Looking through John Logan's script for "Spectre"

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Comments

  • mepal1 wrote: »
    Its a good point that some have raised that in the film SP, it did appear that Bond didnt seem to really know Blofeld.

    Well, Bond looks at Blofeld when he sees him for the first time IMO with a "HIM ?" look, and it's in the trailer. That had the photo scene.

    Obviously since I had read the scripts when the trailer came out, I can't judge if it was obvious or not. But to me it was as obvious as the Madeleine / White connection in the trailer.

    It was obvious from that scene that Bond clearly knew Blofeld/Oberhauser, but in the remainder of their scenes together you don't get the feeling that Bond really cares about him. The scenes between Bond & Le Chiffre for instance felt far more menacing. They were going after each other and they both wanted to best the other. It felt like a cheap attempt to give some sort of additional weight to the relationship between them because the stakes of the film felt incredibly low as it was (which is especially confusing/frustrating when they decided to bring back Spectre & Blofeld after 40 years and couldn't muster a decent plot or villainous plan).

    Then there were things like why Spectre even cared about Swann in the first place. Why in the hell would they care if Bond found her? Plus the reason for the rift between Mr. White & Blofeld came about because Blofeld was targeting women & children? What did Mr. White think the $ being raised by Le Chiffre in CR was going towards? Terrorist attacks that only killed grown men? The plot as a whole felt forced and the film opted to throw in a bunch of random back stories between the characters to try and heighten the stakes and in the end I thought it just made the whole thing more confusing & it came off as very lazy on the part of those involved.
  • Posts: 5,767
    On the other hand, Blofeld was never that fleshed out a character and always just a collection of gimmicks anyway. So maybe Sam felt he had little to work with anyway....
    Well, it would have more than sufficed to rely on Fleming, he provided flesh by the pound in his three Blofeld novels.

  • Posts: 1,680
    I think everyone is reading too much into the Blofeld angle.

    Blofeld didnt take the path the took solely based on Bond but it was a part of it. Also Blofeld never tried to seek out Bond at all. Ever. Bond kept getting in the way for 9 or so odd years & finally after Sciarras death & funeral Blofeld was probably anticipating a confrontation.
  • Posts: 5,767
    Tuck91 wrote: »
    I think everyone is reading too much into the Blofeld angle.

    Blofeld didnt take the path the took solely based on Bond but it was a part of it. Also Blofeld never tried to seek out Bond at all. Ever. Bond kept getting in the way for 9 or so odd years & finally after Sciarras death & funeral Blofeld was probably anticipating a confrontation.
    It´s not what is but how it is presented. The storytelling has much too much emphasis on the brother angle. That´s why a lot of people don´t read too much into it but are annoyed by it.

  • edited December 2015 Posts: 14,797
    How is it ridiculous? It's the classic "hero creates the villain" trope.

    You can call it classic, but I call it unoriginal, seen a million times, a cliche.

    Besides, James Bond is not supposed to create his villains. I think this is the obvious influence of Batman.

    It is not so much a cliché as a common trope that is used among other things for dramatic irony. I would agree that in Bond stories, at least in the novels, Bond does not create his enemies. In movies, it has been different: in GE and DAD, Bond was instrumental in the construction of the villain. Not that I like DAD mind you. In the novels, England and sometimes the whole West plays an indirect role in the creation of a monster, for instance in MR.

    That said, James Bond did not create Blofeld. This is entirely Blofeld's assumption that this English boy placed in foster care was a cuckoo. And beside, Blofeld in the end created himself: he chose his new name, he killed his father, he built his shadow empire, etc.

    I am not sure yet if I am quite satisfied with the Oberhauser is Blofeld yet. But it is still far better and closer to Fleming than an African warlord or a Miss Blofeld. Or a M is Blofeld (one thing some posters brought forward here years ago which I found so ridiculous and unthinkable). I am like @Brady regarding the early scripts: the end result is a million years better than some of the ideas that were there.
  • Aziz_FekkeshAziz_Fekkesh Royale-les-Eaux
    Posts: 403
    Upon reflection, the Bond/Blohauser connection bothers me less and less than when I first saw it. It's clear that Bond doesn't care too much about Blofeld and just sees him as a villain tot stop. Bond is a pro and despite Blofeld's best attempts to mess with him, Bond never lets personal stuff get in the way of the mission. It's Blofeld who's cuckoo and obsessed with Bond, blaming him for this and that while Bond is just doing his job.

