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them ALL to die. :D
This in spades.
I will say that I think Cameron did deserve the Oscar for Titantic as it was a monumental undertaking and to hold it all together against the odds when jokes were doing the rounds that it was going to sink the studio took balls.
He is a very average director of people but a very good director of spectacle. For someone to put him anywhere near Spielberg is embarassing. Avatar is dumb popcorn fare that Spielberg outgrew 25 years ago yet Cameron sees to have abandoned his whole career in an attempt to turn this blue smurf rubbish into a franchise to rival Star Wars.
The likelihood we will ever see any adult films from Cameron to come anywhere near Schindlers, Munich, Lincoln or Bridge of Spies is close to zero because unless there's scope for a shitload of FX to save him working on the script or having to talk to actors he's not interested.
The only Cameron films to really deliver are Aliens, T1 & T2. And even if you compare them to the best of Spielberg's blockbusters he's still not close.
That has been posted before. By me!
a) M saying to Bond, "it was either the possibility of losing you, or the certainty of losing all those other agents". With Bond shot, how did she excpect to save the harddrive? I don´t detect any other signs of senility on her part thoughout the film, so what is that line supposed to tell me?
b) Mallory saying to Bond, "it´s a young man´s game". This is a Bond film, which means I´m familiar with Connery and Moore, and both looked decidedly older than Craig, without ever being questioned for age reasons. In fact, in most of his films, Bond is in his forties. So, even ignoring that Bond just started his 00 career with CR, and acknowledging the 50th anniversary, the mention of "a young man´s game", which is obviously directed more towards the audience than towards Bond, still seems most odd.
Can anyone shortly explain to me why those two pieces of dialogue were in the film?
a) the 'bloody shot' was to take out Patrice. Assuming he had the disk, if he had been shot dead by MP, the disk would have been recovered. Even if he fell off the train (like Bond) and into the river, the disk would have been lost forever, so problem solved as well. The intention was not to shoot Bond. There was a 50/50 chance that MP would hit Patrice. Hence the 'possibility' remark. The 'certainty' bit is where she was incorrect and miscalculated - as Bond rightly noted to her back in London. "You should have trusted me to finish the job". Indeed. She panicked, as he noted.
b) In this 'reboot' world, Bond is physically aging, unlike the prior era, where we were expected to believe that Connery in his 30's (DN) was essentially the same age and man as fat Connery in his 40's (DAF), and similarly that 'young' Moore in his 40's (LALD) was the same man and age essentially as 'old' Moore in AVTAK. In the old world, they never aged. In this new pseudo 'realistic' reboot world, they do. SF takes place some years after QoS, ostensibly.
a) Of course M meant for MP to shoot Patrice, not Bond. But her remark of "the certainty of losing all those agents" doesn´t merely show a past miscalculation. The fact that she tries to justify her decision months later makes no sense whatsoever to me, except M being senile or mentally deranged right then. Because until then, there have only been mentions of Bond being M´s most trusted agent. If a number of years has passed since QoS, that still wouldn´t justify in the least why all of a sudden M shouldn´t have faith in Bond. Let alone the fact, as mentioned above, that the harddrive would be lost if Bond got shot accidentally.
b) Same here. Even if a number of years passed and Bond is older now, it´s a bloody Bond film, and everybody, not just nerds, have seen that Bond most of the time was older. And even disregarding that, what sense does it make to show rookie Bond, and then immediately jump to the end of his career? Except because Batman did the same? In Bond´s case, leaving out all the adventures he had in the meantime makes even less sense than in the case of Batman, where at least a poor try at continuing an old story was made.
I think Mendes was just trying to show that M was in fact panicking at the start of SF, and even later, as Mallory closed in. She did indeed trust Bond, but in the 'heat of battle' she made a bad call, just like she ostensibly made a bad call when she fed Silva to the Chinese. These bad decisions came back to bite her in the film. So to clarify, I think she did have faith in him, but the consequences of that disk being lost led her to question that faith, and she made a mistake at the start of the film, mirroring her bad call on Silva. She tried to atone for that later by giving him his license to kill back even though he wasn't ready and failed the tests.
Regarding the age thing, this is probably Mendes again. He probably thought it would help him to drive home the 'old' vs 'new' theme that ran throughout SF, and so decided to age Bond. Since 4 yrs had passed since QoS, it probably seemed as good a time as any to do it. I agree that it seemed strange to go from rookie QoS Bond to seasoned SF vet, and we as an audience missed seeing Craig Bond 'in his prime' as a result.
Yes, M panicked in the moment and made a terrible judgement call. For some reason, all of a sudden, she doesn't trust Bond to get the job done anymore. How many fights has Bond lost? Why didn't she think he would win this one? Bond rightly scolds her later that she should've trusted him to do the job. I suspect that her still defending the decision months later is a sign of denial on her part that she massively f***ed things up. Which, interestingly enough, she does admit at the end of the film.
In light of the above, and in light of this thread´s title, I find it incredible that SF turned out the highest-grossing Bond film and got so much praise from so many sides. I would say it is the most overrated Bond film, yes.
Either Purvis and Wade intended to make M look incompetent (and ive been told repeatedly that this wasn't the idea) or the writing was just awful.
the latter is probably most likely.
Having said that, the whole of MI6 is portrayed as utterly incompetent throughout the film ,so there is at least some consistency
Well said. I remember the person I saw Avatar with proclaiming it to be the greatest film in cinema history, and to me it was really just popcorn fluff and pretentious crap. I'd watch Spielberg's Duel over Avatar any day. In fact, you'd have to pay me the 2016 inflation adjusted equivalent to Connery's DAF salary, plus back any two films of my choice to get me to watch Avatar again. Aliens, on the other hand, I enjoyed in the cinema, but it was no Raiders.
As far as the overrated Bonds go, for me it just depends on mood. I have friends who really do think SF was the best Bond ever made, yet on many days, I'd much rather watch LALD. I'm watching SF as I write this (the Bond/M Aston Martin scene is about to come up) and I'm having a blast. :)
What I always said.
What never ceases to puzzle and amuse on a personal level is when this film is rated highly by Bond "fans." Ultimately, it provides little more than a flashy, over-hyped, vapid, MTV-influenced pot-pourri of greatest hits moments which don't add up to a satisfying whole. It's like one of those mediocre compilation albums where you simply flick through to the songs you like, enjoying the few good bits, and arbitrarily disregarding the rest. Oh and the score is awful too. GE (despite a great pre-title sequence and henchwoman) is average.
They are all exactly as good as I think they are.
I adore SF, but I agree that it can far too often be called a golden film that trumps CR, which I'm not having. Great films are great films, but CR wins every day and thrice on Sunday in every way. It's just a magical film, super special.
I will say I'm always shocked to read people who rate SF in their top five, then relegate SP to the bottom or near it. Those movies aren't different enough for one to be adored and the other to be absolutely hated. They make up a two part adventure, so I don't get how you can have such extreme reactions between them. Obviously the goals of the productions are different and the films use different motifs and themes, but they are made with the same intent and style.
I think so many are sleeping on SP's major strengths, just as some do for TB, DAF, QoS, and on. SF also gets a pass for things SP does better, but I won't harp on about it.
So was it overrated by those who loved it? As far as I know everyone watched it with an open mind so maybe the great love it was greeted with was because it was fully worthy of that praise ?
So one Telegraph critic questions its validity as a great Bond film? Big deal. I don't base my opinion on a paid critic.