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Great.
Got it.
But why do you continue obsessing over Craig. He’s gone. He ain’t coming back.
Can’t you move on? It’s tiresome. Can’t you play on another thread with fresh thoughts, instead of the same old, same old?
Asking for a friend.
It's the poetry of a lone man's journey. And, which you seem to forget, it's a bloody film series, not real life. Had someone invaded a scene saying that Leiter was dead, you'd be complaining about such a pivotal moment happening offscreen. Had we been shown his death in a scene that was missing Bond, you'd be complaining about Bond missing such an important occurance. You went in arms crossed, so you were always going to complain.
Why did lieter have to die at all? He never died before in 40 years of history, nor did M, nor did bond. Somehow they managed.
Well done, @DarthDimi … I was going to go into the poetry of storytelling, but I shrugged and asked myself: what’s the point??
And so instead, I had to get to the point of @Mendes4Lyfe and all of his posts: you hate Craig, we get it. But why can’t you let it go?? He left in 2021.
It’s 2024.
And Mendes goes on as if the guy is going to be making another Bond film. Talk about a broken record…. And for how long has he been saying the same thing (daily, weekly, monthly and yearly)…
@peter
That's what you get when someone hates a film to the point where the hate becomes utterly irrational. The obsessed type will stop at nothing to build a solid case amidst nothing but emotional stress. Some arguments narrow down to personal taste and are legit -- you don't like something, fine. But some are attempts at demonstrating errors which we can all agree on, and that's when things get silly. "Why this?", "why that?", "surely this is a mistake!" No, you'll have to accept that others don't share all of your complaints, and that not all of your complaints are mistakes on behalf of the filmmakers. They just did something you don't like, and because you don't like it, you are looking for an echo chamber. And that's when you get DCINB.
Absolutely, you’ve nailed it.
It’s a slippery slope that does lead to the irrational (and creepy) behaviour of the DCINB ilk.
As you say, you don’t like something? Cool, always interested in opinions or thoughts and it doesn’t matter one bit whether I agree or not.
The flip side (and more positive side), of that coin is reading the very thoughtful posts that @007ClassicBondFan has shared with us. He put great effort into his rankings and reviews of each Bond film. Never did it come close to stepping into territory that would potentially demean other fans, or belittle others for their admiration for a film. Nope, not at all. And I enjoyed reading every single mini-essay that he shared with us…
But we know that certain people don’t want to share, they don’t want to be positive, they want to build an army of aggressive negativity to prove that they are in fact, correct. It no longer is about an opinion, but instead it has to be absolute rules and laws.
It’s immature. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. And it has zero value to what most of us are trying to do here: celebrate this character and exchange thoughts and ideas and opinions.
Thanks for that sober post @DarthDimi ..
Yours is the best post I've read all day, @peter. Well summarized.
Nope.
Edit: and thanks @DarthDimi … I think we’ve just grown a little weary of certain behaviour…
Also I wish to add that sometimes I think it’s much easier for people to grasp at straws for why the may not like something (I’m guilty of doing it time to time with certain films) as opposed to just being honest and saying that some of the creative choices that were made didn’t gel with you and simply leave it at that. I think that’s a valid enough reason for why you may not like something as opposed to try and create reasons that don’t hold much weight in the grand-scheme of things. I mean I don’t like James Bond stopping his heartbeat about 30 minutes into a film before immediately reviving himself and strolling around looking like Jesus (though Brosnan rocked that look imo); but I’m not cussing out DAD (not like I used too ;).)
They hadn't tapped into the poetry of a lone man's journey yet, clearly.
True.
And you're at it again.
What'd you hope to achieve by this comment, @Mendes4Lyfe ? Seriously, what?
Some people only know how to be destructive and are incapable of building anything positive.
Try harder.
Well, more blown up than buried, but point taken 😂
Sounds just like EON productions to me, slowly taking everything that matters to Bond anyway from him one by one and then killing him before his daughter could learn his name. Where's the optimism in that? Bond had more joy squeezed into the 3 minute BMW chase around a parking lot in TND than he did in the entirety of Craigs run. Here's a novel idea to reboot the franchise, try having some fun for once, I think that could suit a franchise about a super spy saving the world, but what do I know?
Again I reiterate, what people want is not difficult to deliver, or costly (e.g. the TND car park chase), it just takes getting someone with the right sensibilities.
