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So many great references and thoughts in this thread. Thank you. I especially liked your thoughts about the poison @ImpertinentGoon
One of the signature action set pieces of Craig-Bond's first 00 Mission is a fight down a staircase that shows both him and the audience how brutal and sometimes empty his world is and shatters the ice between Vesper and him. The fight has no real point other than Bond having to stay alive. He doesn't have to kill Obanno, he probably doesn't even know who he is, but he is being attacked.
Towards the end of NTTD on his last mission, Craig-Bond fights his way up a staircase through an army of goons to save the world and his wife and child. If he doesn't do it, there's nothing left to save...
I noticed those similarities, but never thought about any significance about him going down in the first, and up in the other. Maybe it was just to differentiate it, but maybe there is some symbolic meaning behind it as well.
I doubt that was deliberate to be honest, but nevertheless a good observation.
I think there is a chance Fukunaga thought the stair fight in CR was interesting and wanted to do something similar or top it even. On the other hand there are loads of other fight scenes in recent action films that would have been inspirations.
I agree that there probably isn't a lot of deeper meaning to be mined here.
Seriously though I like the idea but probably an accident :D.
Which is a lovely double ref to both Craig’s dismissive throwing of things and the traditional Bond hatstand gag! :)
(And maybe the cigar gag if you’re being generous)
I also noticed the parallel to the staircase fight in CR, but I wasn't able to so brilliantly contextualize it with deeper meaning as you did ;)
I'd say there's a reading where in CR it's a "descent" into the world and life of a 00, and in NTTD, it's an "ascent", finally away from that world. But I'd agree that's probably not what the intention was!
And the Atomic Blonde one is also a 'oner' too; yes I think you're probably right.
I like reference to Goldeneye a lot. Laboratory and in / with The villian lair.
FYEO:
Easter Egg:
When Bond walking towards the XXV bar in Jamaica with Felix and Ash, people can be seen in the street playing it.
I did wonder where that might appear as I saw that too... There's also a reference in the credits to Monster Hunter World and Megaman but I've not found either of them in the movie.
I think it is in the same place, though it is hard to tell as it is 'blink and you miss it'.
Pretty strong foreshadowing of Bond's ultimate fate.
... and there may be more foreshadowing of Bond's death, or perhaps a sense of "death deferred," as in the tolling of the church bells in the square in Matera; the death look on Bond's face in the car before he decides to "do something," or so I would characterize it; the young Madeleine trapped under the ice ... all just from the PTS, and probably more after it.
Edit: also, what's going on in that religious procession that Bond interrupts?
It's probably just a random procession. They tend to do those in old Italian cities now and again.
However, I was recently researching wether the festival that is depicted in Matera actually exists. I couldn't find any evidence of the "burning pieces of paper with secrets on them" part, but there is a famous festival in Matera. The "Festa della Bruna". Mainly it's your standard multi-day religious festival centred around a Madonna statue that has been in one of the town's churches for centuries. The main piece however, is that every year a big, pretty carnival float is built out of papier-maché. Takes months to build the thing. Then it is paraded around the town and once it reaches a central square, it is completely ripped apart by the townspeople who take pieces of it home as kinds of relics. And then they build a new one the next year and rip it apart again.
So the whole idea about a festival about destruction and renewal and how beauty cannot last, but can be replaced and so on and so forth does exist in real-world Matera. I guess they just thought that explaining all that and then having both Madeleine and Bond confront a secret through it would have taken a lot of expository talking, whereas the way it is done in the film there is one sentence by the bellhop and then two silent pieces of acting, where we see them burn paper and that's all you need to understand what is going on with the two characters.
https://bestselfmedia.com/burning-letters-letting-go/
Whether this is intended to invoke her name or not, I don't know ... but after a cursory search, the procession doesn't appear to be one native to Matera (though I wouldn't rule it out). The saint is better known as St. Vincent Ferrer, and is more associated with Spain than Italy.
Also, his feast day is April 5th, perhaps coincidentally the day on which Albert R. Broccoli was born. Among the many things that Ferrer is associated with are orphanages and Judgement Day.
PS. If I could figure out how to include a screenshot from my phone I would ....
Edit correction: "Vincenzo Ferreri" on the banner, I missed the letter "i".