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I'd argue the likes of someone like Wolf Blitzer is commanding a higher paycheck than some generic unknown stepping in for a minor, quick TV appearance as a made-up anchor.
Bond could still get shot but it would be just a shot from Patrice not Moneypenny. Keep things simple. He'd have a near death experience and may be a bit of amnesia. I'd make his recuperation a bit glamorous, not like a depressing week at some grotty backpacker hangout in Thailand.
Rather than incompetent M would be shown as more just down on her luck and harried by the press and parliament. She'd welcome Bond back with open arms and he'd be coming back as much for her as for MI6 and England.
Rather than M hanging on with her fingernails to keep her job she'd offer her resignation. The film would cover what are supposed to be her last few weeks in the job during which the crisis escalates and through her own sacrifice she achieves redemption. M would be more clearly motivated by duty than vanity. No lame Tennyson poem or bad courtroom scene.
Severine wouldn't die so quickly. Bond wouldn't creep up on her in the shower unannounced.
Silva's willingness to be captured would more clearly serve some despicable plan, in order to get close to M. His escape would be less farcical and the chaos he'd wreak on London more terrible and wide reaching.
The Highlands would have featured more as a location. Bond and M's last stand would have been less home alone and just a bit more clever.
I really like the way the screenplay has Kronsteen, Klebb and Blofeld in the early scenes and then they disappear for the bulk of the film only to reappear after Bond has spoilt the plan and they have to rally to overcome the damage, forcing Klebb herself into action.
The discussion will become a GENERAL discussion, so you guys can discuss whatever you would change about whichever film you want. You could even take it further and discuss what you change about the franchise as a whole.
Thanks again. I've loved every minute of leading this discussion :D
"Ulysses" is one of the greatest poems in English literature and was used very well in the film, where it was applied to M, Bond, and the UK itself.
It's not the poem per se that I have an issue with but how it's used in the film. I really don't like M's characterisation throughout the film. She's a public servant who has badly screwed up. She should be deeply apologetic and looking within for why she's failed and let down her best agent but instead she's just full of bluster and arrogance. It's never sat well with me or made for a convincing character study. But then Dench's M was always a little bit all over the place in terms of characterisation. Theres very little consistency apart from her aqendless trust issues in relation to Bond which just make her seem fickle and rather tedious.
And to be honest Silva is an odd one as well. If you think about it he is someone who loyally served Britain and MI6. He didn't abandon Britain - M made a decision that he was expendable and binned him. In this sense his backstory is quite believable and potentially interesting. And his anger and hatred are entirely understandable. But then he's just painted as this 2 dimensional Dr Evil character. And M never really shows the slightest regret or suggestion of remorse. We can understand why she did what she did but she doesn't elicit empathy because she's so pig headed and remorseless about everything her job has required her to do. It makes her seem very inhumane and cold - when she's confronted by a man who was loyal but who's life she destroyed she needs to show us that this means something to her - Silva should not just be a crushed but under her shoe. If that's all he is to her then she's a less worthy person to lead MI6 than we'd be led to believe.
In the end it feels like Silva the disposable colonial runt versus the bullyboy elite represented by M and Dench.
Mendes is not an idiot and I have no doubt he was aware of a lot of this but I just wonder sometimes what he thought these characters really represented.
I've said it before but there are shades of Brexit in SF.
That's one of the fundamental reasons that SF connects with me. Bond's journey is not really of interest to me in this film. Frankly I'm disinterested in him.
Rather, It's the primary dynamic between M and Silva which resonates. It's a complex one and the 'mother' connotations suggest that Mendes did things intentionally. "Regret is professional", suggests M. "Oh, to hell with dignity. I'll leave when the job's done." and "I did get one thing right." give some insight into the character's mindset and indicate that she recognizes her errors. Nevertheless, like the Bulldog on her desk, and like Bond for that matter, she puts her head down and gets on with it because that's the job.
Similarly Silva is complex too. The interrogation scene at MI6 and his final encounter with M suggests inner conflict under all that bravado - a real feeling of hurt is displayed when he delivers the following: "Say my name. Say it. My real name. . I know you remember it.". Later, we sense conflict when he can't execute her, but rather wants to die as well. "You're hurt. You're hurt. What have they done to you? What have they done to you? Free both of us. Free both of us...with the same bullet. Do it. Do it. Only you can do it. Do it.". Like a jilted and abused child he has lashed out, but in the end has difficulty doing what he came to do. He is as connected to her as she is to him. Bond actually put him out of his misery, but only after fate had run its course (she was killed by someone else). The ethos and pathos are there in this film and that's why it was successful. The Logos not so much.
So I don't think the film would have worked even remotely as well for me without the central conflict clicking like it did. In this film I feel it. In the follow up they keep telling me about it and yet I feel nothing. This is all passionate heat. The follow up is all detached cold.