    The way it's presented in the film is really the best of both worlds; Mendes gets his personal stuff but the finished product isn't derailed by a heavy handed way of shoehorning in this past relationship. Some might say it's underdeveloped but I think we got a good balance here. Do people want it to play a larger role in the film? Some are already complaint that it's there at all. One literally can't please every one.

    That being said, Mendes, P & W, Newman, and Logan need to go. Let's get some new blood.
  • TheWizardOfIceTheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'
    Posts: 9,117
    bondboy007 wrote: »
    That's kind of what I was getting at. Bond essentially 'creating' Blofeld felt very weird to me. Especially given that all Bond did was latch onto the elder Oberhauser as a father figure 30 years prior. Then there's the fact that Bond doesn't even seem angry at Blofeld for killing Oberhauser and just seems virtually indifferent to Blofeld in each of their encounters. It was almost like they knew there wasn't a whole lot of real conflict between the film's hero & villain so they threw in the whole foster brother/Bond created Blofeld arc to try and add some depth to the relationship between the two of them at the last minute.

    At first the whole Oberhauser thing didn't bother me that much but the more I think about it the shitter it gets.

    In the book Bond requests to be assigned to the Oberhauser case so he can hunt down Major Smythe but in SP he doesn't even flinch when he finds out Hannes was murdered rather than dying in an accident.

    I fail to see the point of any of this Oberhauser shite that was shoehorned into the film as Bond doesn't seem to give a toss about Hannes dying or Franz being responsible and having a vendetta against him. Take it out of the script and you lose absolutely nothing except some feeble motivation for Blofeld. Why isn't him being a super criminal motivation enough instead of some piss weak kindetgarten gripe? It demeans the character of Blofeld who wouldn't let such pathetic emotions affect the course of his life.

    Reading through this thread and two points become scarily evident:

    1. A lot of the people who have ended up making big decisions on Bond scripts seem to be happy to sign off on some absolutely shocking ideas. Some of the elements in various drafts of the script were appalling yet they were happy to send them to the studio and remarkably it seems that we were saved some of Logan and Mendes's more ridiculous notions by the studio pushing back and (praise the guy) Fiennes who just said a straight 'I'm not having that.'

    2. I'm wondering what EON were playing at during all this shambles (I really cannot think of a more apposite word than that)? Despite having 3 years to get a script in shape SP seems almost as chaotic a writing process as QOS.
    Shouldn't they be checking on Logan's progress and if what's he's coming up with is bollocks they need to be interceding a bit quicker.
    As it is it seems that once again we end up with a script that is still being rewritten the night before shooting starts.

    Here's an idea going forwards (apart from hiring a better writing team) - why not sign someone up by say end of March and let him start writing and see what he comes up with. Then rewrite, polish or if it's shit sack him and start again and repeat these steps until you get a good script.

    The point is don't have a release date locked in and announced. By all means aim for October 2018 but if by mid 2017 the script isn't gelling (as SPs clearly wasn't) consider letting the date slip by a year.

    The key issue is they lock themselves into a release date in and they simply have to start shooting on Jan 1st of the year the film is to be released whatever state the script is in.
  • Posts: 1,680
    At that rate we wouldnt have gotten SP until Nov 2016.
  • TheWizardOfIceTheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'
    Posts: 9,117
    Tuck91 wrote: »
    At that rate we wouldnt have gotten SP until Nov 2016.

    So be it if the script ends up sparkling like the Akbhar Shah rather than paste and glass.
  • Posts: 1,680
    For SP to be just as good as SF would not have been worth another 4 year wait,

    If they cant solve the studio problem in a short amount of time I dont think Craig will return.
  • mcdonbbmcdonbb deep in the Heart of Texas
    edited December 2015 Posts: 4,116
    SP did more harm to the franchise than DAD or QOS. Mendes et al show no regard whatsoever for Fleming or the integrity of the characters... namely Blofeld in this case.

