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My thinking, too. The last EON Bond actor. Everything changes now, and it's questionable that it'd be for the better.
Everything SP did was in other Bond movies already. Nothing about it was M:I novelty, if anything it's M:I that copied Bond.
No Time To Die was written before Endgame came out, and absolutely nothing about NTTD copied Endgame, unless I missed the time travel in No Time to Die or the garden of death in Endgame.
I don't think Craig's Bond was any deeper than any previous Bond. Bond has always been a fully-fleshed, 3-dimensional character with contradictions, flaws, and pathos. Some movies highlighted these traits more than others, but even in the sillier movies like DAD we see what motivates him, what angers him, why he's so dedicated to his job, etc.
The idea that Bond's psyche needs to be explored strikes me as silly, a waste of time, and a substitution for an actual story. Giving Bond and Blofeld a shared childhood is not giving the story depth, it's a low-effort gimmick that gives the illusion of depth but actually has no bearing on the plot whatsoever and no consequences for either character.
That pretty much aligns, I think, with the majority of opinions about the matter. I do agree as well. Poor gimmicks, poor writing, poor character treatment. It’s the story in which Bond finds himself immersed that is key, not Bond’s own story. That was telling of some fatigue, I think. Let’s see if someone out there can fly pass that and come up with some original stories.
Not to her, though. In interviews and public statements, she was enamored with Daniel...almost to the point of, yes, not being able to move on without him.
I think she could have continued without one but perhaps without both was too much of an ask
Exactly this. Bond is the character we follow as he experiences the story. The story is not Bond himself. This is what annoyed me most about the last three movies.
In other words, you could easily replace him by a robot. I'd rather watch the adventures of a fully-rounded character whose motives I can understand with a minimum of kitchen psychology. Doesn't mean I subscribe to all the antics the writers put into the last movies, especially not that foster brother nonsense. But it must also be noticed that even that left Bond surprisingly untouched, doing his job in spite of those tribulations. I'm all for that.
Yay
NB - In "No Time to Die," the SPECTRE agents use a high-tech gadget that looks like a portable anti-gravity device or a personal hover platform. They drop it down the shaft, and then they jump off and use it to float down slowly, defying gravity.
No worries, those are the only two threads I felt it was relevant to, but I couldn't make up my mind between them
What happened to Gregg Wilson? I wish EON had continued on, not every Bond film and not every Bond Actor has to feel some sort of divinity. It's ok to just make a good Bond film with a good actor, and I don't think anybody could have topped Daniel Craig in her mind.
Bond is quite enigmatic really, there's lots of situations we don't see him in or know how he'd react to. Part of the whole 'cool' persona is that he's slightly unknowable in some senses. Exploring that is no bad thing as the movies are literally about him.
Also I'm not sure we could say he's always been a three dimensional character: that guy in You Only Live Twice isn't a human, he's a walking quip machine who presses buttons on other machines and that's about it. His depth has varied throughout the movies, and that's not a bad thing, it keeps it interesting.
In fact, I think it's cool that Bond isn't a traditional character who learns things and goes through phases of soul-searching. We love him more for what he does than for who he is? Something like that? I'm not sure that's the right way of phrasing things, but I'm tired. ;-)
Interesting to consider, is Craig-Bond really any different by the end of NTTD than he was at the end of CR?
Dead as opposed to very much alive? ;-)
Jokes aside, even the Craig Bond, who "learned his lesson", doesn't change all that much, you're right. But compared to most of the others, I think he at least changes a bit.
A character doesn't need to change to be three-dimensional. Bond has already become who he is when we meet him in CR. He goes through ups and downs over that novel and the novels that follow, he has flaws, drives, and an inner world, he has a particular way of life and a particular way of seeing the world around him. I think that makes him three-dimensional, and it's why he doesn't necessarily need to have a traditional arc.
In contrast, characters like Jack Reacher, John Wick, and Rey from Star Wars are two-dimensional power fantasies of their creators. That's very different from what Bond is.
