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Comments
As they say in the UK........."you should of gone to Specsavers" :)
What an unfathomable idiotic thing to say.
Interesting people are liking this more and more it mirrors my own view on repeated viewings. It's not the dizzy heights of CR or SF kind, but it's a fun if unchallenging ride.
Excuse me, Thunderfinger... I didn't notice, either. :)
I've only seen the movie once, though, so maybe next time... It was clearly an important detail to many people.
Are Bond fans not anymore allowed to be sexist?
==Does Mendes wear socks? Waltz wear socks? In real life? Hope this is explained on the dvd extras.
Planning a 5th viewing next week. I swear those pants will be rolled up above his knees by then. Terrifying to look at. The no-socks does help fit his crazy vibe, but it's also terribly distracting, offputting even, as it just looks so bad. No socks with loafers IMO does not work, and generally never with long pants.
Blofeld is a twisted depraved man no doubt, but that doesn't require looking like a person that can't dress themselves. Then again who else wears those jackets that he wears?
Hopefully the new director can find him some proper socks for next movie.
Ha ha yes blame my predictive text. The irony.
He's in Morocco, why would he wear socks anyway? And it's not like one of his henchmen will tell Blofeld that he has poor style.
After watching SPECTRE I had the same feeling. I wanted to watch TSWLM, and that's exactly what I did.
Agreed. Especially the finale. Very few Bond films have the climax filmed at night, but it seems Mendes prefers it that way. That's one of the reasons I didn't like the Skyfall finale that much. It was too gloomy and dark, but I guess it was reasonable due to the death of M. In SPECTRE however, it didn't work for me at all.
I generally prefer more upbeat endings in Bond films, and Bond quitting his job and driving off with Madeleine didn't give me that vibe. It was handled much better in CR, in the scenes with Mr. White in Italy after Vesper's death.
There is something very 60's about that ending. I can't quite put my finger on it (no, it's not the Aston). I think it has to do with Bond starting the car, shifting the gears, looking at Madeliene and then driving off. I got an Avengers (Steed/Peel) vibe. All that was missing was the hat and brolly.
TSWLM is an incredibly stunning film to look at, especially on blu. Colours just pop and the soundtrack is superb in some places.
:P
Yes. Bond is ready for the Caribbean, and a summer adventure with brighter colours again.
Get him to bloody Australia!
B-)
Jamaica, please!
It's Bond's spiritual home.
My impressions that didn't change from first to second viewing: Christensen and Whishaw were both spectacular.
I think it's an unusual Bond film in that it is very well paced! Many Bond films drag toward the end. Not this one.
Did anyone else see the thank-you to Maria Grazia Cucinotta in the credits?
Time bends... it squashes a man's ego...
Suffice it to say that I had so much fun in SPECTRE that I felt like I was watching YOLT with TB sensibilities. Not a bad thing.
:D
yes
His pants are pretty short, too.
:))
Right, and they still look dorky. Appropriately strange if we are being kind. :(
===
Sam Mendes said something very strange in the Times Talks interview posted on this websites home page.
Mendes says " In this movie, Bond has to have an emotional journey. We set that expectation up in Skyfall"
Hunh? Actually no such expectation was created in Skyfall.
What was actually set up in Skyfall was that it appeared Bond had returned to normal. That he was ready to be an efficient operative again, minus emotional baggage, supported by a shiny new Mi6 team.
This utterance from Mendes rings hollow. What it seems he is actually doing is serving up what he thinks is needed justification for contriving the whole Bond and Blofeld have a disturbing childhood history.
As I said earlier, I think Mendes might be the only person in the world, that thinks the Bond-Blofeld family history story is remotely interesting.
But apparently Mendes can't make a movie, including a Bond movie, without his leads, including James Bond, indulging emotional journeys.
He is effectively saying he had no choice but to give Bond an emotional connection with Blofed. It was all set up in Skyfall, don't you see, except that it wasn't.
But even Mendes it seems had to address reality when it came to actually making the film. There is no actual emotional journey for Bond in this film. The emotional journey or obsession is all on the part of Ernst.
It boggles that Mendes' whole "emotional journey" angle comes down to Ernst having a fixation with Bond.
Bond is truly unaffected by Blofeld in any emotional way. This is part of what makes Craig's portrayal so engaging, I think. Craig's Bond is finally behaving like the Bond we know and love. He's on mission and focused, NOT bothered with emotional baggage.
Bond recognizes in Rome that Head of Spectre is strangely enough, the Franz Oberhauser he knew as a child, but he seems quite disaffected.
