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That definitely could have resulted in a more interesting and emotionally compelling film, though I can't help mentioning that Ian Fleming once wrote, tongue in cheek, that "it is always a bad idea for the hero to fall in love with the villain’s daughter. We are left wondering what sort of children they will have." The question was dodged in OHMSS and answered in NTTD.
I think just having those bits at all triggered fans because it’s not part of “the formula”. I agree, I didn’t find it as excessive as others seem to.
I don't see why it felt weird: it's just a change of name, ultimately. It's the same story from the book: Bond goes after the man who murdered his childhood mentor, Oberhauser. But in typical style for the Bond films they've taken that Fleming nugget and expanded the story to fill a film (see also TLD, OP, FYEO etc.) and made that person into the main villain of the film- that's a really pretty standard way of adapting these short stories. And in making that person the main villain, you also have to drop their age a bit (otherwise the baddie will be around the same age as Bond's father, and Craig was in his late 40s at this point so that's a baddie in his late 70s or so which becomes a bit tricky- they're not usually that old) which means this person killed Bond's mentor when they were a kid. So you make him Oberhauser's son jealous of Bond... again, that's a pretty logical story change. The only problem comes when you take one more leap and say 'well why not make him Blofeld?' - and in truth it makes no difference at all inside the story: Bond has never heard of Blofeld or white cats or hollowed-out volcanoes before - that he's called Blofeld makes no difference to James. It does make a difference to the audience however because we do know the character, and it feels silly to us. Now, they were obviously hoping to avoid that feeling of silly: maybe they felt buoyed because they'd done such a great job of rehabilitating and reinventing M, Q and Moneypenny in the previous film and thought they could do it again. But they didn't quite make it this time, we never got over our feeling of "what, they're brothers?", but I still think if you look at the thought process and the line drawn from Fleming, you can see why they thought it would work and I don't entirely blame them for trying it.
I can believe it. Fleming's Bond was entered into Eton at birth by his Father. His Dad also attended Fettes, so at least one half of his family is... well, posh, let's say.
The Oberhauser plot line from the short story could have been included, but only as a way into the story. Bond investigates someone linked to the death of Oberhauser, his old ski instructor, and from there he uncovers SPECTRE's plan... perhaps it wouldn't have been necessary in this film, as they had a good premise of Bond tracking down this organisation from the start anyway. Ah well, perhaps for a future film.
I mean honestly, the idea that Oberhauser's son bore a grudge against Bond and killed his own dad as a result actually is a more interesting story to me than that. I don't think it works in the film entirely; but as a hook, it's a more interesting one to me and if I were involved in writing that script I'd have probably pursued that line too. It keeps that childhood angle central to the story rather than just quickly moving on from it, and it keeps Bond right in the heart of it.
But then they throw in the Nine Eyes thing too, which is a good idea but perhaps for another film, but I guess they needed as well because if it were just a story about a villain pursuing a long-standing grudge against Bond then it would seem very much a retread of Skyfall but with this film's Silva bearing a grudge against Bond instead of M.
It's tricky, I don't know what the solution would be, and it's evident they just ran out of time and had a lot of people putting their oar in. I have a lot of a sympathy for the people who made that film because there are solid ideas in there which just fell apart on them.
I feel that after Silva the writers really embraced the whole 'villain out for revenge' angle. It's even done again in NTTD. I mean, it's a different approach than what we usually see in Bond stories. Ok, there are villains like the literary Drax and Travelyn who have vague grudges against Britain, but the likes of Silva, Blofled and Safin have specific people and targets they want to kill. It was pretty effective in SF because Silva's backstory and motives were clear. Silva used to be a good, loyal agent like Bond (why he works for MI6 despite having a Spanish name and accent is another issue) and now he's a cyberterrorist who wants to kill M and take down MI6 in the process. There you go. You have a great villain with a clear motive - he's even a twisted mirror image of Bond.
With Blofeld the revenge subplot wasn't strong enough because Bond hasn't really wronged him. He just... well, existed. He literally showed up and stayed with the Oberhausers for what seems to be a short time. Why is Blofeld so mad at him? Ok, maybe he has Father issues and dislikes Bond, but the film goes to great lengths to suggest that Blofeld has committed his life to this organisation in part to make Bond's life a living hell... seems a bit of a stretch.
