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Comments
For me SF failed me with SIlva's big plan including the escape that left me puzzled. And then the choice made by M and 007 which made no sense at all which led to the Bond estate.
Amazed that the Secret Service allowed a criminal free game and hunting in the UK, since it did happen with their knowledge. I did suspect a trap with a cadre of SAS popping up to assist 007. As it did not happen the part of the movie totaly took my out of the movie something that had only happened with QoB before.
And the great Mendes made an awefull mess of 007's return from being lethally wounded and still be able to dissapear without a trace for MI6. He then returns without an explanation at all and is able to enter the home of M just after there was an attempt at her office. MI6 looked like a total bunch of amateurs so why the heck did Silva go around so complicated when he could have rung her doorbell.
Once again a movie with a shedload of symbolism over actual content.
That said the PTS was great as was the moment of reveal of the Aston Martin DB5.
My quibbles with SF really don't matter any more. My quibbles tend to fall into a broader cateogory of this isn't ideally the way I want Bond to be, but once one gets past that, the film stands up quite well on its own merits.
I do say the film is not half as clever as it thinks it is. It does seem to have pretensions, however thematically it works on levels I don't think that we've seen before in Bond films. It does have layers. This element is at least interesting even if I don't seek such stuff from a Bond film. eg I am quite pleased with MR's attributes as a film- moreso actually.
But SF I do find grows on one. It is a well crafted film, made by top notch cinema types.
I must confess I do pop it in from time to time and sit back savour and enjoy, but what really gets me cranked is the pure visceral glamour and excitement of the Connery films and the Rog imitations. Here I am bouncing in my seat. I love those films so much (channeling Lupe from LTK)
SF rather, I can sit back and appreciate as a different kind of Bond take, but I am really looking forward to another dramatic shift in the Bondverse, when someday, somewhere, a hitherto unknown Bond director emerges and makes another YOLT!!!!
Komodo dragons wouldn't be able to drag me out of the theatre.
That said it is his choice to dislike SF jus as some folks dislike MR and others love it.
I find too often that if one has an opinion not shared by a certain core group here on this forum you are treated as if you are a troll. Their favorite label while the majority opinion here is boring enough I prefer the differnt ones easily.
A forum should be about discussing and not be for a circeljerk, there are others sites specialised in that.
Virtually all of it makes sense, except according to your moronic standards. Outside of you and a few other cuckoo birds, nobody had major issues with SF's plot. The film has a 92% freshness rating from professional critics on Rottentomatoes, a rating it would come nowhere near enjoying if it was the logical mess you make it out to be. Face it--you are the one with problems of logic, not SF.
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"Moronic Standards "? Very well,so why don't you tell me why MI6 had to wait until Bond (of whom they didn't even know he was still alive) cuts out some bullet shrapnels out of his shoulder to identify Patrice when he was blazing them away with his drumfed Glock on the Istanbul market just like Santa Claus does with presents at Christmas time? Didn't they even think to recover some of them in the aftermath of the PTS events or did they just had no interest in the hard disc anymore? Moronic logic,eh?
Read my answer to @Perilagu_Khan and think again about the supposed ludicrousness of my claims. I can repeat this kind of logic ad infinitum with just about any scene/event when it comes to SFs storyline.
I do not mind dissenting opinions in the least, his attitude is what I do not care for.
Attitudes are like opinions, everybody has got one, sometimes we like them and sometimes we get annoyed by them.
Be gracefull and ignore the ones you dislike.
And I know I should occasionaly heed my own advice. But I always stick to the idea that anything I would write down on any forum is similar to what I would say in your face. I do not see the internet as a means to annoy people in anonimity.
"Moronic Standards "? Very well,so why don't you tell me why MI6 had to wait until Bond (of whom they didn't even know he was still alive) cuts out some bullet shrapnels out of his shoulder to identify Patrice when he was blazing them away with his drumfed Glock on the Istanbul market just like Santa Claus does with presents at Christmas time? Didn't they even think to recover some of them in the aftermath of the PTS events or did they just had no interest in the hard disc anymore? Moronic logic,eh?
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I'm sorry, but you're a prissy old Don, nitpicking your way through the script. Very few films, let alone Bond films, can withstand this sort of minute scrutiny. They are Bond films, not calculus problems. For some unknown reason you have decided to single out SF for a frame-by-frame breakdown so you can claim that the film is nonsense. Utterly preposterous on your part.
I'm sorry, but you're a prissy old Don, nitpicking your way through the script. Very few films, let alone Bond films, can withstand this sort of minute scrutiny. They are Bond films, not calculus problems. For some unknown reason you have decided to single out SF for a frame-by-frame breakdown so you can claim that the film is nonsense. Utterly preposterous on your part.
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Do you really think I' m a Bond fan since the days of TSWLM because I am a fanatical slave to logic? What to me makes all the difference in the world is ,that when you are willing to accept the premises of even the most outrageous Bond movies (i.e. YOLT,TSWLM,MR,DAD) they all have at least acceptable logic standards. Sure they have a plot hole here and a logic gap there,but all in all they somehow make a story ( and after all- these are Bond Films!). In SF nothing fits together logic wise and I feel at least a handful of people should point it out instead of praising it for some supposed "layers" and such!
Maybe for you. I saw it 4x in the theatre.
