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I've always thought it was a shame that Mendes cut the scene of Bond struggling to run in Regents Park before the frags were removed - it would've been the perfect counterpart to him running full pelt from the Tube to the security committee meeting, with the direct comparison signifying clearly that he was back on top form. I know it tells us that, anyway, but the counterpart to the earlier scene would've been nice.
It’s probably been discussed at length now, but Bond’s age in SF never came across to me as him being past his prime (indeed the film is about him proving that he very much isn’t despite his injuries/personal issues). He’s very much an agent at his peak during the PTS. I’d say he’s actually faster and cleverer thinking on his feet in terms of how he pursues Patrice, less bullish and much smoother/skilled than in QOS and CR, with his one mistake ultimately costing him (also worth remembering that by the time he actually fights Patrice on top the train he’s already been shot in the shoulder. The fact that he can keep moving is astonishing. He’s a beast in this sense). Craig’s Bond to me comes off as being the same age/at the same point Brosnan’s Bond was in GE - that’s to say in his early 40s, having been an agent for a while. He’s not young, but still has potentially a number of years ahead of him with good health (which obviously in SF is under question). By SP he comes off as renewed and truly in his prime.
Different types of scenes in two different movies no doubt, but I think for me just because we see Patrice doing stuff like commandeering motorbikes and skilfully making various escapes, he comes off as more a match for Bond than Slate does.
I also think the power of SF’s PTS is seeing Bond at his peak going against such an opponent, taking these hits, and metaphorically ‘dying’. He puts in a damn good fight on top of the train though. He actually gets a hit in (with the same arm as his bad shoulder as well) that knocks Patrice to the ground (not sure why but it’s a detail I’ve always subconsciously remembered. It’s a feeling of our hero’s taken a hit but will still win). Even with a bullet in his shoulder I think he would have come out on top had M not gotten Moneypenny to pull the trigger.
I think that’s an issue with QOS. I’d argue it’s a film where Bond is too superhuman and never sufficiently put at a disadvantage. Bond on top form is great (as I said this is what we got during SF’s PTS, and him getting injured amps up the tension with this in mind) but when the climax of QOS involves an unarmed Bond fighting a villain with an axe and we know Bond will win, it really nullifies any ‘edge of your seat’ feeling these films need. If anything that moment needed Bond to be injured or for Greene to have played some sort of dirty trick that knocks Bond off guard for longer.
CR had its share of heightened reality during its action scenes, but we saw Bond getting legitimately hurt, even chugging whiskey and tending to wounds after fights. It brought a vulnerability to Bond that SF expanded and, in my opinion, the later Craig films and QOS somewhat neglected.
@Feyador
Looks like we're seeing the same things. Now, I'm not suggesting that this was the plan all along, but death is so prevalent throughout the Craig Bonds, that one wonders if this was by design after all. Especially important seems to have been the death of parents and brothers. Bond's parents play a symbolic part in SF; Judy's M serves as a surrogate mother (and her subordinates addressed her as "Mom".) We see Madeleine's parents get it. Safin lost his, and Camille lost hers; both are motivated by that loss. Oberhausen, in a way, lost his father to Bond -- he, too, is motivated by that. Silva is seen as Judy's M's other "son", which makes him something of a brother to Bond (and Mommy was very bad, wasn't she?) Then there's Felix, of course. Mathis exists somewhere between a brother and a father figure to Bond. Vesper is most likely an orphan (since she never denied Bond's claim.) Blofeld is Bond's foster brother. And, lastly, Bond himself, now a parent, must die too.
My point is that never before, in any actor's tenure, had the focus been so much on deaths in the families, tragedies that motivated characters and even entire stories. Almost every single film in the Craig years had such themes running through it. The Connery years, by comparison, barely touched the subject at all.
Does that make the death of Bond necessary or necessarily logical? No, but it makes his death, um, part of the "poetry"? I don't know. I don't hate it, I don't like it, I accept it. My point is that if any actor's tenure would be able to get away with it, it's Craig's. Personal deaths were never not on the agenda, and as soon as NTTD introduced offspring, I started contemplating Bond's death (knowing that Craig wasn't going to go out without one last surprise for us.)
@Benny
Thanks for the compliment.
I like these posts a lot. Death was very much a part of the Craig Bond films, and his version of the character faced it often. I’d say Craig’s Bond was even written/played fundamentally as a man who presumed he would never live as long as he did by even NTTD (and not in a cheeky ‘devil may care’ way that his predecessors had, but more a ‘I don’t care if I drink myself to death but still want to feel something along the way’ manner that he has in QOS/SF. Very much something related to the Fleming novels).
Erm, very debatable. It’s not that Bond has a pre-designed character arc in the novels, but he certainly has different facets of his personality which change/adapt based on his experiences. In CR he’s rather cold, arrogant, impersonal (and actually quite overtly sexist, and not in a way I suspect even Fleming intended to be glamorous). By the end he falls in love and is betrayed, his chance at a happy life shattered, and returns to MI6. In later novels he gains a sense of humour (even if it’s very gallows humour/not quite the light, quippy lines we get in the films), falls in love far more easily/falls for women with ‘one wing broken’ to the point he wants to protect them, becomes much more prone to his vices and depression when not on a mission. He becomes very self reflective of his past by the later novels, his dislike of killing in cold blood becomes more apparent to the point it creates conflict in regards to him doing his job, and he frequently confronts ideas like whether he should leave the service or not, and whether he indeed can ever settle down. I’m not sure if he’s quite the same character by the end.