With Safin, I felt his backstory was strong, but his motivations for selling the nanobots later become muddled because he's killed most of SPECTRE by the first third of the film. He's literally achieved his goal by the time Blofeld dies. This could have rectified by having there be remaining SPECTRE agents still alive who haven't been targeted. Safin is preparing to release the nanobots, but this would mean the innocent family members of said SPECTRE agents dying too, not to mention the fact that anyone could attain the nanobot technology. Hence why Bond would have to destroy Safin's nanobot factory.
On the contrary, the film goes to great lengths to portray Bond as a very strong protagonist who goes well out of his way, at great personal inconvenience, to find Spectre/Oberhauser. There isn't really a "revenge subplot" in Spectre. Oberhauser does nothing to make Bond's life a living hell in this film until Bond goes to the immense trouble of finding him. The only revenge pursued in the movie is for things that happen within the movie itself.
It bears repeating: Oberhauser is not Bond's brother, stepbrother, half-brother, or foster brother, he did not start Spectre to make Bond's life a living hell, and the film doesn't even have Oberhauser seeking Bond. "You interfered in my world, and I destroyed yours."
Oberhauser was clearly written the way he was to achieve certain themes and dynamics. From a practical standpoint, they wanted the Bond and Blofeld of this movie to have some kind of history equivalent to the mythological versions. If they hadn't done it this way, I bet they would have done something similar later that would have irked fans. (They clearly did not anticipate the emotional devastation that would have on some people, or they may have instead considered having a Bela Lugosi figure make fish metaphors instead. :)) )
They also have these themes going of Oberhauser having personal grievances and living a life that he feels he was partially forced into ("In a way, he's responsible for the path I took..."), and Bond not being entirely different, having never had a choice or stopped to consider his life. Mr White obviously did stop and consider what he was dong to some extent, and Madeleine obviously thinks Bond should consider it, and Blofeld obviously thinks Bond should continue along as he has ("Finish it!").
And to bring this relitigation of Spectre back round to NTTD, I think Blofeld's death was at it should have been. This creepy, petty, vindictive little voyeur deserves the death he got. He would have wanted something grander too.
To be fair, re-visiting NTTD, I still like the pre-credit sequence and the Spectre party sequence. And the other scene I really liked was Bond and M by the river, especially the way the music is used. I still like old school Bond and M meetings, where Bond respects M. All this "you have got a difficult day" and "have you shrunk?" stuff was disappointing to me, because after they installed a stuffy male M at the end of Skyfall I was hoping for a bit of old-fashioned respectful banter between them. At least we got some of that back in the scene by the river.
Given how the Craig era played out, I wish they'd never have done the 'everything back in its proper place' ending to Skyfall. It gave me false hope that the series was back on track, back to the Fleming and early eon idea of Bond. As I've said before, they could have gone forward from there, with a new actor if necessary, new stand-alone adventures, and some old-style Bond sex and violence type fun.
Because he had just learned that the devastating events of the PTS you liked were kind of a prank, and he has on some level wasted five years of his life not being with the woman he loves who he just saw for the first time since those events.
On the one hand, some folks think Bond appears too indifferent to Blofeld in Spectre, and now I guess too agitated in NTTD...I suppose they could have reversed this or something, but it's probably futile to try to please everyone, us hardcore fans in particular.
“Was I hallucinating or did I just see a dog taking a piss at the parade???”
Why would you have your control room next to an open nuclear reactor?!
"Help me defect and I'll give you a decoding device, and by that I mean you can blow up a Soviet embassy and steal the device yourself" is a horrible offer!
20% of Goldfinger's behavior makes no sense except as a way to trick the audience!
Why would Blofeld steal capsules from both sides, thus making it obvious a third party is at work?!
What the hell is even going on in the OHMSS PTS?!
Actually, most of these sound like me. *blush*
For me there is not enough buildup. If we had seen Bond devastated when Blofeld says that he engineered Bond's breakup with Madeleine, then his lurching for Blofeld's throat would have felt more organic.
