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Everything after Morocco is so badly plotted, like terrible fanfic (down to the Hildebrand callout--too late for winks, dudes, just wrap up your movie!). I blocked out most of it.
The cinematography, the music, the actors, the little things which only exist in Bond world. It has Fleming all over it. It has real emotions, which was done the last time with Dalton, though they tried it to a lesser extend with Brosnan.
I recently got the vinyl scores of Skyfall, Spectre and No Time To Die. The gatefolded and graphic designs are bloody marvelous! And when listening to the scores I immediately get drawn to the atmosphere and the scenes of the movies. It has a lot of emotional melodies, big brass orchestra's, some ambient music, a lot of dynamics, tasteful electronics. Way way better than Arnold in my opinion.
Yeah it doesn't pay off, it's very odd. And as you say, we never get any attempt to tell us if Bond even cares about this guy- we don't even know if he liked Hannes or not.
Yes, you can edit the foster brother stuff out (it really is only a couple of lines here and there and just the plot reason for Bond recognising him) and the film would be the same. I can see why they did it: in the books Bond holds a grudge against Blofeld because he killed someone he loves- it's fair enough to try and adapt that (and fitting it to the plot of Octopussy is quite clever), but it doesn't go anywhere.
Yeah my thought has always been that Q should have given Bond another gadget PPK as he had in the last film, only this one has one explosive round, for shooting locks etc. Make the barrel sort of pop out or something so we know Bond is using the gadget function, and bob's your uncle.
He even switches to his PPK when he's trying to hit the 'copter and misses with the first pistol.
Oh yes, that's a wonderful scene.
As I think Q Branch suggested (apologies if it was someone else): put Helen McCrory in the role and the film improves instantly.
Plus it gives the added benefit of retro-fitting Blofeld's plan into the previous movie and selling the idea that he really was in the background all along, because she's in Skyfall and would have been Blofeld's evil puppet in the Government then, trying to bring down M.
Thanks, apologies echo; I always forget. It is inspired though, yes: I really wish it was possible to will that film into existence!
The weirdest thing about it is that the foster brother stuff was totally unnecessary. Bond already knows Blofeld is responsible for deaths of Vesper and Mathis, and he finds that out long before he actually finds out that Blofeld had killed Hannes. Even Blofeld's involvement with M's death is revealed long before the Oberhauser reveal.
Bond already had a personal reason to go after Blofeld, and that resonated with the audience more than the Hannes thing ever did.
Yes, excellent points, especially about how the audience care more about people we've seen than people we haven't.
I can't quite remember though, what's the involvement in M's death you mean?
I wonder if her videotape cameo could have more explicitly tied Spectre in with Silva and her death, or if that would have been a bit too much continuity to ask the audience to remember.
I guess the thing is though, if you could have written it so that part of the main plot is that Blofeld had found Silva and manipulated his grudges to try and expose MI6 and bring down M so that he could install his puppet C in place and take control of the intelligence forces, that's actually quite decent, matches up with everything in both films and doesn't really retroactively spoil anything in Skyfall (other than maybe taking away a bit of Silva's agency I guess). If they'd just concentrated on Silva and made it a sequel to SF without trying to hint that Greene or whoever was involved too, I wonder if that would have made it a bit stronger.
Even something like that bit where Q (inexplicably) connects the rings to the old baddies, if there had been screenshots of Vesper and M with 'deceased' splashed across them also on his screen, and a flash of anger from Bond, there's a bit of motivation right there.
As you say, clever though it is, foster brother goes nowhere. Funnily enough it could be an example of wanting to put some Fleming in there and it actually getting in the way of the story.
The problem is with Spectre the goal is an intelligence based one. It tries to have Nine Eyes be this despicable surveillance program. The problem is, to get to that point, Spectre have committed terrorist attacks.
Add in the fact the Nine Eyes resemble Five Eyes and the PRISM/ECHELON worldwide surveillance programs in action, and we have a plot that involves terrorist attacks to reach a reality where we as citizens don't feel impacted day to day.
Also, with the framing of Nine Eyes. We're supposed to hate it the minute it gets mentioned, and M detests it even before the reveal because it is undemocratic. Blofeld is just another problem on another bad plan. But we live in a world where this plan exists! While some may find it suboptimal, mass surveillance barely causes problems for the average person. Whereas a criminal's control of mass surveillance would certainly cause more fear in the population (I still don't know how Blofeld would make any money from this plan).
It would certainly be awful if a nefarious unelected villain got into the workings of government intelligence and started disassembling it, I'd be scared.
