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Nothing is outside the realm of possibilities but some ideas are worse than others and further from Fleming than others. I'll take the lesser evil thank you very much, given the choice. They could have made the angora cat a familiar spirit containing the demon named Blofeld, that possess Oberhauser. That's a possibility and the franchise has dabbled at least one before in the realm of supernatural. But that's a terrible.
Bottom line: Blofeld is a man.
So what about Blofeld being Bond's father? Or Bond's son? Still makes him a man, but it's a ridiculous idea. Having ANY connection between Blofeld and Bond is ridiculous to me. Much tougher for me to forgive and look past than a woman Blofeld (wouldn't bother me in the slightest) or something else unique or different.
A demon-possessed cat is obviously an extreme example, well past anything we saw in LALD.
They should've eliminated any air of mystery and made it a Blofeld vs. Bond battle right off the bat and market that. No obvious twists you can smell coming years away, no 'Franz Oberhauser,' none of it. Could've been so much better. I feel like they put too much time into setting up a grand mystery of who Waltz was...in a movie called Spectre. Well I wonder!
You are building a strawman: I never said these would be good ideas or even mentioned them at all. I was comparing ideas that were considered in the creative process. I was joking about Blofeld's cat and did mention it would've been a terrible idea. I agree they shouldn't have tried to make Blofeld showing a twist... But it's neither here nor there regarding who Blofeld should be: linking him to Bond is ridiculous, otherwise he's still Ernst Stavro Blofeld, he is still closer to the source material than Ernestina.
Yes, Blofeld being a woman is so far removed from the source material, but Bond and Blofeld being step brothers somehow isn't. Totally.
At this point they might as well just throw him down another chimney and forget he exists for another 20 years
Here's the strawman again: both are a departure from source material however a female Blofeld is MORE. And it makes this change far more difficult to ignore in subsequent movies for obvious reasons.
You can disagree with my views all you want but please refrain from inventing views out of thin air, this is asinine.
Hahaha yes,thats a more attractive option !
I agree that it was rushed. Maybe they should have waited for the next Bond actor. Blofeld would have been a good "hook" to start his tenure. I think bringing back Blofeld was a strong wish but they didn't know how to do it when they got the rights.
That said not sure Cassel would have worked. Too French for the role. If it had been me I'd have someone like Ciaran Hinds or Brendan Gleeson. Large and could easily be thuggish looking.
"Inventing views"? Not at all, it's how I feel. All I said was I'd prefer the other two ideas over a step brother connection, not inventing anything.
It doesn't make it remotely difficult to change - just recast. Simple. It's not as if the Blofeld they created in SP is the only Blofeld that will feature in the series until the end of time. They'll recast, course correct, take a different approach, etc. Happens all the time.
Inventing views I do not have. I thought I was clear. You can disagree with me but inventing strawmen is disingenuous.
And yes sure they can recast. But it's easier to recast a middle aged white character with a middle aged white actor than changing gender!
While that may seem a contradiction, my thinking is as follows: If they had gone that route, then it would have been more clear that we were dealing with an abstraction. A creative fancy for this iteration in this self contained reboot universe. There would have been no doubt.
By making him a white male and then adding on the brother element it's sort of trying to have it both ways.
You're arguing that I'm inventing a view...that I already had about what I feel would've been a better avenue to take regarding who Blofeld is? I'm not even sure so we'll just agree to disagree on it. Some people love the twist, some people hate it, and some are indifferent. Personally, I thought the whole backstory they had regarding Blofeld and Mr. White sounded wonderfully inventive and unique.
Question is: can he do a Polish accent in English? Maybe I just think he's just too French. He does have something of OHMSS Blofeld though.
NO. I'm saying you're building a strawman about my own view on the matter.
As a native polish speaker i already get a shiver down my spine just thinking about Cassel (who has the thickest french accent in movie history) trying to Sound polish. If it's Cassel I'd rather they rewrite him as a french man and leave it at that
If that's what you think I'm doing then you've totally misunderstood what I'm saying. I couldn't care less what everyone else likes and doesn't like in this respect, I'm not out to attack someone's opinion and make them feel "wrong" about it. All I originally stated was I thought the other two ideas could've been better pulled off.
Fine by me
I'm including a quote below from Craig in a 2015 Esquire article which I've posted elsewhere before. It seems they thought it was a good idea at the time, because that element never got changed despite other refinements.
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There has been chatter that Waltz plays Bond's most notorious adversary, Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the comical, cat-stroking, Connery-era menace and boss of the shadowy criminal enterprise Spectre. Actually, Waltz plays Franz Oberhauser. For Fleming fans, that name will ring a distant bell. Franz is the son of Hannes Oberhauser, an Austrian climbing and ski instructor, and friend of Bond's father, who briefly became the young Bond's guardian after the tragic death of his parents – in an Alpine climbing accident, no less. "A wonderful man," Bond describes him in the Fleming story, Octopussy. "He was something of a father to me at a time when I happened to need one." Hannes Oberhauser was later shot dead by the dastardly Major Dexter Smythe; his frozen corpse was discovered in a melting glacier. Bond took it upon himself to track down his former guardian's killer. So, Waltz's Franz Oberhauser is Bond's foster brother. It seems from the trailer he is a senior operative at Spectre – conceivably still under the control of Blofeld – and possibly was connected to Quantum, another nefarious outfit hellbent on world domination (crumbs!), represented here again by Mr White, familiar to fans of Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.
In other words, Craig's initial reluctance to let Bond's backstory bleed into Spectre – and to cut back on the angst in favour of, as he puts it to me, "more Moore", invoking the jollity of Roger Moore-era Bond – didn't survive much past the first script meeting. "I think I'd just got it into my head that flamboyance was the way forward and fuck it, nothing touched him. But as we got into the story and rooted out the connections, they were too good to leave alone."
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https://www.esquire.com/uk/culture/film/news/a8782/daniel-craig-interview/
Let there be no ambiguity about my views then. I think all three are bad and I can't see how they can be exploited well. I am one of the firm believers that the closest possible to Fleming the better. You take away the stepbrother from SP you still have a middle aged man as Blofeld of similar ethnic and cultural origins who can believably have such a name. It's not good but it's closer to Fleming than a female Blofeld, an African Blofeld, a Mallory Blofeld or a youthful Max Denbigh Blofeld, to name a few hypotheses mentioned on this forum. You can also ignore that particular aspect of SP in subsequent movies more easily.
I remember reading that a long time ago.
My Problem with this is simple, i like Craig, i think he is a smart guy and if he says the stuff they came up with in the writing room was too good to be left out then i am inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.
But its very unfortunate that none of it was included in the movie!
There is absolutely no meaningful connection between Blofeld and Bond, and zero relevance of it to the Plot, they don't even get a dinner scene ala TMWTGG where they could Talk about each other etc. And how they see each other, it just drifts off into BS whenever they meet.
I heard there was a chess scene planned between them at some point, and other things, but as i said, the movie does absolutely nothing with their ties.
i don't know what the hell happened between the writing and the actual shooting, but i am guessing drugs. Lots of drugs
Which is ironic, since they got the rights because Logan and Mendes desperately wanted to use Blofeld in first place.