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You're kidding no? Why for goodness sake :-P???
I know some recent posters on this thread, including yourself, like it a lot, so I'll go easy......my vehement criticisms are noted elsewhere.
I'm just not a fan of this film at all. I think they got it all wrong. Too cheesy, with emo-Bond etc. It just rubs me all the wrong way.
I much prefer DAD (although I know I'm probably in the minority on that) for entertainment value and for spectacle.
I think EON had an interesting, revenge based idea, but executed it poorly here. I think they knew it, which is why they practically remade the story in a better way with SF.
I would be very interested to hear your reasons for regarding it as such.
I love this film. It gets a real hiding around here and that stings deep man, stings deep. I just don't why this film has such a bad reputation round these parts. Surely my sentimental feeling towards this film (it was my first time seeing Bond on the big screen), has blinded me to the obvious?
Pierce Brosnan excels as Bond turning in an elegantly lethal performance. Backing him up are the supreme and fascinating double act of Sophie Marceau and Robert Carlyle; Elektra is dead inside and Renard is dead, physically. You feel pity for Renard. He realises Elektra is playing him, but he does not mind; he goes even so far as sacrificing his remaining days to see her happy.
Marceau is smouldering and sensual, and for me, she shares a genuine chemistry with Brosnan. Elektra is an angel with a wing down, or so Bond thinks. Bond thinks he has found Tracy, but he finds Blofeld. Some people complain about the “quip”, “I never miss”, but I view it as an admittance of Bond’s heartbreaking choices, that Bond has to make.
Now in light of objectivity, I shall point out some of the film's flaws...
The more emotional nature of the script allows for some unintentional melodrama. (Primarily the scene between Bond and M in Scotland and the scene where Bond confronts Elektra.). I always imagined Bond being more still, in the two aforementioned scenes. Brosnan is too animated in those particular scenes. Fleming wrote that Bond is precise in his movements, decisive and economical. He wouldn’t have acted like that. Just my two cents worth.
It sounds like I'm being too hard on The Brozz, but he's my childhood Bond, and he carries a special place in my heart. To balance out, then, here are some moments in which Pierce Brosnan is just so smegging cool;
The ways he takes out the goons in the Banker's office
Sorting out the heavy, gaining access to Zukovsky's office
During the buzz-saw helicopter attack, Bond opens a trap-door, pushes a goon away, and fires straight up, through the floor, to a second goon.
The other major weakness is the staid direction of Michael Apted - this is the first time I was not overly impressed by the director - even Lee Tamahori, in the first part of Die Another Day anyway, showed more drive and inventiveness. Also I can't believe that Apted didn't, in the two aforementioned scenes, call Brosnan to rein it in a bit.
Casting a cheerleader as a nuclear physicist was either very naïve or very cynical. Richards dies when she has to share the screen with Marceau.
However, the overall premise is inspired and all the Bondian attributes abound and in novel fashion.
I think quite highly of QoS, but you make a very good point here which I have not thought about before. QoS is indeed not the kind of film to get too many people 'hooked' onto the Bond franchise. Neither was LTK. So groundbreaking as these films are for this franchise, I agree that they are somewhat too atypical to draw in a lot of new fans, as you suggest.
TSWLM, GE, or SF are more the kind of films to bring in a new flock of fans.
The point I was making though, which @w2bond got me thinking about, was whether anyone who saw QoS as their first Bond film would be drawn into the Bond franchise/world. I don't think many would. It's really not that kind of film.
Some films just make you want to see the others in the franchise. For me, it was the Moore entries that got me into Bond and then I wanted to see them all. I was hooked. I think SF probably did that for a whole new generation of viewers, which probably bodes well for SP's success at the box office.
And it is even tougher, as IMO Craig's performance in QOS is, ironically, one of the best performances from any of the Bond's.
The writer's strike also hurt this film badly. The script is among the worst. While other Bond films suffer the same problem, there's so much repetition here. M says "I need to know that I can trust you", almost word for word from CR. So much for his developing character arc - it's back where it started. "Get in" is said no less than six times. The dialogue in the White interrogation scene seems clumsy.
Title sequence is the worse, as is the song. Looks like a Bond knock off. GB at the end with a weird Q graphic enveloping it.
Also, what's with the random references to previous films? Couldn't they think of their own iconic moments that they had to blatantly steal from GF and TSWLM (Sterling)? SF gave the series a welcome nod and wink with the cufflink scene and the "he's keen to get on" scene which is reminiscent of OP (got laugh from the audience)
The only bit I enjoy is the Opera scene (until the arty gunfight) and the score accompanying it, and the score in generally while not Bondian is quite enjoyable.
And as @DaltonCraig007 said, Craig's performance is stellar as usual.
Based on the strength of his previous work, I think it's in safe hands!
2. CR
3. SF/ TND
5. GE
6. TWINE
7. DAD
Completely agree. I hated GE but TND actually made me think that EON might be able to make a decent Bond out of Brosnan. I enjoyed the first half of TND, although it then loses its way and becomes very routine.
I had high expectations of TWINE but when it actually came out I realised that all my original views on Brosnan had been confirmed. He settled back into his lazy GE persona which was just amplified in DAD. It's as if he thought he was Sir Rog but without a modicum of the actual technical acting know how or presence. Sir Rog is not a 'great' actor but he does know how deliver a line, stand in front of a camera and provide some tonal differentiation between different scenes.
Of all the post Dalton movies, the ones I've enjoyed most on first viewing were actually TND and QoS.
You've created a tautology which then undermines the argument (you have to be a Christian to see God etc), not a fair way of looking at things IMHO