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Comments
That's it. No elaborate unravelling of a conspiracy or unearthing clues. Just stick a ring into a computer and presto the true nature of Spectre is there for all to see and years of Bond's nemeses are connected together.
Really poorly done. Almost like they realised they'd missed out an explanation on how they were connected so decided to make the ring into some secret dossier on Spectre agents ready to scan.
Also dire how Mr White suddenly grows a conscience and becomes a 'family man'. In CR and QOS he is the mastermind in the shadows. A mysterious criminal leader who we know little about except he operates above Le Chiffre/Greene. He would have been ideal as Blofeld or Blofeld's right hand man in Spectre yet the story about him growing a conscience (suddenly becomes opposed to hurting women and children despite e.g. assisting in laundering conflict money out of Uganda in CR), having a wife/daughter, having a secret command centre next to his favourite hotel room - again poorly done and didn't really do the character justice after the intrigue of his first two films.
Yeah, that's terrible, lol.
Dalton wasn't exactly Mr. Smooth with the ladies (In my opinion he was all the better for it) but even with that low benchmark, that line out of context is piss-poor and borderline rapey.
DAF - Blofeld dressing up as a woman. Making a mockery of the series greatest villain.
Roger Moore's tarzan moment in Octopussy (couldn't even make it useful to the escape)
Roger Moore spending crucial minutes dressing up as a clown and applying face paint whilst the atom bomb is close to detonation.
Numerous times in AVTAK when they make a poor effort to disguise the stunt double and it is more clear than any other film that it isn't Moore doing the stunts (shame as some very good action scenes in Paris and San Francisco)
thankfully the 'flying carpet' scene was removed from TLD as that would have been a disaster.
Pretty much all of DAD - CGI, plot, identity changes, Jinx, invisible car - cringeworthy from start to finish
I quite like Moonraker and a couple of the moronic scenes cut out would improve it immensely.
I think that's agreeable.
Don't be ridiculous. This is a fan forum. We only discuss what we hate ;)
Hahaha so true Nackers,so true !
Bond has never been above exploiting a woman's vulnerable state of mind to get his end away.
Think Pam in Thunderball, Solitaire in LALD and even the grieving widow (name has gone) as recent as Spectre. The man is a cad!
I like how while Q is waiting for Bond to show up he whips up a nice animation that shows Sciarra, Mr White, Silva, Greene etc as tentacles on a SPECTRE octopus.
Good points on Mr White and his 'women, children' volte face.
The whole reason Mr White is so good in CR and QOS is that he clearly has no morals whatsoever and will kill anyone that stands in the way of Quantum making a profit. He certainly doesn't seem that fussed about women and children being blown up on the Skyfleet plane or interrogating Vesper and exploiting her to the point she tops herself.
And of course Bolivian women and children don't drink water so that's why he didn't speak out against the plan in the meeting at the opera. Or maybe it was just that he was enjoying Tosca too much.
Then there's the car chase ruining scene with MP rummaging in her fridge which serves only to lead Bond to the pale king despite it already being announced in the SPECTRE meeting that he's in Altausee if he was paying attention. And wouldn't it have been better if Bond goes to the cabin not knowing who the pale king is and we get the reveal then rather than 'Of course - Mr White!'?
And while I'm here - smart blood. Apart from it being already used (same as the signature gun in SF - any chance of some original gadgets Mendes?) in CR does it serve any narrative purpose?
And this is just stuff before the film jumps the shark in the third act.
It all just seems not at all well thought through in the slightest.
Bond could just pop into MP's office every now and then and ask if his retirement cheque has arrived already and ask Q for a walking stick.
Jaws vs. Dolly was cringe-educing but that at the very least fitted the slapstick, cartoonish nature of the film (and had some lovely classical music in the background).
With a character named Jaws, it's almost inevitable that the shark will be jumped at one point or another.
That's true but Kara wasn't really vulnerable. She was just an idiot.