There is too much going on in the scene--Madeleine reuniting with Bond, Madeleine trying to kill Blofeld, Bond reuniting with Blofeld, Blofeld confessing, Bond wanting to kill Blofeld...it needed to be a couple of scenes. It's like they said, "Well, we only have Waltz for one day on set. Make it work!"
Yeah I think Bond fans want his death to have been bigger because he was called Blofeld, not necessarily because of what that character was to Bond or the story.
Blofeld had ruined the happy life he was going to have Madeline..?!
The problem with having Bond and Blofeld know each other as children is that there's always going to be that expectation of some sort of personal connection. The film tries to have its cake and eat it two. Blofeld is simultaneously an ambitious supervillian who wants this MI6 agent out of his way, and fixated on Bond. Blofeld openly says that he's been long looking forward to coming face to face with him again, and he has this idea that because Oberhauser Sr. took Bond in that that's how he knew his Father didn't love him and had to die... I mean, that's particularly weak sauce, but it very much emphasises that personal connection. Heck, he even says that Bond set him down his path of killing his Father and forming SPECTRE... It also hints (to me anyway, and apparently a few many viewers of this film) that Blofeld had some sort of jealously towards the young Bond, and much of his glee at being 'the author of all his pain' can be attributed to this. Same for the fact that he tortures Bond in a way that would seemingly make him forget the faces of his loved ones (yeah, the guy has some hang ups about this sort of thing). It's a case of weak writing, but the strands of jealously, obsession, revenge etc. are all there, and the film wants viewers to make these connections for the case of drama.
The fact is there was no need to have any personal history between Blofeld and Bond in this manner. Blofeld would still have been behind SPECTRE, responsible for Vesper's death, Le Chiffre, Greene, and apparently Silva too (although the last case is questionable and I never bought that the lone wolf that is Silva would have ever been a member of SPECTRE). Bond would already have felt invested in bringing Blofeld down because he was, in fact, 'the author of all his pain' in this sense alone. He's the reason Bond and Vesper never settled down, why Bond continues to be an MI6 agent, and very broadly why he's alone/the man he is. Blofeld could easily have felt this animosity towards Bond because he kept interfering. No further elaboration needed. Just roll with it and let it play out. But no, we have to muddy the waters with all this other nonsense. It overstuffed the script and led partially to a weaker film.
I actually don't mind Blofeld's death in NTTD, just the execution of it. I always cringe at the 'Die Blofeld, die!' part.
Exactly. Also, when Madeleine asks Blofeld his motivations for torturing Bond, Blofeld himself answers by telling her their history and the whole "cukoo" thing.
It sounds messier than the film we got, and you also possibly run into the problem that I'm not sure Bond would be troubled by that guy, but it is perhaps a way of removing the slight contrivance that both boys grew up to be major players in the world of European spying.
But then I guess most of our Government seem to have gone to school together...
Some of the scenes in film felt a tiny bit rushed, like the script wasn't in the best shape but they only had the actors for X amount of days, so they had to make use of their time. I know Daniel's injury was problematic
Well, I don't disagree with most of that really, though I don't see what cake the film is having and eating, or why Blofeld's jealousy, obsession, etc, are a case of weak writing. He's a creep, that's it.
I mean, here's how I see WaltzBlofeld: Franz Oberhauser was a creepy, insecure kid, and his dad takes care of a decidedly not creepy and extremely secure kid called James Bond, who has beautiful blue eyes young Franz notices. Franz grows jealous and resentful and eventually kills his father and becomes a criminal. Years later, after changing his name, he's the head of a large criminal organization which has been occasionally been thwarted by that very blue-eyed orphan Franz hated as a kid. He takes some solace in the fact that this thwarting has come at a personal price for James Bond.
Bond finds Oberhauser at the Spectre meeting and is shocked to see him alive. Oberhauser is someone Bond knew in the past and who puts a chill up his spine. When they meet, Oberhauser, now Blofeld, constantly tries to one-up Bond, who he has always resented and become jealous of. And he intends to make him suffer. Bond, who is not psychotically resentful, doesn't give Blofeld the satisfaction of open hate, which frustrates him just as Bond intends.
