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Comments
Sorry but TB's is quite underwhelming...
Yeah MR and TSWLM are pretty decently unhinged baddie plots: they actually want to destroy the world, and they're big and spectacular and cinematic to look at. With TB, if the worst comes to the worst and 007 can't find the bomb, the authorities can just pay the ransom and stop the detonation.
But they're dealing with SPECTRE. What's to stop them getting their ransom, and still destroying a city with one of the bombs.
I disagree on the urgency of TB's plot. Yes the authorities can pay the ransom. Let's remember that $100 million in 1965 was an absurdly large amount of money.
As Bond says to Domino, if you don't help, thousands of people will die. Potential loss of life is always something for Bond to strive to stop. Besides, TB is such a colourful and beautiful film to look at, that I'm happy to go along for the ride.
As to the nominated entries, I'll go with GF.
I apologise Goldfinger, it's an inspired deal. And so, a dastardly plot, that betters the Fleming novel of the same name.
The CR (card game), FYEO, LALD, TLD, YOLT, TND, DN and OP plots also work very well for their films IMO.
What is it about SPECTRE's methods which suggests they'll do that? They're a profit-making organisation. If anything it's bad business to do that: they get into bed with the Chinese in the next movie, if they've demonstrated they don't keep to their agreements and just blow anyone up for the sake of it then China, or anyone else, are hardly likely to go into business with them.
MI6 don't know that of course and have to stop them, but really someone like Drax poses more danger: he really wants to do it. Blofeld just wants the cash and doesn't care if the bombs blow or not, but would prefer if they didn't blow as it means he gets his loot.
In contrast, Goldfinger, Tomorrow Never Dies and TWINE (which we haven't mentioned here but is a fairly solid baddie plot in the Goldfinger mould: reroute the pipeline to make the one you own more valuable) all have plots in which the bomb has to blow in order for the baddie to make their cash. In Thunderball it has to not blow. Which is less exciting for me.
I don't really get why that's an argument that it's urgent though..? It's important, sure, but not really all that important to the audience, because we don't see those thousands of people. No-one we see in the film is in danger from the nuke. That doesn't mean we don't appreciate it would be bad if the bomb went off, but films are all about a connection with the characters: don't you feel more danger and urgency at the end of Octopussy when Bond has the bomb right next to his face? It's just human nature.
And isn't TB famously the boring one out of all the Bond films?
Of course the funny thing about the CR card plot is it's the only time where the masterplan is actually made by Bond's side rather than the villain!
Funnily enough it's a bit more Mission Impossible in that way.
It's not really a "masterplan" though. In truth it is a bonkers idea which doesn't make a whole lot of sense and is completely unrealistic.
Yeah it's absolutely insane, which is why I think a lot of writers have trouble trying to find Fleming's voice for plots- they're crazy :) He tries to gamble a man to death!
But the main plan in the story isn't Le Chiffre's; it's M's.
I agree that TWINE's villain plot is very good in theory, it's just represented in a bad way in the movie IMO. (although I quite liked the submarine ending the first one or two times I watched it)
I rather like the idea of putting plutonium into the sub reactor to make it blow: that's a neat, original idea. And also: Bond, Christmas and M are all within blast radius: exciting.
I take this point, but I personally don't think the characters need to be directly in the line of fire for things to be exciting. We admired the TND plot a couple of pages back, but if the missile is launched from the stealth boat none of the characters onscreen are the ones who suffer, yet we still feel the stakes of it all and why Bond must stop it. My two cents on the TB plot debate is the same as that.
It's interesting how many of them are riffs on others. TWINE's is the Goldfinger plot, and GoldenEye is a basically a riff on the Thunderball one, stealing some military superweapons n order to make some cash.
I have a hard time choosing between GF and TB. The latter is my favorite Bond film and the plot is an evergreen as others pointed out, still a very real and convincing fear. Also along with YOLT, one of the films where the world-wide panic and race against the clock feels real as opposed to TSWLM or MR among others. Add in not long after the film came out that a real bomber was lost and it was like the best free advertising as to how this was a very real thing.
