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Plus Bond had nicked and was wearing Slate's jacket...😁
It's a good one...enjoy! 😁
Ahh, that Slate fight, what gold. Frenetic, fast, bloody, and a real highlight of the movie for me. I remember how jaw-dropped my 17 year old self was when I first saw it in theaters. I was already dying to see it again in full as soon as Bond left the hotel room.
The Bond of QoS would've absolutely decimated Patrice. I still like to think Bond would've had him if Eve didn't mess everything up but seeing him struggle that much made it instantly apparent that this is not the same Bond I was enjoying four years prior.
Yep! 100% with you on that!
SF was the anti QoS.
DC was having so much fun throughout filming it. Not that that's a bad thing but the part where Silva gives his opening speech, is when during production DC was smiling and laughing having a blast.
In a way, QOS set up the precedent that SP and NTTD expanded upon later. In SP ordinary Spectre goons are almost incapable of taking him out (to the point where he can escape while being tied up). In NTTD he gets shot several times and can still break Safin's arm. The guy's near indestructible.
Personally, I find it much more interesting when Bond is in some way at a disadvantage during a fight. SF works better for me in the sense that he's more equally matched against Patrice. The idea is certainly there in CR with him not quite being able to keep up with Mollaka's parkour, or him struggling and getting bloodied during the stairwell fight. Heck, I'd argue it's more in-keeping with the precedent set up in earlier Bond films (we often see Bond being the underdog when fighting a henchman such as Jaws, Oddjob, Red Grant etc.)
Granted, that's me nitpicking, as I hold no real love for SF and mostly loathe that I never got a proper QoS follow-up in the same vein and with a similar atmosphere, both cold and relentless.
I suppose it’s not something I’ve ever noticed in either film (I don’t think Bond’s injuries were completely incapacitating in either). I even got the sense that him losing his aim in SF wasn’t fully to do with the injury and was in part psychological (Bond certainly does a lot of pills and booze in the first half of that film, and there’s definitely a sense he’s ‘lost his way’). I mean, there’s a nice little internal logic with Bond getting his aim back by using his father’s rifle. That said it does establish Bond being able to do a great amount of pull ups and sit ups, run etc. and, at least in front of others, do it well enough. So in the context of the film he can do this stuff, even if his injury does somewhat hold him back.
Also by having the marksmanship and psychological evaluations follow each other it puts more emphasis on Bond’s state of mind. Like I said Bond’s inability to shoot is also psychological, and it’s an interesting idea the film plays with - that Bond isn’t only physically hurt but damaged and potentially irrelevant in the modern world.
Bringing this back to QOS, one of the things that I find missing from that film is some of that vulnerability Craig’s Bond had during CR and SF. I remember at the time people saying that some of the fight scenes in QOS felt a bit fake after seeing just how much Bond got hurt during CR (in fact it was one of the big things about Craig’s Bond at the time - the fact that he got bloodied after a fight, that he even had to recover in hospital after the torture scene. It just wasn’t something audiences were used to seeing with the cinematic Bond and even felt distinct from the Bourne movies). It’s a shame because there’s genuinely great moments of emotional vulnerability from Craig during that film (the scene with him getting drunk on the plane and the end with Camille being stand outs). And yet I don’t think the concept of Bond having to go ‘off grid’ ever has the right level of tension in that film because he’s so in control otherwise. I do wish, for instance, we’d have seen Bond struggling more against Green during the ax fight at the end - maybe have him sustain an injury that puts him at more of a disadvantage. As it is while Green is a physiological match for Bond (he’s a wonderfully nasty character who gets inside people’s heads, and it’s never exploited fully in that film) he’s certainly not a physical one, and I never feel like Bond could actually be killed (certainly not compared to the near suicide moment with Camille that follows, which is great).
I'll always love QoS and yet will forever be upset we didn't at least get one more installment in 2010 that served as another follow-up with the exact same feel and style. It would've made the segue from Craig's second to third installment much easier for me to swallow. I saw SF five times in theaters, convinced I was missing its brilliance, yet I never located it. QoS? I think I knew not even 20-30 minutes in that it was going to stand as one of my favorites of all time for the franchise.
One could say the same thing about QOS frankly. Or any of the other Craig Bond films.
But to each their own. It doesn’t help QOS that I just have fonder memories of SF (I will say it was the last ‘big event’ Bond film, at least in the UK, coming after the 2012 Olympics and with a very popular Bond after a 4 year gap. I remember going to see it as many times as you did, and each with a different set of friends. It just had that word of mouth, excitement and momentum behind it).
I do like QOS but much like SP and NTTD I feel its imperfections keep it from being as great as it could be. But it’s due for a revisit on my part. May even give it a watch alongside SF just out of interest.
One definitely could. Craig's work stands out a lot in that respect. Personally, I find his first two to at least be entertaining enough that I don't find it as heavy-handed in trying to be a high profile drama or anything like that. SF's action never really excited me, as hard as I tried to love it. That's just me though. I know I'll always be in the minority in not particularly caring for SF (and perhaps less so in outright loathing SP), but damn, if I didn't try as hard as I could to find some love for it.
I think as Bond fans we all have films like that in the series. For me it’s TB. It’s not a film I can ever love no matter how many times I rewatch it.
I will say that QOS certainly has its fans on this forum. While to me it’s somewhat surprising, I’m glad its virtues are being pointed out. I think it’s getting a fairer deal than it did back in 2008, even with its flaws.
Like I said, I think I’ll make time to rewatch both QOS and SF. I don’t think they’re even quite as different as some people here may think.
And yes, it does seem like the appreciation and love for QoS has grown over the years but still has a small set of us die-hard fans propping it up. Whether that's due to the passage of time or general reanalyzing after we've had more installments, or both, I'm not sure, but I love to see it.
For all we know she wasn't the one who gave Slate the keys.
It's actually a true thing: we tend to be less perceptive of the physical differences outside our own ethnicity. Nothing to do with racism per se, although one could use this to comfort his own racist views. So it's very possible that, if she had minimum contact with Slate, she could confuse him with Bond.
I don't know about him playing M but the thought of Nighy playing ANY character in the Bond realm, let alone Tanner, is so exciting to me.
Off topic but I always thought that in SF there was a slow and steady increase of Bond's skills after his fall (real one and metaphorical.) When he trains, he's pretty much at his lowest, then improves his skills, gets the better of Patrice (but just), then is a more capable fighter at the casino, then his shooting improves, and so on until the battle at Skyfall when he's back at the top of his game.
Regarding QOS, because he's mostly on his own with close to little backup, he does not "need" to face a Jaws of an Oddjob.
Yeah, I wasn't being serious about MGW playing M, but I fully agree that he should get a substantial cameo role again, a speaking one. And I'd love to see Nighy there too.