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Moonraker is style-over-substance too. The cinematography, the music, the sets and some of the acting is excellent but it's full of silly humour and plot holes.
Skyfall pretends to be the most meaningful Bond film ever while Moonraker consciously embraces its own ridiculous nature.
This.Its exactly why Moonraker is such a far more enjoyable film than Skyfall.
This is one of my biggest issues with it: on a technical level, the acting is great and the cinematography is cracking, but if that's all you have going for your movie, it's pretty doomed on an entertainment/rewatchability level, in my book.
With is why I can't really see the Craig era as that impressive like most do. In a well made film characters and drama are used to improve upon a strong foundation of plot. In the Craig films, those things are used in place of a strong plot, or to "cover up the cracks" in a weak story.
It's really no different then when the Brosnan films use loud explosions to try and distract you when things don't make sense.
QOS for instance is also pretty arty at times, but I never feel like Forster is pretentious in any way, therefore I can enjoy them. In QOS they also fully embrace the character (prime example being the hotel switch) while in the last two films he's just a regular military type crammed in a suit.
I feel the same way about Craig. We need a new Bond, ideally.
This.
Have Eon trapped themselves into a corner? Maybe. But a corner with unbelievable amounts of potential.
As far as I can tell there are three outcomes:
1. One similar to the end of SPECTRE where he settles down with Madeline and pursues some kind of peaceful existence.
2. Or he rejoins MI6, and we get another ending like Casino, Quantum or Skyfall, with Bond finally getting his mojo back.
3. A sad ending like OHMSS with Bond losing everything.
All of these endings have been done before. If the ending to SP feels unsatisfying it's because the era was never planned to build up to anything in particular, and that can't be remedied at this late stage.
Exactly! Skyfall really does have incredible cinematographic and performance appeal and an identity of its own—TWINE, L&LD, and The Dark Knight influences aside—but the plot threatens to completely undermine all that's going on in the style department, and in the end, once we reach Scotland, for me also the bottom goes out completely and I lose interest in the unfolding drama.
Big fan of art films myself—the good ones anyway—and I agree with this sentiment entirely. The "art film" aspects of QoS are one of the things I like best about it, and as you say, one of the reasons it works so well is because there's nothing pretentious about it. It isn't forced. It simply exists alongside the forward momentum of the film. The proceedings don't stop for us to watch a paper bag floating in the air for forty seconds so we can all say, "Oh how beautiful and original for a James Bond film. Look ma, they're doing art stuff now."
Eon's major flaw, and I agree with you, is poor planning. That's not to say that a build up to a superior conclusion for DC's 5th is unfathomable.
Suddenly making Silva a SPECTRE agent is cheap,lazy thinking,and undermines a great mission based Bond film..which is how i will always see it.
Silva is NOT a Quantum/Spectre agent and SF is a standalone mission based 007 film,to me at least,and i wont change my mind on that no matter what EON,Mendes n Craig say.
I think the biggest casualty of the poor planning (i.e. the fact that "the era was never planned to build up to anything in particular") has been the haphazard way in which the arc of Craig's Bond has been presented. For the first time in the series' 50ish years, they attempted to have some kind of character arc unfold for Bond over a single actor's tenure, and what do they do? They bungle it completely three films in. (Some would even say two.)
So Casino Royale was Bond Begins. By the end of the film, he's finally the good old Bond we all know and love. Excellent. Only in Quantum of Solace he's really still the same Bond we had last time, only now he's a bit harder and a bit colder, but in the end he learns revenge isn't the way and he has to put duty and country first and move on with things. Excellent. Now he's finally the good old Bond we all know and love. Over the course of two films we have now concluded Bond Begins and can move on with things.
Next film. Skyfall—Bond is now a washed-up, has-been relic of the past drinking himself into oblivion on a beach because M chose the security of England above his own safety. Huh??? I know Mendes really wanted to show a haggard, morose, done-with-everything Bond on film but this was completely the wrong point in time for Craig's Bond to experience this and completely the wrong motivation for it. You know what would have been great for Craig's third film? A big fun adventure with Bond living it up and getting on with a normal mission and just being Bond—kind of like what they were going for with SPECTRE, kind of. You know what would have been a great time and motivation for Craig's Bond to be all washed up and despondent and drinking himself into oblivion? How about maybe his fourth or fifth (i.e. his final) film, after something monumental has just happened in his life (maybe something like Blofeld killing the woman he loves more than anything, which was Fleming's original motivation for Bond to be all messed up in YOLT, not that Bond felt miffed by M choosing Queen and Country over the neck of one of his agents). Sheesh.
It was just all done completely out of order and without any rhyme or reason other than "I want to do depressed Bond now so lets shoehorn in a way for Bond to be depressed." They had a real opportunity to have Craig's Bond experience an actual arc over 4-5 films and instead they delivered the most scrambly plate of narrative scrambled eggs since the triple whammy of YOLT-OHMSS-DAF.
Couldn't agree more. I'll take a dropped arc over one overstaying its welcome any day. At this rate, 'Bond 25' will involve Madeleine dying and Bond falling in love with a brand new character again, quitting the service once more.
A better ending isn't impossible, but too many disappointing Bond films have been the product of the "last hurrah" way of thinking. For once it would be nice to give "quit while we're ahead" a try.
Back to basics.
They're a couple films late for that. At this point it's more like, "What have we got to lose?" ;)
Yes please. :D
You very nearly got that reference past me, haha. ;)