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Yes, they were, as you call it, less "intellectual". They were indeed slightly more "brainless". They were chewing the popcorn for us, so to say :-P.
If a movie pretends to have an intellectual approach, BUT has a storyline that makes no sense at all, I call it pseudo. Feel free to correct me,BUT only if you can point out ONE SINGLE POINT in SF story development, that bears scrutiny. Otherwise you just might consider, that you're simply overestimating Logan and Mendes ( I'm not mentioning Newman,since he has nothing to to with the script, but obviously I see him as overrated as well).
Btw,you can ridicule the Brosnan Bonds from breakfest to dinner,but TWINE was the last Bond flic without ANY plot holes, and I just happen to appreciate such niceties (somehow makes me feel,there is indeed some brain involved in the making)
As for the "old vs new" layer in Skyfall, I found it quite "in your face". Chewed for us indeed. Multiple times.
And for Newman, I've heard "New Digs" on French TV already a few times for some reality shows and documentaries. The problem is that it is a suspenseful tune, yes, but a too generic one IMO. Even the oriental vibe is a bit weird when it's played in Skyfall.
Agreed :-)
This would be (and it is, actually) a nice observation, hadn't it been that the lack of a motif for Silva is due to the composer.
Here the use of music with Silva made it clear that Mendes wanted Silva to be flamboyant "in the real world of the movie" IMO (in French, I would use better terms, but right now it's late).
We had use of "real music" in Bond before (the QOS opera scene, the TB nightclub, for instance), but here it was another step. I don't think we'll get a Dogma Bond soon though (in it, music should come from a source in the movie, the characters hear it, etc).
If there's any music for Silva when he first appears, it's mixed incredibly low, then there's "Boum", then a few seconds of dare I say, generic action movie music, and then some Bond theme music. I think that with a few seconds, what can a composer do more than some generic action movie music in such a case ? There's no "Silva theme" to play with, he only has the Bond one (and rumors say it's the producers' hand here, moreover).
And with "Boom Boom" (which is used for quite a long time), Silva makes an entrance again with no theme. After "Boom Boom", that's also some generic music I dare say, you can't have two strong musical cues one just after the other, we're looking at a movie, not MTV. Or Gardians of the Galaxy ;)
So there's still hope! May be he's scoping out other composers. Could be interesting.
I wonder whether he'd even contemplate working with Arnold if Newman is not available.
I agree @Shardlake. Part of what I like about Skyfall is the music. Newman's music feels more natural, original, real, atmospheric overall and harmonises with all the scenes as opposed to Arnold's loud, overbearing clumsiness in parts. Sometimes Arnold's music just takes me out of the scene altogether. Many of Arnold's pastiches aren't even good ones. The only thing missing from Newman's score is a nice slow melody. Arnold has made the odd nice one. I love ''Paris and Bond'".
I like what Campbell did with CR better than what Mendes did with SF in terms of the humour. However, since Mendes is back, I'll feel frustrated if Newman doesn't return and Arnold takes up the mantle once more.
Bring back Newman!
However, didn't MI6 say that Arnold would probably be returning or did I misread something?
Yes, but this is most likely wrong, as David Arnold himself announced two times on Twitter that he won't be returning (August & September last week).
Yeah, I'm assuming that Mendes want's Newman back.
I was surprised that Mendes came back for B24 as I really didn't think he'd be interested. So I won't rule out his return for B25.
If I'm not mistake, screenplay writer John Logan has mostly a theatre/playwright background. From what I've read from the big Taschen jubilee book "The James Bond Archives", John Logan mainly worked on the elaborated dialogue, like Silva's entrance speech about rats and M's speech supported by Tennyson's poem. On the whole, Logan was the one who added the more intelligent, thought-provoking lines to the screenplay.
The one-liners though, are usually more the work of Purvis & Wade. And allthough they did improved in "Skyfall", they did seem a bit out of touch, like in the Brosnan-era. Still, the line "He's keen to get home" made me laugh :-).
I really hope, that Purvis & Wade this time do it right with the humour. And I also hope that more intelligent, elaborate lines, written by Logan, have not been deleted completely.
In essence, I think the overall plot (villain's plot) and story, created by John Logan, hasn't been changed that much. I expect that Logan's main idea is still in place. The same goes for Peter Morgan's idea for "Skyfall", which was in essence also used by Purvis, Wade & Logan in the end.
I would have preferred if Logan had been brought in to pollish a P+W script, not the other way round. Logan is not very interesting or original with his plots - they tend to be heavily derivative. Not that I have much faith in P+W's plotting either.
I really don't understand why it always seems to come back to P+W - bizarre.
According to P&W Mendes and Logan heavily changed the script especially from the point on where Bond comes to Shanghai. This is - certainly not by pure accident - exactly the moment in SF where nothing makes any sense anymore in an almost insulting way. Thought-provoking? Sure, but not in a good way! One good monologue (Silvas entry speech) is certainly not enough to redeem this mess. Also I doubt that the one-liners were by P&W , since while not being the bee knees they always displayed an at least slightly higher standard. (these "put it all on red and circle of life" lines to me are the worst one-liners ever been spoken in the whole franchise. Tasteless and not even funny in the slightest!)
Having just watched LTK last night it's an uplifting reminder of what a good plot and some old-fashioned solid storytelling does to lift the general tone and quality of a Bond movie.
It's more than evident in SF that Mendes borrowed heavily from Batman, particularly in the sort of slap-dash, impressionistic approach to story-telling, where you're just supposed to be carried along by the visual spectacle and sustained by the broad thematic approach. Nolan's trilogy became increasingly less interesting to me as it went along, precisely because it ended up without much of a story to tell. This is a million miles away from the traditional Bond plot approach, but does seem fashionable at the moment.
Any way, at least Batman had good production design and an excellent composer. I've said it before and will say it again - I think it is a real shame that Hans Zimmer does not seem to have ever been considered for Bond. He at least deserves to do one movie. He is a brilliant collaborator and with the right title song performer, it could be magic.
"Old fashioned storytelling". Probably because it's plot was directly lifted (stolen) from Yojimbo!
Yes, I'd read that somewhere before. Part of MGW's contribution I believe.
Well, there's a lesson there - if you're going to steal your ideas from somewhere else, make sure the source material you're pinching is better than Nolan's Batman trilogy.
Bond's almost single-handed destruction of Sanchez's empire through sowing suspicion and misinformation is nicely done. One of the last times we've actually seen Bond really use his intelligence and wits to out-fox the villain. Very enjoyable.
More on topic, Kamen's score is okay, but not brilliant. Actually made me appreciate Newman's SF effort a little more.
You are -of course - talking about "for a handful of dollars" and "last man standing" not LTK, which obviously lacks the second gang and many other points to make it a derivative of Yojimbo (which itself is heavily inspired by "red harvest" from the one and only Dashiell Hammett).
MGW was the one who stated it's central theme was lifted from Yojimbo, not me.
Take your complaint up with him if you disagree.
This only underscores how much Wilson is lacking. Obviously he's not even able to identify from what he's stealing. Probably he thinks Craigs Bond derrivates from Oliver Twist. Mind you even if license to kill stemmed fromYojimbo it would be still nothing to be especially proud off! Copying is easy,to create is the heavy part.