police framed him, so he tried to frame them back.
When you take into account QOS's development hell, it's even more of a triumph than it appears on the surface. First P & W's rejected script. Then Haggis's rejected revision of P & W's script. Then Haggis's own rejected script. Then Haggis's rough draft second script - which he said he was only 10 pages into in August 2007. As he famously delivered that to EON just two hours before the start of the writers' strike in early November, that gives you an idea of how little time Haggis had to work on it.
Think about the dozens of leaked emails re. the SP script and how the Sony and MGM execs spent several months asking for all kinds of in-depth re-writes. None of that was possible with QOS and any re-writes were mainly down to Forster and Craig on the fly during shooting. Ok, they had that Joshua Zetzumer guy come in and work on some dialogue after the strike was over, but he was actually on set and writing stuff overnight for them to shoot the next day, so it's still not comparable to the months of additional work that went into the SP script.
Anyhow, I know Craig's recently called QOS a 'sh*tshow' and maybe the development of it was - but when you think of everything they were up against and then see the end result, I honestly do think it's a triumph. I don't know if you can tell, but I quite like QOS...
A symbolic visual to compare in the production: when the cast were in Panama filming the Greene Planet part scene, the crew used an old dilapidated building that had no life in or surrounding it. They built it up and gave it a newfound glory for that one night of filming for Fields to trip Elvis before Bond and Camille end up with a dying Mathis.
There are many reasons DC says that film has a lot of special moments. They didn't have fun, but they made memories they could fondly look back upon.
Who is more convincing?
Fields was supposedly meant to represent an innocence Bond once had....until the death of Vesper....according to Marc Forster. He also mentioned that if he were given another chance to direct another Bond film, he'd emphasize having more women getting with Bond...he didn't seem to handle the opportunity of being more innovative with the series. Maybe it was DC who helped make QoS a more direct sequel to CR as much as he could.
David Arnold's score helps bring the air of melancholy throughout the film.
Camille may have been the only Bond girl to not sleep with him but she is the one who many viewers seem to wonder if she is okay after the last scene. She realizes the empty consequences to her vengeance while she and Bond relate to one another. The cemetary by the train station is metaphorical and the fade away of her walking from the car is symbolic.
SP reminded me a lot of this scene when Bond and Madeleine arrive at the Moroccan desert....a scene DC fondly remembers personally from filming that movie. You could sense a lot of homage to the rich desert shots of QoS in SP.
Longer Bond movies are a small way to make up for the gaps in each film. While SC did 6 official movies, 8 hours compared to DC's 5 at 8.5-9 hrs....not bad.
I wasn't quite aware of all this. Doesn't help my not-so-positive view of p&w as writers...
When the pressure is on ...P&W deliver but since CR they have learned to collaborate with others as sell such as Paul Haggis for smooth sailing. Hiring someone else to "punch up" a script however, forms some noticeably broken content.
Personally I find the films where they got additional help by far superior. Tnd, dad and twine are weak scriptwise. Cr obviously is an adaptation and qos underlines my understanding here. Personally I feel only nttd really works of the last 3 films, mainly because the plot holes are covered by superior direction/film making.