Post by Harkovast on Mar 8, 2015 18:35:04 GMT
Let me just lay all my cards out on the table before we start here.
I loved Casino Royale.
What I loved most about it was how cool everything seemed.
Being a spy really felt glamorous, sexy and dangerous again.
When Bond was killing bad guys and getting it on with women I was really buying into the awesome world he inhabited.
I loved that the villain was not some all knowing super human that out wits everyone in the world easily but some how still won't kill bond when he gets the chance. the guy was incredibly smart but he fucked up, he did things while desperate or panicking and wasn't always in control of the situation.
This is a film where both the villain and Bond are shown to be vulnerable -the villain when guys were threatening to cut off his girl friends arm and Bond during the brutal chair sequence. This was the first time in forever that Bond had been in a death trap that was REALLY frightening! Rather than making it seem like the bad guy was fucking around, it made you realise how serious this monster actually was.
At the end of the film the evil Mr White, the guy who has been pulling the strings gets that phone call, asks who he's speaking too, gets shot in the leg, the camera pans up and there is Daniel Craig with a huge fuck off gun and he says "The name's Bond, James Bond."
BAM! Awesome.
And this really set me up to want a sequel!
The bad guys have fucked with Bond, beaten his balls, got the only woman he ever loved killed and now its pay back time.
We're ready to see Bond make these assholes pay.
So you can imagine my excitement when Quantum of Solace was announced.
The trailer even made it look cool.
The bad guys are after what they describe as the worlds most precious resource and they "must control as much of it as they can."
What do they mean? What are they after? How will Bond stop them? And based on what a bad ass killing machine Bond was in the first film, do these fuckers have any idea what deep shit they are in?
And then the film came out...and it was just...meh.
Bond was boring again.
The excitement, the glamour the drama, the fucking awesomeness all melted away.
Bond goes to a lot of different locations in this film, but if you ask anyone who saw it to explain why Bond went to any of these places almost all of them would struggle to answer.
Rather than the focused mission of revenge we were expecting, Bond seems to largely just potter around.
He goes to different places because its a Bond film and the writers feel they have to send him to different places because that's what Bond does.
The most precious resource that was mentioned in the trailer? It turns out to be water, specifically the water supply of Bolivia. References to taking over the government also refers to the Bolivian government.
I don't want to have a go at Bolivia, I'm sure its a nice place...but that's not exactly the world spanning master plan I was imagining. Bolivia doesn't seem to feature that much in the film and I (like most of the audience) know very little about it. Other than a montage near the end of sad Bolivians who don't have enough water, there is very little effort to make me care about any of these stakes.
A plot doesn't have to involve the whole world in peril but you have to make me understand the dangers and consequences.
The evil general that the bad guys are manipulating to let them take over seems like a douche...but it gives the impression this is an unstable country with governments changing all the time. I dunno if that's really the case (Bolivia is in South America, right?) but that was how I felt watching the film.
The villain is this short evil French guy called Dominic Green but like the rest of the film he's just bland and not nearly memorable enough. Other than a scene where he goes insane with an axe near the end of the film (which is memorable because it seems so out of character), I really can't remember anything about him.
His minion is evil worse. A dorky looking guy with a bowl hair cut called Igor. No really.
Igor doesn't seem to have any super skills...or any particular skills at all. Why isn't he a lethal assassin wanted by the CIA or an Israeli traitor, hunted by MOSAD or a member of a disbanded special operations unit, wanted for war crimes OR FUCKING ANYTHING. Instead we have a man with a silly name and bad hair whole looks really worried the whole time.
He gets killed during the final battle when the fleeing bad guy tells him to go fight bond (which he looks terrified at the prospect of doing) and then gets blown up by a random explosion.
Not exactly thrilling.
Why is this so dull? It's like vanilla Bond!
The first film you could cut the tension with a knife and half the movie they are just playing cards!
Here Bond is on a merciless mission of revenge against a world spanning evil organisation...and its totally uninteresting.
That's sort of an accomplishment right there.
In this film M sends a secret agent to help Bond and I swear to God when she first arrived I thought it was going to be a twist and it would turn out M had actually sent him a hooker to get it out of his system so he could pay attention to the mission.
It wasn't just her porn-star-like name of 'Strawberry Fields' or the fact she was wearing a rubber over coat when she first arrived and it looked like she didn't have anything on under it. What made me suspect a twist was coming was that she was SO stereotypical of what we would expect from a Bond girl.
She told Bond that she didn't approve of his play boy ways and his charms certainly wouldn't work on her etc etc.
I was thinking "Seriously? We're doing this?"
It was so telegraphed that she is going to shag him in a couple of scenes and then die that I couldn't believe they were playing it straight.
But they were.
How did we come to this after the first films awesome sexy seduction of the bad guys wife, or the complex, mutual attraction with Vesper?
Why does this woman who claims not to approve of Bond complete reverse her view and decide to up and fuck him?