On the other hand, maybe that is why she is vulnerable.
Anyway, still a woeful line of dialogue.
Bond is usually a consensual man, and certainly in the example of Sean's Bond and Craig's Bond, so you couldn't credibly argue he took advantage. I agree on Solitaire, but that's part of what makes early Roger a bastard.
As for Kara, I don't view much of anything she does as stupidity, she's just got a lot of heart and is a normal girl functioning in crazy circumstances. She acts as you'd expect at times, stunned with shock or frightened. But even while facing great danger, such as in Afghanistan, she rises to the occasion and races to help Bond. She stresses him out because she doesn't know how to act in high action and danger, and needs extra direction (she's a regular girl and just a cellist, after all), but that's because this is all new to her.
She's not the ditziest Bond girl even of her own Bond decade much less the ditziest of all time, and the very natural dynamic between her and Bond goes a long way towards making her more than just another girl on Bond's arm. It's quite ahead of the times that Kara is not sexualized or given the depth of a puddle, connecting her more to how the Bond girls used to be in the 60s with interesting humanity, contradiction and personality that made them stand out. This was lost at times in the Brosnan era, but the Craig films again brought it back and hopefully it stays that way because real and raw women are always preferable to those who are only there for scene dressing.
All this connects back to Fleming, who really worked to write strong and interesting female characters that had the kinds of flaws, contradictions and proclivities that make them intensely human and real feeling. It's why the media's arguments of the misogyny of the Bond series don't really wash with me, as there's very little evidence to back that up in the books or in the films that came after outside a few instances. If I had a daughter I'd be proud if she rose to the occasion and acted as some of the Bond women we've seen have.
Excellent post.
Give me an ordinary girl like Kara any day over Bond 'equals' like Anya, Wai Lin and Jinx fighting and shooting alongside Bond.
People who criticise Kara for almost flying the plane into a mountain should remember she's a fish out of water in an extreme situation (although that is pretty moronic).
As an aside the one thing that always pisses me off about that whole sequence - which is easily one of the top ten Bond set pieces - is having Kara open the rear door for NO REASON WHATSOVER. You've been told to fly a plane and haven't a clue what you're doing but the one thing you don't do is start randomly pressing buttons and pulling levers. Why couldn't they have Bond or Necros throw one of the drug pouches which the other ducks and it hits m the switch by the door (that is set up in the PTS - despite it making no sense why the Russian Air Force would GE using a Hercules)to open it? But that's not Kara's fault it's lazy scriptwriting.
@TheWizardOfIce, well, I think Kara is looking at Bond and Necros fighting and tries to help, so she opens the door to get the net out. The issue being, for one, how does she know how a plane works when she can barely pilot it (not her fault, just saying) and second, it's very dangerous because she could've killed Bond if his foot got caught and was sent out with Necros head first.
There was a better way of setting up the final fight, for sure, that didn't make Kara look silly. I like the idea of Bond and Necros accidentally pressing a bad button that opens the door. That, or Bond shouts to Kara what switch to pull to get the net out of the cabin and, in a scuffle with Necros, he accidentally falls after it to start the sequence off.
And Kara's one of my favourite Bond girls and I find her and Bond's relationship really sweet and endearing. It's easy to call her an idiot but she was in way over her head and coped really well considering (e.g. stealing the jeep at the airfield).
I do think you're doing the Brosnan era girls a bit of a disservice too @Brady. Jinx is shit, Wai Lin is boring, and Christmas is Christmas (I like her to be fair, I think she's likeable, but that might be because it's Denise Richards in her prime) but he had some really good ones. Teri Hatcher is an awful actress but Paris is a great character. What happens to a Bond girl after he loves them and leaves them? She outgrows him, but that's easier said than done and both of them struggle with their feelings when they see eachother again. I liked that a lot. And Natalya is great. Intelligent, resourceful, but also very vulnerable at times. She feels real and human and minus the bikini scene, she might be the least sexualised out of all of them (she spends almost the whole film in a jumper). And even when she's on the beach in the bikini the purpose of it isn't "cor look at the Bond girl showing some skin", it's just a calm before the storm moment where she has to come to terms with who Bond is (feeding nicely into the "kill him, he means nothing to me", that's her way of telling him she understands). And if we're counting Elektra she's a brilliant character and one of the best villains of the series imo. A really believeable and sort of sympathetic psychopath.