Robert Wade apologized to me when I mentioned DAD, that's how much it haunts him to this day when I simply mentioned the film. I was thanking him for QoS and CR not being like DAD. It wasn't only the writers' fault but also the director has some say. Notice TWINE, good story but the way it's executed is like a joke.
I do agree that a director definitely has responsibility on how a film ends up.
Here's the top 5.
1. GoldenEye
2. Licence to Kill
3. Skyfall
4. Casino Royale
5. TWINE
Problem is, some of this gets lost in the shuffle because I'm not sure the director is even sure of the writer's intentions. So Bond's warm response to the new M could just look like, Oh, great, I have a male boss - that's better! And the sheer stupidity of his not actually knowing Moneypenny's surname until the final scene. Too dumb for words. And heading out to Rodriguez' island, despite all the talk of how evil he is, not even armed with a pistol ffs - and being surprised when it doesn't work out too well. Just wandering about on deck - oh dear, the henchmen have found him!
I am not sure this kind of idiocy is in the other films so much, though you could argue some of those were aimed at young teens anyway, who are less likely to notice. Even in a film like MR, where you could argue against the tone, I am not sure there are so many plotholes as such, where I sit there thinking, right, that couldn't happen. But in any case, these films belong to a different genre, just as the Aston DB5 wouldn't quite fit for a movie like Dr No.
For me, SF aims to be a gritty, glamorous, credible Bond film, not preposterous hokum, so I can't just overlook its absurdities, which occupy almost every scene.
That said, yeah, SF sort of had it open much of the time. ;)
Could you elaborate on this. I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Do you really think I' m a Bond fan since the days of TSWLM because I am a fanatical slave to logic? What to me makes all the difference in the world is ,that when you are willing to accept the premises of even the most outrageous Bond movies (i.e. YOLT,TSWLM,MR,DAD) they all have at least acceptable logic standards. Sure they have a plot hole here and a logic gap there,but all in all they somehow make a story ( and after all- these are Bond Films!). In SF nothing fits together logic wise and I feel at least a handful of people should point it out instead of praising it for some supposed "layers" and such![/quote]
But SF's story makes perfect sense. Niggles such as shell casings do nothing to undermine the overall plot, which is sound. And really--we've got nukes smuggled into Ft. Knox, space capsule-gobbling rocket ships, a pack of gorgeous ditzes insinuating bio-weapons in perfume dispensers, space lasers with cataclysmic capabilities, something called a Solex Agitator which renders carbon fuels otiose, cannibalistic oil tankers and a manmade Atlantis, stolen space shuttles and mysterious space stations, manmade seismic catastrophes, commandeered Russian satellites with--again--WMD capacities, a renegade petro-baroness nuking Istanbul to heighten the value of her new pipeline, and purposefully engineered droughts in Bolivia and you're banging your spoon on your highchair because MI6 didn't Hoover shell casings? You really believe the above plotlines can withstand even cursory scrutiny? Heh. Well, all I can do is chuckle.
Agreed completely.
But it still raises the question, why are we the audience asked to sit through these scenes.
Are Bond films now about journeys into darkness, yet still we get utterly ridiculous scenes, played for our Bond amusement, whereby the Aston Martin is suddenly tricked out again circa 1964. The film is very uneven in terms of its tone and mood.
IMHO Eon very much mishandled the whole scenario of Severine being a sex slave, from Bond's very animalistic seduction of her (yes I know she set the table with champagne etc, but it wasn't one of Bond's smoother seduction scenes, not even close) to her later being trotted out as "fetish piece" followed by torture porn death.
I throw my hands in the air. What is Eon trying to create here? I find these attempts at being dark and edgy to be hamfisted and badly handled. Just leaves a sour taste in the mouth. I don't recall feeling this way watching other Bond films.
This movie is not half as smart as it think it is. It's a very uneven work. That's what I don't like about it.
All the silliness about Silva plotting his own capture and escape, detonating a bomb to time with a subway train arrival etc. That stuff can all be explained away. It does all loosely hold together really no worse than any other Bond film.
Mi6 not finding Patrice's bullet fragments earlier suggests maybe a level of inefficiency, but its not a slam dunk. There are all sorts of scenarios in which Mi6 may not have been able to either search for or find the fragments.
What I mainly don't like about SF is its uneven tone and artistic conceits.
Again this movie is not half as smart as it likes to keep telling us it is.
I think both Craig and Mendes got caught trying to do a smart edgy spythriller drama but like Apted, Forster, Haggis before them, they were hamstrung by the expectations inherent in the Bond formula.
Better I think to try and do a good film, within the parameters of the established formula.
Maybe Eon might want to consider a dark and edgy Bond TV series for HBO or something, and leave the big screen for more traditional Bond fare.
TV is being widely touted in many quarters anyway as a more a serious dramatic medium than film. Drama types like Mendes, Forster, Craig, Haggis could go nuts with the cable tv palate.
Personally I anticipate that the best "Bond film" of recent vintage, post CR06, will be next year's Man From Uncle release.
The Bond offspring might very well do Bond better than the original.
But SF's story makes perfect sense. Well, all I can do is chuckle.
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Reading the first sentence it is very obvious,that this is all you can do.
Agreed. @timmer is one heck of a persuasive writer.