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Spectre felt like it was trying too hard. And ultimately felt insecure in its eagerness to please. It also had terrible pre production, the studio execs correctly pointed out all the flaws in the early scripts and most of them weren't corrected.
The Brosnan era was quite the box ticking exercise. Vodka martini, tick; Aston Martin, tick; Tuxedo, tick; M, tick; Q, tick. That sort of thing.
Does he have many original, iconic moments?
Is the problem now that new iconic moments are harder and harder to create? And isn't it more true that iconic moments aren't deliberately created, they happen when audiences react in a certain way to moments within the film.
Did they know Dan coming out of the sea in his trunks would get the reaction it did? But, of course, Ursula Andress did it first anyway. Damn Dr No for having so many iconic moments, and closing the book for good on those ideas.
So, the naked torture scene in CR. Is that iconic?
Silva's rat speech, is that iconic?
Is SP too new to have anything labelled as iconic yet?
I don't know the answers to these, but I do know that Bond has to exist within certain perimeters or boundaries which label them as Bond movies, so I guess a 7 ft Wookie is out of the question for start.
I believe it's hard to avoid comparisons and references to old Bond films. If Bond takes a pen from his pocket someone will tell us he did the same in a movie 30 years ago.
I think however that Abrams can possibly learn a lot from Broccoli and Wilson, because if his first stab at SW is a remake of the original SW, then, how is that a good thing?.
I haven't seen this new SW film btw - you see one Muppet film, you see them all.
Also (perhaps) the train speech with Vesper ok so it may echo the likes of North By Northwest but it's not a direct homage like Dan coming out of the water or (Urgh!!) Jinx coming out of the water in DAD.
I think those are more tropes of the Bond character than homaging direct moments from past Bond films, which I think is ok to an extent. It's what identifies the character of Bond. But even this formula can get tiresome if overplayed, which the Brosnan era toed the line a bit. CR does a nice job of turning some of these tropes on their head ("Shaken or Stirred?" "Do I look like I give a damn?"). As far as original/classic moments, GE springs to mind: the bungee jump, "No More foreplay", the beach scene with Natalya, M's "misogynistic dinosaur" dialogue. Looking at the other films, dare I say the BMW (as derided as it is, you could argue it was new for the time), and damn I'm going to refer to DAD - the torture scene was a first. Not saying all of the Brosnans scenes were great, but I felt like they at least were trying to bring in new ideas.
That said, the Craig era has original moments too: the brutal bathroom fight, Parkour, Bond nearly poisoned to death, and a slightly reckless rookie Bond for that matter in CR, but overall I think there was a reliance too frequently on past material.
It's the overuse of homage that get's tiresome. The DB5, which in GF was fresh, exciting, new. Now it's become too much of a throwback. In GE it was ok because it was just a drive through the countryside in a vintage car, which happens to turn into an unexpected race. But yes too many homages: oil girl (GF), tracing a bullet (TMTGG), "are you going to eject me?" (GF), Spectre house of mirrors (TMWTGG), train fight (FRWL), Blofeld scar (YOLT), and the list goes on, I don't need to repeat them all here.
+1
That's what confused me when I last saw it; if Q has made almost no progression on getting the DB5 back to full working order in SP, and he's pre-occupied with assisting Bond and stopping C during the finale, then how is it all fixed up by the end of the movie? Seemed like yet another unnecessary reason to inject it into the movie for some odd reason.
I know, it's rather foolish of me, every single time I do it.
Much like how Bond was beyond incompetent when it came to his aim in SF, and yet in SP, which obviously takes place (at the absolute maximum) a couple of weeks after SF, he's an expert marksman, killing everyone with one shot with any weapon from any range, as Bond does.
Anyway, back on topic! My curiosity has derailed things long enough. :D
How exactly do you arrive at this conclusion?
There's very little in the film to indicate this. Bond just states 'I've been following Sciarra ever since'. This could be weeks, months or years.
I would contend that given the CNS building is on Millbank opposite the MI6 building and there is no sign of it when M drives along Millbank at the start of SF we can only assume that it has been built since SF. Buildings like that take years to go up (even if the foundations were already built at the time of SF) and I know it's got no people in yet and is brand new but even so 3 years is barely enough time to get it up.
In addition the MI6 building wouldn't look so dilapidated and be rigged to blow in just 2 weeks.
I would say there's a minimum of a year between the films. Nearer two.
We know nothing about Sciarra so maybe he is a dab hand at covering his tracks.
Intelligence analysis is hardly Bond's area of expertise especially given he was doing it all on his own and couldn't overtly use any MI6 resources to help him.
Keep these theories coming though @Creasy47!!
In the world of Bond, I doubt it'd take him long to find a man like that.
But, at the end of the day, we're discussing something that I suppose truly has no correct answer. Things simply exists in Bond's world and that's that; we'll simply never know how long it takes him to track Marco, or Mr. White (CR), for that matter.
Oh well thanks for clarifying.
In that case you were right first time. In fact why not have SP take place the day after M's funeral? No reason the CNS building couldn't be built in one day if anything goes in the world of Bond.
This is quite a useful theory you've stumbled upon to cover up sloppy scriptwriting. Whereas before I though the SPECTRE ring being linked to Le Chiffre, Greene, Silva, Sciarra and Blofeld was bollocks it now works perfectly.
Are you Sam Mendes in disguise?
I never said that one answer doesn't make more sense than another, I'm simply pointing out that there will never be a concrete answer given.
All I've posted are curious ramblings, nothing more. I've offered up zero theories. I'm not sure why you think I'm trying to cover up anything, or why you felt the need to point out the ring issue from SP, when I also disliked how they went about that and found that it made no sense.
But then you changed the rules and said in Bond world anything is possible. Wish you'd told me that at the start because I'd assumed we were playing by real world constraints.
'Cause of lawyers you see. The new owners of Skyfall were a bit miffed when their grand old Scottish manor was slightly singed during Bond and Silva's battle. They took the British government to court etc... Hence why Bond is only receiving his effects some 3 years after the fact.
To make @DarthDimi happy: But.... he's B-) Ralph Fiennes B-) !
Not only are MI6 agents banned from sharing their last names, they are also banned from sharing birth dates? MI6 reckon the agents would be much more clinical and detached operating this way....
I assume you jest @RC7, because @susanvil makes a valid point. It was well pitched, which I guess is what your comment is inferring... :>
I was being quite serious.
QoS less so. I can only really think of the Opera scene, which while an homage to Hitchcock of sorts, is definitely something impressive. As I said on another thread some while back, that QUANTUM meeting is far fresher, more inventive, & more realistic in terms of the topics of dicsussion in my view than the blatant homage, complete with predictable death of operative, that we got in SP.
Sure, the DB5 has been done to death now, but that is just a barometer for other too obvious homages that, as others have said, have become quite tiresome in the last two films. We didn't need the darn ejector seat nod again in the 2nd consecutive film. We didn't need to see another Aston being chased by a Jag. We didn't need the 'goon in a train' because that's been done at least 3 times before. Etc. etc. Didn't anybody have the brains to realize that when they decided to give Blofeld the scar from YOLT (was this even necessary, given that only Pleasance sported it) they would subconsciously draw association to Austin Powers, since Pleasance is the Blofeld iteration that was ripped for Dr. Evil? Was this their intention? Or did they not even consider this possibility?
I don't mind a few references to the past if it must be done, but at least try to have some creativity and subtlety in the way you go about it.