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What do you mean about ad campaigns? Why would Amazon help them?
I think making two films back to back is a bit too ambitious, and I’m not sure the latest Mission Impossibles are a very appetising example: they started making those over five years ago and the second is only about to come out, they must be exhausted.
Agreed about back to back films too. I don’t think it ever works out great in practice, and each Bond film I think should be its own adventure/crafted as its own thing even if there are story overlaps with the previous one.
Yes I like that every time they make a Bond film they pour everything they've got into it, they don't hold stuff back (unless it's something which gets chopped out and doesn't fit into this one).
Mission Impossible did that and it didn't work so well.
You could have Bond defeat the villian in SP, then find the Spectre ring at the end of the film, which would lead him on the path of Spectre and Blofeld in the follow up.
You'd have to name SP something else I suppose
Quantum Of Solace and Spectre are still the biggest missed opportunities in the series in my eyes.
I found a David Arnold playlist on Spotify this afternoon, and I was enjoying it as I was reading. 'The Name's Bond' from the CR soundtrack came on, and it's superb, the way the tension mounts and the main theme comes in like a brick through a window a few minutes in. I'm sure people (like me), who watched that scene in the cinema, will remember it.
We all felt that Bond was back, and the future for the movie franchise looked, well, amazing. When those credits rolled, there wasn't a single person in the audience who wasn't up for seeing the next Bond film, like, now!
Hard to believe it'll soon be 20 years ago. And the series, for me, never really delivered on that promise of those last moments of CR.
I agree, SPECTRE would have been great as a two-parter, giving Blofeld a chance to build his evil presence. And the final scene of SPECTRE, with Bond driving off in the DB5 should obviously have been the final scene of Craig's tenure, rather than that debacle of NTTD. And QoS, in my ideal world, would have been simply made better. Made right, without the daft milli-second editing and unexplainable plot. So Craig could still have 'had his five', so to speak.
I do think though, that the Craig era was mostly a success.
NTTD is a Bond film, so devoid of Bondian danger and it shouldn't be so.
I enjoy SPECTRE too.
It's actually hard for me to imagine someone who's an aficionado of the James Bond movie franchise, preferring NTTD to SP.
Why is that?
Because, in my opinion, Spectre delivers more traditional Bond movie thrills and cinematic Bondian satisfaction than NTTD, which I find misguided, uneven and, to be blunt, not very respectful to the original concept of James Bond, as envisioned by his creator.
And please note that, all this is my opinion, and at no time have I said that people shouldn't like NTTD better, or that anyone is less of a Bond fan for liking it better. I've really tried to word it carefully.
Not that that'll stop people on here from giving me short shrift, eh?
I am a James Bond aficionado, and I prefer NTTD to SP.
Thanks for the clarification. It almost sounded like you were intimating that liking NTTD more than SP made you less an “aficionado”, which is why I asked if you could elaborate. We all have our own opinions on what constitutes a James Bond film, or at least what we want out of a Bond film. Like how QOS was the first to not have Bond sleep with the leading lady of the film, and to some that made it less of a James Bond film, but that’s only a small number compared to how many felt about NTTD’s choices.
In the seventies, Frank Sinatra made a full-on disco single. Sinatra was one of the greatest proponents of orchestrated 'big band' era music, and many Sinatra fans were appalled at the disco single. It broke with tradition. Yet, I'm sure there were Sinatra fans who actually enjoyed the single, and would say "it's a brave diversion. Why should we keep listening to the same formula of big band swing and orchestrated ballads?".
You could make up loads of similar comparisons in pop culture, couldn't you? Situations where a franchise or a 'brand' breaks the formula, and some people are on board with the new direction, and some hate it.
So when I say I can't understand an aficionado of the James Bond movie series liking NTTD more than SPECTRE, it's the same as me not understanding why anyone who loved Sinatra's brand of music, would happily embrace the disco single, and even prefer it to the previous versions of the songs used for the disco 45. That's not to say they shouldn't like it, or are any less of a Sinatra fan for liking it better. It's just that the musical style was quite far removed from the initial genre.
