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I'd rather just skip NTTD completely and pretend SP was the end of Craig's run.
Ahh, if only!
Yes, I'd rather watch SP, I mean Bond ends up with Madeleine, then I will just wait and watch for Bond 26 with Bond on a mission with a different woman, just like the old times.....
Skipping NTTD and that unconvincing touchy feely love story.
A barryt007 quote would go well here.
I'm still trying to figure out how an inanimate object can hate a fictional character. I could be a while.
"Don't think, just let it happen."
Then watch the whole of NTTD.
Then watch the rest of SP from when Bond regains consciousness in the torture chair.
Hey ho, NTTD was all in his head, Bond's alive and he drives off into the sunrise with Madeleine.
Solved it!
;)
I watched NTTD again a few weeks ago, and I went into it with a very positive outlook. I tried to take on board that it was only the end of CraigBond, not James Bond, and tried to get into the idea that it was an 'arc'. I was all up for trying my best to enjoy it and I even had a few beers. But I hated it more than ever and now I've given up on it and I'll consider it like CR '67, and not a proper Bond film. I think that's the best approach for me now.
Then I bought a Roger Moore Bond box set of all his films for £11.00 and watched Live and Let Die and felt loads better.
That will be the biggest challenge for the next films. Blatantly ignore modern sensibilities and risk backlashes everywhere (which might actually be good publicity), or cut away some of the old bondisms and risk losing Bond too somewhere in the process? I honestly don't envy the producers. If I had to choose, I'd say go for the first. I bet most people can still handle the womanizer, the brawler, the human chimney and the liquor barrel. Let the easily upset cry and yell and, well, turn the Bonds into the forbidden fruit again. I seem to recall that working well for the first few. ;-)
I think the problem is how much stricter the censors have gotten about that sort of thing. Well, kind of. In terms of violence and sweariness, they can push the envelope further than ever. But I do think some of the darker sides of Bond’s character are going to be a harder and harder sell for a 12A. There’s nobody like him in Marvel, his closest counterpart (Ethan Hunt) is much more of a clean cut hero type who barely even uses his gun nowadays, and even Batman got a 15 rating with the new one. That plus Bond’s audience skewing older than it used to makes me wonder if they‘ll shift to 15/R rated films one day. If anything I think that could make it more appealing to teenagers, so it’s not like they’d be shutting young people out completely.
The modern equivalent of buying her an ice cream perhaps? ;)
@Venutius, you bloody genius!
I don't like restrictive thinking in entertainment. I'm more permissive myself. I'm neither on the "right" nor the "left" side of the debate, but somewhere else. I think it's perfectly okay for Bond to shoot a thug for breakfast, bed a gorgeous girl for lunch, blow up the villain's lair for dinner, go home, report to a female M, get some gadgets from a gay Q, and never look back. I don't think there's anything threatening about a black, female OO, nor about Bond girls being still referred to as "girls".
At the same time, I'm also conservative, not politically, morally, or philosophically, but in a "geeky" way. My motto is "don't touch Bond!" Whatever you do with M, Q, Leiter, and Moneypenny is fine; they are just not as big a "thing" for me as Bond. So Old World Restrictive people, back off. The ethnicity, sexuality, and gender of these characters can be as fluid as molten wax in my opinion. But Politically Correct Restrictive people, back off too! Last time I checked, there are still more than enough white, heterosexual males on the planet to justify a white, heterosexual, male Bond. Find a series more to your liking if you can't handle my Bond, but don't touch my Bond.
I think we (yes, I too) sometimes worry too much over the small number of loud (but small in numbers) Restrictive dogs fighting over the bone that is our Bond. They are loud, they post like mad on message boards and Twitter, they write lengthy articles, and they get invited to talk shows, but they are just they; loud, but few. And they may push a few extremely principled people or some confused teenagers away from Bond, but they alone will never be able to keep the vast masses from attending a screening of the next Bond film.
Watch them in reverse order; I’m just saying, give it a shot (next time you have six free hours lol).
I'll push back a bit on that notion. Eon hired phenomenal actors to play those four roles, and I daresay they inhabited those roles better than many of the white, male, or straight actors who previously played them.
