It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
As for Bond putting Madeline on the train solely for her own protection, if he didn’t break up with her because he had doubts then him sniping at Madeline when they are going to see Blofeld makes no sense. Similarly, what is the point of Blofeld telling Bond that Madeline didn’t set him up if Bond had no doubts (though when Madeline gets scared and asks not to see Blofeld Bond obviously begins to put his doubts to rest)?
You know the film much better than I do, but those scenes simply didn’t read like Bond didn’t have doubts.
Nicely summarized!
fingers crossed everyone :-SS
Writers' strike???
https://www.indiewire.com/2023/04/writers-strike-2023-explained-1234831299/
He had seeds of doubt* roughly between the time he bikes up to the hotel maybe, and when they’re sitting getting shot at in the car. But if you watch the performance you can see him weighing it all up, considers just letting them win, then dismissing it, because he knows Madeline is innocent. That’s when he nods. I am hardly the biggest Craig fan — though my estimation has gone up of late — but it’s all there on screen. One of the things I *like* about NTTD is that it’s not treating the audience like idiots, and is a film that recognises it’s a visual and performative medium. Show don’t tell, being used correctly for once.
He only gets back into the game because of Spectre, and M’s involvement with Heracles. Loyalty in other words.
He’s done, but his life is an echo of Mr.White in Spectre. He’s all but hiding, but unlike White hasn’t quite given up on somehow getting shot of Spectre and reclaiming his life with Madeline.
Safin upsets that, because not only does he do Bonds job for him — eliminates Spectre — but he makes Bond realise there’s a target on Madeline. The rules change completely in the cabin in Norway. Bond wouldn’t be keeping her safe by going away — the targets not on him anymore — let alone Mathilde. But the past is catching up with them in other ways.
Her past, that *if* she had told him about, perhaps he could have helped sooner, has moved the target from him to her. By the end, quite literally. But she’s making the same mistake Bond did when he altruistically put her on that train, but then never spoke to her again. Trying to deal with things on her own.
That’s the mistake they end up paying for, with Bonds life, but Bond buys their future — Mathilde —her freedom. White did the same for Madeline, but because he was *more* flawed than Bond, it took him far too long.
It’s all echoes and tragedy, all the way down the chain, until Bond breaks the chain. And ironically, to an extent, Safin.
Everyone is a victim of someone else’s choices, until Bond saves Mathilde, and to a lesser extent, Madeline. (Who has still lost Bond.)
I’ve actually only watched the film a couple of times, but it was fairly well done, and even pulled the other films up by association. It’s very in keeping with the jaded Bond common in Fleming, and arguably better in some respects. Book Bond could let his anger make him into a bit more of a dick to all and sundry.
*edit: Because he’s being shot at, blown up, chased and generally attacked from every which way. He’s clearly being ambushed, after all.
So this whole pearl clutching over how long it’ll take for Bond 26 to happen… whatever. Kiss my ass.
If she was Spectre in Bonds mind, she would have been under the train rather than on it. Or taken in, at the very least, and stuck in a cell. He was basically reliving the trauma of Vesper — where he *was* betrayed — but he’s not stupid. He knows how Blofeld and Spectre work now, and a very small but fairly key point is that even after that, he was still going after Spectre after leaving Six.
He may think Madeline is a weakness or a vector for Blofelds hatred of him personally, which makes her both a liability and a target, but he in no way doubts she is innocent based on events that occur throughout that film, and the previous one. He had no more reason to suspect her here, than he did when she’s his guide in the last act of the previous film, for a start. One of the simplest reasons, is that she saves his life with the watch in Blofelds holiday camp. There is literally no purpose in that, if she’s just going to do him over for Spectre later, and it also ties in with Safins statement after saving her life as a child.
Basically, it all comes down to how smart we think Bond is. He’s generally shown to be pretty clever in these films.
If Bond was sure she was innocent, and it's clear he wasn't going to fall for Blofeld's trick, then the script is deliberately presenting Blofeld as incompetent for trying something like that. (And for comparison's sake, I wouldn't say Blofeld having his organization and himself terminated by Safin is intended to be taken as an example of incompetence on his part, more like an example of him being blindsided by a formidable foe -- again, only the intention of the script, regardless of the results.)
But more importantly, if Bond was sure she was innocent, then these lines make no sense:
Bond: Madeleine Swann, really?
M: Well, yes. We took your information seriously, but that was five years ago. Nothing came up.
Bond: Well, she’s very smart and very good at hiding things.
It's clear Bond asked MI6 to check on Madeleine.
I think he told them enough to get them to stay away from her. Keep her out of the game her father played. But no one came after her, and they needed her to get Blofeld to play nice. (Which is likely because Blofeld sees her as the most likely thing Bond will come back from wherever he’s bunkered down for.) Without her as an innocent, he’s got no reason to stay away, and all of his purposes are better served by bringing her in himself, or eliminating her. ‘The bitch is dead’.
This is more about him not being happy M is making bad choices — like going ahead with Heracles, or using his former girlfriend and a private citizen, putting her in a room with Blofeld. Remember, he spent part of the last film trying to protect her from Blofeld. And as I said — it’s her that is more than a little responsible for the state Blofeld is in.