That's it. That's what's in the movie. It makes sense to me. I know that at least one moderator does not appreciate speculation as to why people like/dislike things, but I suspect that most people think it should have been a more intensely personal thing on Bond's end, or (more often) that Blofeld just shouldn't have known Bond at all. But to me, Bond constantly brushing off Blofeld made sense as a reaction. Bond isn't the psycho, and he's happy to let Ernst drive himself nuts with his resentment. And they obviously didn't have to have a personal connection at all, but I think this was the better way.
Bond could have walked into the Spectre meeting and seen some new character. "Oh, I guess that's the guy." Or it could have been Mr White: "Oh, that guy again. The guy I shot in the leg once." I don't see that either of these would have been more interesting. I think this was one of the more interesting things they could have done, and it's certainly more interesting than previous film versions.
If people didn't misunderstand this brother stuff or think Spectre exists to thwart James Bond, maybe he'd get more slack... Or maybe they should have done a flashback PTS! I mean, Alec Trevelyan seems well loved, and he has an utterly nonsensical backstory where he worked as a patriotic and successful 00 until he was in his forties and he faked his death elaborately, and then later in his fifties he decides to get revenge on England because they betrayed his parents or because of a post-Cold War loss of meaning and/or he wants to make a lot of money. What? Or a KGB agent made in a Nazi lab? Huh? Or a guy who thinks his life depends on a password only James Bond knows so he arranges a car accident for James Bond that should almost certainly kill James Bond?
WaltzBlofeld is hardly the weirdest villainous creation in these movies. And Blofeld has never been the same thing twice in any of these movies or in the novels, save perhaps the hidden Count Chocula voice from FRWL and TB. Bringing the "character" back can only be a contrivance where the name is spoken for the benefit of the audience. Making a creepy voyeur anti-Bond out of him is a wonderful choice.
And indeed, that is the motivation for the torture.
Yes, @mtm. I too wish Blofeld and Oberhauser were separate characters. That way, Blofeld could have encouraged and exploited Oberhauser's personal connection to get back at Bond. A FRWL kind of motivation.
QoS and SP are both frustrating films because they are at least 75% of the way to a good film. With one (?) more pass at the script, these films could have been stronger (although admittedly the whole third act of SP is a huge mess--perhaps the PTS helicopter scene should have been saved for the end).
That's a bit of a cop out for me. Ok, Blofeld's a creep. So what? He still has to have some sort of motivation for killing his Father, and the way the film played out it seems like this was due to the fact that his Dad 'loved' the young James more than him. We simply don't know enough about their relationship to think otherwise, and this has all kinds of implications for Blofeld's character, his glee at being this 'presence' throughout the last few stories, his torturing of Bond etc. The fact that you have these two ideas going on at the same time - Blofeld, a man who thinks he's a visionary and Blofeld, the creep who wants to torture a kid who his Dad loved more than him - creates this odd dynamic. We start to read many of his decisions, the fact that he was the 'author of all of Bond's pain' as being, at least subconsciously, motivated by this jealously towards Bond... and that's simply not good enough. Same problem with Safin, there's too much going on that it starts to feel like two different villains. If it gets to the point where you are having to question your villain's motivations because they are in some way too ambiguous for many viewers, then a film like this has a problem.
The fact is, it is personal for Bond, even in the film we got. Like I said, Blofeld was behind Vesper's death ultimately, and this turned Bond into the man he was. I'm not criticising the fact that Bond brushes off Blofeld's glee/resentment, but the fact that there was little feeling of familiarity between the two. It felt like any other villain/Bond confrontation. From a script point of view they may as well have cut the Oberhauser subplot as it added absolutely nothing - no sense of character motivation, no sense of higher stakes. There was already a great potential dynamic between these characters.
With Travelyn his backstory works for me because it's clear what his motivation is. It's something that was long brewing - his family were former Nazis and potential defectors, but were sent to the Soviets by the British Government and were executed. That's pretty cruel sounding, but plausible. It makes sense that a villain would plan a scheme against the UK for many years, at least in the context of a film, because the motivation is very clearly getting revenge upon the country that wronged his family. It really doesn't matter if it's silly, or what methods he chooses to do this - this is a Bond film after all - because it's clear and understandable what his motivations are for the audience. Again, Blofeld and Safin's motivations in the Craig films seem muddied and unclear by comparison because lots of character ideas were injected into them.
