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@fjdinardo Bond 26 is 95% a Hans Zimmer score. Villeneuve is Zimmer's new Nolan.
That, and no ones done a solo Bond score since Goldeneye, and doubtless they'd have asked Eric back if he'd had been any good.
It’s something we’ll have to see, and it depends on the specifics of the creative direction. They could well go for something ‘bigger’ in terms of the set pieces and villain’s scheme, but aim to ground it in certain ways in order to get the most out of the story (not unlike the first three Craig films but with a bigger scale). I really don’t know.
Well, the first 3 (or 2 at least) Craig films didn't ground fantastical and absurd adventures in a realistic setting, they just dropped the comic book aspect all together. Bond 26 will certainly carry forth the Paloma sequence aspect of B25, in a similar way that Casino Royale Carried on the realism of the North Korea aspect of DAD.
To be honest, to this day...for me, Serra's GoldenEye score still makes me feel the modernity of Brosnan's era. The score sounds futuristic, but still Bondian in parts...just that the modernity was too much, but I love it. I think EON weren't ready for it then. But by the time they got to Skyfall, they were ready for Newman's sound...which isn't really far from Serra's style of focusing more on the dramatic, eerie and romantic side of James Bond.
How do you mean solo?
Just once, standalone.
I mean, CR gave us sinking houses in the finale, an almost stereotypical looking villain with his scar/glass eye, Bond’s heart stopping and being restarted (all with a one liner at the end when he came back to the table) and even a lot of those familiar old Bond movie tropes. QOS gave us an airplane dogfight with Bond and the girl surviving the fall with a single parachute, Bond easily seducing the beautiful female agent meant to take him back to London, Bond single handedly storming the villain’s base, Bond chasing a henchman and fighting him in midair while caught/swinging on a rope etc. I wouldn’t say they dropped the ‘comic book’ aspect of Bond in those films, no.
Hmm, I’ll bring up the previous thing I said to you about expectations of this film ;) We have no control over what the filmmakers will do here. It also requires specifics (ie. What characters or moments are we talking about?) I don’t disagree something from the Craig films will be carried over, but that’s simply because they’re the most recent instalments in the franchise and filmmakers don’t create things in a vaccum. I’m sure we could get a plucky secondary Bond girl not unlike Paloma who gives us a humorous scene or two (although Paloma is simply a twist on the secondary Bond girl anyway, so it wouldn’t be unprecedented). And of course we’re going to get big, ever so slightly outlandish set pieces that could be compared to NTTD - it’s a Bond film!
Ah gotcha.
I'm really not sure I follow your logic here, your saying there's not a contrast between the early Craig films and the more outlandish entries such as DAD or MR? If so, then Craig was certainly given a lot of false credit over the years, because that's all I remember hearing about was how they put the more silly aspects away and got to grips with a serious, grounded story. And what exactly is fantastical or silly in your opinion about the sinking house? I wonder if fans were to rank Bonds silliest or most outlandish moments, whether the sinking house would even make the top 100? So no, can't say I entirely understand what your getting at.
The early Craig films are very consciously more grounded, character based takes on Bond which play with the well known cinematic tropes in various ways, sure. A back to basics approach to the franchise you could say. But these are still Bond films we're talking about. They contain action, danger, some big/somewhat outlandish set pieces, beautiful women, the stylish clothes/cars, a nice location or two, and of course the enviable, masculine hero at the centre of them. As I said, these films exist on a spectrum, and each film should be looked at individually anyway. They don't all have to involve space travel, invisible cars, or nanobots. They're all fantastical to some extent.
It's not exactly a scene you'd get in an adaptation of Le Carre, is it? It's a set piece which uses the surroundings of a beautiful European location and gives us an action sequence with a very particular concept. I'm not even sure if the house would sink like that in real life (or at least I'm unsure how many Venice buildings are supported by inflatable foundations like the ones in the film).
