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Bond losing his memory would result in people accusing the producers of copying Bourne again, even though YOLT was written well before the first Bourne book. I think Bond faking his death and choosing to spend the rest of his days living as an anonymous fisherman on a remote island somewhere would have been a great ending for Craig. It would basically be a follow-through on his aborted retirement in Skyfall, where he gets to "stay dead" and make a clean exit from the 00 life.
> This would have been far more satisfying to most audiences
Based on audience scores, box office returns, and critic reviews — I think people were fairly satisfied with the ending!
This is an anecdote but several of my friends who I convinced to see the movie (who don't like Bond) absolutely loved this one. That's a good thing!
How do you think writing works? That's, like, the first rule of storytelling — you write to the ending, link the circle together.
I think there are some writers who take a more organic approach to their endings; maybe they're more focused on characters, and like to see where the story goes naturally.
There are a few ways I suppose, but writing the movie to come to a specific conclusion is not a bad thing.
The idea of having an adaptation of YOLT sounds like a piss poor idea for someone’s last film. As a penultimate film I think it might have worked, but NOT as the final film. Watching Craig as an amnesiac Japanese fisherman might have pleased some Fleming purists but would have absolutely perplexed audiences on why the hell filmmakers would even end Craig’s run that way.
"I'll take alternate endings to famous books and movies for 400, Alex."
https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/941-6-famous-books-that-almost-ended-very-differently
And that's not including book-to-movie adaptations or movies that have alternate endings. Ever see the original ending of Layer Cake?
But all that's beside the point, anyway, as everyone went into NTTD giving it the ending it has and Craig was apparently adamant that it absolutely not end any other way.
@matt_u posted excerpts from the making of NTTD book. Craig had already came up with the idea of his Bond dying at the end of his run way back in 2005 when he was cast. It was considered for SP at a very early stage but they decided not to.
Which makes sense — the CraigBond films have framed him as a mythic figure/world redeemer, so they have to give him the mythological ending: death that transforms the world ("Everything's good now. There's no one left to hurt us.") with a transcendent rebirth out of the cycle (the stuff with Mathilde's eyes, eyes=soul, the ending shot of three light going through the tunnel into Matera/heaven).
I didn't think they'd go so hard into the mythological stuff, but they did it even bigger than "Spectre"! Impressive.
Stephen King does the exact opposite, the ending is the last thing he writes (he said that in his On Writing book). And, in my opinion, he's a much better writer than Christopher Nolan.
I never said "you write the ending first" — I said you write to the ending. Definitionally that's how writing anything works. You resolve it based on what has come before. The original poster alluded to a fault of NTTD being that the movie was "molded...to come to the specific conclusion they wanted."
Of course it did!
Think about how music flows — the ending bit comes from what came before. You don't introduce something new right in the last beats, that's jarring! Or, if you do, that contrast is in itself a statement — which can only come about threw the different beginning, or molded by what came before. Because stories function as a circle. Most of the time, it rounds back to the start. And if it doesn't — if the circle is broken — that act only works because of it being molded to that point.
Completely different mediums.
In screenwriting, the ending is very much ironed out early on, because the writers usually work in a three-act structure. If writers don't know the third act and the ending, then the script is in trouble. SP is a perfect example.
They may not have known anything else, but they knew it had to end on Westminster Bridge. ;)
I keep hearing this same comment over and over again, yet this bears no reality to my circle of friends. No one I know really loves this movie. The most positive comment from one of my friends (who is a big fan) is that he thought it was ok, but didn't like the ending. I don't know anyone who loves the ending, or even likes the ending.
Start checking out the dedicated established Bond fans on YouTube (Calvin, Zaritsky, etc.) and its the same pattern there too.
Maybe there are people out there who are not Bond fans that love this film. I know there are many on here that love the film, but usually by now with my circle I would have started to get a feel for what audiences think about a film. CR and SF was generally well praised in my circle - QoS and SP not so much.
With NTTD, this is faring far worse. I'm putting the overwhelming praise on here down to it being a new film. I've seen this happen with every Bond film on this forum, and eventually the opinions can change over time, once the dust has settled. I'm hazarding a guess this will start to happen with NTTD too.
The critics - well I don't listen to them anymore, after The Last Jedi. That was the first time I saw overwhelming praise for a film that bears no reality to the film itself, and I'm afraid NTTD is falling into the same camp.
Didn't you have this as your best Bond film ever only a few weeks ago...?
You're looking for the Dikko Henderson version.
You mean it wasn't ShakenNotStirred but StirredNotShaken? :))
Precisely! :D
I'm lost. You mean I've got the wrong person?
I always get these two confused unless I look hard at the name :))
Likewise Jackie, and I think you’re right, our mileage varies on what we see as Bond or not. I came out of QoS feeling much like you did after TMWTGG, and if they’d carried on in that direction, then I wouldn’t have enjoyed it very much. But that’s since become a really popular film on this forum, I know a lot of members think it’s very underrated. So, I’ve got more and more relaxed about deviations from the formula as I’ve gotten older. Sometimes it works for me, sometimes it doesn’t, but not every Bond film has to work for everyone. Variety is what’s kept the series going.
Very good catch, I hadn’t thought of that. I think the missile coming from a Royal Navy warship makes it especially poingant too, Bond arguably set himself on that path the moment he enlisted.
I think YOLT could work as a final film, but I’m not sure if it would’ve worked as a final Craig film, because of the Russians. Even if we ignore how unlikely it is that they’ll ever use another country as outright villains again, would it have held the same
weight as it does in the book? I think Bond obliviously heading to Vladivostok at the end of YOLT would’ve worked as an ambiguous and tragic end to the series, because SMERSH were his oldest enemies. But it wouldn’t have held the same significance for Craig. He was the gritty post 9/11 Bond. Terrorism and the surveillance state lurked in the background of his films, in the same way the Russians did in the early films.
I dunno. Maybe it could’ve worked, if they’d worked the FSB into the plot somehow, but I’m glad it didn’t happen anyway. I’m not sure I’d have enjoyed waiting six years to see Madeline get killed in an OHMSS retread followed by a round two with Blofeld. I’m glad they did something different.
A straight remake would have worked in 1971 with Lazenby.
Someone said on here that one of the biggest miss-steps in the movie series was making YOLT before OHMSS. And it's right if you think about it.
You're arguing about semantics, but the point still stands. King doesn't decide the ending either. He doesn't know how the story will end until he actually gets there. That's what he means.
As @TripAces said they're different mediums and I'll concede that he has a good point, though I still disagree with Nolan's approach and I prefer King's, whether it's a book or a movie script.