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It delivers!!!!
I'm waiting to see if it can reach #23 on your list. Maybe someday? Or just too many issues for you?
I think the PTS is good but overrated IMO. The first shot is great but from the moment the building explodes it doesn't work so well. I mean there is a building collapsing in front of a thousand people and nobody seems to care about that. The parade just goes on. Shouldn't one expect people to scream around. The same applies to the helicopter fight. Unfortunately I never felt the danger and the tension in that seqeunce. As often in the Craig era, it is too easy for him to knock out his enemies.
As the building collapses, we cannot even see the crowd so we do not know its response. But during the helicopter sequence we definitely hear screams and see crowd movement.
At any rate, I love the traditional carnivalesque imagery of the PTS. Like so many Bonds before it--TB, OHMSS, MR, QoS--SP's PTS captures a discrete cultural celebration, and this lends the PTS a genuine Bond "feel." That's my favorite aspect of the PTS. I also like the YOLT homage (Bond landing on a couch), and the DC trademark of flippantly tossing aside a handle.
Until he falls onto the sofa. A quibble at that moment, but it grows into a torrent after the halfway point.
Being entirely objective rather than viewing things through nostalgia tinted glasses, are your criticisms of SP exclusive to this film or do other Bond films suffer from same problems yet seemingly get more of a free pass due to the nostalgia factor? Furthermore theres a lot of positive stuff in SP (decent PTS, excellent (apart from some mediocre action) first two acts until they arrive at the crater, Craig on very good form, excellent cinematography) which tends to get lost in the criticism of the stuff thats not so good, yet it is leagues above some of the older entries.
My own take is that yes SP is badly flawed but does that stop it being a really good entry in the series? Not really.
The decision to have Blofeld have some personal 'step brother' connection with Bond is the worst call since greenlighting the invisible car IMO. But it has such an extremely minor impact on proceedings (another indication of the shocking writing. If this is going to be the twist then is should be a major thing but Bond just ignores it and it has zero impact on him, despite Hannes Oberhauser being so important to him that he actively hunts down the guy who killed him in the short story OP) it is no more irritating to me than the pigeon double take, the tarzan yell or the slide whistle. Stupid? Yes. Totally ruining the film? Nah.
Ditto the retconning - hamfisted, sloppy and ill judged but a deal breaker that turns the film into a total clunker? Not really.
Same to be said for the score - its bad to be sure but doesnt make the film a total disaster. A good score can only save a film up to a point. Barry's scores for DAF, TMWTGG, MR and AVTAK elevate whats on screen certainly but dont save those films from being not that great.
And apart from slightly disappointing big action set pieces (car chase, plane crash, finale on the Thames) those are my only big issues with the film.
I think theres a sense that because a film is new we pick it apart a lot more than some of the older ones without really objectively considering that some of said films really are a lot more shoddily put together than most of SP.
Off the top of my head without really going into it (theres the separate SP v other films thread for that) I would say the following:
Blatantly Worse Than SP
DAF
LALD
TMWTGG
MR
AVTAK
TND
TWINE
DAD
Arguably Worse/Better Than SP
TB (most will disagree but TB is a drudge to watch for me whenever Fiona is not on screen)
YOLT
TSWLM
FYEO
LTK
OP
GE
QOS
SF
Blatantly Better Than SP
DN
FRWL
GF
OHMSS
TLD
CR
I'm trying to be impartial here (TB bias excepted) and while some of you might be tempted to jump down my throat and say that the likes of TSWLM and GE should be filed under Blatantly Better Than SP the fact is that the Rog and Brozza eras are filled with camp and thinly drawn characters. Yes their basic stories are probably more coherent but the cartoon aspect of characters like Jaws and Xenia is more blatant than it is with Hinx and Blofeld. Anyway I'm not actually saying they are definitely better or worse just that a case can be argued either way.
Personally out of the arguables I would probably have TSWLM, GE and QOS on a par with SP; OP and SF marginally better and YOLT, FYEO and LTK marginally worse. But these opinions arent fixed in stone and until I break it down element by element in the other thread I cant be sure where exactly it sits in my own rankings but I would guess somewhere around the middle which is probably what it deserves.
I disagree on the ones I've crossed out. LALD, TMWTGG (I have a bias for this one) and TND are still too close to call for me.
You make good points, but the film is being judged in relation to the other Craig films primarily at the present time. That is how it always goes. TWINE & DAD are normally compared to GE because they are also Brosnan vehicles.
Craig set the bar very high for his Bond due to the genius of the earlier entries, and SP is being critiqued quite harshly as a result because subconscious comparisons are being made to the latest entries starring the same actor. Especially given his 'world' is all interconnected with a linear timeline.
Bottom line, the critique is harsh, but one area where this film completely fails for me is charisma. It's beautifully filmed, but it's like watching the Dead Walking (no pun intended) and I wonder if that was in fact Mendes' intention. Even DAF has charisma as far as I'm concerned.
Bang on. It's no masterpiece, but the criticism is disproportionately harsh. When film historians look back it will neatly correlate with an era in which people were just irrationally angry about anything and everything simply because social media gave them a platform.
It is being criticised at the moment because it is the latest film. That is the way it goes. Poor QoS is still being blasted to this day. It doesn't deserve it. In both cases the problem is the predecessor film was just too damn good, imho.
In many ways I view SF and SP as one movie, or at least a continuation of the same core ideas and journey, so not liking one at all but adoring the other is hard for me to wrap my head around. Thoughts on this?
The same can be said of CR/QoS (one film but different tones).
I've also noticed (and my head will be chewed off here) that many Brosnan era fans are huge fans of SP. More so than SF.
I agree, but I think less so. CR was so heavily loved and when QoS came, I think a massive majority of us didn't like it. For many (like myself) it took a long time to warm to it, and again, because CR was so brilliant, anything less really stuck out in a bad way. It wasn't a surprise like it is now to see SF fans turn to SP dissenters, and vice versa.
With the SF v. SP debate, the love for SF might be equal or arguably greater than CR (I personally don't think so), but the criticism of SP hasn't been to the level that QoS got and frankly, still gets.
That's why I classify the CR/QoS and SF/SP reactions differently.
I've seen it described several times as being as bad, if not worse than DAD. I can enjoy DAD for what it's worth, but that's just reactionary bullshit and disproportionately harsh.
I like them both too. QoS is the only DC entry that I think is lacking in several areas.
Personally, I think SP has as many flaws as SF, but in different areas. In a strange way, there's a movie within the DNA of both SF and SP that combined would be a work of genius, but neither attain that level for me. I guess that is always the way with Bond for the most part, though, so I can't complain.
Why does SF resonate for some and SP not work, and vice versa? That is a curious thing. I really don't know.
I can only speak for myself, and I am an SF fan. I found SP by the numbers and lacking in passion. I didn't feel that way about SF, and that's why I liked it.
For me, the plot contrivances and the brother and all the rest could have been forgiven, but I need charisma in my Bond films. Spark. Life. Energy. I just didn't get that from the new film, but got that in spades from the prior entry. It's almost like the colours and the score (I found both drab in the new film) mirrored what was on screen. I'm not sure if that's just a perception or if that's in fact that case.