In terms of Bond films, it probably sits on that spectrum I talked about closer to the boat and helicopter sequences in FRWL (which incidentally have that Bondian tinge of fantasy to them too - Bond uses a flare gun to set off an oil explosion and shoots down a helicopter using a sniper from his gadget briefcase!) Or maybe perhaps something like the TLD fight with Necros on the dangling cargo net.
No thoughts on Bond restarting his heart and strutting back in with a one liner? Seems a bit out there for something which strips away all the 'comic book' aspects of Bond films. Or any of the other examples I gave?
I'm going to hazard a guess and say you do understand what I'm trying to say to you, you can follow the logic but want to be correct in this instance, and that you're capable of understanding the basic ideas here ;)
Anyway, to get back on topic, I don't know how Villeneuve will approach Bond, but he's obviously going to be making a Bond film. There's so much you can do with it. I'd love if we had a moment like in CR where Bond cleans up his wounds and chugs whiskey after a fight. Or indeed that we have a fight like the Grant one in FRWL, the staircase one in CR, or the one with Travelyan in GE. Something that shows us tangibly that Bond can get hurt and there's a sense of danger in this film. An issue I have with the Cuba sequence in NTTD is that it feels a bit too cartoonish at points, and while entertaining some of the danger gets lost in the comedy. I'd love a bit of that grit back from the earlier Craig films personally, but with a slightly different approach story-wise.
Yes I can't imagine the water at the edge of a canal is five storeys deep!
I'm going to say it's the opposite, that you understand theres a marked difference between a film like CR and the likes of outlandish films like MR/YOLT/DAD, that you fully understand what I'm getting at, and are simply pretending not to see it for the sake of the argument you're making having any kind of coherence. I don't know where the Le Carre namedrop comes from, or what relevance it has to this discussion. I'm very clear to say that I'm talking about a comparison between Bond films, I don't see the need to move the goalposts like that all of a sudden.
Bond restarting his heart is not remotely realistic the way it's portrayed, but that does not put it into the category of space laser battles or tsunami surfing. Like I say, I don't even believe that you believe that. If Bond fans had to rank their most outlandish or fantasical moments in Bond they would pick a dozen moments from Octopussy or Die Another Day before they even thought about the heart-restarter from CR, and I'm pretty sure if you were honest you'd do the same.
I didn’t say there weren’t differences between CR and something like MR and DAD (I’ll say it now clearly if you want - there are). I acknowledged that in the first sentence of my last post that it was a more back to basics take on Bond. I just disagreed that it did away with all elements of Bondian escapism, and that all Bond films contain a spectrum of what we’ll call outlandishness. The only thing I was saying was that potentially a Villeneuve film could ground some of that bigger, fantastical Bond stuff in a similar way the Craig films 'grounded' some of that Bondian outlandishness… maybe. That’s it ;)
Le Carre novels are generally more grounded and ‘realistic’ than Bond. I’m sorry if you genuinely didn’t understand that.
I don’t think it does. Like I said there’s a spectrum of what a set piece or even an idea for a scene in Bond can be in terms of its fantasy. See previous post I guess…
Sure… I guess… I’m not saying it’s the same as those other scenes though…
I mean, I’ve heard more people talk about how great/tense that scene is compared to those other scenes in Bond. And how cool the one liner is…
Pretty much, yes!
But I'm not arguing that Casino Royale doesn't have Bond elements, only that they aren't outlandish or fantasical compared to the likes of MR/YOLT/DAD.
If Brosnans Bond had been confronted with the sinking house he'd have simply grapple-propelled his way straight to the top, if Craigs Bond in CR is just as fantasical and outlandish, why doesn't he do the same?
Why are you arguing then? 🤣 I said I agreed with that. I just said that not all Bond films have (or have to have) space travel or invisible cars. Some of them have decoding machines or action scenes involving boats/planes. Or sinking houses or Bond restarting his heart.
What’s outlandish about a grappling hook?