This is madness, man. You’re talking about a film in a series. It’s fiction, @Mendes4Lyfe … I’m talking about your obsession and how you’re filling up these boards with this strange obsession. You’ve been saying the same thing for years. Day after day, week after week, year after year.
And what makes you the great arbiter of what “we” want? Why do you insist on speaking on behalf of millions of strangers worldwide? You don’t know what ppl want. You’re some guy on a phone. You have no power to speak on behalf of what “we” want.
You sound like a little tyrant/dictator, and behaving like one too.
In the end, speak for yourself. What you want. Some ppl will agree with you. Others won’t.
But it’s just your opinion. And it has no bearing on what will happen in real life.
Try harder. Stop being a little tyrant. Be confident in what you want and speak for yourself. And, try spreading out your ideas instead of this Daniel Craig obsession you have. His Bond is gone. He ain’t coming back. Can you move past this? Can you move past his era? Can you progress yourself?
Try harder.
But bond is certainly enjoying himself, there's no denying that.
So do you not have any fun watching any of the Bond films past TND @Mendes4Lyfe ?
I mean, if that’s the case I’m sorry there’s a good chunk of Bond films you don’t actually like, or at least get any enjoyment out of, as seemingly many other people do. I couldn’t imagine being a Bond fan and not having fun to some degree watching any of these films, particularly the new ones (there are of course a handful of films in this franchise I’m not as keen on or have personal criticisms of, but there’s always something in them).
Yes, right after the woman who apparently "got too close" lies dead in his room! Plenty to be joyful about!
But anyway, I just wanna say as someone with that context behind them, I’m more than open to change and I think it’s a necessary change and I think you’d be surprised how many think the same because I think everyone knows and understands that it was time for Craig to move on and now for a new guy to step in.
The important thing here is an openmind. I keep saying it on every page and in every discussion I have with someone but it’s so important. We all have our preferences and our own ideas of what should be done going forward, but it’s out of our hands and whatever happens, we should just at least be grateful for the fact that our favourite series is continuing to grow and hopefully thrive.
Yes, there will be shouting and hollering and moaning and complaining but that’s common in everything. It would be impossible for EON to please everyone so just sit back and enjoy the ride :)
Connery Bond every weekend. That’s my Bond upbringing.
I fell in love with those 60s films, and much to the chagrin of my dad, I was passionately in love with OHMSS (although I thought the actor who played Bond looked and acted strangely!).
We would see all the new Bond films in the cinema on the first Friday of release.
And I was reading Gardner by ten, Fleming by twelve, but really got into Fleming hard by 15…
By the time I hit my teens, Dalton was a welcome hit in my home, and his posters adorned my wall…
I wasn’t a fan of the Brozz era, but still went every film, and could find some things I enjoyed, but knew the aesthetic and the lead, just weren’t my cup of tea (but never felt a need to hold a grudge against EoN or the lead actor, which is why I find some behaviour here, uncomfortable and weird).
I fell in love with Craig era, he became my number one, and his very flawed last film has become my favourite…
But I don’t want a rehash of Craig, nor a Craig 2.0. It IS time for a new actor and a new era, and a man who will breathe his own life into this character. I’m looking forward to it…
And PS: @007ClassicBondFan … and definitely waiting to see your conclusion (no pressure!!)!!
TND was the last time they made a real bond film IMO, and that sort of happened accidentally. It was Barbara and Micheals first time helming a Bond film on their own, there were a lot of issues during production, so they essentially had to shoot from the hip, and lean on the formula a lot out of necessity. The movie is slick as hell, and brosnans bond is probably the last time we see that unflappable hero, with his "armour on". The World Is Not Enough has the problem of being dull, and not really having an imagination capturing idea at the centre. Bond films rely on formula, but there's always that spark of uniqueness which set them apart. LALD has voodoo, TMWTGG has karate, Moonraker has space exploration, and TWINE has... OIL? There was no engaging hook, and the direction, production design, cinematography really don't live up to Bond's standards. DAD is a bizarre contrast of tones, like there's two stories fighting for supremacy over the other, but (as I described on the controversial opinions thread the other day) there's still a lot of Bond "stuff" in there, I.e. little ideas which in another film could completely work and add something to the fabric series. The sword fight, bond walking through the lobby in PJ'S dripping wet, the Aston chase on ice, bond using the accelerator of a hovercraft to dispatch the baddie against the fan and leaping out of the way etc. I have a lot of respect for Casino Royale, every so often there needs to be a Bond film which shakes things up a big way and resets things, but I think they went a bit too far than they needed to to get the point across, and as time goes by the movie feels very dated to the mid 2000's just like batman begins. There's a lot of discussion about "trust" "half monk half hitman" and "putting you armour on" and "do I look like I give a damn" which feel like meta commentary, like they're saying "look at us, we're so different". I suppose at the time we were like "wow, so serious" but 20 years later, with so many films and series that have done it since it just sticks out. Also I don't like how the film is structured, with a whole 4th act taking place on the end after Bond wakes up in hospital. Its like they forgot to establish that bond and Vesper are falling in love, or something. I know that's how the book is structured (well, are they ever really in love in the book? Not really), but this is a case where they should have changed some things in the adaptation to make it more cinematic. Most people i talk to agree that the movie feels "complete" once Le Chiffre snuffs it. QoS is a mess, but I just can't gel with films where Bond is on the lamb, vengeful, disheveled, disorientated, looks like he could fly off the handle at any moment (I don't like LTK for this reason, either). SP and Bond 25 you can probably guess my feelings on, I don't need to go into detail...
