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Forget Star Wars, critics had no issue at all with SF doing all the same things. And may I say that SP did its winks infinitely better than SF. That's why the critical response is so mind boggling to me. SF was everyone's darling, and didn't get any criticisms it should have gotten, but three years later and SP gets slammed for having similar elements. Rubbish.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!! Good one!!!
The torture scene doesn't work because there really is no way to make it work.
Torture in reality is death, just a slower more painful death.
Part of the ongoing fantasy of Bond is that he does not get killed or actually be helplessly tortured.
He escapes before this stuff goes down.
Fleming created one torture scenario in which Bond was truly doomed.
Bond did not escape. He was fortuitously rescued
That's it. Then he had weeks of convalescence and healing.
Yet Tamahori, Mendes, and assorted continuation authors think it somehow makes sense to willy nilly subject Bond to torture because Fleming created ONE, operative word ONE, iconic torture scene, from which Bond was only lucky to get rescued
Just say no to "Torture Bond" unless dramatizing Fleming's first novel.
I've replied to your post before about torture scenes in Bond novels, which were littered with them.
DAF with Bond nearly being kicked to death by football boots. This would have been far worse to show on screen than the ball whacking in CR. Bond's long, torture ordeal in Dr. No's nasty assault course would also be very nasty if it was shown in a true adaptation. Bond and Solitaire being tied to a boat and being dragged along a coral reef is a particularly nasty way to go. Bond getting his finger broken in LALD. Bond trying to commit suicide while tied down to a table after Oddjob does a few things to him, before the ordeal of being sliced in half very slowly. Even Bond being strapped to a chair while Drax furiously lets rip and beats Bond severely about the face sounded fairly horrific in MR.
Fleming always had a sick, sinister side to his writing, and it showed in nearly all the novels, not just in CR.
So you are wrong when you say a torture scene only happened once. It happened numerous times, in different forms.
Pretty sure it was @TheWizardOfIce who made it, wherever it is.
EDIT: Found it in the torture thread:
@TheWizardOfIce
You missed Bond being dragged along a coral reef from the torture list...
You hate SP. We get it already. Now would you please be so kind as to stop inflicting your misery on the rest of us?
Does he not have the right to share a negative opinion of Spectre as much as you have the right to share a positive one? The same debate sprung up after Skyfall, and it's just as pointless today.
With respect to the broader question of why Skyfall was praised for its winks to classic Bond while Spectre wasn't, I have a few reasons. The first and most important one is that Skyfall told a compelling story. Silva was tortured because of M, Silva wants revenge against M. Bond was also hurt by M, but he wants to protect her. Watch them collide. Skyfall also developed its ideas about the obsolescence of MI6 and Bond's relationship to his job, whereas Spectre halfheartedly throws some lines about data collection and Bond's job before abandoning them. Spectre also retreads some of the exact same ground that Skyfall did, in the villain with a personal vendetta against Bond and government bureaucrats wanting to shut MI6 down, but again, they don't develop the ideas half as well and we're left with a mishmash of tropes thrown out there.
Now, it's also true that reviews of Spectre weren't unanimously negative. It still has a positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and most reviews still praise some of the old school Bondian tropes, like Mr. Hinx and the chase in the Alps and so on. I haven't seen Star Wars, but I will in a few hours, so I will comment on any perceived differences after that.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_globalmilitarism197.htm
I'm with you, @Perilagu_Khan. Of course none of us mind anyone sharing their views, obviously. What I personally take issue with is beating a dead horse. When SF came out we had a select group of members who went into threads both related and unrelated to SF to complain about it and bring negativity into what were meant to be discussions on its strengths. It was like members going into appreciation threads to tell everyone how much they despised the actor, film, or movie in question.
With SP we now have the same old situation. Those that don't like SP, we get it, we know who you are. You needn't worry about being forgotten, we are quite aware of your presence and your all-important negativity. We know what all of you don't like about it from memory, which is easy because it's all that you post.
The point here is this: those that like SP can go on and on all day about all the positive aspects of it and it does nothing to upset anyone. The same is true for discussing its faults, but only when it is done with limitations and respect. When we post comments about films, we often share both our favorite things and complaints about them one to three times as discussion goes along. We don't, however, go into every thread related and unrelated to the film to then bring all of that out again just to hate on it without adding anything to discussions, and often disrupting it. What I see now more than ever is members heading into threads they shouldn't be in posting things like "wow, this was way better film than SP," or "SP was a massive disappointment compared to this," when they are adding nothing of value to discussions but their own hate. It's pointless.
I wouldn't even call myself a big Star Wars fan, and I really liked The Force Awakens infinitely more than Spectre. Sure, it rehashes old plot points, but a lot of aspects of the plot still feel fresh. Nothing in Spectre - aside from the opening sequence - felt fresh.
I would've loved to see Spectre steal the plot from a prior Bond film (like The Force Awakens does from the original Star Wars) if it meant there was some semblance of coherence to the events of the film. Spectre was so poorly written in my eyes that I saw it once in theaters and won't see it again until DVD. I don't remember the last time I've left a theater as disappointed as I did after Spectre. Quite the opposite with Star Wars even though huge chunks of the plot were as derivative as it got for the franchise.
At least you know the part you play in this little drama of yours.
Lol, sorry. I just hate looking forward to something this long and being so monumentally let down. QoS was a very flawed film, but I still enjoyed it and saw in the theater 3 separate times.
One thing I'd like to see in the next film is for the pace to slow a bit. One of the things I loved about CR is that so much of the action took place in the casino at Montenegro. I just felt like the film got to breathe a bit and not simply jump from location to location. I get that Bond films always show case far off, exotic locations, but SP seemed to jump to a new location simply for the hell of it at times. Like it was trying to check something else off the Bond checklist.
I'm glad you asked. :))
Because as much as I love Connery, I LOVE Dan's performance in SP. He's not angsty as in SF, and he's not needlessly buff as in CR. He nearly equals Dalton for me here, and that's high praise in MY book. Plus, using that bit from Colonel Sun was a welcome treat. Yes, a better score would have rocked me harder, but Newman did not detract, at least.
+1
And I thought you didn't like the movie.
Of course he has that right. But his opinion would be considerably less rebarbative if it wasn't one constant, unmodulated whinge. He has nothing to say except "Woe is me! I hate SPECTRE!" The banging-the-spoon-on-the-highchair act has gone far beyond tedious.
Precisely.
Not sure how you got that idea. After my first two viewings, I felt ambivalent about SP. I didn't dislike it; I didn't like it; I just wasn't quite sure what to make of it. But my third viewing--last Sunday--put me firmly in SP's camp. I still prefer SF, but SP will probably settle in at around No. 5-No.7 in my rankings. That's pretty dam' good.