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And the action is SO MUCH BETTER than the nonsense in QOS.
Well calling QOS “ amazing “ is a but controversial,but that’s for another thread.
The PTS was very well done,but Bond getting shot ( Twice! ) towards the end of it was where believability went out the window.Fixing your cuffs while jumping from one train carriage to another may be very “ Bond “ but after you are seriously shot? All that and he manages a knock drag out fight with Patrice right after.And let’s not get started on Bond surviving getting shot by Moneypenny,surviving that massive fall and apparent drowning.
If after the opening credits they had shown how he had survived,that would be something.But no,we just ignore that and rejoin him after the credits shagging some hottie on a beach.
There are many other scenes where the film just got too silly for me.I can’t spend all day chatting here about them,but here are some “ highlights “
The hard drive plot being forgotten about.
Silvas plan making absolutely no sense ( Good thing Q didn’t plug in that laptop during his interrogation eh? ).
M quoting a poem to a packed enquiry instead of ordering the building locked down knowing Silva is on the loose.
Bond taking M to a house in an isolated part of Scotland with no back up gives them “ an advantage “.
A waste of Berenice Marhlohe as a potentially great Bond girl.
Bonds plan ending up getting M killed.
I agree with every bit of this, AL.
https://collider.com/james-bond-movies-almost-perfect/
There is a lot to like about Skyfall, but it is not the best Bond film. Nor is it on my top ten list. And it does not compare to an Alfred Hitchcock film. Silva's cyanide mouth is unbelievable as is his "I know every move Bond will make after he chases me."
TSWLM number 3? "The dynamic between Moore’s Bond and Barbara Bach as the Soviet Union spy XXX is compelling because they both realize that they are in inherently lonely professions, and any connection between them may be fleeting." How that relationship was written in the script may have been compelling, but what we saw on screen was not. I don't know why this film is praised. Replete with a henchman right out of a Roadrunner cartoon.
I wouldn’t call SF a perfect film, but I don’t think any film can be perfect, nor am I sure what one would look like if it hypothetically were. I can only go from how I feel about a film, and for me SF’s easily one of the best Bond movies because of what I get out of it.
But both CR and SF are top tier Bond films. QOS has its flaws but it’s a film I get a lot out of rewatches.
I don't think anything from the Craig era meets those parameters, a sign of our cynical times? Does no-one have any hope anymore?
Craig-Bond's personal angst always overshadows any other outcomes
James Bond has been around a long time, so it's good that other aspects of the character have been developed and explored, but in the end I would always pick one with an upbeat ending for the title of being The Best.
When movie James Bond started out in the 1960s, the UK was finally shaking off the post WW2 / post Empire blues and getting ready to swing.
Kruschev was banging his shoe at the UN, the Berlin border confrontation and Wall, the Bay of Pigs and Cuba missle crisis, yet somehow there was positivity and hope in the air, despite the looming threat of extinction by nuclear war.
But it seems like the USA has never got over Watergate and Vietnam. Trust in authority disappeared and has never really returned.
The anti-hero rules and action movies these days are either about righteous rebels, who fight "bad actors" from within their own government organisations as much as villains, or actual assassins and criminals, who we are supposed to root for merely because they are are fighting even worse assassins and criminals.
So you'd pick only only pre-Craig movie with a downer ending?
It's interesting how human beings minds work sometimes, the preference of many for a tragic ending over a happy one (not that I don't enjoy a good tear jerker once in a while)
QOS is something of a disaster. It will always be Craig's weakest entry, in fact it's a mess, and NTTD for reasons already stated doesn't really come into it which leaves only two others.
CR is superb. Was never really in favor of the reboot idea but Brosnan couldn't continue in the role by that stage and they needed someone other for the role. Craig's debut (after initial skepticism) turned out to be an outstanding success and you can award it the highest of plaudits but somehow it can't quite match Skyfall in terms of overall terms of suspense, thrills and viewing satisfaction.
Javier Bardem doesn't provide the most memorable villain of the entire series but still commands a strong screen presence. The opening sequence in Turkey is real fun then you got a strong theme song in Adele and from there the action never really lets up. Great climax in Scotland where we learn the movie or film title originates from Bond's ancestral home and Dench's M provides a very poignant moment. I must rate it highest from a personal perspective due to time of release. Maybe it's clouding my judgment over Casino Royale such is the case as to which is ideally better but I made a decision, and stuck with it.
The tragic ending is not the appeal of OHMSS. It's the story, the characters, and the most fully evolved Bond heroine we'd seen until CR.
Is the story really that good?
The Tracy half is fine, I agree, but I would argue the Blofeld half is very weak
The heraldry and allegies angle, the brainwashing and frolicking with beautiful girls in a clinic on top of a mountain, is more like the material for a James Bond spoof, rather than a legit Bond movie.
And Blofeld threatening to destroy humanity unless he gets a pardon and an aristocaratic title seems completely disproportionate to me.
Give me "From Russia With Love" any day
I'd say the tragic ending is absolutely part of the appeal, or rather why it's so remembered. And generally it's remembered in a positive light.
I think that's fair. Maybe a bit harsh on Bardem: he's not far off the most memorable Bond villain. I'd say he's certainly way up there and the best one, in, I dunno: probably 40 years. Mads is right up there too though.
Yes, I'd rate Bardem my favourite Craig era villain, just ahead of Mads, then bit of a gap back to Remi, a huge gap further back to Waltz, with Amalric so far back he gets lapped by the field.
I get that John Logan's scripts are hit and miss, but he got SF right, and this is mostly because he got the villain right. Silva is one of the most fully-realized, fully-developed villains in the franchise, and he works on two levels.
1. Logan gave him agency and ability. Once it's established that Silva is a point-and-click villain who can "persuade" people to think/act as he wants, everything becomes possible. This is why the story of the deserted island is important: Silva can program and bend people to his will. A major criticism of SF is that Silva's plan was all "pre-planned" but was it? Or is that just what Silva wants people to think? It's brilliant. Nevertheless, Silva just needed to create the right algorithms and then let the computer (AI, in its earlier forms) do the rest. It's not that Silva predicted MI6's moved weeks or months in advance; he didn't have to. He created the programming to adjust to what MI6 did.
2. Logan also gave Silva a significant fatal flaw. In this case, it's an obsessive desire to embarrass M and then make his killing of her deeply personal. This goes against what he says he wants: missions in which he isn't "running around." He prefers the pointing and the clicking. But there's the rub. None of that is ever satisfying (see the Bond/Q scene in the museum). He could have killed M in the MI6 explosion. But that simply wasn't enough. The irony, of course, is that being "in the field" is not Silva's strength: it's Bond's. And Silva fails (yes, yes, he does) to accomplish his goal, ultimately killed by the oldest of weapons: a frickin' knife. Again: brilliant.
Is SF the best Bond film? Yes. For the above reasons and more. And it's not close. I have TB, GF, CR, and FRWL in spots 2-5, and there's not much separation between them. But SF offers just a bit more and stands head and shoulders above all others.
It’s not the ending that makes the film. As things are, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is at #1. OHMSS is IMO a stronger film, only let down by the actor playing Bond.
The ending is quite important in this movie. If she had died in DAF the movie would not be the same.