    They tainted Craig's previous Bonds by a trick to try to make Blofeld the villain to end all villains instead of just writing him that way.

    This year Bond needed to step up and they choked. Never have I felt like they had no clue and ended up half assed. At least when they made DAD and QOS they believed in what they were doing. SP is like a moron trying to do brain surgery.

    No reference to that torture sequence is inferred or intended.
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,328
    Oh the hyperbole here is tremendous. =))
  • mcdonbbmcdonbb deep in the Heart of Texas
    Posts: 4,116
    Murdock wrote: »
    Oh the hyperbole here is tremendous. =))

    Just my opinion. Be nice I'm not afraid to kick a can at you :P

    JUST KIDDING!!!
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,328
    mcdonbb wrote: »
    Murdock wrote: »
    Oh the hyperbole here is tremendous. =))


    Just my opinion. Be nice I'm not afraid to kick a can at you :P

    JUST KIDDING!!!
    No harm done. :P
  • mcdonbbmcdonbb deep in the Heart of Texas
    Posts: 4,116
    Murdock wrote: »
    mcdonbb wrote: »
    Murdock wrote: »
    Oh the hyperbole here is tremendous. =))


    Just my opinion. Be nice I'm not afraid to kick a can at you :P

    JUST KIDDING!!!
    No harm done. :P

    Are you sure? It's a 32oz can :D
  • MurdockMurdock The minus world
    Posts: 16,328
    mcdonbb wrote: »
    Murdock wrote: »
    mcdonbb wrote: »
    Murdock wrote: »
    Oh the hyperbole here is tremendous. =))


    Just my opinion. Be nice I'm not afraid to kick a can at you :P

    JUST KIDDING!!!
    No harm done. :P

    Are you sure? It's a 32oz can :D

    I'll reduce it then. ;)
    tumblr_n461wd4LS91qfr6udo1_500.gif
  • mcdonbbmcdonbb deep in the Heart of Texas
    Posts: 4,116
    Murdock wrote: »
    mcdonbb wrote: »
    Murdock wrote: »
    mcdonbb wrote: »
    Murdock wrote: »
    Oh the hyperbole here is tremendous. =))


    Just my opinion. Be nice I'm not afraid to kick a can at you :P

    JUST KIDDING!!!
    No harm done. :P

    Are you sure? It's a 32oz can :D

    I'll reduce it then. ;)
    tumblr_n461wd4LS91qfr6udo1_500.gif

    Lol ok you win. Short of switching to bottles I've got nothing.
  • DoctorNoDoctorNo USA-Maryland
    Posts: 754
    mcdonbb wrote: »
    SP did more harm to the franchise than DAD or QOS. Mendes et al show no regard whatsoever for Fleming or the integrity of the characters... namely Blofeld in this case.

    They tainted Craig's previous Bonds by a trick to try to make Blofeld the villain to end all villains instead of just writing him that way.

    This year Bond needed to step up and they choked. Never have I felt like they had no clue and ended up half assed. At least when they made DAD and QOS they believed in what they were doing. SP is like a moron trying to do brain surgery.
    .

    I agree they choked and did damage to Fleming's vision and the reboot in general. It's something EON will have to be answering to fans for the foreseeable future (I can already imagine seeing a resigned Wilson and a defensive Brocoli in interviews). They wanted Mendes which also meant Logan and they were busy doing other things and then come in and were given way too much trust and control. They should have delayed and gotten Spectre and Blofeld right. They talked (Craig too) for so long, about adding things back carefully, over time, and then they get Spectre and Blofeld and just crap it all out.

    I don't agree that it's done more damage than DAD. DAD was the culmination of four total crap movies that made me (a lifelong Bond fan) stop and say I'm done with Bond. FU EoN, done. So no, its nowhere near that.
  • MansfieldMansfield Where the hell have you been?
    Posts: 1,263
    It's kind of funny to see all of the comments mentioning "how much better" the Logan script would have been than the final product. Really? Granted, it's probably a matter of preference, but most of the Logan script sounds really bad.

