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Bond

Started by asids, December 28, 2017, 01:05:52 AM

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Shaky

Quote from: gatchamandave on September 01, 2018, 04:12:19 PM
Connery/ Moore fully supported ?

" ...and 007 ? Leave the Beretta. "

" Colonel Masters is giving the lecture, 007"

" Well, now that we're ALL here"

" I never joke about my work, 007"

" Try not to break it, 007"

"Forgive me father,for i have sinned." - " That's putting it mildly,007"

and many many more. I see where you are coming from, but remember Guy Hamilton telling Desmond Llewelyn not to play it respectful, as he was originally doing in the Aston Martin scene, but as if Bond was a major pain in the arse ?

That's just a bit of the workplace banter/office politics between Bond and his colleagues, though, and hardly evidence that they don't support him. M & Q always cover their man in the end, with Bernard Lee in particular often turning a blind eye to allow Bond to go a bit rogue and get the job done his way.

Craig's doing Rian Johnson's latest (no, not his Star Wars trilogy).
https://movieweb.com/knives-out-director-rian-johnson-cast-daniel-craig/

I think Craig's out for good.

Noodle Lizard

Is Bond kind of a nerd thing?  I was definitely obsessed with it when I was a kid, and retained a lot of that knowledge, but I never ever meet anyone in real life who knows much about it or has even seen most of them.  And yet, here you all are.  And Alan Partridge.  Is that good company to keep?  Is it WRONG to like BOND?

Kelvin

I don't think it's a nerd thing, but I do think it's seen as a bit of a naff thing to enjoy nowadays. Like something dad's and Jeremy Clarkson like and aspire to.

Maybe overseas it's seen as more geeky, in the same way that things like Doctor Who are far more obscure, but culturally recognisable among the geekier types. Over here, I think it's just seen as so iconic it's a bit old hat - although I think the Craig films made it semi-cool again.

CaledonianGonzo

Yeah. It's pretty nerdy, I'd say. Toys, comics, posters, making of books. What used to mark online Bond fandom out is that, yes it was very male and white, but also that it was very right wing. Lots of spaffing on about the Queen and PC gone mad and real men back in the good old days and not these metrosexuals that they have now.  Not that surprising really given the subject matter, but given what I've seen recently from Star Wars fans, not so distinctive either.

biggytitbo

Quote from: goinggoinggone on September 04, 2018, 11:40:10 PM
Craig's doing Rian Johnson's latest (no, not his Star Wars trilogy).
https://movieweb.com/knives-out-director-rian-johnson-cast-daniel-craig/

I think Craig's out for good.

QuoteHe's an actor of extraordinary range...

Hmmm.

Bad Ambassador

I think that treating any form of media as anything more than disposable, superficial entertainment is seen as geeky. I also know many Bond fans who aren't right-wing at all, myself included, so the tide might be shifting there.

CaledonianGonzo

I dunno, though I'm talking more about online fandoms than in the wider world.  Maybe reactionary might be a better term. There's definitely a nostalgia there for empire and the post-war period - and a sense of British exceptionalism that in this day and age feels pretty Brexity.  However, I'm not sure that Idris Elba panic is solely an online phenomena either.

Thomas

There's a strange new contingent of Bond fans, I think, perhaps since Skyfall. I'm sure a swift Google search will bring you to the various outlets of of cutesy fan-art and romantic fan-fiction about Bond and Q, or Q's twee home life. It's quite apart from empire-nostalgia and right-wing patriotism. It might all be down to someone like Ben Whishaw becoming involved in the series. It's sort of like the Benedict Cumberbatch effect.

Ant Farm Keyboard

They've also stopped to over-sexualize the female characters, and to give them puns as names.
Craig's big moment in Casino Royale, for the female audience, is when he walks out of the sea in his Speedo. That's when a ton of women started to like the franchise again, as it wasn't sexist anymore. The character may be, but the films don't always endorse his choices.

Also, Craig has range. His Mikael Blomkvist in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is practically the opposite of Bond regarding physicality, and his turn in Logan Lucky, with the thick Southern accent and his manic enthusiasm about chemistry was a definite highlight of the film.

Quote from: Ant Farm Keyboard on September 05, 2018, 01:02:06 PM
They've also stopped to over-sexualize the female characters, and to give them puns as names.