I think the take away from the craig era is that EON and the writers need to learn to trust their instincts and shoot from the hip sometimes. I don't where this idea came from that bond is some high art film franchise that you need to bring in heavyweight dramatists to correctly capture the essence and do it justice. Its completely codswallop. Fleming considered the books airport literature, something to pass the time on a long flight, he churned them out in about 2 months of the year, in his journalistic prose style. The early films that we look back on as the golden age were each churned out in a matter of months, they were basic spy plots with an added shot of imagination that arrived at the right time to explode onto the public conscienceness. There was never anything terribly profound or sophisticated about them. I think the writers should be locked in a hotel room and given 48 hours to come up with a concept, and whatever they come up with, that's the basis for the story that they build from. Not everything needs to be this considered, detailed thesis on the state of Bond in relation to the modern world. Sometimes pure escapism is enough, and that's what got bond where he is afterall, not the musings of some dramatist wheezebag. Like I said in the other thread, it's about where the bottlenecks for the series are coming from. In the early 2000's there was certainly truth to saying that keep bond as an unflappable hero was holding them back, because clearly story elements of Brosnans last 2 films had to be fairly brutally compromised so he could finish the story picking diamonds out of halle berry's belly button like a job well done. But that restriction isn't there anymore, so what's holding them back? IMO the fact that the current bond can't lean into the formula, can't let comedy drive scenes, can't be stylised and slick, can't let pure escapism speak for itself, and bond can't have fun is whats holding back the storytelling of the films (again, except for the Paloma sequence of Bond 25 which did all this brillaintly and should be the proof of concept for the next film) . Even something as simple as rolling along a trolley in a newspaper factory while the bond theme plays, or sliding down a mountain inside a cello case would probably be too much for Bond in his current state. But if you only had 48 hours to come up with a treatment, there wouldn't be time to come up with all intricate mother/brother angles, and "old ways are the best" motifs, and Bond on the lamb "back from the dead" etc. You'd just have to think on your feet, like the old boys did back in the 60's and 70's, when they were churning these things out. Bond as a brand is strong enough, there's no need to overthink it.
Not really. Audiences have changed quite a bit. There's an overabundance of "product" out there. Why would you go to a movie theatre when you can just stay home and binge the next TV series on Netflix? Why pay for a Bond film when it's "just" another one like the two dozen ones you've already seen? I think you also overestimate the "cool factor" Bond still has among the younger crowd. Professionally, I spend a lot of time with teens and tweens, and let me tell you, Bond is not on their minds. Neither is the MCU anymore, for that matter. You refer to someone as a "regular Q" and you can hear crickets. Yet these hearts will have to be won over by the new Bond too, lest the series sink into oblivion. "Churning out" Bond films like they did way back when, isn't going to help. You'll have to work hard to build something more appealing.
Bond isn't the only hot action type with cool explosions and breathtaking car chases anymore. Even middle-aged people are considering what to spend their money on first. There's always the option "to pick up the movie in a few months when it's streaming" or when there's money again. So unless you make the films something special, and provided you refrain from mass-producing them, you may hold just people's interest and create a successful era once again. Yes, the Bond brand is still strong, but you really need to think this through nevertheless. I'm not advocating overthinking anything, but you're underthinking things, it seems like. Just make another Bond film, and then another, and then another, ... how hard can it be, right? Well, I think it's become much harder than it was several decades ago.
Do you think he overthunk it??, 🤣🤪