No Time to Die works as a final CraigBond film. I can see that. Watching the five CraigBond films through, they work as a series, and I can understand how people would accept the movie within the 'reboot' (god, I hate that word) era. But for me, the movie takes too many liberties with the concept of James Bond, to sit comfortably with the rest of the movies in the series. SPECTRE might well be an inferior movie to NTTD, artistically. But the whole deal with killing Felix, killing Blofeld, making Bond a dad, and killing James Bond isn't what I want, no more than I want to hear Old Blue Eyes singing to synth drums with a four-on-the-floor drum beat, in a spandex jumpsuit and afro.
Just look at the fear surrounding Amazon.
Two of these things happened in Fleming (and one nearly happened twice, though admittedly even Fleming never went that far).
We never even find out if Kissy went full-term, so to say he was a dad in the books is stretching it a bit.
And as for James Bond nearly dying in the books. Well, they're James Bond books. He nearly dies all the time, doesn't he? That's part of the whole deal.
They should have just adapted YOLT fully. Add more action. Then show us that Samurai-Blofeld v Bond's fight for the very first time on screen. That's the kind of thing that even suits Craig's Bond.
It's a bit of a paradox, but there's so much in YOLT that has and still could be adapted. And yet I don't think it's possible to adapt it faithfully. It's a similar case with Fleming's MR nowadays.
So if we're looking at a way to put a Fleming novel on-screen these days, 2006's Casino Royale is an excellent example of how it can be done successfully. Keeping true to the book, but adding quality extra bits, and updating it sensitively and classily.
That's a slightly strange way of trying to escape that! I guess she might have been run over the next day, or had a fatal allergic reaction from a wasp sting, but this is adding stuff which isn't in the book in order to get away from what the book is saying: the way the book presents it to us, she's having his baby.
A bit like saying Holmes doesn't die at Reichenbach: he does die, the writer just changed his mind later.
I think CR was adapted at the right time. They could get away with adding that original first half with a globe trotting Bond, big action sequences, secondary Bond girls etc because that's what was more or less expected from a Bond film (I don't think a more stripped back version only adapting the novel would have quite been as gripping). It gave them creative freedom to add more. Some of the book's darker elements could actually be included as well, whereas in other planned, but unmade versions of the novel in the 50s/60s (or even later) you couldn't really have things like the torture scene. For a Bond film it's a really unique premise as well with Bond being sent to out-gamble a villain (let's be honest, as good as the MR novel is, there's little in the actual meat of the story that we haven't seen in Bond film before). I'd also say the film wisely makes changes to Bond's character compared to that first Fleming novel (he's nowhere near as humorous or brash as Craig's is, and I don't think any viewers really want a rant from an onscreen Bond about how outraged he is at a woman coming to assist him).
I think if CR shows that a Fleming novel can be adapted today, there's still an awful lot of liberties and changes it'll have to make.
I'll explain myself then.
If I had a wife who is pregnant, I'm going to be a dad. I'm not a dad yet, though, am I?
James Bond was never a dad in Ian Fleming's books, in the same way Daniel Craig was. I think you know that though, right? I mean, you can see the difference. James Bond doesn't become a father and meet his kid in the books. Please tell me you can see that difference.
And James Bond doesn't die in any of the Ian Fleming books either. I don't know why people keep saying he dies, (or "nearly dies"). Last time I read Golden Gun, he was still quite alive at the end.
I can't say I personally think Bond should die in any story. But at the same time I can't completely ignore NTTD because of this view/preference, nor can I say that the film doesn't engage me. It has its flaws for me, but I think it's actually a good Bond movie, and it's fitting for the Craig era. Not much else I can say about it, at least without getting into existential discussions about what a Bond film/story should or shouldn't do! And let's be honest, that's only going to give us contradictory points.
It's a difference, but a semantic one. Like if Fleming only ever wrote him arriving and leaving airports in different countries, but the films actually showed him on a plane, and I were to say that James Bond should never be seen on a plane.
Please tell me you can understand the point about Reichenbach.
Look, it's fine, those things aren't to your taste and you don't like Bond doing them. But I'm glad they haven't been rigidly sticking only to what happened in the previous films: if they'd done that then we wouldn't have got LALD with its voodoo stuff, or, well, any of the times the series has innovated.