It’s very similar to Craig’s Bond. Even in NTTD there’s a very Fleming-esque conflict between Bond potentially being able to have a happy life, and yet fate/his duty never allows him this. It’s one thing to say that Bond shouldn’t die (I actually agree) but it’s another to say that Fleming’s Bond doesn’t change at all throughout the novels, and I actually wonder if you’ve read them recently/are that familiar with them if you think this.
Of course he always was. It didn't happen when he was an active agent, but he'd stayed around long enough that events would follow him. So an unexpected and respectful closure to the character. Not in conflict with reestablishing another actor in the role.
An excellent quote, even if Sir Arthur was, in addition to a brilliant writer, a spiritualist crank. ;-)
To clarify, I don't think he's meant to be Dr No in the final film, just that it appears to have once been the plan. I think @007HallY offered the best counterpoints I could imagine, but I think the theory best explains Safin's appearance, his minions' appearances, his apparent heart placement, his being called doctor, Malek's coy comments about "final names", etc. The several separate speculations seem like special pleading when compared to the single speculation. One has to look at each separate fact and ask, "would we be more likely to see this on the assumption that he was Dr No, or more likely to see this on the assumption that he wasn't Dr No?" Or, "Is this weird to do if he's not Dr No, or is it weird to do if he is Dr No?" I mean, a "doctor" with a Noh mask logo who resembles Dr No, a character from the same series, following a film with another rebooted character. If Safin had a golden gun and a third nipple and one character called him "Francisco" in passing once, I'd make a different assumption!
I suppose it’s something that could potentially be asked during an interview or some Q and A in the future… I suspect that at least one producer has already denied this though as there were fan rumours about this when the trailer got released IIRC. Personally I just can’t see a timeframe/scenario where such a plot twist could be realistically edited out (except for that doctor reference, which again makes absolutely no sense as it seems specifically recorded in post production). At most it might have been an early script idea, but even then it seems like the sort of trivia fact that’d have come out by now. It’s so much more likely Safin is simply a sort of hybrid character which pays a heavier than usual homage to the classic Bond villains, specifically DN. NTTD is a film partly built on these broad references/adaptations on old Bond iconography anyway.
Indeed. It's just the way they said 'marm' that grated on me ;)
Yeah, I don't remember whether or not that clearly seemed recorded after the fact, but it just comes down to what you think is weirder, I suppose! I can't recall from any other film something comparable to a random character giving someone an inexplicable title just once. But it's also odd that they would fail to "remove" that from the script or whatever, as you said. Also weird that they didn't redo Daniel's "Blofield", but there it is!
I admit I sort of want this theory to be true for its explanatory power! I love Safin as a villain, but when he has Bond captive on his island and he discusses power and Bond makes a quip about playing God (!), his motivations appear to have changed, and a lot of people find it a bit flaky. (I like it) Additionally, the very mechanism of the superweapon appears to change a bit to something much more organic. It all feels like something you wouldn't just sit down and write to be the way it turned out, and that some big changes were made (post-COVID or whatever), and that Noh mask logo on the monitors is also part of it.
I think the flakiest villain motivation prior to Safin was probably Stromberg, who was a Blofeld replacement. Drax too, but he was revisiting Stromberg. DAF Blofeld is an odd one, extorting the world for cash when he has enough diamonds to cover a satellite. Maybe Gert Fröbe would have had a more logical motivation if he ended up in his place as once conceived?
Well, I'm not a native speaker so it doesn't bother me that much. ;-) It took a while to get used to it, however. Brosnan had never addressed her as his mother.
I’m pretty sure it was recorded afterwards/is ADR, or at the very least is something lifted from a different scene during production/has purposely been put there. The shot is very wide to the point no boom mics could fit above the frame to pick much up. There might be lapel mics on them (and I can’t remember how long that particular take lasts/if Malek talks afterwards, which could also have been ADR’d as is relatively common). The biggest clue for me is that you don’t actually see the henchman’s lips move (again, the shot is too wide) and I know shooting those climatic scenes was tight anyway and there is some patching together of things like the buyer ships etc.
I do agree Safin’s motives become a bit vague during those scenes, or at least come across that way. I don’t think you need much to create a good Bond villain motive (can be as simple as he simply wants to be known as the worlds biggest gold industrialist) but making sure it boils down to something relatively simple is key. The issue with Safin is he starts off as a rogue hell bent on destroying SPECTRE out of revenge (which is a great motive) but after they’re all killed the game plan of him becoming this megalomaniac comes off as a bit jarring. It doesn’t feel natural, as if the film is dealing with two different characters. His love for Madeline further muddies things, and the ‘invisible God’ lines is the sort of vague cerebral nonsense that personally just confuses me.
I’m not too sure of all the ins and outs but from my understanding there was some patchwork/editing and a dash of improvisation between Malek and Craig done to change things a bit (even little things like Safin just letting Mathilda walk off looks a bit devised in the edit/seems to have replaced a scene seen in the trailer where Safin points a gun at her). I’m not sure if anything was changed because of Covid though, and I doubt anything was fundamentally changed.
There are several ADR fixes in NTTD to help the audience along. "Madeleine...she's an agent of SPECTRE!" is one.
My personal favourite is “oNlY sPeCtRe ArE dYiNG” 😂
The weirdest part is they thought it’d be best to add in that line, and yet moments later he looks across the room at Paloma and fumbles out ‘are you, ugh, for my esc-‘ and just sort of stops speaking. If anything that’s a line which could have been made better with ADR.
I mean, I get it’s played for laughs, and I guess he’s meant to be nervous around Paloma? The character to me always came across as more eccentric than socially awkward honestly, and it’s such a strange moment that it took me a while to work out it was a joke.