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I think the truth will not out for some time, but I also think you’ve answered your own question. Film is somewhat malleable, and they have been known to be finished many times.
The finale of the film is strange. I know that Craig and Malek went off and actually rewrote/improvised much of the Safin/Bond dialogue... it begs the question of what was originally written as Safin's motives get very muddled during that encounter with all this 'invisible God' nonsense. Then there's the issue of these 'buyer ships'... to me it looks like those shots were added with effects in post to stimulate tension and the verbal references to 'buyers' were ADR'd... to be honest it'd be interesting to know the backstory of the production, as from what little I understand it seems like Malek was only available for a short time for those scenes and rewrites were constantly happening...
Wouldn’t need reshoots, just a bit of ADR (Malik in particular has a lot of back of the head shots) maybe some rejigged inlay graphics on computer displays and some hefty editing around the garden and hazmat suits at the end. Though for the record, I think nanobots may always have been in, but the viral aspects were more pronounced. (as they are at the beginning of the story… why would nanobot researchers need smallpox viruses?) Theres a very heavy dose of Metal Gear Solid influence in modern Bond films for a start.
I don't really know where you're getting that idea from.
They already had all the prints for April 2020...it would have been very expensive to redo everything in March 2020.
Yeah, do the nanobots actually carry a little viral load of the algae-derived organic poison in them? I'm not sure how they're supposed to work.
It's not organic poison I suppose (specialised poison? A weaponised virus? I dunno, whatever they say it is in the damn film, it' genetically engineered or whatever and they harp on about it at length to set Bond up to die anyway).
My point was that I think the nanobot virus/poison/whatever thing was most likely always there and not added later into filming or in post etc.
I'm still partial to his opinion, but what I don't understand was to call the concept of Bond having a family boring? I'm not a fan of Bond having a family but it's not boring but because I'm not used to seeing Bond that way, that's a critical change to the character.
I did laughed at his mention of Ejector seat though.
I've seen some comments at Daily Mail and they're all bashing the film, calling it woke, boring and terrible, and those were harsh.
Haven't read his books yet, which I'm going to try maybe next month if I'll find some copies online.
Needless to say, really heightened my love for the film, particularly the stellar PTS. Feels ripped straight from the movie. Great location scouting, even if it were just for tax breaks.
Pics:
Great to see you back, old chap!
I think he makes a good point. A lot of us didn't like the James Bond we were served up in NTTD, and luckily there are forums like this where we can explain our objections to people that sometimes don't understand them.
There are lots of 'interesting' things you could do with the James Bond character. You could give him a long lost sister, or you could make him adopted and he didn't know, and his real dad could be the villain. They could make him leave the service and work in a florists or become a mechanic. They could make him a proper villain, or change his sexuality, or his gender even. All these could be seen as interesting new aspects on the character that perhaps some fans would welcome. But there will always be other fans who would consider these things to far removed from Fleming's creation to be palatable.
Which is why I don't like what they did in NTTD. Fleming never made Bond a dad, and he never killed him off*, and I'd have liked it better if they'd kept it that way. And it seems there are quite a few people who think the same, judging by the comments following the Higson piece.
*And yes, I've read FRWL and YOLT.
It's the Daily Mail, there's always comments under each article calling everything woke. I bet a few of them were even blaming the BBC :)
Wonderful! Looks like you had a fantastic time.
Yup, I think Bond would be all the poorer if he couldn't have driven an underwater Lotus or quit his job to go after Sanchez or met Blofeld in a hollowed-out volcano.
Give him a submarine car, kill him, whatever. It’s all fictional. It doesn’t really matter. If killing Bond bothers you that much, maybe you need to be more emotionally detached to these things.
There's a touch of irony to the author of the Young Bond series saying you don't need to worry about Bond having a backstory...
Personally I wasn't a fan of how the daughter subplot was handled. Then again I also hate the Young Bond novels... ah well.
Yeah it's a curious choice. Maybe I don't want to see Bond as a little boy spending time with his aunt, but I got it.
And, incidentally, I thought Higson's books were terrific, and actually came the closest to feeling like Fleming than any of the other continuation authors. It's not the exact words of what you say, but the tone of voice and mindset of how you say it.
They were never for me personally. I imagine Bond's youth at Eton and with his Aunt to have been rather boring if anything. It would make more sense that such a dreary and oppressive atmosphere would have contributed to Bond as a man - y'know, someone who has this attraction to danger, adventure and vice, but also gets bored rather easily in his own day to day life. I'd imagine if danger followed Bond around even when he was young he'd want to do anything to avoid it as an adult, having seen the consequences. If anything it seems that Bond's life only got a bit more interesting when he went to Fettes and then the Navy going from the YOLT obituary...
Then again, I accept that that's just me. I never found them all that engaging personally.
I will say that it does make me appreciate something like Skyfall more. The idea of Bond spending a chunk of his youth in this isolated, very large house makes perfect sense. It looks like a horrible place even in its prime for a child to live in. It makes sense in some odd way that such a boy, especially after the death of his parents, would grow up and work in a profession where he has to travel to different locations and engage in dangerous adventures.
Again it goes back to the argument of doing right by Fleming or doing right by the story and I don't think it's necessarily a case of one being right way and other being wrong, and we all draw that line in different ways, that's what's interesting. But with Young Bond and NTTD I still think keeps the spirit the Fleming if not the letter. Higson's also of an age when Bond was the ultimate male fantasy but to me a female Gen Z (just) fan, Bond having a family both found and biological really appeals to my sensibilities, whereas his favourite, YOLT with it's grand spectacle is not my cup of tea.
Yes I really like the concept of Skyfall lodge for Bond, even Fleming's Bond. It absolutely makes complete sense and I bet a few newer readers are even surprised to find it's not in the books.
Excellent, thank you. I totally agree with that: it's not a biography of a real man but a series of adventure novels. But Higson does still examine elements of his past, fleshing the character out more, so I do disagree with his assessment of NTTD in one way. However I do also think that NTTD managed to be very un-Bondy in a lot of ways, and if Higson's novels and Skyfall showed us one thing, it's that you can expand Bond as a person and yet still keep that Bond movie/Fleming feel if you do it with enough skill, and it's here that I think NTTD dropped the ball.