😉
But it’s all about tone and how far your tongue is in your cheek when you’re making it, and obviously the tongue depth varies throughout the films. They’re all silly at heart though.
Yes, it's not supposed to be realistic. Even the grittiest ones have a certain weird quality.
Yes, just not following strictly how things would work in reality doesn't make it outlandish, it just makes it a movie. 8-|
You're overthinking it. All of those were designed with the idea of making a film and telling a story in their own way. And, most importantly, making it interesting. I do agree they went into both films with different foundations for a Bond film (ie TWLSM being a bigger blockbuster of a Bond film, while CR was a back to basics reboot of the character/franchise). But are you saying the set designers or writers of TSWLM were completely unconcerned with creating any sense of realism - or convincing verisimilitude - with how they depicted Stromberg's underwater base? It has to at the very least come off as convincing onscreen and have one foot in the door with some semblance of reality, otherwise it may as well have levitated or be controlled by mermaids.
On the flip side, if CR was completely fixated on making it all 'realistic' in the strictest sense, the poisoning scene or sinking house would not have been included at all. But they went into those scenes knowing it was a Bond film, and that our hero would be able to pull through, strut back into the casino, and crack a line after restarting his heart. Or that he'd be able to take on a small group of gunmen and sink a house in Venice.
Those scenes are there because it's an action film and they probably didn't think there was enough action in-between the card game. I don't know what point that is supposed to make? If we're saying that it's fantastical and outlandish because it doesn't follow the strict laws of reality, then that also includes every film from every genre including all action movies. Just because something belongs to a genre with certain conventions, and thus differs from how the real world works to some degree, that proves very little for the sake of discussion because that covers literally all of cinema and indeed fiction itself. That's what makes it fiction, it's something that hasn't happened. So, again, I'm not sure what that's supposed to prove?
It seems to me that your argument hinges on you demonstrating that certain Bond films are fantasical when compared to reality (or John La carre for some reason) but not when compared to other Bond films.
Sure, but they had to decide what action scenes to craft and put in there.
So the argument here is that all of action films (and seemingly films) aren't real anyway and have some form of fantasy, so you don't think any of what I've said is valid even though I've mentioned specific Bond examples and explained how I (and actually one or two others) think CR depicts/reworks Bondian outlandishness? Or however you want to put it - escapism, fantasy etc.
I'm really not trying to put words in your mouth, and I'm happy for you to expand (I really think you need to for this to make any sense), but you do realise how silly that is fundamentally? It also doesn't really have much to do with what I said in that post about verisimilitude and how filmmakers approached those films.
I'm sorry man, but I know you're smarter than that.
I did compare some of the CR scenes to others in previous posts. Just not the ones you were talking about.
I'm not going to say anything else about this, but just read what I wrote over the last few posts if you want. I can understand disagreeing, but when someone hasn't understood, that's a whole different thing. I genuinely don't think you've understood what I'm saying.
That seems to be where your argument is naturally leading. If you're saying that Bond films all share the quality of being outlandish and fantastical just to greater or lesser degrees, then what are the films, Bond or non-Bond, that don't share this quality? And if there are non then aren't you really just saying that films in general contain a certain level of unreality. I don't know what that has to do with what can be described as outlandish in the context of a specific genre or indeed a series of films. That needs to be more specific than just anything which doesn't follow the flow of reality. Bond sitting down at the Casino and throwing out a quip is not fantastical or outlandish for a Bond film, that's basically the baseline of what should be expected.
Even after restarting his heart and thwarting the villain's poisoned martini? Your baseline is pretty high on the outlandish side if I may say so!
Perhaps we should bring this back on topic, because this is nonsense. How do you think Villeneuve is going to handle some of the more outlandish Bond sequences/humour? I don't personally imagine we're in for self referential Moore era music/sound gags during chases, but something more along the lines of how Campbell and Mendes weaved in those things in their movies.
Another post from Ceylon.