Strawberry Fields had a pretty formulaic "Shag 007/die abruptly" arc familiar to so many secondary Bond girls.

But that hasn't been too common in the Craigs, to be fair.

CaledonianGonzo

It also happened in Casino Royale (Solange) and Skyfall (er....thingy. Her off of the new Twin Peaks). SPECTRE is the only one where it doesn't.

SavageHedgehog

Much as I hate to brag, I did used to post on a Bond forum about ten years ago (Commander Bond.net). There was certainly the odd person who made their right-leaning views clear, even one rather confused soul who claimed he edited Pureflix-style cuts free of implied fornication for his own viewings, but I wouldn't have said the overall atmosphere was particularly rightish. I think the majority of posters were American though (the nation famously left of us); I do remember when Obama was elected the mood was generally quite optimistic. There was a lot of disdain for the whole Craignotbond thing there; maybe that's where the Brexitier wing of the fandom was at the time?

CaledonianGonzo

mi6.co.uk was the site where it seemed most evident.  I didn't really post much, but I definitely read a lot of it.

Just googled one username I remember from back in the day:

QuoteAlas, in this day and age when the very notion of indigenous European identity is under relentless assault, public celebration of days such as St. George's is all the more important. We must come out of the closet and figuratively combat the forces that would subjugate and replace us whenever we can.

He's not mellowed.  Someone else is quoting Cecil Rhodes.

Ant Farm Keyboard

Quote from: CaledonianGonzo on September 05, 2018, 07:34:20 PM
It also happened in Casino Royale (Solange) and Skyfall (er....thingy. Her off of the new Twin Peaks). SPECTRE is the only one where it doesn't.

In the first three Craig films, apart from the nameless Turkish woman with whom Bond has a fling when he passes for dead, none of the women Bond has sex with makes it through the end of the film. In SPECTRE, both Bellucci and Seydoux are supposed to be alive.
And then there's Moneypenny in Skyfall, but they make it ambiguous about sharing an intimate moment offscreen after the shaving. My guess is that they did, but both Bond and Moneypenny decided that it would be a one time thing they wouldn't repeat or mention.

Soup

A bit off topic, but I've always been baffled by the bit in A View to a Kill where Grace Jones kills Mr. Aubergine with a poisoned butterfly. I feel as though I'm meant to recognise the butterfly thing as a familiar phenomenon, and not totally baffling and really shit. Like I can see Michael G. Wilson saying "Ah, and maybe then Bond and his contact meet at one of those butterfly shows- you know where the women whistles and the butterflies flutter by and everyone claps and is very impressed- except somebody steals the butterfly rod off one of the butterfly handlers and subs it out for a sharpened, poisoned butterfly and hits the contact in the cheek and he dies. His name is Aubergine." And then Richard Maibaum is sort of nonplussed but feels like maybe he's the idiot for not knowing about these clearly spectacular and well-liked butterfly shows so just nods and goes along with it.

a duncandisorderly


a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Kelvin on September 03, 2018, 12:20:29 AM
But the Craig films were a response to that formulae feeling stale, and Spectre already sees them returning to those cliches. If anything, they haven't pursued that more grounded vision consistently enough, and I'd like to see them lean more into that, before returning to the sillier, shallower romps.

I thought CR was pretty good. I read the books over & over as a lad, & that one stuck with me, so it was nice to see it done properly.
but then... I need to watch QoS again- it didn't really register, because no book.

skyfall is just dreadful. all that 50 years shite. why wasn't the car the one he won in CR? via Q, naturally, but the same car. not 'the company car', ffs.

I watched spectre last week. this is what bond flicks are reduced to- some spectacular set-pieces & just barely enough fabric to hold them together.
right after it I watched 'jason bourne', which was an improvement in quite a few ways on both bond & its own predecessors.

then I watched guy ritchie's "the man from U.N.C.L.E."....

anyone planning to do a period bond, which is really the only logical place it can go now, without turning into bourne, should start here. but I think craig has to go.

Dr Rock

I haven't watched any Bourne, is he likable? Because a big problem for me is Craig is written as a cunt (not so much in Casino Royale) and plays him as a cunt. Bond IS a cunt, but possibly not this much. Can't think of any actors that are right to replace him though. Idris has said he wouldn't  do it.