When they decided to make the movie all about Bond regretting his decision and reuniting with Madeleine, it neutered and tamed Bond in a way that does not feel like Fleming.
I can see Fleming's Bond walking away from his child, but not Craig's.
I hate quoting long comments in their entirety because it clutters up the forum even more than my own comments do, but this exactly.
I don't think most normal humans fall into the two restrictive categories, and the market will soon help the pendulum swing back from moral hysteria to a more reasonable place. For example, "objectification" of women in film has declined a bit, as "objectification" of men has increased a bit. If we can tolerate one, we can tolerate both. (And we should: if I looked like Daniel Craig, I would probably not even own a shirt, and if I looked like Lea Seydoux, well, I would pretty much be doing what Lea Seydoux does.)
Personally I would like to see the next film to still be set in our times. Let’s give 2020 Bond a chance to be better and prove he can survive the passing of time.
I'm also not sure if any 'restrictiveness' resulted in NTTD. I'm not saying that the producers live in a bubble either. I have no doubt that the decision to make, say, Nomi - a character who is depicted as being Bond's opposite - a black woman was conscious and partly spurred on by discussion about diversity in the film industry as of late. Still, it's a pretty logical creative decision, and no one forced them to do this. You can apply this to making Q gay as well. I'm not sure if older posters on this forum realise this, but Wishaw's Q and his sexuality is something I've noticed younger audiences speculate about since SF. Wishaw is of course openly gay himself, but the way he plays that character has a sort of 'Queer geekiness' to him that I think a lot of younger (presumably gay) audiences find relatable. I suspect this is the main reason for the 'he'll be here any minute' line. In that sense I didn't find the decision surprising but simply confirmed what some fans had speculated about for a while.
It's the same with Bond's character in this film. NTTD obviously does something different than what we're used to, but they're decisions that have been seen with other big franchise characters as of late. Showing an older, retired version of the character, having him confront the notion of having a daughter, even having him die have all been seen in films like Logan and Avengers. In all these examples though it's not about 'taming' the heroes and their negative qualities, but about reinforcing the fact that they are heroes. Bond sacrifices himself to protect his loved ones in NTTD (as Logan sacrifices himself to protect his daughter), and at no point in the film are his morality or his decisions to get involved questioned. He's even tricked by Blofeld into breaking ties with Swan. Again, he's essentially depicted as a hero, albeit a more tragic one than we're used to seeing.
Again, none of this to me signals any sort of restrictiveness. If anything it implies a broadening of creativity within this film, for better or for worse. The fact that they wanted the film to centre around Bond/Madeline's relationship justifies keeping our protagonist as a 'one woman guy' (I suspect discussions were had about Bond sleeping with Paloma but ultimately it would have felt a bit weird in the context I just described). The 'Bond is old' jokes are pretty sparse as well, and remember, Bond constantly outsmarts Nomi throughout the film.
Going forward, I suspect we're going to see some of Bond's flaws as a character explored. This is fine, fundamentally he's an anti-hero. He's a man who is a blunt instrument in a questionable system that even he is cynical about at times. This critical approach to the main character and his morality worked rather well in The Batman recently, and I suspect Bond 26 might have an approach not unlike that. Still, these films always end up reinforcing the same thing at the end of the day - James Bond is a hero and despite his flaws has the virtues of bravery and patriotism.
All I can say is that we're having a number of confused teenagers in our schools today. Their hormones are peaking, yet social media keep telling them that lusting after another human being is a critical error and could potentially lead to restraining orders and whatnot. I'd be confused too. Where does one draw the line between a cute attempt at seducing someone, even if it fails big time and you're just making an ass of yourself, and coming on too aggressively, enough to risk allegations of stalking, intimidation, and assault? Look, I'm not even suggesting that it's wrong that we have opened up debates we used to consider preposterous. But certain movies seem most willing to sterilize character relationships in a futile attempt to avoid complaints about objectification, sexualization and whatnot on YouTube. I say futile because by now it's become apparent to me that those who want to find objectionable stuff will look for it and find it anyway, no matter how "clean" your movie! (Remember Wonder Woman? One critic was keen to point out that Gal Gadot is "too pretty" for the role; even her mere looks were sexist. So I guess we should just cast ugly people from now on?)