Honestly, it's best keeping the villain's motivations simple, no matter how convoluted the plot. Stromberg is a madman obsessed with marine life and wants everyone to live under the sea? Ok, I can go with it. Elliot Carver is a madman who wants to be the best media mogul in the world and will go to the lengths of manufacturing a war to do this? Wow, that's cool! Waltz's Blofeld is a madman who sees himself as a visionary and wants to gain access to the Nine Eyes programme to thwart any attempts against his organisation. Oh, and he's gone down this route because he knows Bond and his Father didn't love him... and he wants to kill Bond because of this, and probably did some of the stuff in the previous films to spite Bond specifically (maybe, that's what the film is somewhat implying... somewhat). After a point there are too many motivations that go way back and clash with each other. Keep it simple.
I don't mind Blofeld being reinvented. I'm all for it actually. I just don't think Waltz's performance was all that menacing, especially compared to his performance in Inglrious Basterds.
Blofeld's motivation is that he's a psychotic criminal who wants power. Like all the other Blofelds and most of the villains generally. The history with Bond is there to foster (pun intended) a certain dynamic between the characters, and have Blofeld as a guy who is consumed by his past and wants to kill it.
Right. Why would you think otherwise? He killed his dad out of resentment and jealousy.
This is where I get lost. Blofeld's motivations for talking to Bond the way he does and treating Bond the way he does when he eventually meets him are indeed the resentment, sure. They're not his motivations for acquiring Nine Eyes. Or being involved with human trafficking and counterfeit pharmaceuticals. All kinds of characters have multiple motivations for different aspects to their character, even in these movies.
I mean, when Trevelyan mentions more than once that Bond changed the timers on those bombs (after Alec had faked his death--again, utterly bizarre stuff with this guy), I take that as a partial motivation for his specific treatment of James Bond, a guy he knows from the past, and certainly how he talks to James Bond. It's exactly like with Blofeld. But it's not why Alec's gonna blast London with an EMP. He's doing that to avenge his parents/make money/vent his frustrations about how "sorry old boy, but everything you risked your life and limb for has changed." I mean, apparently.
Well, the film doesn't imply that Blofeld did specific things to spite Bond. Blofeld himself sort of does, but like Bond, I take that with a big grain of salt, because I know Ernst didn't use psychic powers to make Vesper commit suicide. But more to the point, I don't see why mention of what set him down his path (at least according to Blofeld--he's clearly been nuts his whole life) makes anything confusing. The film shows a big long discussion at a Spectre meeting of all the awful stuff they're doing, none of which--like the events of CR, QOS, and SF--are happening to spite James Bond. The only thing Blofeld does to spite James Bond is mock and torture James Bond when James Bond comes to his house to kill him. Which is pretty standard behavior! Would a brief story about where Elliot Carver took a bad turn confuse you?
To be agreeable and derail somewhat less, I think Safin was a pretty brilliant character in many ways, but yeah, they really didn't nail down a motivation for the last hour of stuff... Even if they made a tiny change and had him not sell the nanobots but instead use them as he saw fit, it'd be much better. Apparently they just needed a time limit to the final act with the ships arriving?
Yes it would make sense (and in a way it kind of feels like Blofeld in the 60s should have gone that way with Connery's Bond- really pursue him personally, rather than just try and get him killed in one of their schemes), but I would also say that if a script doctor read it that way with Blofeld and Oberhauser separate people they'd probably combine them into one to streamline the film anyway, I think that's a fairly standard thing to do.
Maybe there's a solution in there somewhere, but I think it's not quite there yet.
But simply having Bond not be bothered and not seeing Blofeld's annoyance at not getting the rise he desired undermines it. It's a good idea, badly executed and as a result, Waltz' incarnation of the character comes across as an infantile loser rather than someone who is supposed to be power-hungry. This is what gives ammunition to those who believe the retcon was an attempt at making Blofeld seem like he was out to get Bond from the beginning.
The film simply badly needed another draft to define these ideas properly. To me, they know they made a bad go of it - the fact that it ends up being the butt of a one-liner from Q after Blofeld's death in NTTD is indicative of their awareness of people's dislike of how it was handled.