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
Thankfully I don't think anyone was under the impression that it does, @RichardTheBruce! :) Though admittedly, unsettling coincidences have reared their head in my life too! None, of course, resulted in me having to save the world afterwards!
Should have been M handing Bond the folder to find Sciarra in Mexico City.
No you're not the only one who thought that way. I certainly did and I suspect many others did simply because, yes, "...ready to get back to work" is a perfect line and moment to kick on for the next adventure.
It seems the only person who didn't feel that way was the man who directed that same moment!
The frustrating thing for me is Blofeld, Spectre etc could still have been done as a stand alone. It didn't have to be another walk down Personal History Lane to further muddy the waters.
Do you mean you genuinely think those two films are absolutely terrible and awful, or are you being hyperbolic and only mean it relative to Bond films (so they’re quite good really)? Because @DarthDimi was just saying how we all like all of them :)
I guess a lot of it had to do with the fact that it was the first installment of the series I saw as a kid, but even in hindsight I find a lot of qualities in this movie. Connery is at his best, Kershner's direction is interesting (the whole visual theme of voyeurism that runs through the film, with all the shots filmed in the opening of a door for example, is an original idea for a spy thriller, in particular for Bond).
You certainly weren't. I honestly was a bit disappointed when Spectre again begins with Bond disobeying orders, arguing with M about it, going rogue... I remember thinking; "here we go again"...
I sure hope it is not a new formula trope that Bond and M has to have a heated argument at soe point during the film.
To see Bond and Mallory develop a good working relationship, through to the acceptance, by Bond, that Mallory was the new M and his boss... and then go straight to SP and Bond/Mallory arguing straight away, was thoroughly disappointing to say the least.
Bond was such a little shit towards Mallory in the post-PTS meeting, I am surprised Mallory didnt physically kick him out the room.
Yeah, I thought the same thing. Now, I’m an ardent defender of Spectre, but damn, I wish this was a one-off. One thing’s for sure, if Bond 26 isn’t self-contained, it won’t be hard to see that the franchise has completely derailed itself.
I don't really rank them but it's not a total disaster of a film, it's watchable enough. It's quite patchy and doesn't really have a flow to it, but that's the issue with Thunderball really. I'd rather watch, say, AVTAK, but NSNA has a few things to commend it.
I worked out recently that it's Connery's final film appearance sans facial hair :D
They even gave him a stache in Sir Billie. ;-)
The oddest thing is that Bond doesn’t even seem all that bothered throughout the film that his foster brother is behind it all. You could easily edit/ADR out any references to being foster brothers and it doesn’t exactly change the dynamic which is that Bond had been a foil for SPECTRE and he finally reached the top boss. This is especially true with the London climax, where Blofeld is incensed not because Bond is his foster brother but because he destroyed his base and wants revenge.
It makes the foster brother angle feel inconsequential, especially given how Craig had decided to play Bond in this film as more classical, not having a chip on his shoulder like in the previous films.
Sigh. I've said this before and I'll say it again: it's astonishing how many times I've read simple fixes here that would vastly improve that film. It remains my most frustrating Bond movie because of this huge weight of wasted potential.
That's not really true though: Blofeld's whole obsession with Bond ('author of your pain' and all that) is because of the cuckoo resentment. He's supposed to have been toying with him all this time: there's no mention at all of wanting revenge for the crater base in the MI6 climax is there?
Bond doesn't return that fascination with Blofeld, but that's because he never had- he didn't intend to push him out of the nest when he was a kid. It's true that he could have been shown to want vengeance for Hannes Oberhauser, but at this point in his life he's got bigger fish to fry, and perhaps the writers were wary of giving Bond another person to avenge when we've had the shadow of Vesper hanging over the last few films, and are now being told that Blofeld is in some way responsible for M's death too.
And i LOVE Fiona Volpe.
I guess it's a Kirk/Khan thing: Kirk does not obsess about Khan, but Khan does about Kirk. But I do agree with @MakeshiftPython that you take off the brother angle and you have the exact same plot, same movie. And maybe that's why it doesn't bother me too much, paradoxically.
Yes I know what you mean: Fiona is brilliant (and watching it again recently I was struck that I found her miles better than Adolfo Celi and I was wishing she was the main baddie in the film), but Fatima is so terrifically insane that she lights the screen up every time she appears. There hadn't been a Bond baddie like her before then, and you could say Xenia owes a lot to her.
Likewise, Max Largo was a Bond villain in a style we hadn't seen before: young, successful, psychopathically evil and capable of turning from screaming to laughing in the blink of eye in a very effectively scary way. And blond of course.
And who is the villain in the very next Eon Bond film? Max Zorin. ;)
I think there are a few other improvements over Thunderball: not least Bond actually follows a real concrete lead to take him to investigate Largo from Shrublands, not just the incredibly flimsy 'Derval had a sister' lead which takes him to the Bahamas in TB! I like to imagine a version of Octopussy, say, where instead of following the faberge egg he jets off to New Zealand because 009 had a sister who lives there :D
Some of the dialogue in NSNA is great too.
I guess the plot would go more or less in the same direction, but it does lend it moments of drama and gives Blofeld some emotional stuff to taunt Bond with. The cuckoo moment in the Spectre meeting is a pretty effective 'oh crap' moment I think.
If you removed Felix and Bond's relationship from LTK you would still end up with a film where Bond pursues Sanchez and ends up blowing him to pieces, he could just be ordered to. It follows the same plotline as the TMWTGG novel and Bond wasn't rogue in that. But the emotional connection adds a bit of a drama. Even the ninja stuff wouldn't have to change much.
Well, I tend to agree there. But loads of people love it! :)
My point is that just because you can remove an emotional/interpersonal angle from a plot it doesn't mean that the film will work as well without it. Bond could be protecting some previously unknown government minister in Skyfall and have taken her to his family home, but it's just better that it's the M he has a relationship with and has served under for the previous two films and who has shaped his career as a 00 agent. Everyone left the film saying 'I can't believe they killed her off' - it connected to the audience.
And yes, the Blofeld thing didn't feel quite as organic as that particular plot, but it still added an angle to the whole thing; you can tell they have a history and that elevates their scenes. If he had been a total stranger it would have made those scenes slightly less interesting.
It doesn't totally work, but I can see why they did it.
I quite like that just before the MI6 HQ blows up Blofeld says "Goodbye James Bond": not 'Goodbye Mr Bond' of course, because he knew him as a child and you don't call kids 'mister' :)