Bond can overcome obstacles, certainly (both on the job and how that affects him personally). That seems to be what you're trying to get at here anyway. I'd say that's all the Craig films. Bond's core values don't change in essence throughout his tenure. He's just knocked off course by certain things and his circumstances change by the last one, but he ultimately comes back. For me that's great. A character like Bond needs obstacles and challenges in these stories.
I don't particularly mind scraps of Bond's history coming up either. Maybe not for every film, but it's nice to see a mention of Bond's past in GE and in SF. It informs a bit about the character in tandem with the story, but doesn't hang on to sentimentality nor does Bond himself dwell on it, which is the kind of character he is. I'd say the same about things like Bond having a previous relationship with Paris in TND. It's good storytelling.
I agree with this, a character doesn't necessarily need to "change" in the present tense in order to "develop", the development can be via revelation of past events or aspects of the characters personality that allow the audience understand who he is now, and how he became who he is.
Also in many episodic stories the titular character can be a constant, while those around him are the ones who change, or new characters are revealed. For example, as in many Superhero stories, where the back story of the villain de jour is often the focus. Unfortunately, unlike in a book, most actors get bored and frustrated if their character isn't constantly suffering great personal traumas that allow them to show off their acting technique. Daniel Craig being a prime example, who never seemed to be happy unless Bond was in the midst of an emotional crisis.
That's where actors like Roger Moore come in handy, by the time he became James Bond he had long since recognised and reconciled himself to his limitations as an actor and given up on any pretentions he may have had to being an award aspiring thespian.
Which I guess is why QOS & SP are my favourite Craig movies....
I was going to post something to this effect before the Amazon news derailed things.
I agree, and I think Dalton was aiming for the same approach to Bond that Craig was, he just didn't have the material and the time, and audiences weren't prepared for it. In a sense, Dalton was ahead of the game, too. I'm glad you have noted LTK, because that film also brought out a more personal side of Bond, certainly of Felix. It's the first time we ever saw the depth of Bond's "friendship" with Felix, in any case. It's a shame that LTK didn't have the production design it deserved. It was a bit ground-breaking before being ground-breaking was cool.
One thing I didn't like, (and I banged on about it here), is the fact they killed off the main character, yet were going to bring him back in the same series, under the premise of 'a different timeline'. This didn't sit well with me - I naively think of the Bond series as a drama series, and the timeline idea is something better suited to sci-fi and superhero (genres I don't generally get on with).
Now the whole franchise has been taken over, NTTD somehow seems less dishonest. It's now a bit neater, because we had the classic era, then the CraigBond era. And next, well, god knows what'll happen next, but at least the next 'reboot' will be by a different bunch of people.
And I expect it will be a reboot. I think they'll go with 'Bond begins (again)' because it'll have been over twenty years since the last Bond begins.
Anyway, the Craig era sits a little more comfortably for me now. I felt like EON had painted themselves into a bit of a corner, having to make new Bond film after killing Bond off. Now that NTTD is indeed the last Broccoli Bond movie, it's somehow more palatable.
I might even buy the DVD one day.
Well I don't know if 'three-dimensional' is defined by change, but all the same I'd say he does change over the course of the films- we see him much more rough and liable to impulse in CR and by Spectre he's much more comfortable in himself and his role. And of course the events of NTTD change his outlook on life and what's worth dying for completely: we literally see how surprised he is at his own feelings. Plus those around him change too: in QoS M underestimates him and the events of that film teach her how loyal Bond is.
He remains James Bond because that's what we want, but I'd say there is development and maturing of the character there.
Arguably that's why the new M is having him evaluated in GE, although yeah, I'm not sure in my mind they're the same bloke.
Craig was a producer on the films who wanted the stories to be good; I'd say Dalton is more of an example of what you're talking about. And arguably that lead to LTK, which was a bit of a cul de sac for the Bond films, audience reception-wise.