Location, Location, Location

shadowonthesun

This thread, I admit, is slightly inspired by Balje's creation suggesting a sewer as a Bond villain's lair. It reminded me of the thread on the old forums about appropriate locations for Bond films. This thread is a recreation of old - what locations do you want to see?

Allow me to open the bidding with this: the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking. Bond villains are often wealthy industrialists, and usually have some kind of headquarters - like Hugo Drax's sprawling aerospace engineering compound in Moonraker, or Elliot Carver's braodcast centre in Tomorrow Never Dies - that Bond visits. And naturally, they have (or at least try to have) that Ken Adam larger-than-life quality. Looking at pictures of it online, the McLaren Technology Centre has just that. It's slightly futuristic, has aesthetic lines, and plenty of glass:

Of course, the cars would probably have to go - otherwise, it would just look like Patrick Dempsey's office in Transformers - Dark of the Moon, and the less we say about that, the better. But the beauty of it is that McLaren is a Formula 1 team, and Formula 1 has a mandatory two-week shut-down during the summer, usually for the month of August. So EON could reasonably film Bond there without affecting the day-to-day operations.

Any other suggestions?

JWESTBROOK

Haha some QoS slo-motion 'splosions would fit right in to this place!

How about a lair in the Hollywood sign.. oh wait.

No, seriously, pre-9/11 I would have said the World Trade Center. The new modern buildings being built would be amazing to use, but I'm sure some of the sillier Americans would complain. (I'm an American, I'm patriotic, but you can film there all you want, let alone build a mosque down the street [which you can't now])

This hotel in Abu Dhabi:

I'm trying to focus on what the head of Quantum would fit into. Something that connects politicians with philanthropists and the other professions the Quantum-ites possesses in QoS.

NicNac

Great idea for a thread. Keep 'em coming.

Both of these are impressive buildings.

Luds

Quebec City's Chateau Frontenac

shadowonthesun

Lupu Bridge, Shanghai

Buzludzha Monument, Bulgaria

The Great Ocean Road, Victoria

Sandy

Wow, any of those would do. Quebec city has lots of other places besides the Chateau that would work for a Bond film, lovely city indeed!

I'd like to add the Douro region (Portugal) where Port wine is produced. The perfect place for a car chase.

The roads are scary, very narrow and curvy and the railroad looks like it's going to fall into the river in some places.

Photos simply don't do it justice.

And the BMW Welt in München (Germany), striking!

shadowonthesun

If it's a twisty road you want, allow me to introduce you to the Transfăgărășan highway in Romania, known locally as "Ceauşescu's folly" and voted by Top Gear as the single best piece of road in the world:

Artemis81

All those locations are really cool, would love to see them in a Bond film.

M_Balje

http://wonderaday.com/blog/Fantastic_Subway_of_Stockholm/

More you can see at this page.
http://weburbanist.com/2011/05/27/modern-metro-14-of-the-worlds-coolest-subway-stations/

shadowonthesun

Okay, that's pretty cool, Balje. I could see at least four of them - the Bund in Shanghai, Iidabashi in Tokyo, the Stockholm Tunnelbana and Drassanes in Barcelona - being a part of the villain's underground lair, maybe has his intended escape route with his own private bullet train.

Baltimore_007

Are we talking about Bond or Adolf Hitler :-))

shadowonthesun

Bond villains can have private trains and underground lairs.

Baltimore_007

Indeed, as Trevelyan had one in Goldeneye, and Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, i.e. it was under the ground

shadowonthesun

Besides, if Hitler had an udnerground bunker with private train, then that just establishes a precedent: evil people have lairs and trains. Ergo, a Bond villain can have a lair and a train. And if he has something like Bund, Iidabashi, the Tunnelbana or Drassanes (which would be a good name for a villain) as part of his lair, then that just goes to show that he is evil and he has taste.

shadowonthesun

Okay, with the knowledge that SKYFALL will take place in Shanghai, here's a few locations that could be used:

Expo Axis

China Pavilion

Shanghai Stock Exchange

Nanjing Road East

Shanghai Expo Cultural Centre

Shanghai International Circuit (would need to be carefully shot)

4EverBonded

I love this thread - the photos are amazing! Filming in Shanghai confirmed so now I am even more excited.

Zekidk

For Shanghai location, I would put my money on:

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=116595

shadowonthesun

The problem with that tower is that it won't be finished until 2014.

I reckon most of the pavailions from the 2010 Expo in Shanghai would look great. Most of them have been taken down since the the Expo, but they'd look great as inspiration for buildings:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pavilions_of_Expo_2010

Zekidk

An unfinished skyscraper could be a more interesting location than a finished one :-)

PanchitoPistoles

I just realised that Skyfall will be the first Bond film since 1999 without a Caribbean location!

Caribbean locations in Bond films:
- DN: Jamaica
- TB: Bahamas
- LALD: San Monique (fictional, filmed in Jamaica)
- LTK: Bahamas
- GE: Cuba (filmed in Puerto Rico)
- DAD: Cuba (filmed in Spain)
- CR: Bahamas
- QOS: Haiti (filmed in Panama)

Ever since LTK Bond has visited a Caribbean location in nearly every movie!

shadowonthesun

The Great Orme, Northern Wales

With filming taking place further up the coast in Scotland, the Great Orme could be a good setting to fit in with the castle. It's also the scene of one of the most famous rallying stages in the world, which was revived for the first time in thiry years:

It's narrow, blind, uneven and very, very fast with a sheer cliff to one side and a drop into the Irish Sea on the other. And to make it all the more difficult, there's a three-inch-high kerb on the right-hand side, which is completely invisible.

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7

Kyoto Station, Japan

JWESTBROOK

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 said:
The Kyoto Station in Japan

erm.. I think you meant

haha :P

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7

JWESTBROOK said:

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 said:
The Kyoto Station in Japan

erm.. I think you meant

haha :P

If you bothered to check you would've seen I fixed it. [-(

jolearon

@JWESTBROOK I really like the Dubai hotel idea as well.

JWESTBROOK

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 said:

If you bothered to check you would've seen I fixed it. [-(

:/ Twas simply a joke #:-s

QBranch

At the start of the year I read somewhere that EON was negotiating to shoot in Dubai. At this point it's obviously a rumor, but I'd love to see Bond visit Dubai in the next couple of films.

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7

JWESTBROOK said:

0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 said:

If you bothered to check you would've seen I fixed it. [-(

:/ Twas simply a joke #:-s

So Twas mine friend.

;-)

Samuel001

QBranch said:
At the start of the year I read somewhere that EON was negotiating to shoot in Dubai. At this point it's obviously a rumor, but I'd love to see Bond visit Dubai in the next couple of films.

That was probably people getting mixed up with Carte Blanche, when all those rumours surfaced.

shadowonthesun

I'm not that keen on Dubai, or any of the other Emirates, for that matter. I find them to be a little tacky, with all the buildings designed to compete with one another, rather than complement one another. It's a place where money is thrown at problems, like they're trying to buy the world's attention, rather than earn it.

shadowonthesun

The bizarre architecture of Josip Broz Tito:

http://www.cracktwo.com/2011/04/25-abandoned-soviet-monuments-that-look.html

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