With Dr. No there are plethora of easy cash options he can take: he can sell the technology to the Soviets (in the novel I think that's his goal), he can ransom the Americans as you say, he could land the rockets where he could clone them, use insider knowledge to invest smartly and all the rest.
With Nine Eyes its true that they could influence governments. Manipulate intelligence forces, find WMDs where there are none, etc. But government control has an end goal: ideological or profitable. Spectre works sans ideology and the only potential quick cash out is selling surveillance to foreign powers. Or maybe getting the intelligence operatives to ignore Spectre operations.
But both of those are plans that could be run within British intelligence: Nine Eyes would just be the scaling up worldwide. Again there's no particular reason why the program itself as a new thing is bad for the public (and so hated by M) or profitable for Spectre. Certainly not worse for the public than the terror attacks, which are brushed over.
And that last paragraph is exactly the point. People have qualms with the FBI, NSA, CIA, etc. but if Elon Musk asked for a merger, the main point that people would have problems with is that it's Elon Musk, not that unified American intelligence violates privacy or whatnot. (and also in the analogy, Elon Musk already runs the CIA pretty much, so a merger doesn't really serve much more for him)
Nah there's plenty of profitable opportunities: even starting wars is great if you have fingers in weapons dealing, construction or even medicine, and they're clearly in everything for the long game. Plus, they may not have ideology of their own, but as in YOLT, they're happy to sell their services to those who do. These guys control pharmaceuticals, human trafficking: they literally say in the film that controlling the world intelligence agencies will mean they're easily counteracted so that they can carry out these various nefarious schemes. I just don't think this is the problem with the film.
I think it's more because Spectre would then have unfettered access to the whole western intelligence community: doing it on a bigger scale is obviously worse.
An additional thought on this:
Say Bond is more curious as to why M was focussed on Sciarra: when he seduces Luciana he digs a bit as to what her husband had been up to and discovers that he was meeting with Silva regularly and had been sponsoring him- Bond begins to suspect a link between the shadowy organisation and Silva's efforts and figures out that Silva's attacks were just part of their longer term plan to damage MI6. Obviously that culminated in M's death so he takes it personally. As NoTimeToLive points out, that's kind of enough of a motivation without the foster brother business.
Q tells Bond that Silva was linked to Oberhauser's organization ("do you know who links them all?"). Even though Blofeld was not directly involved, him (supposedly) financing Silva helped the latter carry out his plan which led to M's demise.
Right 1: I think that's kind of what I mean. The profitability isn't in 9 Eyes: rather 9 Eyes is a capital good that they will use for other operations. 9 Eyes doesn't feel like a be-all end-all villain scheme. It feels like the sizing up of a minorly successful scheme.
This is doesn't help the film for two reasons: firstly because many die in the sizing up and those attacks feel like they're more impactful than this plan. And secondly because it doesn't really bring obvious gain to the villains. (My third complaint is that it mimics a real life system too much, eroding the threat, and fourthly that 9 Eyes is only bad because Spectre's control, but the film tries to make it seem like 9 eyes is inherently bad).
And no I don't think that Nine Eyes is the worst part of the film or why it doesn't work. I think it is a sticking point in why the plot of the film is unfixable in a way. There's a shadowy organisation trying to run an intelligence based plan, but that plan must be so crucial that worldwide terrorism can only be step A
I think potentially a Skyfall sequel could potentially make sense in a two step plan: discredit MI6 and then infiltrate as auditors and such. But again, could it make sense with blowing up Mexico City and Capetown and wherever else?
I guess when they say it'll help them counteract the intelligence agencies, that doesn't sound very exciting, that's true. It's more just a sort of security measure to their main plans, which isn't terribly exciting, I don't disagree. I guess it would have been better if they'd mentioned the sorts of things I'd mentioned, like the YOLT-style ideology-to-the-highest-bidder stuff.
Regardless, I do think the level of threat of the plan is decent enough in the film, it's kind of given a good enough weight of sinister nefariousness, even though I agree that if you think about it it could do with a bit more work.
I see where you're coming from, but do you not think that to fix that all you need is to outline a plan which is worse than a terrorist event?
I think the big sinister meeting does work towards that: we're made aware of this big horrible organisation which has fingers in so many pies of exploitation and hideousness around the world, that they'll be completely unanswerable to no-one and utterly untouchable. That's not too bad is it?
I think it still makes sense, sure, doesn't it? With MI6 and other agencies missing the attacks because there were no warning signs, due to them being completely non-ideological. What are you thinking?
Actually I've never thought about it: was the Mexico bombing part of the Nine Eyes plan? Or just a bit of random Spectre evil?