Rather the revelation is treated by Bond more as operational intelligence, in aid of Bond's quest to take down the person known as Chief of Spectre.
Bond says to Blofeld later,"I came here to kill you." He could have added, not because you are Franz Oberhauser but because you are the boss of this bad organization called Spectre.
The emotional journey is all with Blofeld.
Blofeld is obsessed with Bond, but even then it appears his obsession with Bond was spurred entirely by Bond's interference in his criminal affairs.
Blofeld was building Spectre independent of any lingering hostility towards Bond. If Bond hadn't got in the way of his work, would the pathological obsession with Bond have manifested at all?
I guess what we are being asked to believe is that Bond's interference in Spectre affairs caused Blofeld to double down on his Bond hatred. Bad memories of lost daddy love were rekindled.
So Blofeld obessess. The series retcon suggests that Blofeld was somehow instrumental in killing those that Bond loved in previous films.
Blofeld only mentions Vesper and M by name. So I guess we are to surmise that he helped put wheels in motion to kill Vesper, once he realized that she and Bond had come together, and that he also encouraged Silva in his efforts to take down M.
It's not clear whether Blofeld encouraged the death of Fields or Severine.
We don't know and I don't think we care, as those films gave both Greene and Silva their own motivations for taking these girls out.
In SP, we see Blofeld torturing Bond out of envy and twisted spite, and later going after Bond at Mi6 with pictures on the wall of dead persons from Bond's past, and forcing the Swann rescue dilemma on him.
Blofeld is 100% obsessed with Bond, but Bond it seems remains entirely unmoved by Blofeld. Bond even mocks him, which is great. It's exactly what we expect from Bond. It's Entirely consistent with his persona, which is not to dwell on the why of these villains but rather on the how of taking them down.
This is part of what makes Craig's performance so powerful. Even in the face of an arch villain from his childhood, he is focused on the practical mission reasons for taking him down.
This is where I think Mendes really tripped all over himself.
His stated intent is for Bond to engage an emotional journey but he fails to engage Bond in that respect.
It's as if the story wouldn't cooperateand and instead explores Blofeld's twisted emotional journey.
But the big problem with the whole "brother" history as being Blofeld's obsession and not Bond's, is that it falls into the Who Cares category.
It's as if Mendes shoehorned this angle in orginally to deliver on non-existent "expectations" of Bond engaging an emotional journey, but ultimately couldn't actually deliver.
I think this is one of the reasons that SP feels so uneven, even forced, in its attempts to elicit an emotional response, because the big emotional journey relates to Blofeld not Bond.
This is a problem because the audience identifies with Bond. We don't get emotionally engaged with Blofeld.
If you are going to make this kind of character drama, then Skyfall was reeally the better effort, because that movie was about Bond's journey. Like or lump the story, Skyfall was about Bond's journey.
SP rather, is about a fully formed mature Bond bearing witness to the psychosis of an arch villain who has an obsession with him.
This is why the brother angle, I don't think is terribly grevious to the canon going forward. Simply because Bond doesn't care. Bond is properly focused. All the brother angle adds is some background to the madness of Ernst, but the movie suggests that Blofled was deranged anyway, so his obsession with Bond, is really only a sidebar to his greater derangement.
Yet so much time and energy is focused on this brother relationship, that really doesn't mean much at all.
I do think its time for Mendes to move on.
It seems he managed to make a good watchable film, despite himself.
Looking ahead to B25, I would dispense with the brother angle all together. Let Ernst get back to trying to rule the world via Spectre with Bond as permanent thorn in his side that he can't quite exterminate and vice versa.
Even doing a riff on Fleming's OHMSS/YOLT saga, can just come down to Blofeld escapes and strikes back at Bond and Swann, followed by Bond counterstriking with full 007 sanction and force. Blofeld ultimately survives and lives to die another day, way off in the future after many more fresh adventures.
Swann need not be killed. She is not Tracy.
Really good post about whose emotional journey it is, and why it seems a bit, or maybe way, off. I'm not advocating another revenge story, but the story would have engaged Bond more if he were upset about/avenging Pa Oberhauser's death a bit--the "cuckoo" as the devoted "son."
I know they didn't have the rights to SPECTRE back then and I'm sure Eon was being careful, but I would have bought Blofeld as the architect of Bond's pain (and not a retcon) more if there were some filmic indication that some specific figure was working in the shadows in CR, QoS, and SF. The closest they came to this was with White in the first two films. Perhaps White should have become Blofeld.