I can see and understand your point of view on this but I really felt that Maryam's performance didn't cut it at all and a lot of what people see as sweet and innocent came across as awkward and stiff to me. It makes the poor lines and poor character judgements all the more annoying. She's not the ditziest of the bunch but certainly one of the more disappointing to me because a better actress would have really made it click, even with the poor dialogue I noted above.
@thelivingroyale, I don't think I was being too hard on the Brosnan era girls. I don't find Wai, Paris, Christmas, Jinx or Miranda memorable or successful as actual characters, and that's the majority of the Brosnan era right there; you even agree with me about the vast majority of them, so that's telling. When Sean had amazing girls nearly across the board and, in my opinion, Dan's era has had the same above average batting average when it comes to depicting real and deep women, Brosnan's doesn't stack up in the same way. On paper a character like Jinx may seem appealing to some (I wouldn't like it anyway), but it's all in the execution by the actress. Those women were written very cartoonishly and for the MTV generation where their looks were stressed and the scripts and performances didn't explore much beyond the surface level stuff. The approach that the Dalton era reignited with Bond girls in some ways died again starting with TND and wasn't found again since CR, where quality also returned.
The second part of your post is spent defending Natalya, but she doesn't need defending. I guess I should've outlined that more clearly, but I did say that the Brosnan era lost the touch of the best films' Bond girls "at times," implying that not all of them were bad. Natalya is the best of the 90s with literally no competition, and stands reasonably well against some of the other high tier women for sure. Much like a lot in GE, the first Brosnan film nailed things none of the other movies did half as well, and that's the biggest shame. I've been a reasonably vocal fan of Natalya on here in the past, so I didn't really think about making my stance on her clear. My point remains about Brosnan getting one really good Bond girl in a bunch of average or mediocre ones, and that's a bad batting average.
Whenever I rewatch TWINE (it's been a long time) I'll see how I feel about Elektra but she's clearly yet to make a lasting impression on me. I think part of her character is let down by how awkward her interactions with Bond can be and how the best moment with her character in my eyes (Bond's murder of her) is down to what he does, and not what she does. It's nothing that stays with me, or makes me see it as monumental and memorable.
Bond's only true equal through out the series was Wai.
I guess Aki would qualify as this sort of archetypal character, and for my money she's the high point. She was competently played, had an actual personality, did her job as a character and helped Bond, and is able to make you care enough when she dies. And most importantly, we never had, "She's Bond's equal, even though she's a woman!" shoved down our throats either.
(I could throw in Pam too as another of Bond's successful/credible "equals," so don't want to leave her out)
I hate this Bond's equal nonsense anyway, and for many reasons don't like to use the term as it implies a lot of extraneous garbage like the misconception that Bond girls are barely ever worthy of matching up to Bond, or that they're always written as ditzy bimbos, which is not the case at least across the vast majority of the films. I don't view a woman being Bond's equal as only those who can pick up a gun, throw a punch or drive a car, either. The Bond girls that excite me and that I hold on to the memory of are those who, no matter their skill sets, background, or familiarity with Bond's world, stand in solidarity with the spy to face what is ahead of them. As far as I'm concerned the likes of Honey, Tatiana, Domino, Tracy, Kara, Natalya, Vesper, Camille, Madeleine and others are more valuable and worthy of Bond's partnership than a chick who walks down a wall with a bungee cord or who sends out a kick with a "Yo Momma" one-liner.