    There would be more of Bond sharing the spotlight in the field. That should enrage everyone who complained about Judi Dench's globetrotting. At least they were giving screen time to an imposing presence that almost always got more out of Bond. When they throw in Tanner and Moneypenny and whoever into the field it's almost entirely useless.

    Blofeld reveal is interesting, but I don't think there was a problem with it in the version we got. The worst part of it in the Logan script is probably that it occurs in the PTS. I think it works better to play with our expectations. The concept of decoding the name is interesting, though. Perhaps that was inspiration for the "decoding" of the SPECTRE organization itself with Q and Swann.

    M as a traitor? And people are upset about the Oberhauser reference? Personally, I am entirely unaffected by the half-brother angle. Craig's Bond is clearly not literary Bond and it wasn't handled with any lack of tact. They knew each other for a summer, that's nothing on the level of any kind of sibling relationship. If the Oberhauser reference bothers enough people, chance are there is a laundry list of things that piss them off in Spectre since so many classic Bond situations are taken out of context already.

    No Hinx? That alone would make the movie much less enjoyable. Hinx was one of the best parts (in fact most people have said he was underutilized around this forum IIRC). They did femme fatales so well in the Brosnan era. The difference between Brosnan and Craig is that Brosnan was more of a charmer. I just can't see Craig getting the same mileage as Brosnan in that department. Craig, being infinitely more physical than Brosnan, gave us a good show with Bautista.

    The NATO base is one aspect that I would say sounds far superior to the final Spectre script. I just didn't feel very attached to any of the villain's plot. I've already said it would have been better if they could have narrowed their scope to some of the background actions they were taking that went along with consolidating spy information. We didn't really have that, so the danger was really only placed on the characters themselves in a kind of disjointed way. It would have been nice to have the methods of the plans cross the path of Bond more directly.

    I'm glad we had P&W to improve the script. Let's have a proper screenwriter in the future though, please.
  • echoecho 007 in New York
    Posts: 5,921
    Tuck91 wrote: »
    For SP to be just as good as SF would not have been worth another 4 year wait,

    If they cant solve the studio problem in a short amount of time I dont think Craig will return.

    It's not a studio problem (as it was in years past). The contract with Sony is simply up.
  • edited December 2015 Posts: 2,015
    Note : IIRC in the mails, the heads of Sony also asked amongst themselves why the script was such a mess after all this time...

    And IIRC it was only around June/July that Mendes wrote in a mail "Now it feels like a movie" or something like that (I'm not 100% sure about the date though)

  • Posts: 1,680
    I remember almolst a year ago when after the first press conference when the title/cast & locations were revealed, & when filming started. Thats where the hype started, everyone thought this was going to be the best Bond film ever made.

    The hype was just too much for this one
  • edited December 2015 Posts: 5,767
    bondboy007 wrote: »
    That's kind of what I was getting at. Bond essentially 'creating' Blofeld felt very weird to me. Especially given that all Bond did was latch onto the elder Oberhauser as a father figure 30 years prior. Then there's the fact that Bond doesn't even seem angry at Blofeld for killing Oberhauser and just seems virtually indifferent to Blofeld in each of their encounters. It was almost like they knew there wasn't a whole lot of real conflict between the film's hero & villain so they threw in the whole foster brother/Bond created Blofeld arc to try and add some depth to the relationship between the two of them at the last minute.

    At first the whole Oberhauser thing didn't bother me that much but the more I think about it the shitter it gets.

    In the book Bond requests to be assigned to the Oberhauser case so he can hunt down Major Smythe but in SP he doesn't even flinch when he finds out Hannes was murdered rather than dying in an accident.

    I fail to see the point of any of this Oberhauser shite that was shoehorned into the film as Bond doesn't seem to give a toss about Hannes dying or Franz being responsible and having a vendetta against him. Take it out of the script and you lose absolutely nothing except some feeble motivation for Blofeld. Why isn't him being a super criminal motivation enough instead of some piss weak kindetgarten gripe? It demeans the character of Blofeld who wouldn't let such pathetic emotions affect the course of his life.