Fundamentally, I believe it's as much in the actors and the acting as it is in the script. Dench and Bardem deliver. We sympathize with Dench primarily because of her long run in the series, but Bardem had to really sell his part. he did.
I'll echo those well presented opinions by saying that much of the reason that the Silva-M relationship works is because it is mirrored in the long established dynamic of the Bond-M relationship. So the emotional complexities of Silva's feelings and his twisted motivations and actions have been mapped out to the audience for decades before but particularly since the Brosnan and Craig eras (with Dench) and dare I say it...with the Dalton era. His reluctance to kill Pushkin is met with M questioning his professionalism and of course the brilliant interaction at the Hemingway house in LTK displays a cold, lethal efficiency to their relationship with a sniper waiting to take him out (I always loved that touch of the sniper's presence and thought it indicated how seriously they were taking Bond as a threat and how clinically they were ready eradicate him.)
I think Skyfall is critical of the secret service and how it treats its own operatives as disposable. The entire opening - take the bloody shot - is a scene setter for the themes and dark mirroring motivations of Silva and Bond. Bond being treated this way by M - could easily have turned a man down the path of revenge. He sure as hell is tortured by it on his beach escape and when he shows up at M's house. Who knows how long he would have stayed away? To be slowly turned bitter and vengeful like Silva if it wasn't, funnily enough, for Silva's plan blowing up Mi6 to pull him back from the brink of personal hell and once more toward his country's interests.
Bond is more concerned with Ronson dying and frustrated at not getting information from Patrice before his death. Things that he wasn't concerned with and in fact criticised for by M in both CR and QOS. Instead M is the one who is telling him to leave Ronson and yelling at Moneypenny to kill Patrice even if it risks killing Bond. Rather in QOS she tells him off for putting Fields in Greene's sights and in CR she's sympathetic toward Vesper because of her final action even though she's a traitor.
I always thought SF was the summing up on the trilogy nicely and that SP should have been the turn back toward the more impersonal, classic Bond feel (with a modern interpretation). For parts of it they at least attempt to go in the direction, and I believe Craig wanted to go there toward the detached Connery cool - but the script kept dragging him back to step-brothers and love stories and personal angles.
I also agree on your last point about going back to detachment post-SF. That's one of the places where the last film doesn't work for me. Tonally it's all over the map and Bond's reactions don't work for me in the context of the importance of the events in the film to him.
I mentioned on another thread a while back that I feel the Craig films appeal to women more than previous entries. I think this is by design, in order to grow the viewing audience and accommodate the fact that women are a larger part of the audience these days. It's also a function of how people (not just women) think and express themselves these days. With social media and what not people are more 'open books' emotionally. The characterizations and motivations reflect that, whereas it could be argued that previous films saw things more from a reserved and alpha male perspective (and I don't mean in the obvious sense). Even the strong female characters in earlier films were defined in a sort of male centric manner due to the power of the visuals.
Honestly I far prefer the previous approach, which I find more subtle - but then again I've been told that I'm a bit old fashioned. Having said that, I think SF worked as a 'one off'. It was the perfect execution of an artistic director's vision. One could feel Mendes's theatrical blood running through that film. It's a polarizing entry, but it connected with the masses.
The trick now is where to go from here. Ironically, Mendes said the very same thing when asked about the future of Bond in a question and answer session towards the end of last year.
This is what makes the future quite fascinating.
What a thoughtful and loaded question @bondsum ... I think the next film, with CF at the helm, will answer your ultimate question: will the subtext and themes take over future films at the expense of plot.
Watching CF’s body of work thus far and I think we will see a return to a balanced approach. He’s a far more subtle filmmaker and story-teller than Mendes. He understands that character is story, story is character, character is action and action is character. Yes, complex themes will be explored but through action and choices and storytelling where “messaging” will
come through more organically and subliminally.
(Btw, loved what you said about the Oedipal subtext of the earlier films and, indeed, the books; damn fine observations)
I think SF works as an outlier Bond film - same as OHMSS or LTK or QOS. It has different aims - whether it achieves those is up to the individual viewer (such is the subjective beauty of cinema.) While SF's literal plot may be strewn with conveniences and contrivances, and goodness knows from this forum we're all aware of how frustrating they can be for people! I believe that the emotional resonance SF is hoping to achieve works for many because of the established character of M and the newly introduced character of Silva is a dark reflection of a long portrayed dynamic between M and Bond.
SP fails for me in this department because it is shoe horning in a love story and a third act familial revelation of a villain that hasn't been earned. SP also ends with Bond having to decided whether to kill an unarmed, injured Blofeld at point blank range which is something I didn't think Bond would do. And thematically it's something that had been resolved at the end of QOS.
