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Agreed @BAIN123. The dogfight seemed quite unnecessary & shoehorned to me (plus, I couldn't make out what was going on.....which is par for the course with this film).
Contrived or not every sequence added or attempted to add excitement to the film. And yeah just adding is contrived ..I get it....but without the train sequence in SF would've been kinda ho humm ...its a visual media ..let it be visual ..sure keep in check or you get DAD ice surfing but whatever lol
It's much harder to make the case that SF is any more contrived than the previous 22 films.
FRWL - the gypsy camp fight... it really offers nothing except progressing a subplot the film really didn't need, and a brief "haha" moment for Grant when he has Bond held at gunpoint.
YOLT - the Little Nelly bit.. it literally does absolutely nothing except allow Bond to get into an air battle.. he gets zero information from this scouting expedition, and the film could've progressed exactly the same without it.
DAF - the police chase down the Las Vegas strip... serves absolutely no purpose to the film.
TMTWGG - the whole karate school part + boat chase.. the school wasn't necessary, and then neither was it for Hip to suddenly ditch Bond when he came to rescue him in the first place.
TSWLM - the whole lotus chase.. while awesome, it's a wee-bit contrived.. i wont say completely contrived though, because orders were given for them to executed once they got to shore, so it's not like the sequence was without a proper setup.
MR - the gondola chase.
FYEO - the hockey fight bit... absolutely no purpose to this at all.
AVTAK - the horse race.. i know why Zorin is doing it (a pretty weak attempt to try and kill Bond) but i always wondered, what if Bond won the race? Would it have mattered, and would he just have tried to kill him anyway?..
but certainly not as contrived as the firetruck chase... not to mention the brilliantly bad police work that sets up the chase, but the chase does next to nothing for the plot.
LTK - the bar room brawl was a bit contrived, but i still enjoy it.
TWINE - trying to defuse the moving bomb in the pipeline
the whole helicopter attack on the caviar factory.
DAD - pretty much the whole damn movie was contrived lol.
CR - the sinking house at the end.
QOS - the boat chase - and the arial battle with the DC3.
SF - the subway car coming through the ceiling at Bond.
@bondjames, it's been a while since I've watched QoS, but wasn't it necessary for them to jump out of the plane to find the water being dammed up? So it did advance the plot, in spite of being shoddily edited.
I think it depends on the context. MR is an overblown, pretty outrageous film, so contrivances are par for the course. The films were constructed in that way to some degree. Something like SF takes itself a lot more seriously so its contrivances stand out a lot more. Especially when there's little internal logic to hang it together. When you compare it to the other more grounded entries it's construction is certainly more contrived IMO.
Special mentions:
MR: Bondola chase is hilariously contrived.
TWINE: Caviar Factory is quite ridiculous, although I love the score.
SF: All of Silva's escape. From spotting 'Granborough Rd (say what?) to the tube train'.
they pretty much found that by chance.... the point of the plane was to survey the land that Greene had been purchasing up - the only point of interest was noted by Camille, who told James about the sink holes (which seemed to be in numerous quantity).. it wasn't until they fell down one of the sink holes that they discovered the dammed up water........... so, now that i stop and think, i guess the sequence does kind of help move the plot along - it still stands to note, that had they been not shot down, it's unlikely they would've found anything.
Yes, that's what I meant. That had they not been shot down the plot wouldn't have advanced the way it did.
That is pretty bizarre. Oddjob puts the car + Solo + gold into the crusher. And then later Goldfinger says he has to separate the gold. Er...couldn't Oddjob have just removed the gold first to save some time and effort? Or put Solo into another car at the junkyard and have that one crushed? Doh.
And its strange that Goldfinger goes to elaborate lengths to kill and dispose of Solo yet he's just gassed 20 or so goons to death in his house and doesn't seem particularly concerned about disposing with them! Why not have Oddjob throw Solo's corpse in with them?
@Sark, from my point of view, it just felt shoehorned in in order for them to conveniently find the water facility as has already been mentioned. They get attacked, and happen to fall into that hole that allows them to find the facility.....sort of strains credibility.
Also, regarding contrived scenes in general, for me it depends on how the scene feels or plays out. If it is not properly edited or conceived, then it feels contrived/artificial to me. That applies to nearly everything in TWINE (a shambles imho), the convenient train collapse in SF (which is aimed directly at Bond), the rubbish hockey fight in FYEO, and numerous others that have been mentioned here. So it's about execution.
Although the TMWTGG car chase may have been contrived, it did not feel that way to be because I thought it was wonderfully executed, slide whistle (blame Barry for that one, uncharacteristic mistake) and all.....
@Sark, from my point of view, it just felt shoehorned in in order for them to conveniently find the water facility as has already been mentioned. They get attacked, and happen to fall into that hole that allows them to find the facility.....sort of strains credibility.[/quote]
Agreed. Just because something appears to advance the plot doesn't mean it's not contrived. QoS struggles because Forster had already decided he was going to base his action scenes around the four elements, irrespective of the story. Hence we have an aerial scene that is there first and foremost to service his creative wishes. I find most of the action in QoS pretty contrived for this very reason.
TSWLM's Lotus scene is quintessential (cinematic) Bond. Contrived, ok yes it is a bit, but nowhere near as much (or as badly) as that awful ski chase in TWINE. That really takes the cake for me.
And Goldfinger, for all its praise, is one of the worst offenders with the iconic but very staged DB5 factory chase.
But let’s be honest – almost ALL of the Bond films feature heavily contrived action set pieces that feel very staged. The formula was really beaten to death during Rog’s years: 007 meets main villain – villain commands his inexplicably incapable henchmen to set up several elaborate attempts to get rid of Bond whilst making it look like an ‘accident’… instead of just having a sniper finish him off.
I’d have an easier time listing the ones that feel fluent and spontaneous:
- FRWL’s Orient Express fight. Really well woven into the fabric of the story and feels like the natural coming together of the two adversaries
- TLD’s Aston Martin chase scene UP UNTIL the self-destruct, of course. Despite some clumsily written dialogue it feels natural that Bond would get Kara out of the Eastern-Block that way as there is little time to plan anything else (and the Austrian border is very near Bratislava).
To me, the most contrived of all is the boat chase in TWINE. In a perfect world, that pre-titles sequence would have ended right where it should have: after Bond rappelled down the building with the chord. We wouldn’t have had to sit through a Moneypenny scene, an M briefing scene, AND a bloated chase scene ALL BEFORE THE TITLES. Ugh.
i think its a little of both.... my list of contrived moments mostly falls under the unnecessary category.
Sacrilege.
I think @MajorDSmythe's speargun is needed here. ;)
Much as I love that film @Chang, I'll have to agree with you.... that scene was contrived certainly, but it was a celebratory "James Bond moment" (i.e. Bond doing something only Bond does) the likes of which we'd not seen for years in 1995 (especially after LTK's seriousness)....so I think most of us forgave it.
I'm sure we wouldn't have been so forgiving if Sera's original tragic score for this scene (thankfully deleted by EON) was included.
That's sounds good! 80's industrial. They should have kept it, maybe I would have liked the scene more.
sorry, but it sounds like a chimp having a tantrum on an old casio keyboard.... ick.
We then know a chase or action scene has to be put in, so it can be used. Meaning
All chases etc since FRWL have been contrived ? :D