    Reading through this thread and two points become scarily evident:

    1. A lot of the people who have ended up making big decisions on Bond scripts seem to be happy to sign off on some absolutely shocking ideas. Some of the elements in various drafts of the script were appalling yet they were happy to send them to the studio and remarkably it seems that we were saved some of Logan and Mendes's more ridiculous notions by the studio pushing back and (praise the guy) Fiennes who just said a straight 'I'm not having that.'

    2. I'm wondering what EON were playing at during all this shambles (I really cannot think of a more apposite word than that)? Despite having 3 years to get a script in shape SP seems almost as chaotic a writing process as QOS.
    Shouldn't they be checking on Logan's progress and if what's he's coming up with is bollocks they need to be interceding a bit quicker.
    As it is it seems that once again we end up with a script that is still being rewritten the night before shooting starts.

    Here's an idea going forwards (apart from hiring a better writing team) - why not sign someone up by say end of March and let him start writing and see what he comes up with. Then rewrite, polish or if it's shit sack him and start again and repeat these steps until you get a good script.

    The point is don't have a release date locked in and announced. By all means aim for October 2018 but if by mid 2017 the script isn't gelling (as SPs clearly wasn't) consider letting the date slip by a year.

    The key issue is they lock themselves into a release date in and they simply have to start shooting on Jan 1st of the year the film is to be released whatever state the script is in.
    As so often, a good post from @TheWizardOfIce, but I allow myself to contribute the idea that the combination Mendes/Craig is a bigger problem than the script, because their influence was paramount in leading to the script, and Mendes, as a variety of posters already pointed out, makes Mendes films, not Bond films.




    Mansfield wrote: »
    It's kind of funny to see all of the comments mentioning "how much better" the Logan script would have been than the final product. Really? Granted, it's probably a matter of preference, but most of the Logan script sounds really bad.
    I don´t recall anyone posting in this thread "how much better" the Logan script would have been. It´s just surprising that, after comments leaking last year that Logan´s script were totally unacceptable, the final film doesn´t seem so far from it, neither in terms of content, nor in terms of quality.





    Note : IIRC in the mails, the heads of Sony also asked amongst themselves why the script was such a mess after all this time...

    And IIRC it was only around June/July that Mendes wrote in a mail "Now it feels like a movie" or something like that (I'm not 100% sure about the date though)
    Mendes saying that something feels like a movie is hilarious, given that in his Bond films he basically does theater filmed for the big screen.



    Tuck91 wrote: »
    I remember almolst a year ago when after the first press conference when the title/cast & locations were revealed, & when filming started. Thats where the hype started, everyone thought this was going to be the best Bond film ever made.

    The hype was just too much for this one
    Well, calling a Bond film Spectre, and then referring more to things like the dead being alive than to the Special Executive for Crime, Terror, Revenge and Extortion, what the f*** were they expecting?




    I would suggest that for the next film, the whole Oberhauser/Spectre thing will be ignored and SPECTRE introduced properly, with or without Blofeld, but not the Blofeld from SP, just ignore him, or better still, let Bond wake up in the first shot of the film and shake his head and mumble something about what a bad dream he had. That kind of forboding would actually be kind of Fleming-esque, much like in the MR novel, when Bond sees only part of the blinking Shell sign, thus reading the word "hell" blinking over and over at him.
  • WalecsWalecs On Her Majesty's Secret Service
    Posts: 3,157
    mcdonbb wrote: »
    SP did more harm to the franchise than DAD or QOS. Mendes et al show no regard whatsoever for Fleming or the integrity of the characters... namely Blofeld in this case.

    They tainted Craig's previous Bonds by a trick to try to make Blofeld the villain to end all villains instead of just writing him that way.

    This year Bond needed to step up and they choked. Never have I felt like they had no clue and ended up half assed. At least when they made DAD and QOS they believed in what they were doing. SP is like a moron trying to do brain surgery.

    No reference to that torture sequence is inferred or intended.

    Exactly.
  • bondjamesbondjames You were expecting someone else?
    edited December 2015 Posts: 23,883
    bondboy007 wrote: »
    How is it ridiculous? It's the classic "hero creates the villain" trope.

    You can call it classic, but I call it unoriginal, seen a million times, a cliche.

    Besides, James Bond is not supposed to create his villains. I think this is the obvious influence of Batman.