As much as Mendes gets praise/blame for these thematic overtures it is also Purvis and Wade returning to the same motifs as they did in TWINE and DAD. M being a compromised figure attacked by the central villains for her past decisions, (TWINE) Bond's clean bill of health, nods to Bond's family roots (Scotland, Family motto) and questioning his disposability and reliability as an agent (DAD).
As @bondjames has stated - SF isn't really about Bond, it's about M. I've always felt CR is about Bond, QOS is about Bond and M and SF is about M. In CR he is born, in QOS he has to be guided and in SF he has outgrown the need for parental control.
I don't believe many other Bond films have these preoccupations and nor do I necessarily think they should. Fleming's written work on the other hand is ripe for psycho analysis.
My biggest issue with SP was that it should have been a return to classic Bond. I felt Craig's Bond evolution was complete after SF and that he was ready to assume the form of the finished article that Connery was in Dr No. And he should have had a similar straight forward thriller like Dr No's plot to match. I believe Craig was reaching for this in SP and could have achieved it if the plot wasn't dragging him back into childhood trauma, secret missions from Dench's M, step brothers and professions of love from his counterpart.
But as I've stated before (in my discussions on the podcast ***Spoiler Alert***) modern mainstream cinema, not just Bond, seems unwilling or incapable of doing genuine subtext - using semiotics rather than dialogue. One pleasing antidote to this was the recent Bad Times At The El Royale.
@Major_Boothroyd's "SF isn't really about Bond, it's about M" comment is one of the issues that I personally have with the movie and it's another reason why I'm not at all enamoured by this entry as much as others seem to be. It's not the only issue that I have with SF, as I'm not particularly enthused about Bond's orphan backstory being salvaged from a fictional obituary taken from YOLT, purportedly from The Times newspaper, and used as some personal cross to bear. It's not as if they include the whole backstory about Bond being adopted by his aunt and living in the village of Pett Bottom, where he completes his early education, because if they did then there'd have been no place for Skyfall lodge in this timeframe. Also, I feel if Fleming had felt this Little Orphan Jimmy an important issue, he would have made more out of it in his YOLT novel, but as it probably wasn't even meant to be taken as sacrosanct, no doubt a work of fiction by the Ministry, it should have been left that way. But no, Mendes obviously saw clear parallels between Nolan's Bruce Wayne and Fleming's own fictional obituary, and therefore decided to make his own version of that same movie with its similar subtext and beats. The only reason I call it "heavy-handed" @bondjames, is because these themes are given the same rank or importance in Nolan's movie that are also prominent in SF. Whilst not an exact carbon copy of DK, it's clearly evident that it aspires to be a wannabe rendition of it. As a homage to Nolan's Dark Knight, I think it compares favourably. As a Bond movie, I think it fails. That's not to say I can't appreciate Bérénice Marlohe in the movie. I just wished I'd seen more of her and Patrice, and much less of Judi Dench.
I agree, I didn't pity her when she died. I probably would have been sadder if Kincade would have died. Thankfully, he didn't.
I distinctly recall walking out of the theatre in 2012 and commenting to my mates that it was certainly different, but really good as well. It connected with me for reasons I've previously mentioned. However, like @Major_Boothroyd, I see it as a one-off. It's not something that EON should aim to duplicate in my view. We don't even know if they fully realize what caused it to succeed to be frank.
Sometimes it's a confluence of events and circumstances. Timing. Plain old luck.
I do find it emotionally better balanced throughout its runtime than CR though, which is a film which has more emotional peaks and valleys. That's another reason why I increasingly prefer it to Craig's first.
Bring back Kincade as Bond’s sidekick.
Hear! Hear! With Albert Finney again!
Oh. Uh. I was thinking being a little more creative. Like in MIB 3 when Josh Brolin played the younger Tommy Lee Jones.
I thought the younger Kincade could be brought back via a time portal that Q finds. And I think Corey Feldman would be the perfect casting decision.
Maybe Madeleine Swann could've been Oberhauser's daughter, which could have made the romance make more sense? And then that would also solve the issue of the brother-storyline that people aren't so fond of, including myself.
Personally, I didn't see SF as a one-off like yourself @bondjames. I knew that by Mendes delving into Bond's backstory and giving it a discernible tweak, as well as getting plaudits for it, he (or "they" depending on who Mendes' successor was going to be) would not feel too shy about taking more liberties with the Bond chronicles in future. I had a similar feeling when I came out of TSWLM back in '77, knowing the next entry would be even more harebrained than the last—after all, if you're willing to swallow the half-man-half-fish villain and a repetition of the YOLT story, you'll buy anything.