I do think the way the two films are pretty much working towards the same goal means that it would have made sense to link them together explicitly, my only issue is whether it would have meant too much continuity for the Saturday night audience. Whenever I try to think about fixing Spectre I find I'm adding plot or characters in, which just feels like I'm making it more complicated!
I think why the movie is "unfixable" in this way is because it doesn't want to do a world-ending plot. It instead wants to focus on betrayal and the shadowy corridors of power. So the idea that we're being spied on by our Spectre-controlled governments fits right into those themes.
The problem is that the threat also has to be shadowy as well: and the meeting does that. It's the sort of Illuminati thing that strikes fear into people. But a shadowy threat doesn't compare to a direct one like terrorism. Especially when the shadowy threat isn't the be-all end-all plan.
I think Skyfall carries the same themes about the shadows and such. A terrorist attack in London and a massive intelligence failure have made the public question the effectiveness of the 00 section.
I was sort of thinking a consequence of the failure was a new technology consultant or something (with all the hacking in the last film!) who has to handle all the intelligence. And then all of it gets loaded to their system, where its up for other countries, foreign bidders and all that (which makes the countdown more real). And then instead of terrorist attacks, Bond is cleaning up with the NOC agents from the last movie (maybe he's protecting one from a Sciarra assasination) and maybe finds Spectre from the other end.
It's pretty holey though. And it takes an almost international plot and squashes it down to just a British one. I think that's what makes Spectre so hard to fix. Everything is so tightly wound together that one removal and it all starts crumbling apart. Tightly plotted feels like the wrong word for it though.
As for Mexico, that was my guess. I think the direct replacement of Hinx for Sciarra suggests that maybe Sciarra was supposed to be a big player in the Nine Eyes plan. But I'm not sure really. If such a thing were to exist I don't think Mexico would be a big player. I'd guess the G7 plus Australia and one other EU nation. But clearly I wouldn't guess SA to be a part of the alliance either.
I guess it could do with a 'this will allow us to do X!' plot, but I think the shadowy threat works quite well: they're a sinister all-powerful megaforce who will be able to do whatever they like once the button is pressed: if a terrorist incident is just what they do to get there then imagine how much worse life will be from now on. It's kind of more existential than most villain plans, beyond those of Stromberg and Drax. Rather than just a one-off bad thing, it's more a sort of 'human life will be under the rule of Spectre from now on and you'll never even know about it'. I guess that could be played up more.
Oh I like that a lot, especially the idea of cleaning up after the incidents of SF. That ties into the MI6 building left derelict, after all.
I know what you mean, when you look closely at the plot you kind of end up thinking it fits together quite well, even though it ends up in an unsatisfying movie. I would really love to see what a professional script doctor would make of it.
Makes sense, I must admit it's a part of the plot I've never really thought about before, I think I just thought it was general evil-doing, but it probably was part of the Nine Eyes plan. It's such an odd script: in some ways it works really well, and yet it doesn't!
I disagree. Its often quiet scenes in mostly empty settings with some longer-than-usual shots don't make me fall asleep; if nothing else, they suck me into the experience.
I agree. As I've said before about Blade Runner, I enjoy living in the world instead of rushing through it. SP gave us time to live in it here & there.
Exactly. A pause, a moment to breathe. A quiet moment for introspection even. SP explores the theme of death, and death is emptiness, eternal silence, a black void. We're invited to accompany Bond and Madeleine on their journey into the past, and we are always given enough time to take in the scenery, to easy into the moment, and to be there as long as Bond is there. We're more than the usual tourist who drops by for a few quick photographs before rushing to the next location. I understand why some find the film a bit tedious -- Bond films usually run like a bullet train. But I, for one, appreciate the opportunity to experience Bond's adventure a little more intimately than usual.
Have I mentioned before that 2001 and Blade Runner are my favourite films ever? ;-)
Yes, yes you have, Dave. :)>-
Good. ;-)
One more thing. Fast films have a better chance of hiding plot holes and whatnot, simply because we're not given enough time to take it all in. Producing a quieter film is, in some ways, more difficult.
All I can say is that in 2015, you could hear a pin drop in my theatre during the Spectre meeting in Rome, not because people were sleeping, but because they were focused and tensed (as far as I could judge). Part of that is because the tension was slowly built in that scene. We didn't go "cut-cut-cut" from Micky Mouse and back to Micky Mouse; instead, we were given the time to grow a sense of menace.
My favourite scene, 'l Américain, is another great example of a moment that pulls me in. Every time I watch SP, this is the scene that makes me fall in love with Madeleine and wish I was Bond right there and then. It's curious how much the film resonates with me. Few other Bond films do, including the ones that I find overall better than SP.
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