James Bond

Craig was originally contracted for five, yes, but a.) this film felt like an ending, and b.) Craig's outright said he wants out at this point.

Also: Blofeld and Denbigh: boss and subordinate or Big Bad Duumvirate?

edited 21st Nov '15 5:03:19 PM by HamburgerTime

Just watched it, and... Quag, let's just say that you're not alone when it comes to your thoughts on the intro credits.

edited 22nd Nov '15 12:13:47 AM by Pyrite

Watched it yesterday... I liked Skyfall more. This one felt kind of "jumbled" to me.

So did they have to pay Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Javier Bardem and Mathieu Amalric for their photographic cameos?

Not sure about that - said cameos were actually modified stock footage from the previous films, what with frames of Vesper drowning, Silva in handcuffs, and Le Chiffre at the poker table.

The tape with the Vesper interview was such an evil tease, for a very beautiful second I thought we were going to get a cameo.

By the way, I liked that this film showed a bit of Bond's softer side. He's clearly trying to keep civilians as far away from his messes as possible throughout the film, and the scene where he jokingly ponders whether a rat might be an enemy agent reminded me of the fact that, as odd as this may sound, Fleming's literary Bond is an animal-lover. In the books he always feels terrible when animals are harmed in the course of his missions, including, in Thunderball, mourning a barracuda that tried to kill him after it gets hit by a SPECTRE depth charge.

Not to mention the fact he avoided shooting any pheasant in Moonraker (though, then again, he had his sights set on Drax' sniper).

edited 24th Nov '15 11:41:06 AM by Quag15

Re, Bond Continuity: the only way to make any sort of sense (and even then not very good sense) out of it is if Bond is a Legacy Character which has supposedly been denied by the higher ups (which doesn't stop it from being a popular fan theory). In the reboot continuity it's the case for M and possibly Q but not Bond himself (though you could make a case for Brosnan's Bond being Craig's predecessor under Judi Dench's M).

edited 24th Nov '15 1:01:26 PM by Elle

Again, with continuity? Ugh...

Found this on tumblr. I thought it was funny, but is it as applicable as usual to the latest Bond film?

http://squeewentthefangirl.tumblr.com/post/133933575924/robothugscomic-new-comic-link-this-is-my

Because it reminds me a lot of Severine. And Andrea Anders.

Corinne Dufour as well.

She doesn't die but that's pretty much Monica Bellucci's character to a T. It all goes by in about five minutes to boot.

edited 25th Nov '15 9:22:47 AM by LE0Night

Pfft!

Monica Bellucci was treated far better in Shoot 'Em Up. She had an actual character arc as well. Was her character in Spectre just a glorified cameo or something?

A Sequel Hook perhaps? I was surprised at the number of mentioned characters from other films in the dialogue, which did an excellent job at allowing the audience to recall and intertwine the events of the past few films.

My hypothesis for a fifth, and thus final, Craig film falls upon the extremely likely scenario that, following the capture of their head honcho, The Remnant of Spectre comes out of the woodwork to fight one last grandiose conspiracy led by as aspiring lieutenant of Blofeld's - me personally preferring Dr. No as homage to the first Bond film villain to suite a final Craig film.

In order to defeat the final offensive by Spectre, the information provided by Monica Bellucci's character and Felix Blighter will be required.

edited 25th Nov '15 11:18:23 AM by FluffyMcChicken

There is actually something interesting about Bellucci's character: she's the new oldest Bond Girl, and only the second to be older than her corresponding Bond. Honor Blackman was the previous holder of both those honors.

edited 25th Nov '15 12:15:32 PM by HamburgerTime

I can't really see her coming back. I'd rather have Léa Seydoux return to reprise her role of Elizabeth Swann, and see where their relationship would go (or end).

In any case, I don't think Monica's character has much more information to provide. Unless, somehow, she ends up playing both sides at some point.

And I think that's about it that makes her interesting within the realm of Bond's Girls Of The Week. She had so much potential...

Also, speaking of Bond Girls, I think I'm gonna have to review my list of the top Bond Girls. Melina Havelock is a bit underrated, imo.

edited 25th Nov '15 2:41:24 PM by Quag15

By the way, I had an interesting sight when I went to see Spectre. There was an elderly couple in the audience. Made me wonder if they'd been following since the Connery days. More women than I expected there to be, too.

Saw this movie today. I loved it! I don't know about you guys but that intro was awesome!

That Sam Smith really knows how to sing.