The ease at which Mendes got away with his Bond revision is what I believe led to the Blofeld "brother-gate" Hannes Oberhauser angle being the next step in the Mendes evolution of Bond. The thinking was clear: We got away with Moneypenny being a useless field agent called Eve, Bond having a ramshackle house called Skyfall, the OO section having a preference for orphans, and Bond being a screw-up who runs off and hides when things don't go his own way only to return when "mother" is in trouble, so we can do anything.
With regards to SF having more emotional peaks and valleys than CR, I have to respectfully disagree. I found zero emotional depth in SF because I found M far too irritating and crotchety to be sympathetic towards and the ending calculable. So much so, that when she eventually bit the dust, I was actually smiling and looking to a brighter tomorrow without her. However short-lived that feeling was, I at least knew Judi Dench wouldn't be fighting for anymore screentime alongside her co-star. This cannot be said of CR. By the end of that particular movie I felt like I'd been on an Olympian journey with Bond and come out the other side totally reinvigorated and wanting more.
I think SF works well thematically and theatrically. It pulls at certain audience emotional levers in a manner which resonates with the masses. The outstanding visuals and ambience facilitate this also. Like a music video or good play, it mesmerizes at a certain base level and casts a spell. Mendes doesn't achieve the same sleight of hand with SP, and therefore the story problems are more apparent. Van Hoytema's cinematography, Newman's score and the cast (all elements which helped the prior film to resonate) couldn't hold a candle to what was achieved in SF (imho). Furthermore, there is the hamfisted and overly predictable handling of basic formula, further helping to expose the plot weaknesses. So the film 'fails to please formula fans', 'annoys Fleming fans', and 'ticks off SF fans'. Way to go.
Regarding emotional peaks and valleys, I think you misunderstood what I wrote. I actually agree that CR has more emotional peaks and valleys. My point is that SF is more emotionally consistent throughout its run time. It's an emotional film overall. Everyone is emoting in it actually, and often. CR on the other hand changes from a basic Bond thriller to an emotional roller coaster at the end, and frankly this up and down is what I don't particularly like about the film. I prefer a bit more stability during the run time personally.
I have no problem with the poem. What is annoying is that she takes time ro read it fully aware that a madman is about to make an assault on the room endagering not only herself but many civilians in the process. What makes it even more disturbing is that this issue was so easily avoidable! Just cut the damn scene of her being warned by Bond and Tanner. Lets say all communication was cut after Silva´s hacking. The scene would be so much more powerful if M was an unknowing victim! What were the presumed benifits of seeing her stubbornly stay without taking the warnings seriously? Was it bizarrely and ironically meant to show strength of character? It sure backfired!
I have always liked Skyfall, but that scene annoys me more with every viewing! Especially because it spoils a potentially iconic moment in the series in a way that could have been so easily avoided...
I realise that I'm never going to convince people who like SF to suddenly dislike it, that's not my intention. I'm only giving my view as to why I find SF a less than stellar experience and rank it very low amongst my own favourites. The Oberhauser (Kahn Star Trek Into Darkness reveal) aside, I still prefer SP over SF. With regard to SF resonating with the masses, I'm not sure how that can be proven either way. What do we use to measure this? Rotten Tomatoes? Yes, it has an 85% audience rating from 373,233 users, but so does Transformers (2007) but with a far bigger user input of 2,384,940 users. Again, I'm not sure what to make of these figures, other than 10x as many people felt compelled to register their approval of Transformers than SF. How many people actually saw SF worldwide and have given their vote of approval on any of these matters? Out of curiosity I've had a look at the new Suspiria numbers: a healthy 74% audience rating from 1,703 users, but the movie was an absolute flop, barely pulling in $2,483,472 at the BO from a $20 Million budget. I guess my point is, it's not as if these percentages translate to good BO as that appears not to be the case, so what purpose do they serve? I think the general consensus here at MI6 was that SF was the best Bond movie ever made and the only way was up from here on out. This is why I take no notice of the general consensus here as it changes with the seasons.
You point out Van Hoytema's cinematography and Newman's score not being up to the same high standards as SF (an often repeated grievance from MI6 members), but I really don't understand this criticism. I can't recall members here ever discussing the merits of cinematography until Roger Deakins came on board. Sure, there was some praise for OHMSS, YOLT and TSWLM but it was never used to the extent that it is now to undermine how a Bond movie should be viewed. Nobody ever mentions David Tattersall's cinematography or David Arnold's ho-hum score for DAD. Sure, SP has problems, but I think the cinematography is the least of them. I don't disagree with the "hamfisted" storytelling though.
Okay, my mistake. But as I pointed out, I didn't find SF an emotional experience. You either cared that this was Judi Dench's last Bond movie, or you didn't. Alas, I did not. Everything else was predictable or superfluous in this movie for me.
Well said! SF is overrated twaddle and the mother of SP. The truth will out!