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Comments
I do apologise for momentarily increasing testosterone levels to the point of distraction.
You're quite right, though. It does speak volumes and it is annoying. Though I suppose that will change when EON throw us a bit of string to play with.
Then I understood. Yes, I most certainly did.
Oh yes.
No doubt.
I’ve also seen it. Still don’t get it.
Kind of sums up my feelings for Lea Seydoux.
And mine. Don't find Seydoux to be jaw-droppingly stunning nor horrendously ugly but the fact that her character was so poorly written and her chemistry with Craig so forced made me dislike her more than I probably should have.
McQuarrie and Ferguson created a much better female character than the Bond team did this time round.
The "tortured soul" idea is how Fleming wrote a lot of them though isn't it? More often than not the girls in the books were damaged/broken/vulnerable, so really this is just the Craig films sticking close to the source material. I've probably missed a few in my head but Gala, Solitaire and Tatiana are the only ones I can think of who didn't have some sort of tragic backstory. Severine's backstory felt very Fleming to me, he seemed to have a weird thing for rape victims.
Nor me. Honestly find her really plain.
Now that you mentioned Solitaire, I wouldn't mind if they recycle the African warlord angle they originally developed for Blofeld in Spectre, and properly give the role to Buonaparte Ignace Gallia. I think it'd prove to be a very relevant villain. Something we haven't seen in a Bond film but quite came close to in William Boyd's Solo, if memory serves. A very fitting antagonist for a Craig film.
Oh, wait, that worked out pretty well, actually.
But I think it´s not so much the female characters that make recent Bond films such a drag, but the overall way of handling the films, and how Bond´s character comes out of the situation. I think I wouldn´t have a problem with a grumpy Bond, if the film on the whole wouldn´t be so incongruous as the last two, with confused supporting character dynamics, and dumb attempts at humor.
+1 I agree, she is very ordinary, certainly not Bond girl material.
Oh and that clip of her climbing out of the pool, didnt they only use that in the trailer?
Now, let's talk Domino. She was wronged by Largo quite often, even in the Eon film, but you never got the impression from her that she didn't enjoy life and the perks she had rather than being all damn grumpy her way around.
So, source material isn't that all the Bond Girls are depressed, moody and grumpy women. Most of them have tragic backgrounds, yes. But, the Craig films follow the Vesper Lynd template with the excited portion of her persona cut out, even though I love Severine and regret that she wasn't used more in the film.
Do you know many women like her? I sure don't. It might be equal parts me liking the character (she was flat out f*cking cool at times and gave Cruise a run for his money in the action department) as much as it is me finding her attractive, but there's certainly nothing ordinary about her to me. She was better than any Bond girl we've had since Vesper, with whom she shares that 60s femme fatale vibe; although Vesper was obviously the more emotionally resonant of the two.
No, that scene was in the film. Very much so.
And she was very British which I liked,being a Brit myself.
A bit like Lara Croft .
That scene was in the film but am pretty sure that particular shot wasnt!
Eva, certainly. Olga, maybe on par. Lea, absolutely not. For me, at least.
I admired what they tried to do with Lea with the "daughter of an assassin" angle, but the script didn't do the idea justice. Lea is a fine actress but her romance with Craig is so forced to me that I can't rate the character at all. Cruise and Ferguson worked much better in this regard, as they held back on the full-blown romance angle. It only occurred to me over Christmas how hard Newman's score is working in certain scenes to add weight to the Bond-Swann romance. The music during the train conversation sequence is so heavy-handed. Compare this with the similar scene from CR and you see where SP went wrong.
From memory - the first shot was, the second one cuts to the reverse. It doesn't linger on her derrière quite so much. ;)
I'd very much love for Craig to get a character like Ilsa Faust - who is more of the Anya Amasova type, just a bit more British obviously!
You know what? I'm not a Brit but I do love Lara Croft so maybe that is what it is.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of Bond girl we are going to get this time round. MI does work on a different template compared to Bond at the moment so comparing is just for arguments' sake.
Ordinary? That's exactly what she is not! Personally, I don't find her gorgeous/hot/sexy merely by looks, but by being a class act. Something very, very rare these days!
With her starring in the next MI, comparisons with the next Bond girl will be inevitable so IMHO, EON really need to do something in this area. They have their work cut out.
Ordinary? Hell. no
She's certainly very attractive, but it's the combination of her beauty and her character which makes her extremely appealing to me. A female version of Bond, right down to the irony, which she delivered with a wink far more deftly than our incumbent male Bond did in the same year.
Absolutely!
I agree. It's all about tone. Natalya is a top 2 or 3 Bond girl for me, and even though she lost a lot of colleagues at Severnaya, they didn't dwell on that aspect. I appreciated that.
That's fair enough. I guess they didn't want to trivialise the tragic backstories so they went with tortured/moody portrayals with Camille and Madeline.
I think they struck a really good balance with Vesper and Severine though. Severine especially feels so fleshed out and real in how she hides how tortured/vulnerable she is and she's so effortlessly fit and charismatic. In a way, as horrible as it is to say this, I think it makes the tragic backstories more sympathetic when they still have a fun/charming side, because you grow to like them at first and then find out they've actually been through some messed up stuff and feel sorry for them. Whereas if you're introduced to a Bond girl moping or scowling, it's a bad first impression, (even if it is more realistic in the context of what they've been through) so it's "oh, that's why they're like that" instead of "woah that's pretty messed up, she seems nice as well, that's a shame".
I agree they should have used her more. She might be my favourite Bond girl to be honest. Either her, Kara or Natalya.