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I'm with you on how I don't think a retired family-man Bond would have satisfied anyone disappointed with the ending. Most of the suggestions offered up on how it could have ended differently write out Bond's family completely in efforts to get him back to being a fully committed member of MI6. If this Bond had wanted that, he would have just gone back to MI6 after Matera.
One moment I do love in the film is in Jamaica when Nomi accurately appraises Bond as having nothing to live for. He hangs his head for a while at that before raising it to meet her eyes. She's right. Obviously, MI6 wasn't enough for Bond at this point in his life.
While I wish Bond could have been able to finally enjoy his life with his family, I'm not sure I'd be willing to give up the last bit of Craig's performance to make that happen. It was just too good. Plus Bond was finally able to ensure the women in his life don't "end up dead."
The argument about DC's timeline being a self-contained arc doesn't hold much water since they've spent past 3 movies riding the coattails of the previous eras. They can't have it both ways. They can't say that DC's tenure is its own thing while making 50th anniversary movies. Bond isn't 6 different characters, he's one character. If you kill DC's Bond, it may not literally affect the previous Bonds, but it does affect the overall image of the character. People are angry not because they specifically killed DC's Bond but simply because they killed ANY Bond. Like someone else said, it was an unwritten rule of the Bond series that you just don't do that. There's a reason why Bond has survived all these decades, he doesn't die, not any iteration. Now that Eon has destroyed that, they've alienated fans, burned bridges, and made it harder for audiences to accept Bond returning to the screen, if he does.
Nor me. But we are in danger of becoming like Star Wars fans and letting ourselves get annoyed because they didn't film the movie we wanted.
That said, I would still argue that I'd happily take the rough (Italian bloke fainting into his airbag) with the smooth (the first true order of Fleming's Vespa), as long as Bond was still around to die another day as the credits rolled.
And thanks from me. I've enjoyed the debate today, (and don't worry, I won't normally post this much, it's my day off today).
I actually enjoy reading how people who obviously love the franchise, are on board with the film and the ending. I'm hoping in time I can come round to their point of view. But I can't decide not to care that they've killed James Bond, then said he'll return.
M said "I've no compunction about sending you to your death, but I won't do it on a whim"*
But it feels like EON did just that.
*I bet I've got that wrong, sorry. It was something like that.
Great first post @ColonelAdamski
I was a similar age when my dad took me to see Live And Let Die 😁
I get where you're coming from regarding this strange Bond film. I enjoyed it immensely and admire the balls it took to go through with that ending.
Like you, I'm also a massive fan of the Fleming books 👍
marvelous summary of my own feelings on this. I could be speaking to my own reflection.
Good point!
@bondsum : thanks for the welcome. We may be new here, but as you can tell we've been Bond fans for a while.
But then the book series a few years back had Bond using his modern smartphone and driving a brand new 2010s Bentley Continental GT with bluetooth and LED headlamps and all that, and in the next novel he was the same age in Africa in the late 60s; we struggled on :)
Yup, he was never going back full-time to MI6 (because he's already left and he's too old) so it had to end one way or the other.
Maybe one other alternative is his becomes M or something (bit weird), but it was clear from the end of Spectre that the story wasn't going to end with him just going back to being 007 full time.
Precisely.
My main gripe with SF was that it never truly kicked on from where CR left off. Yes, we got a standalone Bond movie, but we also got a hugely damaged Bond who was no longer in his prime. We'd gone from young Bond to old Bond in the space of just three movies, the second of which was a direct sequel to the first. The growth had mostly happened off-screen rather than on it.
Yep, and Bond never will top Cruise's M:I action. And it shouldn't, IMO. Bond should go back to being a spy thriller, with a detective story at its core, granted, with some action pieces, but not be defined organically by them, as the latest M:I films are.
I think Fleming stipulated they could only use the title of The Spy Who Loved Me. I think he virtually disowned the contents of the book.
As regards the chapter titles, chapter five of Thunderball is called Spectre, so perhaps they are allowed to use chapter titles as film titles?
Perhaps they could title the upcoming Bond films after every fifth chapter in the books. Let's see how that works; starting from the first book, chapter five of Casino Royale is tited The Girl from Headquarters. Not bad! I could go with that.
