what if we have a 007 against supernatural?

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  • Simon wrote: »
    j_w_pepper wrote: »
    I can see your point, but there's a lot more to that. For one thing, how should they know he is coming at all? And then, what about the entire tarot card story? Cards that have "007" on the back?

    The same answer to so many older Bond films - Plot Convenience! I always thought the cards with 007 on the back was more akin to a mistake/product placement than anything.

    As for the cards having information pertinent to Bond - it's the same trick that gets pulled when a real con-artist fortune teller has you sat down in front of them. It's a an ambiguous guess, just the same as people find meaning in horoscopes. Who knows, maybe off camera the cards also told Kananga he and Tee-Hee would be lovers so he just decided to listen to the bits he thought more believable.

    I think just about everything in LALD can be explained without admitting to a reality of the supernatural within the world of Bond if you choose to view it that way. Solitaire might simply have had really good intuition (as Bond considers in the novel), and when she loses her powers it's simply a matter of her succumbing to a self-fulfilling prophecy. As mentioned previously, Baron Samedi appearing on the train at the end could just be fourth wall breaking or perhaps the snakes in the coffin were nonpoisonous. In fact, as a kid I always figured the first Baron Samedi that comes up through the ground must have been an animatronic. I never considered the character was meant to be actually regenerating (though that was probably just because of the control station and mechanical lift we're shown below).

    What I always found more troubling than any of that was that Bond himself seems to admit to belief in the voodoo powers when he asks Solitaire to use her ability to help them find the poppy fields. (Though I now realize he was probably meant to be speaking flippantly here.)
  • RichardTheBruceRichardTheBruce I'm motivated by my Duty.
    edited November 2021 Posts: 12,914
    QBranch wrote: »
    What if the villain goes up against
    zombie Bond

    ?
    Zombie Bond
    is my longtime concept. So obvious.

  • VenutiusVenutius Yorkshire
    Posts: 2,895
    There were plans to have Eva Green 'haunting Bond' in QOS, but I assume it would've been in nightmares or he kept thinking he saw her out of the corner of his eye, rather than a literal haunting!
  • TheQueensPeaceTheQueensPeace That's Classified
    Posts: 74
    you can HINT at the supernatural and have the villains USE it. LeChiffre, for example, is a satanist but it is never spelled out. Mr Big uses voodoo. Blofeld is a real world vampiric Dracula type. But tread carefully with anything like that. Hints at aliens / ghosts being researched/deployed as superstitious weapons maybe but never confirmed as actual facets of the lore. SPECTRE kinda went 'there' and arguably foreshadows where Bond is headed in his next film..
  • quantumspectrequantumspectre argentina
    Posts: 61
    you can HINT at the supernatural and have the villains USE it. LeChiffre, for example, is a satanist but it is never spelled out. Mr Big uses voodoo. Blofeld is a real world vampiric Dracula type. But tread carefully with anything like that. Hints at aliens / ghosts being researched/deployed as superstitious weapons maybe but never confirmed as actual facets of the lore. SPECTRE kinda went 'there' and arguably foreshadows where Bond is headed in his next film..
    yes, sometimes i wish spectre was more supernatural, even the opening with the day of the dead make it more dark than others 007 movies. needed more of that.

  • BirdlesonBirdleson Moderator
    Posts: 2,161
    I'd love it if done subtly.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited June 2022 Posts: 14,861
    you can HINT at the supernatural and have the villains USE it. LeChiffre, for example, is a satanist but it is never spelled out. Mr Big uses voodoo. Blofeld is a real world vampiric Dracula type. But tread carefully with anything like that. Hints at aliens / ghosts being researched/deployed as superstitious weapons maybe but never confirmed as actual facets of the lore. SPECTRE kinda went 'there' and arguably foreshadows where Bond is headed in his next film..
    yes, sometimes i wish spectre was more supernatural, even the opening with the day of the dead make it more dark than others 007 movies. needed more of that.

