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Well stated!
I just wish we had more moments of him drinking and being solitary. It felt like he was barely in retirement and then when the film got to London the tone changed drastically as if his 5 years in Jamaica hadn't happened
The point is that there’s a thing with fans giving weird Fleming elements a pass that they never would if it were under a different name.
Like if Purvis & Wade came up with the girls being brainwashed into poisoning earth’s agriculture, there would be many fans talking about how ludicrous that is and how it brings down the film for them the same way nanobots brings down NTTD.
But because Fleming came up with that nearly 60 years ago we don’t give it much thought like we would with a brand new film because in everyone’s minds it’s always been part of Fleming’s canon.
Just like how in 40 years fandom will have reached a point of accepting NTTD as something that was done at one point in the franchise’s history and not really be all that bothered because by then it’s not seen as a novelty.
I’ve seen this with Star Trek, where fans are so used to original TOS episodes having ludicrous storylines but if done today would balk at how silly it is.
Thanks, happy to be of help.
Hi @QBranch. I saw NTTD on Sunday last but I'm still formulating my opinion on it after just one viewing on the big screen. On the whole I liked it but I need to mull over my words a little more before I type up an initial review of the film and my first impressions. Just glad that I finally got to see it on the big screen as all Bond films are intended to be seen. Will post my review ASAP though. :)
A lot of whiskey has been drunk, and spilled, over NTTD. Somehow, I feel sure of that. ;)
Maybe that was Bond's ghost at the end of the movie that did that to you. Maybe the dead really are alive!
:D
It could also be said that change for the sake of change isn’t a good concept.
They could have easily made White Blofeld in SP.
Precisely, yes. Jesper Christensen was a much better actor than Waltz in the Bond movies imo. Blofeld came off as goofy. Not once did he feel dangerous in Spectre. White, even in his deathly state, was much more entrancing than Waltz.
That's lovely.
But it's not James Bond.
Says who? You? Are you a long lost descendant of Ian Fleming's?
This. I love when people tell us what is and is not "Bond".
People have their own "idea" of what Bond is and isn't. No one, certainly this Colonel, is any kind of grand arbiter on what Bond is.
I suspect Bond in the novels does a great many things that certain people might say is "not Bond". Getting married?? Certainly not!
“Bond should never have a child!”
…
“No, I haven’t read the books!”
The sheer amount of little "Mathildes" there must be running around all over the world...
I guess people take me as a hardliner on this, but there isn't actually any type of Bond movie I prefer over another. Two of my personal favorites are LTK and TMWGG. One is a fairly hardcore revenge movie, the other is basically a comedy. I like Bond when he's driving motorized gondolas through Venice just as much as when he's strangling enemy agents to death in train cars. I wasn't even really bothered when he surfed a tidal wave. I really only have two rules for Bond:
1. Don't radically alter his identity.
2. Don't kill him off.
#2 is something that I didn't think they'd ever do, so obviously when I accidentally read a spoiler for NTTD I was pretty pissed off because to me it seemed like such an obvious- and simple- rule to follow.
There are certain things from the novels you would never adapt, and the giant squid is probably one of them, so is a nodding statue. So I agree that not all Fleming is sacrosanct.
But I genuinely think the end of the YOLT would have played out better than what we eventually got instead on screen from P&W. Blofeld instead of Safin (much bigger payoff), Bond kills Blofeld then escapes off the island only to be shot and loses his memory. Still tragic, still dramatic, still sad, but makes the film a cliffhanger ending rather than such a controversial ending to divide the fanbase.
Or at least have him dive off the island as it blows up, and then Bond is presumed dead. Did he make it, or didn't he. You could still have the obituary scenes afterwards. This again keeps in line with Fleming.
I also feel that to show Bond diving off the island would just be having your cake and eating it too because you'd go through all the emotion of his eventual death, including his talk with Madeleine and the response from MI6, to then just have him dive away at the last minute, all for a payoff that's not gonna come because again Bond 26 was always going to be a reboot.
Ok, so you are one of the fans who actually wanted Bond dead at the end of this film then, rather than an ambiguous ending. What about the ending that Fleming wrote, the final chapter Sparrows Tears?
And what about my other point which they didn't adapt - Blofeld instead of Safin. You really think this Safin character carried more weight and significance than Blofeld?
As for the whole Blofeld or Safin thing, I would have preferred Blofeld to have had a better ending, yes, but I also enjoyed what we did get from Safin. Even if he was slightly underwritten, I preferred Safin much more than Blofeld in Spectre, so was happy to have a more refreshing main villain in the story.
Fair enough. Sounds like you got the exact ending you want, and you thought it couldn't be improved upon. I really wish I could see it this way too.
There was never a literal nodding statue in Fleming. Just Bond second-guessing whether a statue had nodded while feeling particularly superstitious. The same as people jumping at shadows.
The giant squid, on the other hand, is well overdue and hopefully will turn up during the next Bond's run.