Next book, Live and Let Die..
... shit!
Yup, agreed. Matera is decent but after that it falls off. And there's only the bit where he grabs the motorbike (and they don't even have to bother showing us him getting on it because they know we know he's Bond- of course he's getting on it) which has any sort of Bond-y swagger to it. It's not particularly good action and it's not Bondy either.
When the Norway chase opens and all of the baddies' vehicles are leaping dramatically in the air that's what the chase should have been: everyone driving way too fast over rough ground with cars -including Bond's- spending more time in the air than on the ground. Something new that we haven't seen before.
:))
Six years had passed since CR and they just wanted to go straight to veteran Bond for the 50th anniversary. I think that was the correct impulse. I wish the second had been less a direct sequel and more of its own thing while still serving as a follow up (like how LALD novel picked up from Bond’s desire for payback).
So just because they made a mistake with the second film and that there was a delay with MGM’s issues, I’m not holding any of that against them for doing a story that shows Bond as a vet. Thankfully, neither were audiences as they rolled with that conceit. It’s just a few Bondphiles crossing their arms over it.
Thanks. The Craig era has been frustrating for me since SF and its lousy script riddled with contrivances and incongruities with CR-QOS.
The idea of Craig's tenure being a self-contained arc is something very recent. When CR was released, the common perception was that the Craig tenure was supposed to showcase how Bond became the Bond we all know and love, not how an "alternate universe" James Bond became 007, sort of, and then died. Now we have to deal with all this "timeline" nonsense.
The Craig era was supposed to be a reconstruction of James Bond but all it did was end up deconstructing him to the point where this whole era comes off as some botched experiment, and now they have to do yet another reboot to set things right. Almost makes me feel like DAD (which I dislike) was the "real" Bond movie and the Craig ones are just some kind of "what if?"
That's not true. One thing is homaging stuff, another thing is recycling stuff. The Craig era toyed with the past but always with a fresh take. The only scene where they went 100% nostalgic was in SF during the DB5 reveal. The Craig films never lacked a strong personal identity. In fact, they proved to be the most distinctive and tonally independent era since Connery when they started it all.
Though it is always funny to me how SF derides GE with the "exploding pen" comment, only to use an exploding watch in the very next film.
On the other hand Waltz's Blofeld is the less nostalgic Blofeld you can ever possibly imagine.
You're most welcome @Benjamin. I too was an older Bond fan when I first joined the forum back in 2002, so it doesn't matter how old you are, so long as you're here and you get your opinion out there. Not everyone will agree, but that doesn't matter either.
I've more or less come to terms with these inconsistencies seeing them for what they are, an attempt at experimenting and playing with certain tropes of the Bond films, but fleetingly so, rather than making a definitive statement on the place gadgets should have from now on in the Bond films (for example). Thus, each new film can offer a different set of subversions than its predecessors.
I think, one can have a strong personal opinion about the basic premise of a controversial movie, without losing touch with reality.
Was he 49 then? He was such a dude. You just know that if he walked in a room, even if he wasn't famous, you'd be going "who the f*ck is that!"
Like Sammy Davis with Connery.
Not sure how that’s a “problem”. They did it their way in the 1977 and they did it their way in 2012. Both paid off immensely. Even more so for SF as that not only outdid Moore’s effort but is a more highly rated film by fans and critics alike. So good on them for pulling it off.
I did say, therein lies my problem with it. Clearly, it didn't bother you or the access media. As we're using BO, fans and critics as a yardstick, then I suppose that means TB and GF are still vastly superior to SF as they both managed to out-perform the movie in every category. Case closed, I guess.
I remember thinking that the end of Skyfall was the great 'reset'. It was like, yea, now we have M, M's office, Moneypenny, Q, Bond wanting to get back to work.
That was the time when we could have had any adventure with any actor going forward. This 'reboot' thing had done its job, and we were okay.
I honestly thought we'd be back to the original vision of the films post Skyfall, (and the novels to a lesser extent).
But no, they've killed Felix, killed Bond, but it's all okay, really, because they'll all be back in another reboot.
Riiiight... nothing messy there then.