I have to go with the plot of GF. Not only is it imaginative, but Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn have improved on Fleming by making it more plausible by planting the bomb to make Goldfinger's wealth go up rather than just stealing the gold, going to the length to explain why that wouldn't work in the process.
Also, whereas SPECTRE is just threatening to use the bombs to extort money, Goldfinger is willing to still blow his up and cause needless deaths, easily dismissing all the deaths referring to how many motorists are killed in accidents each year. It's a chilling moment and a tribute to Frobe's acting. Actually one of the great villain reveal scenes in the series, if not the best. That's evil and he would still see his stock go up and see the chaos on the financial system for years to come. Although GF is not one of my favorite films overall, the plot and villains are great.
I think in terms of realism TWINE is probably higher up there, or Octopussy more chillingly so.
I wonder what the most realistic and believable baddie plot is? Le Chiffre's plan with the airliner is up there (and actually relatively harmless!), I guess Greene's plan could be... FRWL maybe (although I never get why Russia wouldn't just change their codes once they realise a Lector has disappeared?)... if any of us understood Koskov's plan that might well be too! :)
The machines themselves are as valuable as the codes they would crack, as no decoding machine is the same as another and any future codes could be easier cracked if they had the right equipment. The only solution would have been to completely overhaul their coding system, which would be a major setback even to a powerful country. See also, the ATAC in FYEO, which is the same concept but flipped.
You would think that the one job it has to do is not let the West read the codes though, so overhauling the system would be what they'd have to do; although it's a good point that that would be a major setback for them and so still a victory for MI6. But as soon as the Russians notice it's missing that's the end of any hope of M being able to read their messages.
What Bond really should have done is blow the room where the Lector was and planted a bit of wreckage so they would have thought it was destroyed in the explosion.
Likewise with the ATAC, what he should have done was blow it up as soon as he saw it in the St Georges wreck: I don't get why he was trying to recover it in the movie. I suspect he was secretly working for the Russians :)
Yeah, that's true. The extra detail goes a long way. While the film cleverly manages to follow the plot of the book while implementing SPECTRE as the puppet masters, they did sacrifice a extra story detail from the novel; the Russians were happy for Bond to take the decoder back to England as it was booby-trapped to explode upon inspection. It covers that little hole nicely, at least from the Russian perspective.
In that way it's actually a bit strange that M knows it's a trap but has to go for it anyway as the prize is too good to ignore, as if he thinks the Russians are behind the trap (I don't think they suspect anyone else at that point do they?) then why would the Lektor be genuine?
LOL. What was Koskov's plan anyway? Trading diamonds for arms? Shouldn't it have been the other way around: he gives them arms, he gets diamonds?
Mission Impossible: Fallout really showed what a climax can look like if the villain is in possession of two atomic bombs.
It seems like it would've made a good Tom Clancy novel plot also. On close inspection, OP's plot is like an updated version of GF's plot i.e, main villain(Auric Goldfinger, Prince Kamal Khan) teams up with an official(Mr. Ling, General Orlov) from a communist superpower(Red China, Soviet Union) to smuggle a bomb onto an American military base in order to wreak havoc in the West. As strong as GF's plot is I think OP's take on it slightly improves it and makes it even more tense and exciting with Bond having to race against time across East and West Germany to stop the bomb.
I've heard that criticism for years but I've never thought so. Perhaps it's my fondness for locations like the Bahamas and for underwater sports. I guess I'm with the original 1965 audiences who found TB exciting and made it a megahit. Also, TB is the first Fleming novel I ever read.
Yeah that's a fair take. I think AVTAK and TWINE are perhaps closer to GF in that their aims are similar i.e to destroy a valuable stake of a commodity so that their, already large, holdings in the same commodity increase hugely in value. TND also hovers slightly around there too, although it's not exactly the same as Carver needs to destroy a city in order to grow his company even further, but it's not a million miles off.