    That's a lovely thought, yes that would have been great. The Spectre poster got a lot of flak but I always thought the image of Bond in his skull mask was nicely striking. Maybe they could have made Spectre itself into a bit more of a cult; I'd love to see something a bit more twisted and kind of perverse in a Fleming way in them.
    Imagine the 'Mickey Mouse' Spectre Rome meeting in the style of Temple of Doom! :D
  • edited June 2022 Posts: 784
    mtm wrote: »
    you can HINT at the supernatural and have the villains USE it. LeChiffre, for example, is a satanist but it is never spelled out. Mr Big uses voodoo. Blofeld is a real world vampiric Dracula type. But tread carefully with anything like that. Hints at aliens / ghosts being researched/deployed as superstitious weapons maybe but never confirmed as actual facets of the lore. SPECTRE kinda went 'there' and arguably foreshadows where Bond is headed in his next film..
    yes, sometimes i wish spectre was more supernatural, even the opening with the day of the dead make it more dark than others 007 movies. needed more of that.

    That's a lovely thought, yes that would have been great. The Spectre poster got a lot of flak but I always thought the image of Bond in his skull mask was nicely striking. Maybe they could have made Spectre itself into a bit more of a cult; I'd love to see something a bit more twisted and kind of perverse in a Fleming way in them.
    Imagine the 'Mickey Mouse' Spectre Rome meeting in the style of Temple of Doom! :D

    It could have redeemed that film quite frankly. LALD had spooky elements.
  • edited June 2022 Posts: 2,750
    mtm wrote: »
    you can HINT at the supernatural and have the villains USE it. LeChiffre, for example, is a satanist but it is never spelled out. Mr Big uses voodoo. Blofeld is a real world vampiric Dracula type. But tread carefully with anything like that. Hints at aliens / ghosts being researched/deployed as superstitious weapons maybe but never confirmed as actual facets of the lore. SPECTRE kinda went 'there' and arguably foreshadows where Bond is headed in his next film..
    yes, sometimes i wish spectre was more supernatural, even the opening with the day of the dead make it more dark than others 007 movies. needed more of that.

    That's a lovely thought, yes that would have been great. The Spectre poster got a lot of flak but I always thought the image of Bond in his skull mask was nicely striking. Maybe they could have made Spectre itself into a bit more of a cult; I'd love to see something a bit more twisted and kind of perverse in a Fleming way in them.
    Imagine the 'Mickey Mouse' Spectre Rome meeting in the style of Temple of Doom! :D

    It could have redeemed that film quite frankly. LALD had spooky elements.

    I love the idea of making SPECTRE more cult-like... I mean, they always were a bit anyway with the numbers they give each other, the strange ritual/convention they have to 'shame and kill' anyone who fails... It also works in the sense that this version of Blofeld ultimately killed his father and changed his name, seemingly managed to convince a bunch of criminals to join his weird supervillian cult... I mean, the level of myth making and charisma such a man would have to adopt would be interesting to see played out and would bring out a different side to Waltz's Blofeld. I dunno, the idea of a cult gaining access to surveillance/defence/information technology, staging terrorist attacks, using fear to spread their message, perhaps implant or recruit members within governments is far more scary than simply having a surveillance program for the sake of anticipating MI6 investigating them.

    Anyway, I'm all for more supernatural/weird in Bond. As others and myself have mentioned it's certainly there in Fleming, albiet in a grounded way.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited June 2022 Posts: 14,861
    Yeah they sort of worship Blofeld already in that, and he came back from the dead - go with that a bit further! :)
    And they're called Spectre and have a spooky septapus as their logo...

    (Hang on, is that why it's called Spectre in the film Spectre? Because Blofeld/Oberhauser has returned from the dead? The dead are alive and all that? I've not really put that together before!)
  • edited June 2022 Posts: 2,750
    Exactly. It'd actually play quite well with Waltz's Blofeld - this strange subversion of having this unseen, fear inducing, almost supernatural presence paired with this seemingly pleasant and affable little man. Kinda like the Blofeld in the OHMSS novel was to an extent. Just up the mania in Waltz's performance and hammer home Blofeld's mythos that he gives himself, this powerful force who rose from the dead (perhaps introduce the character a bit later onscreen) and it'd have been an improvement.

    I do wish the Craig films had leaned just a bit more into those supernatural and fantasy ideas. I got the sense there were shades of it in both SP and NTTD, but we have yet to really implemented. That actually gives me some hope that they'll try and push it further with Bond 26. Y'know, really give the sense that Fleming did in many of his novels that Bond is slowly descending into this strange, otherworldly territory.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    007HallY wrote: »

    I do wish the Craig films had leaned just a bit more into those supernatural and fantasy ideas. I got the sense there were shades of it in both SP and NTTD, but we have yet to really implemented. That actually gives me some hope that they'll try and push it further with Bond 26. Y'know, really give the sense that Fleming did in many of his novels that Bond is slowly descending into this strange, otherworldly territory.

