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Attacking DC because his looks are not troo to Bond.
And so on.
Sadly, you might be right. Although I suspect SF will become just another recent Bond that I won't bother rewatching.
It has actually given me a greater appreciation for CR, which is far superior.
In time all the hype will settle down and there'll be a more considered view. May be my view of it will go up, but I'm sure that many of those who are hailing it as a masterpiece right now will give it a more balanced assessment in a year or two.
If I'm being fair, it's not bad in the way that the Brosnan films were, it's just a really bitter disappointment as I'd expected so much more.
How true. i'm off to see SF again just to see if i like it better 2nd time,or not.
I suggest the likes of @Getafix stick with their old favourites and don't bother watching any future installments.
True we don't learn a lot about Bond's psyche but when have we ever? In the books all we know is that Bond is a reflective loner whos parents died in a 'climbing accident'
The film went into different territory that had never been done in the films before - and unlike Brosnan's era followed through.
Yes the CG was obvious in places but I wouldn't call the action scenes "boring" at all. At least they were coherently editied unlike the last installment and at least the plot had a bit more meat/excitement to it.
What exactly is this new territory? I don't have an issue with the seriousness as long as the plot makes sense. And I don't actually care too much about plot either as long as the film carries you along (as, IMO QoS did) but this didn't do that for me. It invites you to take it seriously, but take almost any scene and analyse it and it makes no sense at all.
MI6 has put all NATO's agents on a laptop harddrive? Okay, then MI6 are utterly incompetent.
M orders Bond shot (thereby guaranteeting she won't get back the disk). Okay, she's incompetent and STILL doesn't trust Bond.
Bond falls 300m, falls to the bottom of a river unconscious and survives. Okay, I'll just accept that bit as total nonsense.
Mallory tells M she's sacked because she's utterly cr*p at her job (makes sense) and then she just says 'no I'm staying' and continues to make a monumental mess. Okay, MI6 and M are utterly incompetent.
Bond tracks down an assassin and makes his way to Macau where a woman who is so scared of Silva she leads Bond straight to him and her death...
Yes, but my point is to what purpose? It promises much but delivers little.
The whole thrust of OHMSS is Bond falling in love. The climactic scene sees Bond's world destroyed by his nemesis. In the meantime we get an excellent action adventure (and some wonderful music that helps tell the love story). The ending is totally shocking and transforms our perception of Bond and (until DAF came along), Bond's outlook on the world.
What happens in SF? Bond stupidly decides to take on the villain in a remote location with no weapons and no back up that happens to be his childhood home (so what - what actual significance does this have to the story whatsoever? - think about it). M dies (hoorah). The end. I'm sorry, but if you buy this film as some kind of innovative spin on Bond I think you've been conned. The basic premise has potential but the film then goes on to tell us ABSOLUTELY nothing about Bond that we did not know already. And it spends an awful long time, ponderously and pretentiously telling us that absolute nothing. I'm afraid this has confirmed all my worst fears about Mendes as director - that he'd try and inject hidden depths to a series that is not frankly about hidden depths - and that the result would be an incoherent jarring mess.
Not only this, but M is portrayed as a) utterly ruthless (fair enough, I suppose), but also b) untrustworthy, c) arrogant and d) utterly incompetent. When a Bond movie involves Bond being shot in the first 15 minutes at the orders of M, then I don't like M very much. Why is she (again) not trusting Bond to complete his mission? What does Bond owe her after she has serially back-stabbed him. If you include DAD, then it is clear that this woman really, really, has it in for her 'favourite' agent. Calling the 'shot' doesn't even make sense. Her top agent is engaging the target and she orders a rookie field agent to take a pot shot on the off chance that she'll hit her target. The odds on Bond coming out on top were clearly better than the odds on Moneypenny hitting her target. It just doesn't make ANY sense, and it makes M's trust in Bond a tedious central part of the plot again.
On top of that, we realise the main villain is motivated exactly by M's ruthless lack of loyalty to her agents. Silva was one of her best and she sold him down the river. Not only that, but when he shows up she shows not the slightest remorse or guilt. Silva is clearly mad but his hatred it entirely justified and I for one was with him all the way. I'm sorry, but the villain of the film is bl**dy Judy Dench. I was rooting for Silva throughout and wondering why on earth Bond was bothering to protect the stupid old mare.
If you want to pick the narrative of that film apart too you could say he sleeps with several women in the process of the film - kind of undermimes the idea of him falling in love don't you think?
Not in the Sixties and definitely not if you're Bond.
In the CR book Bond sleeps with one woman throughout the whole story (Vesper).
Once again you are speaking as a Bond fan who knows everything about the character because you read the books, and the movies and the documentaries....But for general audience and new audience of younger generations it's some new aspects to the character. All they (probably) know is Bond surfing in Iceland.
My point is, as Bond fans we must not be selfish, we must think of others because without their interest in Bond, Skyfall is probably not making $287 million in 10 days.
But CR told us that Bond is an orphan. That was (I think) the first cinematic reference to this. SF could have taken it a bit further, but it doesn't. That's what I didn't like. I'm more than ready for some more character-driven stories. But this just didn't deliver.
He hasn't. That's the thing. He hasn't even touched the books (and the first cinematic reference to Bond being an orphan was in GE).
How doesn't it take things further? We see his home, an elderly man who looked after him as a child and the graves of his parents (their names have never been mentioned in a Bond film before).
I'm starting to think Getafix wants Bond to go into great detail about how tough his childhood was growing up without ma and pa.
And...? Would reading the books have given me a greater appreciation of the incoherent plot of SF?
It would give you more of a basis to be on here.
Show a scene from his youth with his parents? Then, there would've been complaints that it was not needed, too melodramatic, and etc.
Sorry Getafix, I can't take you seriously.
So you've created a new rule that you have to have read the books to post on here? You haven't got a response to a single point I've made, so you retreat behind Fleming.
Tell me, what in Fleming tells you that this is a classic Bond movie? Seeing that he wasn't a big fan of the almost univerally recognised classic films made during his lifetime any way, I'd be delighted to hear your answer.
Frankly, I don't think they need to go down this route at all. But if you are going to go to Bond's childhood home and show his parents' grave and repeatedly go on about some unresolved childhood trauma you might actually want to resolve that in some way, or use it in the plot.