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Doesn't it also show that GE made roughly six times it's budget, the same as CR? That is of course if you believe the budget of CR was indeed $102m, most reports suggest it's around $150m, which would then leave it trailing GE having earned just under four times its budget. Even SF only made 5.5 times its budget, still trailing GE (in fact even AVTAK made five times it's budget) Then of course we have films like TB, that made nine times it's budget, or of course GF which pulled in a box office haul 'forty times' its budget. All of a sudden the modern figures don't necessarily mean all that much.
I don't think anyone is denying they were right to change things creatively, but the whole B.O. thing is non sequitur. They've all been reasonable to very successful on those terms.
Go for it! Show me up for what I am!
The idea of merely turning a profit is old school. You must also CRUSH the competition to prove your worthiness in the marketplace! The CONAN school of business!
What will eventually lead to corporate self-destruction.
Holy crap we actually agree on something, I couldnt have put that better myself. It was at the time the cheap money market in the US clapse of Enron one of the biggest corporations collapsed and had massive roll on effects still taking place today 14 years later and it put off investors. $3 for every $1 you put in after 2 years is not a good investmemt in their eyes they could make that in interest leaving it in their swiss bank accounts without risk.
There are too many that go red.
I personally would have kept the character Eve in the film, and had Silva shoot her in place of Severine(on the Island) having captured her after the casino scene in Shanghai. Then Bond perhaps could have returned the favour later on :) Then we could have an MP cameo in further films should they want to, but making her a central character is basically making MI6 some Mission Impossible family affair. Bleh.
Q, I don't have too much of an issue with. He is redundant of course now that Bond is largley gadget-less, but he was an interesting character in Skyfall and helped provide contrast with OldBond. That he was a 20-something nerd was totally fitting. I was hopeful that he would appear in the field in SPECTRE. It would have meant he finally got to see Bond's world, out of his jim-jams, and who knows possibly been KIA.
M - The problem I had with Dench's M was that she was always in his ear, on missions or not. I always felt there should have been an intermediary somewhere, someone who could be on location. But alas they need to make use of Dench and there are never enough interesting characters on location, which is why it's MI6-centric. With that said, Fiennes M is going to be great, and he is feasibley someone who I can believe as a leader, a strategist, and not just a whining nag. He's someone who I would want to see more of on film.
I know some thought Bond got lost in amongst the supporting players in SF but personally I didn't see that, I also think for all Dench's efforts and Bardem's scenery chomping that it was always Dan's film like the previous 2 before.
As for Moneypenny, I though the chemistry with her and Craig was spot on but I don't want to see her in the field with a gun again, she can go out in the field as a M's assistant that is fine from time to time, or meet Bond somewhere in London to pass on info etc but keep her mainly in HQ.
Q like some have already said was ripe for a reinvention, Cleese proved what was a horrible idea it was trying to follow Desmond's Boothroyd with a similar type. Ben's take was just right, if you have the previous Bond's butting up against an older man not impressed with his actions then going down the route of making a new world Q younger and tech savvy seems the obvious option.
How MP & Q turn up in subsequent entries will be interesting, the desire to make them integral to the story but as some have said if they aren't then maybe we can have entries where they don't appear or just only briefly, trying to shoehorn them into every entry worth some weight will get tiresome and formulaic, the one thing this era has tried to avoid.
No need to get all liberal on me. Haha.
Anyways! Has nothing to do with race really just I find the current actress not right for the part. She isn't MP to me.
I was hoping for a white MP just because that is always how I pictured her. Not sure if anyone remembers but Emily Blunt was originally rumored to be MP. I think they missed a huge opportunity for that story. Having MP shoot Bond didn't work for me either.
Ralph Fiennes to is still a really good choice for M eitherway.. I wouldn't change that.
Maybe he kisses her on a mission,(while undercover) and she takes a liking to him. Later she walks in on him sleeping with another woman and takes offense to it. I would love to see MP being the one constantly rejecting Bond....
It was possibly because you suggested your first major issue was with her being black. There are a tonne of issues I have with the reimagined MP, but being black isn't one of them. I don't think it's racist to want character to remain visually consistent, but hopefully you're over the initial shock and realise it's perfectly fine.
I personally just don't think she's a good actress. I've seen her in After the Sunset and I've seen her in the Pirate movies, and I don't see what the big deal is. She's average to below average.
The other thing I have a problem with is that we were given too much to reimagine for her character in SF, and it was unecessary. Change for the sake of change. So my problem is with EON. As an example, we had to assume she was incompetent (I don't remember that portrayal before - MP was never incompetent, quite the contrary - just with a longing to be taken seriously by Bond), that she had a Jamaican accent (why exactly? Is this necessary? Even Eva Green took lessons to get a full English accent for CR, and I understand Seydoux is doing the same for SP), and that she was black. All of this was unecessary within the context of the plot, so it felt like it was being shoehorned in to tick a box.
Arguably her new found incompetence combined with her being non-white and Bond's condescension towards her is a troubling visual paradigm in itself which they perhaps should have avoided.
With Q, at least the geeky, younger reinterpretation made sense, in the context of today's society. It is in fact more likely that a Q would be like him rather than Desmond Llewelyn, apart from the stupidity of plugging Silva's computer into the MI6 network.
So it's the check the box reinterpretation that I have a problem with. For the same reasons, I did not like Samantha Bond's MP either. That too was an unecessary reinterpretation of a much loved character (why did she have to be so abrasive towards Bond? Because we live in a darn PC world? This is a James Bond movie, not Sex in the City for pete's sake).
I realize that MP was not fleshed out in Fleming, but she was suitably fleshed out for 23 years on screen by the brilliant Lois Maxwell, who many of us fondly remember. So I think EON should have had a somewhat faithful interpretation of that portrayal. It's not like with Craig, where they are arguably going back to the source material. Even Craig is bringing back some of the Conneryisms from that much loved era. I don't think there's anyone who will say that Lois Maxwell is not the gold standard for MP.
Having said all of that, if they want to check a box to appease some who may say that the James Bond universe is too white, then go for it. Arguably the James Bond universe should reflect London's ethnic diversity as it stands today. Just not Harris. I liked Salmon in the Brosnan universe and I like Wright in the Craig universe. I did not like Dench in the Brosnan/Craig Universe (not because she was a woman, but because I found her M too motherly in some instances and too condescending/controlling in other instances).
As long as there was no Indian sub-accent, or cliche, it was played by a good actor, and he was suitably geeky like Whishaw, I'd have no problem with it.
The guy from the Newsroom, Dev Patel could do it easily.
Yeah, Dev Patel wouldn't be a bad shout actually.
Actually, Eon wanted Jack Lord to return for Goldfinger, but he wanted more money and billing than Eon was willing to provide. (That was first disclosed in a Starlog interview with Richard Maibaum in 1983).
As a side note, Lord was cast for his most famous role, Steve McGarrett, a mere five days before the start of shooting the Hawaii Five-O pilot. That was disclosed by Rose Freeman, widow of Five-O creator Leonard Freeman, at a 1996 fan convention in Los Angeles.
As long as he's not Major Boothroyd then I'm all for it.
Q can be of any ethnicity for me as long as he is British.