    Yes I like that. I guess if you look at something like Batman Begins there's a bit of a hint of that kind of world mixing with the world of the hi tech, with the mystical Tibetan stuff and the Scarecrow hallucinations: make it a bit more twisted and freaky.
  • VenutiusVenutius Yorkshire
    Posts: 2,895
    Hey, if the President of the USA can worship a 40ft owl statue in Bohemian Grove, Blofeld could've hoodwinked his simps into believing anything!
  • GadgetManGadgetMan Lagos, Nigeria
    Posts: 4,247
    I thought NTTD was the Bond film where a bit of the supernatural was going to be explored....at least in a subtle way, because of Safin's mask. I thought Safin was going to use the mask in at least two more eventful scenes, and possibly the finale. I don't know if it would have been too outlandish for Craig's Bond, to give Safin's mask some sort of unique and nefarious gadgetry.
  • edited June 2022 Posts: 2,750
    GadgetMan wrote: »
    I thought NTTD was the Bond film where a bit of the supernatural was going to be explored....at least in a subtle way, because of Safin's mask. I thought Safin was going to use the mask in at least two more eventful scenes, and possibly the finale. I don't know if it would have been too outlandish for Craig's Bond, to give Safin's mask some sort of unique and nefarious gadgetry.

    I'd have loved for them to have at least done something with Safin's fixation on Japanese culture. There's so much interesting folklore that could have been incorporated into his character. I mean, having read Haruki Murakami's Kafka On The Shore (excellent book by the way) they go into a bit of detail about Ikiryos, which are disembodied spirits from living people, often those consumed by jealousy or rage, who haunt others... I mean, to me that seems not unlike Safin in a broad way. He's this ghost of a man, his body deteriorated, consumed by both rage against SPECTRE and jealously over Bond's relationship with Madeline... he even comes back as that sort of 'spirit' in his mask to get revenge on White and the rest of SPECTRE. Just a little touch of the supernatural like that could have been cool...

    Also, apparently the original idea for Safin's mask was a Siberian bear hunting armour. Honestly, I'd love to see this idea recycled for a future Bond film, perhaps give it to the henchmen...

    tumblr_m92n7bBPQ81qfoxz2o1_500.jpg?w=700

    Honestly, can imagine a Bond villain in a Fleming novel wearing that. Looks absolutely nightmarish.
  • GadgetManGadgetMan Lagos, Nigeria
    Posts: 4,247
    Yeah, looks cool @007HallY albeit it might be compared to Pinhead from Hellraiser.
  • edited June 2022 Posts: 2,750
    That may have been their logic for changing it... Still though, it's such a striking costume! I can imagine a pair of Wint and Kidd style henchmen dressing up in those suits and killing their victims.
  • GadgetManGadgetMan Lagos, Nigeria
    Posts: 4,247
    007HallY wrote: »
    That may have been their logic for changing it... Still though, it's such a striking costume! I can imagine a pair of Wint and Kidd style henchmen dressing up in those suits and killing their victims.

    Yeah, it could work.
  • EmilioLargoEmilioLargo Dublin, Ireland
    Posts: 15
    A nice blend of Fleming and Dennis Wheatley would be interesting. As mentioned in a previous post SPECTRE being a shadowy organisation led by a cult leader Blofeld (not unlike Mocata ) certainly tickles my fancy. I think it's time to bring the fantasy element back into Bond. It's been far too serious of late.
  • I’ve always wanted a Bond film that dealt with the more horror tinged Fleming stuff, pushing Live and Let Die’s horror bits further. Not necessarily supernatural, but use Red Grant’s book backstory about killing on full moons for a new henchman, have Dr. No’s obstacle course with the giant squid, and the night time island infiltration and barracuda barrier from Live and Let Die. It could be pretty nerve-wracking stuff if done properly, and people couldn’t say it’s un-Bondian because it all comes straight from the books.

    Why not remake LALD with more emphasis on the horror aspect and perhaps explain Baron Samedi to make sense of why and what happened as to him being perched on the train at the ending of the 1973 film not in the sense as a sequel but in a sense of a remaining that can be applied to the loose end of the first movie.
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