...like a strangled cat dragging its claws down a chalkboard.

Fixed that incomplete sentence for you.

I actually do find the song growing on me, but that falsetto is just offensively awful. It seriously needed a man who can genuinely sing well to do it justice.

I saw the film again the other day to see if my opinion had changed, and broadly, it hasn't. I still love it. Though some of the flaws do irk a little more. Specifically...

The exploding base and total lack of marksmanship from the mooks/improbably good aiming from Bond. Standard as it is for action films, this series should really be less brazen in it by now if it wants to be taken seriously. And with Craig as Bond, it does. Throwbacks to the Moore era do not work when you're trying to be as serious as possible - Narm ensues.

Monica Belluci. Yeah, she should not have been in the film. I feel like the producers are cringing at having created a genuinely interesting, positive female character and feel like they need to force in a stupid, two-dimensional living flesh-light just to satisfy their still-living teenage selves. In this case the flesh light is "mature" which is "exotic" in a way they can get away with without being called racist.

Strawberry Fields they could get just about away with in Quantum of Solace as a means of sending up the series' own tropes and showing how far they'd moved on from it. Except that having included such a disposable woman in both the next two films they've not moved on at all, and the pastiche is retroactively less-effective each time for it. Time for for the producers to leave puberty or else leave the series itself. Or both. Both would be good.

Damsel in Distress. In any way shape or form. It undermines even the better female characters, especially when they need to be given the Idiot Ball in order to get into such a situation. Again, this should be a Dead Horse Trope, and again, they were doing a little better with Camilla and Vesper (neither of whom were perfect characters by any means). Swan is still one of my favourite Bond girls, probably of the whole franchise, but the script got in the way in places. The series can go a whole film without the trope applying at all (Licence To Kill's Pam Bouvier being such an example) and I want it again.

The constant referencing of past films. Fans of the series are fans of the series. We get it. The other films still exist and if we want to watch them we can and will watch them. Give us something new to enjoy. The problem though is more that the series' tone has evolved, and the constant references threaten the capacity of new films to set their own tone and move forward. You can't have Bond act like he did in the Moore era and avoid Narm. It was awful then and it's worse when the series is genuinely trying to take itself seriously.

Don't get me wrong, if the series wants to go all out comedy, fine, I'll accept it's not to my taste and move on. But it still has the pretense of serious action and thus must be judged for its failings in that regard. Again the prepubsecent attitudes of the producers (and presumably part of the audience) are almost certainly a factor in this.

And...the big questionmark over this film. The big one. Bond and Blofeld being step-brothers. There is no need for it. Really. I don't really mind Blofeld being given a backstory, as past a certain point Willing Suspension of Disbelief is threatened anyway regarding the villain's mysterious backstory. But Blofeld is now reduced to a petulant child, his entire motivation reduced to being The Un-Favourite. Obviously Bond is incidental to his main plans, but he's still going out of his way to torment him like Gruber in Die Hard With A Vengeance. That latter film wasn't taking itself seriously so it worked. Here, it is and it doesn't.

Despite this massive long essay, I do honestly like this film. But there are issues, and they reflect the issues in the franchise itself.

See, I thought playing on James Bond's past as an 'orphan' was stupid in Casino Royal, so actually seeing payoff to it was nice. I think the movie should have just ended with Blofeld being consumed by a fireball though, well, they catch C obviously too but the fireball consuming Blofeld, that should have been the climax. James Bond gets some credibility back by utterly destroying his tormentor after Batista took an understandably protected loss to him.

And it really rubs me the wrong way that C, a man simply trying to do what's right and getting in over his head, has to die but Blofeld, a man killing people for his own amusement, gets to live. I would have preferred they get all the information they need from C while he smugly tells them they are all foolish fools for not following his vision and Blofeld was reduced to cinders in the desert. Hopefully future Bond films touch back on the fact South Africa's head of state was consumed in a fireball for voting wrong, assuming there are future Bond films. And whatever happened to that country Quantum cut the water off on?

I cringed when Bond destroyed two buildings. Obviously it was an accident, obviously it was still better than blowing up a stadium, but damn, how many people do you think died?

Since when was C trying to do what's right? Did I miss something? Because the last time I checked, C was working for Blofeld.

I do wonder what became of the rest of Quantum. In QOS we see that the Executive Board had at least three other members apart from White And Greene; whatever happened to them?

Greene gets a Cruel and Unusual Death courtesy of being left by Bond in a desert, with only a can of motor oil to drink at the end of Quantum.