Maybe, if we allow the next Bond a bit more fun in the bedroom again, the "what are they thinking!?" hysterics on Twitter will actually lure curious folks back to the theatre. After all, no matter how loudly the new 'PC' decency is being advertised, deep down inside we're all still very susceptible to some good old gratuitous sex and violence. ;-)
Of course, the next actor has to be willing to take part in all that. There's always the, uhm, reputation to consider. And not a lot of actors would even consider slapping a woman like Connery's Bond did in FRWL. Then again, this scene is often brought up as an argument to prove Bond's misogyny and so forth, but has anyone stopped to consider the context? I'm not even talking about the times, I'm talking about the story. We're fighting a (cold) war; the enemy is closing in and has just killed your best ally. The girl knows something but she won't talk. Bond must now resort to more extreme methods--hell, Jack Bauer did much worse! That he slapped a woman is frankly incidental; he slapped a (presumably) enemy agent who refuses to cooperate. Anyone of us would beat it out of her if she was, say, a terrorist who knows exactly where a bomb is going to explode near a school but won't speak, woman or not.
But I digress. To be honest, I don't think Craig's Bond was too clean. He slept (or at least kissed) with 9 women in 5 movies. Not bad. He got Solange and Fields killed by simply leaving them behind. One wonders if his girlfriend from early on in SF ever heard from him again. He still enjoys the bottle, as demonstrated in QOS and SP. I'm not too on board with the accusations that Craig's Bond was neutered or demasculinized. That he didn't get his freak on with Paloma is a missed opportunity on the one hand, but a fairly logical choice on the other, given that his heart still belonged to Madeleine. A Bond who loves... Yes, for as long as he's been around, in books and on film, Bond really can love. We can perhaps pardon him for his pre-martial adultery in OHMSS, given the nature of the mission (and what Q said to Pam). Still, Bond can love. In that sense, Paloma wasn't going to be pursued... too hard. ;-)
I certainly don't want to come off as someone craving debauchery and a 007 with a voracious appetite for anything sexy on two legs. I want good Bond films, and a good Bond film is the sum total of more than just the guy who never minds a few colourful nights while on a mission. I think that complaints about "too much of that" as well as complaints about "not enough of that" are both wrong. Squeezing in more Pat Fearing hot sauna scenes isn't going to boost the quality of the films. Whatever they choose to add or remove has to guarantee a better film; it doesn't have to happen to placate either side of the Bond-and-sex debate. I think the Craigs did things just fine. They may not have been showing quite as much skin as some of the older Bonds, but there's still plenty of the juicy stuff to go around. At least in that sense, I disagree that NTTD hates James Bond.
You also have moments in those films which are looked back on differently. The barn scene with Pussy Galore and Bond is an example. Again, at best it's viewed with some sort of dark humour by some ('looks like a Me Too moment waiting to happen' etc.) and at worst it's deemed 'rape' by others. I can see why. It's not a trope unique to Bond but the idea of the hero 'turning' the woman to his side by sleeping with her, her at first refusing before ultimately succumbing ('two nos mean a yes') is always going to be viewed differently nowadays. We live in a world where these sorts of cases have come to light, powerful individuals have been 'outed' for this type of behaviour. Just like the AIDS crisis made the idea of Bond sleeping around with several women in a film look questionable, these sorts of moments in previous Bond films are going to hit differently in hindsight. It's the same with outright sexism (in the CR novel Bond is openly sexist in a 'women should be in the kitchen' way, whereas in the film he's simply arrogant and cheeky towards Vesper. This is because in 2006 such a line would make him out to look like an unredeemable a*sehole and have taken viewers out of the film).
I suspect Bond will still be a womaniser going forward. The Craig era certainly had Bond sleeping with women to get what he wanted on assignment, or indeed just sleeping around in general, even if this indulgence wasn't depicted in that fun, carefree light of the Connery era (I'm thinking of his one night stand in SF). These scenes might be presented differently than what we've seen in previous films, but I don't see any reason why this aspect of the character can't and won't be adapted.
Much appreciated, mate.
I'd say so. Also, it might have been perceived as cheapening his relationship with Madeleine.