    That's kind of what I was getting at. Bond essentially 'creating' Blofeld felt very weird to me. Especially given that all Bond did was latch onto the elder Oberhauser as a father figure 30 years prior. Then there's the fact that Bond doesn't even seem angry at Blofeld for killing Oberhauser and just seems virtually indifferent to Blofeld in each of their encounters. It was almost like they knew there wasn't a whole lot of real conflict between the film's hero & villain so they threw in the whole foster brother/Bond created Blofeld arc to try and add some depth to the relationship between the two of them at the last minute.

    Contrast that to the relationship between Bond & Le Chiffre in CR, where we got to see their hatred for each other build. It was through Bond's actions in that film where he kept foiling Le Chiffre's plans that built up animosity between them (similar to how the Bond/Blofeld relationship was staged in FRWL/TB/YOLT). Not some 30 year old feud between foster brothers that's barely even mentioned in the film, yet is given as the entire reason the villain turned evil in the first place.
    It was just poorly written imho. That's why it hasn't resonated with some (myself included) and that's why to some, the implications, importance, meaning & ramifications of what's being said by the actors does not appear to be fully reflected in or emoted by the actors & characters on screen.

    They should have taken a little more effort (I was going to say spend a little more time..but that's clearly not the case since we waited 3 yrs!) in developing & thinking through character motivations and whether they would appear fully plausible & relatable with on screen, in the context of the narrative.
  • PropertyOfALadyPropertyOfALady Colders Federation CEO
    Posts: 3,675
    Do you think the three leaked scripts will ever pop up on sites like Internet Movie Script Database?
  • edited December 2015 Posts: 267
    mcdonbb wrote: »
    SP did more harm to the franchise than DAD or QOS. Mendes et al show no regard whatsoever for Fleming or the integrity of the characters... namely Blofeld in this case.

    They tainted Craig's previous Bonds by a trick to try to make Blofeld the villain to end all villains instead of just writing him that way.

    This year Bond needed to step up and they choked. Never have I felt like they had no clue and ended up half assed. At least when they made DAD and QOS they believed in what they were doing. SP is like a moron trying to do brain surgery.

    No reference to that torture sequence is inferred or intended.

    100% agree. SP on it's own is a better film than DAD (I happen to like QoS fine), but it went and mucked up Craig's era by shoe horning in the events of the prior 3 films. Never before has a Bond film done that. If it was bad, then it was essentially moving on and hoping to do better the next time. And it makes it feel so much worse when everything else about SP was incredibly lazy. I was ecstatic when I saw they were bringing back Mr. White & Quantum, but in the end everything was just so poorly tied together that I wish they'd just made Bond 24 a total stand alone film.

    Having SPECTRE be the villains behind the events of Craig's first 3 films was not ever the plan until they got the rights back and decided to make it the plan between SF & SP, and it showed. SP was just an incredibly lazy and poorly written film that tried to heighten the stakes of the events in the film by calling back to the events of the prior films. I hope Craig is back for one more, but I very much hope they get new writers and a new director (or an old one if Campbell can be persuaded to return).

    I also hope they just go into Bond 25 by making little to no mention of the events of SP. No Madeline Swann, Blofeld's out of custody with little to no explanation, Bond is back with MI6, etc. Just have SPECTRE & Blofeld be a threat and Bond is the one tasked with stopping them. That's where SP went wrong the most in my eyes - now Bond 25 has to be a good film on its own and correct the mistakes of the prior film unless they ditch so much of what SP tried to establish.
  • PropertyOfALadyPropertyOfALady Colders Federation CEO
    Posts: 3,675
    How many leaked scripts are there?
  • Posts: 314
    I think it was clear they were setting up an evil organization behind CR and QOS, but SF too? C'Mon that's just cheap. In my opinion they should have taken just one more film before Blofeld's reveal, just hint at a connection to the previous movies, don't overblown it.
  • ClarkDevlinClarkDevlin Martinis, Girls and Guns
    Posts: 15,423
    I think Spectre itself was going to be a two-parter. Certainly the film did feel like that way... Perhaps Logan outlined it as such before the rest of the crew vetoed and merged it into one film.
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