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Comments
It's just too much for my liking and reeks of incompetence.
And don't get me started on the incompetence of M, Q and Eve.
Or, it can be seen this way-
1. Three people are outnumbered 3 to 1 in full combat and M gets hit with an errant shot. Do we blame the platoon leader for every casualty after he completes his mission successfully?
2. Moneypenny's bad shot and M's lack of trust led to Bond not getting the hard drive. She should have let him do his job.
3. He's got numerous armed men holding weapons on him, waiting for him to make a move like that. Bond has often failed to protect the sacrificial lamb. I guess he failed in every other movie that's happened in, which in the last 7 films it's happened 4 times (TND, CR, QOS, and now this one).
I think we'll see more of that type with Craig in Bond 24 but expecting the same type of character from the 60's in this day and age is being a little nostalgic and as I said before it would not work now. That version you mention is not a realistic proposition now, you might not like it but you aren't making these films EON are and they have far more of an idea of what they are doing than the majority of the people on this forum despite the so called experts that spout their ideas, I'm just glad some of you aren't involved in the production, you'd never be happy and what a mess of a film we've have on our hands.
Many go on about how great Connery's was and he was but they seem to forget this was the character in his infancy, newly introduced in a completely different time and atmosphere, we live in far different times, far more uncertain and you can't just go back to nostalgic version of Bond and think it will fit in with a contemporary take on the character. I don't know some complain we aren't seeing the Bond of old yet when they make little winks to the legacy this is not good enough all I can say some of you will never be happy till your own wet dream of a film is made and I think we all know that is never going to happen.
Well done. But some people just want to see the character kick butt. If he had no weaknesses you'd have incredibly suspenseful movies like VTAK and DAD.
A much better ending would have been Bond using his laser-guided super-robot missile-watch to blow up the bad guy at the last second, followed up by the line, "You really have to watch where you step around here!" and showing up 9am Monday morning with M completely unaffected by the whole experience. Then Bond could a winner instead of a failure.
Thank you @Sandy! It's good to be around. :) If Sam Mendes does indeed come back 1, let alone 2 Bond films, we'd be set!
I don't consider myself difficult to satisfy and I am not a perfectionist. After five viewings I just think that the bad things outweigh the positive. I don't think that the audience need to be educated in the direction of a more contemporary Bond by some filmmakers who do not want become suspects of doing the same thing all over again. This desperate desire to re-shuffle the template, to ditch elements, like the gadgets and putting the gunbarrel at the end, that helped define the brand, is a worrisome trend I think.
Movie making is all about creativity but creativity should not infuse a change that takes away the persona of the character from how it was conceived.
Why and who Bond is, is because of how he was earlier and how we grew up watching him. For the kids in this generation this Bond is no more different than most other action film character: Flawed and unstable. The hero who hits rock bottom and then somehow resurrects, has just almost become a cliché and is seen done a lot better in the Nolan-movies.
Could not disagree more. Nolan's Batman really is the character in name only. One of the exciting things about the Bond novels is that he is a human being, he can be hurt (which means he could be killed), he has Achille's heels, and he isn't given super weapons, his tools are usually simple. These past three films really are a restoration of the actual character, whereas Nolan literally threw everything great about Batman out the window. SF worked for me because I cared about the characters; I laughed my way through TDKR, an awful movie that goes out of its way to destroy the Batman character and mythology. All of these genre movies have deep faults but for what it is, SF was far above the average. And for me, I finally saw the real james Bond on screen, a human being with a history who actually has emotions, weaknesses, and thoughts. Fleming's not exactly Tolstoy, but he's not ER Burroughs either. There's some depth there, why not mine it?
I would have hated the novels if Bond never made mistakes. That is what I loved so much about them - Bond was human, and he did make mistakes - frequently.
I suggest you watch DAD, or Austin Powers, as I think in those films the main character makes less mistakes.
Maybe HAL 9000 would make a better Bond in your eyes - he very rarely makes mistakes.....
First you argue that you want Bond to be more contemporary, and then you use the Bond novels which were written decades ago as a reference of how you think Bond should be?
You are entitled to your oppinion, but not your own facts. The many similarites between SF and Nolan's Batman are obvious. In SF Bond follows the exact same pattern as Batman in TDKR: First he wants to retire, he hits rock bottom and then finally he tries to resurrect to save the day.
It's also the plot of almost every Rocky movie and dozens of other movies. But SF actually does it well, unlike TDKR.
Skyfall didn't have the length of "retirement" to make a dent in that plot. TDKR did, and did it spectacularly. What Bond has was barely a vacation.
But I actually cared what happened to Bond. And his handicaps didn't magically heal themselves, he worked around them.
There are plenty of absurd things in both SF and TDKR, and we could be spending a lot of time picking them all out, but what's the point? But calling the script to TDKR "idiotic" while claiming that SF is "well written" and better directed? I think both are poorly written. All I am saying is that I enjoyed TDKR a lot more than SF. Besides I would much rather watch a Nolan-film, than a Mendes-film. Come to think of it, the only Mendes-film that I really liked, was 'American Beauty'
Let's make this easy so a fight doesn't start.
