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(Something that Sam Mendes perfectly copied with Silva and Oberhauser/Blofeld, and their introductions to the public with an almost narcissist oration of parables in which animals or 'things' are being compared with the very essence of crime and villainous behaviour)
It added this sinistre feel to the villain, with only a minimum amount of screen time. Hence to me the Blofeld character should preferably have a minimum amount of screen time to execute a maximum effect. And that effect should be created by intense, sinistre dialogue, some nice terrifying parables.
So in my opinion, Christoph Waltz' Blofeld was exactly that kind of Blofeld. I adored his parables about the Kartenhoff meteorite and the cuckoo's nest (it's even reflected in the theme music). Blofeld's effectiveness shows in a minimum of handlings and executions. He just pushes the buttons on his e-reader, i-pad or computer. Just like Anthony Dawson/Eric Pohlmann did.
Add to that some elaborate narcissist exposition, a butler holding a plate to put your gun on, offering two glasses of champaign........and one can see that Sam Mendes got his inspiration for his villains from the Anthony Dawson/Eric Pohlmann Blofeld and Joseph Wiseman's Dr. No.. To me that's hardly a bad thing. It makes both Silva and Oberhauser/Blofeld to me exciting villains....with a minimum of screen time :-).
Sadly, nowadays fans want 'easy' villains, villains that have a maximum amount of screen time, villains where you can see every detail they are doing to explain the reasons. Sorry, I find that kinda boring.....A good villain, like in the early Bond films, needs to be a shady character of which we can't explain all of his actions....
That wasn't the actors fault, just ham fisted, melodramatic story telling by the production team. Unfortunately I think even Daniel Day Lewis and Orson Welles love child would have had trouble saving that "twist".
So like I said, it wasn't related to screen time if you ask me. I think people were mainly disappointing and Christoph Waltz' performance of Blofeld, because everyone was expecting a Hans Landa. Well sorry, but the Blofeld that I enjoy isn't Hans Landa. He's a man in the shadows, like in FRWL, TB and indeed SP. A man that pushes buttons, not fights or shoots his way out of it. Blofeld is the more sophisticated, noble, less physical antagonist of 'M'.....not necessarily Bond.
Well, if you read carefully, I also said I want a sinister and terrifying Blofeld. I think Telly Savalas' was a good Blofeld, but not as good as the first version by Anthony Dawson/Eric Pohlman. Also, if you read the OHMSS novel carefully, then we also know the Blofeld in there was very much into sunbathing, using dark lenses as sunglasses replacement. To me the Blofeld in the book was slightly more terrifying, slightly more 'gay' and
I also disagree with the notion that we should only give what big audiences want. That's what Marvel is doing and it doesn't make all of their movies particularly interesting. I only wonder if there are actually Bond fans who could do with a little less action and a bit more 1960's-esque exposition and dialogue, like in FRWL.
The general audience want a clash of titans. Hell, even the Jason Bourne films that scream "realistic" to people include fisticuffs with the main villains (or final bosses as some of us call them). So, why would anybody want the action to be dialed down in Bond is beyond me. You don't want Bond to become the big screen equivalent of an all-boring spy drama Spooks, do you? We've got enough of that in the Mendes films, who proved very well he can't direct action, let alone Bond.
You're not the first person to say this,and as far as the books go,even the opening scene of Scaramanga sunbathing screams of Blofeld to me.
He would have been excellent.
Exactly. That's why I am mostly a minority voice in here :-).
"He can't direct action". I'm sorry, but do we keep blasting Mendes, when in essence the scriptwriters should be equally blamed? Perhaps even....more???
The problem remains that if they bring back Waltz, they bring back the foster brother as well.
Speaking strictly personally, I can't even tell you how sick ,and also embarrassed as a Bond fan, this pathetic rape of Flemings work makes me.
I say, burry this rendition of Blofeld, dig a deep hole for him and let the grass grow. And let it grow high!
Pardon? Blofeld a neurotic and jealous weeper with daddy issues and nothing wrong with it? Actually this is the Bond film about a spoiled brat "super" villain meeting a secret agent with mommy issues. In short, all I ever wanted to see in a Bond movie.
In close to 5 hours of directing Bond Mendes only has 2 good action sequences - SF PTS (and that is largely made by the drama of the scene rather than the stunts) and Hinx fight - the rest range from merely competent to dull and bland. He's no John Glen that's for sure.
But not sure why you think Mendes should escape criticism. Yes the scripts are poor but I dare say the script for the Rome car chase said 'Bond escapes in the Aston and Hinx gives chase. Cue massive action sequence' similar to how Mankiewicz wrote in the LALD script 'Scene 52: The greatest boat chase you've ever seen.'
On something like a Bond the scriptwriter comes up with a vague notion and then it's left to the director and stunt team to devise an interesting and spectacular action sequence based on the location, health and safety, budget etc etc which gets us from A to B in the script.
The script is really the bits in between the set pieces so I can't really fault P&W (never thought I'd type that sentence!) for just writing 'there is a chase on snow from the top of the mountain to the bottom'. Yes they might have input but if you look at the Brozza era Vic Armstrong had pretty much a free hand with the PTS's and stuff like the caviar factory shootout and the car chase on ice.
End of the day the buck stops at the director.
There are, but all we are getting are these story development train wrecks of the last two movies! And the fact that there are actually people running around that praise these story abominations as character development arc and such, thus encouraging them to continue walking down this dour and logic defying route doesn't makes things better in my opinion.
