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Yet a minute later he’s laughing at the self inflating tires in his Q branch BMW.
Really? I always thought the character was overall appreciated, sometimes disliked, but overall not controversial. I think he's one of the best parts of TND, but hey.
You got there before me! Agreed, it's ruined after that, and some people had trouble with Felix at the end of LTK!
I think it's fine, he reiterates to himself that he's 'just a professional doing a job', gets his game face on and heads into a superfluous action scene. It is all a bit easily moved from, but folks complain if there are personal stakes so whatyagonnado? :D
It’s a weak scene with a cartoon character played for both laughs and to be serious?
It’s a controversial scene for sure.
Some fans like it some fans hate it.
There’s no right or wrong,
Apparently we’re laughing at Kaufman for his joke about shooting Bond from Stuttgart. We’re horrified that Paris struggled and we’re impressed with the professionalism of the two of them doing their jobs.
And then we’re laughing again with Bond as he drives his Beemer from the back seat…oh yeah a former girlfriend was just brutally murdered.
It’s all over the place.
The tone is inconsistent. It would have been useful to see Kaufman earlier (either killing Paris or in action some other way) to establish that even though he's a jokey weirdo, he's also a legitimate menace. Being introduced cold to this character makes you uncertain as to how to react. They further muddle the tone with how they handle Kaufman trying to help the thugs break into Bond's car. I would have preferred that Kaufman be presented more with a Grant-like arrogance but without the gags.
I would have thought most of the world would have seen the mega hits Ghost or Independence Day at some point. He's in those, and let's face it, you'd never forget that mug..😁
I have seen a few actors who might just about pull it off, but Vincent Schiavelli is not one of them. I do remember him, but I wasn't sure from what, as he has had small parts in many films, it turns out he was in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest".
However I agree that he has a more satisfactory culmination scene than the likes of "Gabor", who I was expecting to see take on Bond in hand to hand combat (which Mr Kil did at least) but instead he is just shot in an incidental and offhand way, like he was just another anonymous henchman, rather than someone who had been foreshadowed as a physical threat earlier in the film.
I've always thought of Mr Kil as a Gabor "clone", added into DAD in an attempt to redress that error
His ridiculous accent doesn't help. It's so over the top it just kills any tension we're supposed to feel.
But I get why some like the scene.
I think “Herr Stamper” was an even bigger offense to the German people. :-) Shouldn’t he have been called “Stampfer,” @j_w_pepper? As it stands, the name sounds like a “Germanized” version of the English verb to stamp, which doesn’t exactly strike fear into anyone.
As for Götz Otto, born in Frankfurt, if I recall correctly, his Tomorrow Never Dies look seems modelled after the Aryan ideal. Ignore the decade, and he feels as if he were handpicked straight from a lineup of Hitlerjugend boys. It works for a villain, but it’s also a bit cartoonish.
Then again, Le Chiffre’s haircut in Casino Royale had a faintly Hitler-esque vibe too, and his bald henchman gave off that familiar Nazi menace. Herr Mortner, with his evil-doctor monocle, and Dr. Kaufman, with his over-the-top “German-ish” accent, hardly shy away from the stereotype either. Bond films do have a tendency to go rather unsubtle when it comes to German villains, that’s for sure.
Thank you. Nailed it. I’ve always despised this scene. Finally we get some stakes. Paris has been killed and the man who killed her, is sitting right there, and he’s here to wrap up a “murder/suicide”, and vanish into thin air.
It’s a fantastic set up that should have been nauseatingly tense.
Instead I watched a human cartoon with a silly accent have a playful exchange with Bond.
I was, and still am, deflated after watching it.
John Seru is a Fijian actor and former professional wrestler.
That's right and I'm not surprised you don't recall what happened to him
However for me, living in the South Pacific, I was quite excited to see an actor from down this way as a henchman, and assumed by that he was going to get a crack at Bond in the traditional fashion, a la Odd Job and Jaws, or at the very least Sandor (Milton Read, the broad, bald henchman who appears alongside Jaws in the early stages of TSWLM). So I was very disappointed.