The way you feel about TDKR is how MrSpy feels about SF.
Both are flawed. end of discussion.
I don't see a fight. This is a discussion forum.
Things were looking heated.
I don't get heated over this stuff, nor would I waste time with an off-topic back-and-forth. I said my piece. Oh, and look back, I brought it up to say I sympathize with people who don't like the DC Bond movies. That got turned around.
No, no. I'm just curious to find out how Skyfall could rank as the better movie. Why someone "feels" that TDKR doesn't have a story, when the fact of the matter is that SF is basically a compilation of ideas and scenes from other movies (especially Nolan's Batman-trilogy) with some original elements thrown in here and there.
And Mr.Spy: I think CR is a fantastic Bond-movie, like you probably think that TDK is great also, right?
TDK was the least offensive of the trilogy but I basically dislike all of the live action movies apart from the 1989 one, and that's entirely for the look of it and the score and Nicholson. There are 12 page stories from the mid-70's that have better stories than any Batman feature films. But I don't want to get into it. They're simply not to my taste. No one has really put that character on screen, or found a way to do what Bruce Timm did so effortlessly in animation.
Box office success and awards don't impress me. I like what I like. I trust my own instincts. I think SF had a more polished, well developed script, better realized characters, and a more absorbing story. But for me espionage is a genre that works well onscreen, whereas superheroes bring all of their shortcomings as characters but few of their strengths when they move from the page to live-action.
I see your opinion on Batman, and respect that. To each his own. So let's just focus on SF here. It's no secret that I disagree with almost everything you are saying. I am just struggling to find the so-called "well developed script and better realized characters."
Let's take Silva for example: Here is a another movie bad guy with a disfigured mouth who disguises as a cop and plans to get caught, exactly like the Joker.
Anyways, so this guy who can topple regimes in the world with a few clicks of his mouse, arranges a huge elaborate plan, years in the making, to get to M, involving stealing a harddrive, blowing MI6 up and changing its location to the 'New Digs', getting caught, tricking Q into uploading a virus so he can escape, having disguises, people and various getaway cars ready for him, and rerouting a subway train through the floor at the exact right moment, all so he can what? Shoot M with a handgun?
Honestly - who writes this stuff? I'm all for suspension of disbelief, but this is insulting my intelligence! Shouldn't a "well developed script with better realized characters" than Nolan's Batman-trilogy, have characters who have firmly established motivations?
In SF they even introduced us to fatherly figure who helped raise Bond in his home after his parents died. And in this house, Wayne Ma... sorry... Skyfall, we learn that Bond as a child locked himself inside a priesthole? Does any of this ring a bell?
Whenever there is a movie or series that makes a huge impact, genre fans tend to see it everywhere. I don't see those conenctions. Bond's history comes mostly from Fleming. The climax was staged at his ancestral home - the end of a huge blockbuster movie - it was not going to survive. Bond didn't fall into a hole, see spies there, and decide to become a spy to fight crime. Silva is nothing like the Joker, he has no moral philosophy, he was betrayed and he wants vengeance. He doesn't use his disfigured mouth to intimidate people. There is no analogue for M, or Malory, in the DKT. And Nolan took plenty straight from Bond; Lucius Fox is not "Q" in the comics, he's a director of affairs at Wayne Industries when Bruce is off doing Batman stuff. Bond doesn't represent anything, as Nolan thinks Batman does, he is that person, he's not in any way symbolic in these movies. Seriously, you're straining for connections here.
As for the story, as I mentioned above, these movies always have obvious holes that the audience sees through. But I've only seen it once, I'm not in a position to pick apart the story. I didn't think it was too OTT, Silva uses his skills to put himself in a position to confront M and then attempt assassination; when that fails he follows up immediately and directly, going straight for her. It's pretty linear, and at the end of the day, while the more naturalistic approach to characterization is a welcome change, it's a Bond movie, I'm not expecting "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", although it's getting closer all the time.
As for the texts, it depends on your taste, I suppose. They're in two different genres. Looking at the 76 years of Batman history and then looking at what Nolan chose to focus on, I am completely baffled. But looking at the original Bond books, SF makes perfect sense, to me anyway. I'm not as big a fan of the movies as I am of the Fleming and Gardner books. This is a Bond movie that "delivers" for me.
Likewise I would struggle with the Bond-franchise if they would turn the Bond-movies into 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'.
And I don't really care much for the "original Fleming" Bond. I like the escapism Bond. One of my favorite Bond movies is TSWLM, which had nothing to do with Fleming's Bond except the title.
Firstly, MI6 got the hard drive back when they captured Silva, so that's all wrapped up.
Secondly, Bond's reasoning for whisking M to his home to rout Silva was NOT primarily to save M's life. Rather, it was to take Silva away from London and MI6 to prevent any further chaos and loss of life. Hell, Silva had already blown up a good bit of London at that point AND murdered a handful of people at a public hearing. This situation was out of control, and to protect national security, Silva had to be lured out into the middle of nowhere so no more damage could be done.
So you see, the preservation of M's life was fairly secondary during the final act of Skyfall, and I was always getting the feeling that M herself knew this.