It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
In Spectre, the watch did not have the helium valve. Bond had to push down the crown and rotate the bezel to arm the C4 in the watch. Again, makes you wonder how he knew how to arm it..haha.. Maybe I'm just thinking too much into this, perhaps Q briefed him on it off screen or something. But yeah, the whole torture scene was like an exploding Omega watch commercial.. I still love it because it brought back the Bond gadgets!
Another good point!
It's.just not shown on screen
But think back to Fleming, there are many examples of Bond doing detailed mission prep. Such a missed opportunity!! Way better than the God awful torture tedium.
This could have been a quality riff on DN dinner scene.
But if I recall from the leaked Dec script, the watch was also used to make Bond's escape, so the product placement goals would have been satisfied.
The dialogue though was rather atrocious and the Blofeld reveal was terrible I thought.
The card game or whatever it was, involved the two of them.playing some stupid game from their childhood.
So I am glad that the scene was radically rewritten.
But the dining room setting could have been retained arrghhh.
Mendes you pooched it right up.
Shows you how they never really had this story together, and had to keep reenvisioning scenes, even just before shooting began
The torture scene is simple if you notice Blofeld's group of drones in the intelligence building they all stand at attention after he shuts down the monitors. This implies to me they have all gone through the lobotomy procedure he is about to put Bond through, in an attempt to make him his slave. Of course he escapes before the procedure is completed.
Not to mention the sterile rooms he had prepared for them to live in with pictures of people they would no longer recognize.
To be fair Blofeld only says 'if the needle hits the right point...'
Clearly Blofeld is shit at doing it as he missed meaning Bond was just left with two pinpricks so he has no problem shooting all the guards.
I think some people are thinking that he is actually drilling into Bond's brain but in the novel Sun just stimulated very sensitive nerve endings, which while very painful at the time, would not leave much in the way of ill effects. In fact correct me if I'm wrong someone as I haven't read it for some time but in CS doesn't Bond also shoot his way out in similar fashion after the torture?
I found it really weird that the actual point of torture was shown. The human imagination can usually come up with imagery that is far worse than that on the screen. Hence, with the shower scene in Psycho, you never see any cutting but viewers insisted they did , and with Speilberg, in Jaws, some of the most horrific scenes are above the water and you can only imagine what is happening beneath the water. And the ear cutting scene in Resevoir Dogs, we hear the screams and see the damage but even with the graphic style of director, we dont see the blade touch the ear. So I found it very strange and a big let down when you actually see the point of incision. (In CR, we did not get a camera looking up at Bond's backside but that scene was far more effective, plus we saw he needed to recover)
It just does not work, plus, as others have mentioned, the recovery is cartoon like and undermines the whole point of the scene. I really dont know what the director was thinking of.
That's a very interesting theory, @lapinsk, that I hadn't really thought of. The whole film SPECTRE agents bow to Blofeld's every whim, so I never thought for one moment that some of them might've actually undergone some "brain surgery" as it were. A commentary track could've helped us understand this a bit more, perhaps? Of course, the not knowing does make it more eerie, I confess.
Threats?
Hmmm, I know where my motivation would be.
I can see how there are theories exploring other solutions besides payment though. Watching that scene, it's extremely ominous how they all stop their work and stand up at the exact same moment. It makes them look controlled/programmed for real. It's one of my favorite aspects of SP.
The concept of Blofeld revealing himself during the scene does make sense, but the set up, scene execution and follow up was poor.
Much better done, with more menace.
Rewatch the sequence were Bond and Madeline shoot their way out of the base. It is so badly choreographed that Bond seems to be some sort of god - never getting hit, shooting down enemies from over the shoulder and the end sequence where he has perfect aim is just too hard to believe.
Then at the very end he shoots down a helicopter with a popgun... Which might be possible, I guess I wouldn't know, but it is a cheat...
I suppose you might be right ostensibly, but I think if any era was missing an homage it was the Dalton era.
I would actually argue that superficially, SP is a throwback to the Connery and Lazenby days, but that's just the coat with which the movie is painted. On the inside, SP is really another Brosnan flick - another overblown movie with explosive and contrived action, but with little emphasis on plot.
Like that's a bad thing. What Bond movie doesn't have explosions or contrived action? It's escapist fantasy not a documentary or police procedural. The Bond series has always been that way not Citizen Kane. Just because a Bond movie has explosions and actions scenes doesn't make it bad. And to single out Brosnan's run as just that? Really? I can think of examples in Every Bond film that had a contrived sequence and over blown explosion.
Blofeld says it 'might' do these things. He's clearly just shit at doing it.
We just need a quick scene at the end of the film with Sir James Molony giving Bond the once over at MI6 saying,
'Well 007 you were lucky. The drill missed the part of the brain that deals with facial recognition by 1mm. It seems to have gone into the part that deals with hand eye coordination instead. You haven't noticed anything different have you? I'd expect one of the symptoms to be having incredible aim?'
My impression of the torture scene is that it's gratuitous and redundant. The cat & the Blofeld reveal could have been done effectively in the control room. I would have preferred that.
The only addition that this scene allowed for is a convenient premise for Madeline to profess her love for Bond, and for the Omega watch to become useful. My earlier memory of this scene in the theatre was accurate - they flashed the watch at the start of this scene, so I knew in the theatre that Bond would find a way to arm it and get himself out of this fix. That deflated some of the tension, and just made all the screaming, blood and the verbal torture by Blofeld unnecessary.
I have no problem with the way the scene was composed though. It's chilling.
My only acting comment would be Seydoux. She sits in that chair knock knee'd and clutching her fingers (no doubt to suggest fear). It's not convincing, but it is childlike. She does somewhat the same thing during the meteor scene when talking with Blofeld. A more effective actress would have shown her fear through her facial expressions, rather than via these more obvious techniques.
That said, I love (sarcasm) how Blofeld says "this needle will disorient your senses and affect your balance" or something like that and then drills right into Bond's head, and THEN Bond escapes and doesn't miss a single shot kills every henchmen in the lair and blows the place up.
LOL - Bond should have had difficulty walking out the door, much less efficiently take out the entire compound.
I'm okay with contrived action scenes and big explosions, it's when they don't make ANY sense at all within the four walls of the movie. That's when I quibble.
I honestly can't believe Mendes and co. let this scene pass the way it is. It makes no sense the way it's constructed, and it would have been so damn easy to make it better. Just show Bond being affected...somehow, for crying out loud!