Thomas

Quote from: Dr Rock on September 08, 2018, 07:34:59 PM
Because a big problem for me is Craig is written as a cunt

I can't even tell that his Bond is written as anything, really. In the last couple of films, he seems to be a cipher for obligatory one-liners and fragments of simple exposition; a marker in a tailored suit to drag the camera from one stunt to the next.

I really like Casino Royale and Skyfall, but there's really no telling what motivates the man 'James Bond' by the time we get to the latter. He has some character in the former, adapted very skillfully from the novel, but in Skyfall he seems barely to speak. A programmed Terminator. Presumably he's patriotic, though you can't really imagine him giving a shit. Misanthropic. Misogynistic, or not. Unsentimental (though suddenly in full affectionate love for the sake of Spectre's final act). He has a lot of sex, but can you imagine him enjoying it? No. I just picture those scenes of him walking silently on a dark beach during his presumed death, or sitting silently in his flat in Spectre. Continually bored, friendless, and unhappy. The quips and jokes and friendly moments in the latest film come across as self-consciously forced additions by the filmmakers, unless they're supposed to feel that way as insight into Bond's monumental depression. Did Vesper's death just hollow him out? He might simply be a sociopathic adrenaline junkie. I reckon he ought to kill himself in the next one.

If they must continue to make Bond films, I think any actor could play him, really, given the muscle mass.

Dr Rock

Yes that's much more accurate.

Kelvin

I don't agree with that assessment of Skyfall. In that film, Bond is a man without a cause, yes, but that's the point. He blindly follows orders, and stands up for queen and country, because that's all he knows.

The villain, whose name I forget, makes that point repeatedly to Bond, and it's only the threat to M that actually gives Bond something to fight for; itself ironic, because of who she is, and what she represents.

In other words, the film is fairly consistent in its depiction of a shallow man.

Thomas

Now that you say that, I do recall one of the taunts by the villain (Silva, I believe) about 'spies, Queen and country - so old-fashioned'.

Kelvin

I don't think Bond does care about Queen and country, though. It's just what he tells himself he's doing it for. At the start of the film, he doesn't return to MI6 out of principle or idealism. He returns because MI6 is attacked and it gives him a sense of purpose again.

Ant Farm Keyboard

It's consistent with the novels. Ian Fleming owed a lot to Raymond Chandler. Marlowe and James Bond are both figures of the knight servant who are cynical on almost everything else.

a duncandisorderly

'skyfall' has this terrific opening sequence, & then the rest of it is shit. 

only 'casino royale' (the recent one, not the woody allen) resembles the pacing of the books.

what you get in the books is a cypher too, to be fair- there's no real sense of a person, a personality or a character. just little flashes of background, like one-liners on a CV, that reveal nothing of what motivates him or fills his thoughts.
I think it's supposed to be like that, though it makes me curious that fleming didn't address the idea more directly, of bond being a foot-soldier, & of being of interest to us (the readers) simply because he happens to be the best of the double-0 agents, i.e. the one that hasn't been offed by a baddie yet.
we've had our expectations falsely raised by things in the flicks brought in by the stars- connery's quips, lazenby's tragic loss, moore's sardonic looks, & so on, but the truth of bond is more like the first craig movie.
then sam mendes has to fuck it all up by making the third one into a birthday party (the 'company car' line- I almost got up & walked out), & opening the door for danny boyle to extend his olympics joke onto the big screen. no thanks.

bourne starts off like a mercenary too, but somehow matt damon brings something to the character that means you share his puzzlement, & stick with him... this latest instalment (the one just called 'jason bourne') seems to want to wrap this up, finally, after years of waiting. I'm trying to imagine how the same might happen in the bond universe, without upsetting the estates of fleming & cauliflower.
could charlie higson write something like this? I doubt it.

biggytitbo

His motive is perfectly clear in one of the best James Bond films Quantum of Solace.

I agree that Quantum of Solace is one of the better ones. Flawed and certainty slight, but miles better than the last act of Skyfall and all of Spectre.

CaledonianGonzo

I agree with the QoS love, but the chase over the moor at the end of Skyfall is also out of the top drawer. Deakins working miracles.


mothman

Ooh. Possible new wallpaper.