The ‘She’s very smart and very good at hiding things’ is Bond being bang on the money about her not revealing any threats or danger to her that situation brings, or hiding her own discomfort, and being blinded to it by a sense of duty not dissimilar to his own. From her perspective, with Bond gone, she may see Six as a useful protection — but also as precisely the place Bond is likely to return to. It’s telling she manage to also hide a pregnancy and a child. (Unless someone at six is complicit in that… possible implication they are basically spending Bonds pension looking after her… but that is supposition.)
Because Bond too is very smart and very good at hiding things.
Either everyone is an idiot — because Madeline was a Spectre agent all along who foiled her bosses plan and blew his face up, and in all of Bonds drawer of stuff on Spectre there’s still no ties to Madeline — or everyone is as smart as they are shown to be, and behaving in a manner logical to their character.
That’s my read of it, mind you.
I enjoyed this post, thank you.
Agreed.
And the line as she gets on the train, "You'll never see me again," is very cold and is addressed to Madeleine, not to elude Spectre or whatever. Bond clearly felt betrayed by Madeleine in that moment.
Bond then goes off the grid to Jamaica because he's wounded.
You’re welcome.
Like I said, NTTD completely changed my opinion of the craig era overall, and they did a good job of tying everything together… plot threads, themes.
And again, when he meets Madeline at MI6 and finds she is the one working Blofeld he says rather cuttingly “must be nice to meet an old friend so regularly”, suggesting to me that he thinks she may be involved with Blofeld. It’s only after she starts to panic that he begins to believe she’s on the up and up, and becomes protective of her.
If Bond had believed Madeleine's innocence from the off, as presented by others above, it would majorly reduce the emotional backbone of his conversation with her when he goes to the cabin in Norway, also. If the film wasn't seriously presenting her as untrustworthy, then the dialogue about betrayal firstly from Blofeld and then between Bond and Madeleine would be pointless.
That we, as the audience, never doubted her doesn't mean Bond didn't. And that's good - it makes for decent drama.
Goldeneye and NTTD would only be comparable if GE was made just so that Sean Bean could be tossed off a satellite dish and then crushed, or if Barbara specifically wanted an ending where Bond makes out with the girl in a grass field surrounded by Joe Don Baker and US Marines for some reason, but since we have at least one early draft of GE that can be read online, we know that wasn't the case.
NTTD's development started off with Craig wanting to kill his character off, and the movie goes through massive plot contortions to ensure that happens. Not so with GE. There's definite plot issues with GE but none of them have to do with the finale. GE didn't HAVE to end in the specific way it did, that's the point.
Killing Bond is no different than killing 009. The writers knew that was the ending, and they wrote to that ending, like most scripts. It was actually no different than killing of a villain, just this time, they were killing Bond.
You may not like they killed Bond, but don't claim there were these "massive" contortions of plot. It was another Bond adventure. This time, however, villains died, and so did our hero.
Get over it, Sparky.
I would be quite funny if the writers for the other films had started out with no idea where the stories would end and didn't have the idea of 'Bond saves the world and kills the baddie' to aim at, and had got to the scene of, say, Bond on the island full of crocodiles or racing to disarm a nuclear bomb and just thought: 'oh it feels a bit contrived that he'd have survived this, doesn't it?' And just let Bond die and the villain win :D
I'm sure they're joking. However, I be ok with Richard Madden as James Bond and Stanley Tucci as M/Villain. I'd be ok with Ralph Fiennes coming back as M as Sir Miles. With Aaron Taylor Johnson as Q.
I've seen enough of it from the whole Netflix and chill phenomena (others renting it).
And no, killing Bond is different from killing 009. Let's not get absurd here.
Again, having an ending in mind for a film you're writing is different from making an entire movie just to have a specific ending.
Things that have to happen for NTTD's ending:
Bond has to go to Poison Island without any protection (not even gloves!) despite already being infected with Heracles and knowing how dangerous and transmissible it is.
There have to be buyers on their way to island for the race against time to happen.
Bond has to run out into the open without checking first and get shot multiple times by Safin.
Safin has to make physical contact with him to give him Heracles.
Also, the island of crocodiles is a good example of a scene that is not contrived. If Bond's magnet watch had brought the boat to him, that would've been contrived, but the movie was a bit cleverer than that. He ultimately improvises his escape by doing something unexpected.
Also, Bond actually did wear gloves.
For me, they aren't even that handsome, Idk, they're not as charming as the previous Bond actors (yes, that includes Craig), if we're talking about the "charms" of these so called contenders by the media, then, they've made Craig's charm more better in comparison.
They're not even that masculine, like think of those 60's gentlemen, they're not just that, they're these wannabe "hey, I'm handsome and sexy" type of guys.
They lacked the machismo, the dominating and dark presence that a man should have.
They all felt like smooth models for me, without the charm, personality and presence.
They're just showy without having it naturally, they're pretending without really having it
They're not (how will I explain this), sexually exciting as those men back in
the day.
Like even if he killed someone, he can still look cool and good, that's Bond, he could make things pretty and cool for our eyes because he have that excitingly masculine presence, that energy.
These popular actors handed by the media to be contenders for Bond, I felt were fake (not literally), but in terms of looks and presence.