Fortunately (from this particular perspective at least) another polynesian (Lee Tamahori) got the job of directing DAD, and a second polynesian henchman (Lawrence Makoare) made an appearance, this time getting to duke it out to the death with Bond, as all good henchmen should.
Lawrence Makoare is a New Zealand actor. He is most known for his roles in The Lord of the Rings film series as several prominent antagonists, including Lurtz the Uruk-Hai, the Witch-King of Angmar and Gothmog, the Orc commander at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
I knew him from Amadeus, but that's it. I'd say Schiavelli has a memorable face (one of the reasons he was cast in Amadeus, by the way, another small but memorable role).
I must admit I agree. I think it's compelling seeing Bond initially cold and determined, followed by that show of humanity. What made Craig's performance in CR - as well as Brosnan's in GE and Dalton's in TLD - so compelling are that they showed how cold and determined Bond could be, but followed by those glimpses of understanding that his profession could be rough for those not accustomed to it (in this case Vesper, Kara, Natlaya etc). I think you need something like that with the next Bond.
Yes, that’s part of it, but there’s a couple of things going on. He gives her a look and we see Vesper appearing shocked in the corner. He pretty much ushers her away and shouts at her to go (which, for Craig’s Bond, is an unusual reaction as he’s generally quite cold/professional, even in dire circumstances). Obviously Vesper has been made complicit in the guy’s death by getting the gun out of his hand, and while killing is part of Bond’s job, it’s not something she’s used to. The way I interpreted it was Bond picked up on how traumatised she was, and it got to him a bit (and I’d say that was the intention in the editing, acting, and direction. It feeds into the shower scene later and even Bond staring at his bloodied face in the mirror afterwards).
I completely agree. I think it's part of many films (Moore's Bond bickering with Melina in the sled, he's trying to get her out of harms way, Connery in FRWL trying to get Tetiana to come along as Nash is trying to get rid of her, etc. etc.)
Bond needs to show his human side, it's why we buy him as more then just a 'hero'. Heroes sacrifice a part of themselves, they're not machines. Even Superman is given some sort of love interest to make him more 'human' (after first giving him superpowers in a way that virtually nothing can happen to him, making him sort of irrellevant).
My controversial opinion:
After watching (most of SP) last night, I've come to the conclusion that EON were running out of creative ideas, and it is good the frenchise has been sold. I'm not immidiately going to praise Amazon for it, as we still have to see what they come up with, but I think EON got on a dead end they couldn't get out of. Creatively, NTTD was a last effort and though the filmmaking itself is excellent, the story is rather empty and poor. Sure, Bond has a daughter, and is in love now, but that isn't much to go on. The plot with the smart blood (again? after SP, weren't all those files deleted?) is hardly interesting or threatening. Safin's story to Madeleine may be interesting, his 'revenge' story against White and Blofeld is razor thin and not very compelling. M beeing the source of the weapon is even more ludicrous and more Bourne then Bond.
All in all, the film holds up due to some spectacular action, fantastic action and cinematic work. But the plot is intelectually poor, as was Spectre's. I think Skyfall started this deteriorating journey. And I think EON didn't have the freshness anymore to come up with something original.
Agreed. I think it's done exceptionally well in CR and feels like a well written story beat. Those other examples are great moments as well though.
I suppose the issue with that is it implies EON is a single creative entity, not the coalition of different filmmakers that is in practice. For what it's worth NTTD has never come across to me like a film made by people out of ideas, for all its faults. Something like AVTAK feels much more tired and has more of that 'out of ideas' vibe to it. I personally get more of a LTK feel from NTTD - a final Bond of an era which broke the mould. Both were understandably strange Bond films to watch at the time (certainly both have their flaws), but in hindsight there's something poignant about them. But that's just me.
It’s the last act where it falls down. And I’m not talking about Bond dying, which honestly I didn’t have a problem with; one of things I like about all the Bond actors is they’ve played the role their own way, and Bond dying felt very Craig. But the whole final act of the film just feels off and, somehow, despite the gravity of what happens, lacklustre.