James Bond

In Licence to Kill he manages to keep up the charade for a long time :D

Is there a trope for that, when a character is built up as really good at their job when in real life they'd actually be terrible for dramatic convenience's sake? In addition to Bond I know this is also a common criticism of House.

Well there's also the fact that that, quite a bit of real-life spy/espionage work would be pretty boring to watch onscreen. It often is just not that glamorous, or exciting (or at least no exciting in a way that translate well to a film with mass appeal anyway).

Same with medicine.

Yes, that's the point, which is why I'm wondering if there's a specific trope.

Nearly every Adventurer Archaeologist.

The novel Bond does actually end up being a 'proper' spy on a few occasions and mostly does a pretty decent job of it. He does a good enough job that he would have got away with spying directly on Blofeld himself if not for an unfortunately timed encounter with another agent.

That said, an awful lot of the time he does end up 'playing' good looking badasses who like to gamble and make the sexytimes with pretty girls so hardly stretching his acting muscles.

I also kind of think that, at least in part, it's an ego thing for Bond. He's almost daring the baddies to come after him.

House in general sidesteps this problem by explaining that House deals with the most utterly bizarre medical cases possible. Several episodes have character who several professionals shruged at for not having an answer, so House's schizophrenic, last resort methods, make some semblance of sense.

By the way... I know how everyone says the evil plan in the film version of Goldfinger is better than in the book (and it is), but am I the only one who likes the film FRWL's plan better than the book's as well? In the book it's relatively simple: the Russians use the decoder doodad to lure in James Bond, then kill him and Tania to cause a sex scandal at MI6. The movie keeps this basic plot but also adds in SPECTRE, playing the Russians and British against one another and having another step to the plan, namely stealing back the decoder and selling it back to the Russians for a ridiculous sum of money. I just find the more complex, though still not ridiculous like some later schemes, plan more entertaining.

It gets a little bit too complex in the film for me to be honest, but it does have it's own sort of charm. I prefer the books in general though so it could well be that is part of it.

Also, and I realize people will probably want me thrown into Blofeld's piranha pool for this, but the film DAF's evil scheme is better than the book's as well. Yes, the laser satellite thing is cheesy. But the book's scheme? Literally just smuggling diamonds to get rich. Boooooooriiiiiiiiiiiiing. We also barely even see the people running the ring (two brother mobsters, each one in two chapters apiece). As in FRWL adding SPECTRE provides some welcome spice.

Book Tiffany is Actually Competent, though, so point to the book there.

On the flip-side, the plot of the book Moonraker is far better and less stupid than the movie's plot, imo.

There's really only a few major literary characters that haven't been adapted yet. There's the Spang brothers, the aforementioned boooooooriiiiiiiiiiiiing diamond smugglers. Gala Brand from Moonraker. Viv from The Spy Who Loved Me (but even Fleming didn't like to talk about that one). And General G of SMERSH. I'd probably want to see Gala and General G the most.

edited 18th Jun '16 6:17:44 PM by HamburgerTime

Can confirm, I finished reading Moonraker a couple of months ago.

Gala is definitely a character I want to see adapted at some point. As long as she doesn't get the Tiffany Case/Mary Goodnight treatment.

edited 18th Jun '16 8:28:18 PM by Quag15

Moonraker and Live and Let Die (the other one that was near-completely changed) did get Spiritual Successors in Golden Eye and License to Kill respectively, though.

I kind of want to see a proper adaptation of Mary Goodnight, as well. Goddammit, she was a Badass Adorable in the books, not a Dumb Blonde.

Recently been thinking that Spectre, especially if it's supposed to be the Grand Finale for the Craigverse, might've been better as a two-parter a la Deathly Hallows. IMO if you fix the pacing you fix a lot of the problems with it. Part 1 could go up to the hotel and have more development for Lucia, Mr. White, and the SPECTRE-Quantum connection; part 2 would pick up from there and include more of Blofeld and Denbigh.

Even though I think you're absolutely right, I can't support the notion of any more two-parters; I'm really sick of them.

I mean, I realize it's water under the bridge now, and I didn't hate the movie; I'd describe my reaction as "satisfied but not blown away." IMO the acting, story, themes, etc. were all fine, but everything moved ridiculously fast. The good guys figured out everything too quickly and easily, meaning I didn't get the sense of "a kite dancing in a hurricane," and a lot of the backstory stuff was just glossed over with a bare minimum of explanation (some things didn't even get that; like, was Denbigh sincere in his belief that allying with SPECTRE would protect people or wasn't he?). Like I've said before, I think this was because they were trying to resolve all of Craig's plot threads out of a fear (looking to be well-founded) that he wouldn't come back.

edited 19th Jun '16 4:24:00 PM by HamburgerTime

Colonel Sun is also a book character that I'd kind of like to see be put on-film at some point.

That's basically the only non-Fleming novel I've seen anyone want to adapt. Possibly because Kingsley Amis was Fleming's friend and his pick to succeed him. And then he only wrote one. Whoops.

Oh yeah, Kingsley Amis's O.C. Yeah, that could be good.

By the way I learned recently that Judi Dench voiced M in several of her video game appearances. Never figured her for the slumming type.

So, here's a little story I though I'd share from the day I saw Spectre, Bond fans. Now, one rarely experiences a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming in a dark action movie, much less in the audience of a dark action movie, but nevertheless me fellow theatergoers has some surprising faces among them. Not only were there far more women than I expected, but sitting not too far from me was this absolutely adorable elderly couple. They seemed to be in their seventies at least, and looked exactly like the sort of elderly people that knit and bake for their grandkids and stuff like that. And yet here they were watching a Bond movie.

I very strongly wonder what their story was. Maybe they've been following the series since the Connery days. I dunno, sometimes I just see people who I feel like have a story to them. Maybe I'm weird for that, but it happens pretty regularly for me.

edited 20th Jun '16 7:27:55 PM by HamburgerTime

I had somewhat of a similar experience when I went to see Deadpool, complete with older aged couples. They enjoyed it immensely.