Sometimes, the use of certain vocabulary in here by default is very anti-Fleming, anti-Bond. Really, I find this a groce, unnuanced exaggeration. The sheer.....well...resentment and anger coming from it, to me is nothing short of blatant unfounded exaggeration.
Let me put this thing clear: Have you actually read "Octopussy"? Yes? No? It was the short story that went into detail about Hannes Oberhauser, being very close friends with the Bond's. So there's a well-founded explanation. There are other 'family' related issues as well in Fleming's work, as we all know James Bond is the father of the unborn child from Kissy Suzuki in "YOLT". So we ignore that fact and do not call the film YOLT pure, utter "rape of Fleming's work"?
Sorry for being blunt, but one can not like or disagree with the idea to introduce a closer relationship between Oberhauser/Blofeld and Bond (by the way, foster/adoptive brother is something different than real biological brother. And I guessssss Blofeld/Oberhauser completely tore apart/severed the step-family link now, so what is your complaint?).
Have you actually read 'Octopussy'? Yes? No? It was the short story that went into 'detail' about Hannes Oberhauser being very close friends with the Bonds with this solitary paragraph:
'It just happened that Oberhauser was a friend of mine. He taught me to ski before the war, when I was in my teens. He was a wonderful man. He was somethhing of a father to me at a time when I happened to need one.'
A well founded explanation?
There's nothing in that to suggest that the Bonds and Oberhausers were close friends. Given Bond's parents died when he was 12 he hadn't even met the bloke till after they had died. If the Bonds had gone round to the Oberhausers every year for Christmas dinner wouldn't he have said 'Our families were close friends' rather than 'he was the bloke that taught me to ski'? Whilst I can't properly disprove that the families weren't close as you claim given the lack of evidence, it's also just as possible from the above paragraph that Oberhauser was just a ski instructor who taught Bond snowploughs, parallel turns and the showy sprung-Christiana (you really need to have read Fleming to get that reference) and invited him home for dinner a few times as he felt sorry for this unfortunate British orphan.
Sorry for being blunt but I can and do. Haven't got a problem with exploring the Bond/Oberhauser relationship but what the f**k does this have to do with Blofeld? Even if one is to agree with your flimsy hypothesis that Oberhauser was 'very close friends with the Bonds', Oberhauser has zero connection with Blofeld.
And differentiating between foster brother and biological brother is just a semantic irrelevance; it's the last bolt hole for defenders of this bullshit idea.
I think @nosolaceleft correctly states that brothergate is a 'pathetic rape' of Fleming's work not to mention serves absolutely no purpose narratively. Bond barely shrugs when he finds out that Franz killed Hannes. It's never mentioned again and we have no emotional investment in it in the same way we do say Bond's loss of Vesper.
Appalling idea appallingly executed.
And that's my biggest gripe with the film. Blofeld's supposed to be a genius (he is in all the Fleming books up until YOLT, when he's gone mad as a hatter after everything that happened to him. And there still he's a genius in extorting the Japanese). In SPECTRE he's just unhinged. In the book YOLT, but also in OHMSS, he's a fearsome, big, commanding type of guy. I didn't see anything like that in the film.
Take TB: in the book Largo is a large, Roman kind of commanding personallity and though Adolfo Celi isn't a big man (allthough at 5'11 not small either) but he sure comes over as a forceful chap. Waltz's Blofeld, who should've been at least as commanding, comes over as a crazed wasp. Bloody annoying and capable of hurting you, but not a truly fearful man.
He doesn't even pause to dwell on what happened or feel a pang of remorse for Hannes.
Like I've said before,SP is a lazy production all the way through from the script,acting,score,direction,well I could go on but that will do.
They felt all they had to do was turn up and everyone would love the film,simply because SF was a good film that did fantastically well : basic arrogance.
I hope not to see him as Blofeld again. Perhaps they can have a hanging photo of him somewhere if they want in B25, to remind us of his presence. It seemed to work for other characters in SP. Yes, I'm being sarcastic.
Let's not forget that the people who severely disliked SP are a bit over represented here. Especially in comparison to some polls :-).
That's actually the thing that worried me: They hired Neal Purvis and Robert Wade again.
How could a Tarantino-written (not necessarily directed) Bond-film be? Always found Tarantino's writing to be entertaining and colourful.
I'm done with Waltz as well. The real shame is that he could have been and should have been such a great villain. Landa was an amazing vilain in IB. And the Bond films offer precisely the type of exaggerated environment in which Waltz's characters thrive.
People are letting Waltz off the hook way too easily. Was he let down by poor writing? Yeah, sure, as was everyone in Spectre. But you don't need Shakespeare to give an entertaining performance. Christopher Walken had to talk about the delights of the burgeoning microchip market and breeding horses and he chewed up the scenery like no other. And screentime? Good thing Joseph Wiseman was onscreen for about 80+ minutes worth of Dr. No's runtime or I shudder to think what his performance would have been like. No, Waltz had plenty of scenes in which to grin dumbly and giggle like a schoolgirl and sometimes just sit there not really emoting at all. As others have said, Waltz and Mendes couldn't reach an agreement on the character, so we have Waltz sitting there without socks on at best looking a little confused about his motivation and what makes a James Bond film tick.
The blame for Waltz's performance falls not on the screenwriter or the editor, but on Waltz and Mendes and no one else.
This.........*sigh*