He makes a joke about offering her a drink or something in the hotel room and the next scene they are naked in bed together with her saying she can't believe she did that.
Neither could I, frankly.
In the first film, if you asked me why, for example, that one bad guys wife had a fling with Bond, I could give you lots of reasons that the film demonstrated.
Her husband is an abusive prick, Bond is super sexy and charming in his scenes with her and she is clearly attracted to dangerous men who are bad for her.
Why does 'Strawberry Fields' (I seriously can't believe they called her that) do a 180 on everything she has said and get it on with Bond?
Because she's a Bond girl and its what she's there to do.
That's why they put her in and its her role in the story.
Show up, complain, shag Bond, get killed.
That's the second time I've given that as an answer for why the film does something and it really says a lot about the problem this film has.
Things aren't happening because they are cool or exciting or make sense.
They are happening because its a Bond film and the makers feel obligated.
Obligation is not exciting or sexy; its boring, its workman like, its drudgery. Bond has become a check list, a schedule, a time table.
The end sequence offers us yet another strange example of this phenomenon.
The bad guy lives in a big mansion in the middle of the desert that is powered by some kind of Hydrogen power cells that make the whole building incredibly unstable and prone to being destroyed in a series of explosions if they get damaged.
Why would anyone want to be in such a ridiculous building? A building so dumb even a character in the film questions how dangerous it is?
Because this is a Bond film and we have to have lots of explosions for the end sequence, right?
Blowing things up has become the equivalent of clocking in for work in the morning.
After all this there is a weirdly tagged on sequence where Vespers former lover, who turns out to be a bad guy who seduces women with connections so the bad guys can manipulate them (in Vespers case by pretending he was being held hostage), gets arrested.
Why wasn't this guy the main baddie? Or at least a replacement for Igor? He sounds like sort of an evil Bond, seducing women but for sinister purposes, might give Bond pause to reflect on his own behaviour etc.
But nah, forget that nonsense! Lets just tag on a token scene where he gets arrested at the end of the movie.
Frustratingly, Mr White escapes early on in the film and isn't recaptured before the end of it. So we don't even getting any fucking closure on any of this!
The reason this film gets so much bile from me is the failure of expectations. For the first time in years I was excited about Bond again and I was looking forward to the next instalment.
It was set up so perfectly but instead we get this bland, uninspired, by the numbers, forgettable tosh.
At the time of writing this, a new film called Spectre is on the way, and apparently Mr White will return so I might finally get the closure I've been waiting for.
It's telling how bad this film was that the next film (Skyfall) doesn't refer to it, or the Quantum organisation (which Bond has failed to destroy throughout all this crap! He just foiled their plans, rather than wipe them out.)
Kinda makes you wonder why I'm referring to it so much right now.
I should probably stop.
I loved Casino Royale.
What I loved most about it was how cool everything seemed.
Being a spy really felt glamorous, sexy and dangerous again.
When Bond was killing bad guys and getting it on with women I was really buying into the awesome world he inhabited.
I loved that the villain was not some all knowing super human that out wits everyone in the world easily but some how still won't kill bond when he gets the chance. the guy was incredibly smart but he fucked up, he did things while desperate or panicking and wasn't always in control of the situation.
This is a film where both the villain and Bond are shown to be vulnerable -the villain when guys were threatening to cut off his girl friends arm and Bond during the brutal chair sequence. This was the first time in forever that Bond had been in a death trap that was REALLY frightening! Rather than making it seem like the bad guy was fucking around, it made you realise how serious this monster actually was.
At the end of the film the evil Mr White, the guy who has been pulling the strings gets that phone call, asks who he's speaking too, gets shot in the leg, the camera pans up and there is Daniel Craig with a huge fuck off gun and he says "The name's Bond, James Bond."
BAM! Awesome.
And this really set me up to want a sequel!
The bad guys have fucked with Bond, beaten his balls, got the only woman he ever loved killed and now its pay back time.
We're ready to see Bond make these assholes pay.
So you can imagine my excitement when Quantum of Solace was announced.
The trailer even made it look cool.
The bad guys are after what they describe as the worlds most precious resource and they "must control as much of it as they can."
What do they mean? What are they after? How will Bond stop them? And based on what a bad ass killing machine Bond was in the first film, do these fuckers have any idea what deep shit they are in?
And then the film came out...and it was just...meh.
Bond was boring again.
The excitement, the glamour the drama, the fucking awesomeness all melted away.
Bond goes to a lot of different locations in this film, but if you ask anyone who saw it to explain why Bond went to any of these places almost all of them would struggle to answer.
Rather than the focused mission of revenge we were expecting, Bond seems to largely just potter around.
He goes to different places because its a Bond film and the writers feel they have to send him to different places because that's what Bond does.
The most precious resource that was mentioned in the trailer? It turns out to be water, specifically the water supply of Bolivia. References to taking over the government also refers to the Bolivian government.
I don't want to have a go at Bolivia, I'm sure its a nice place...but that's not exactly the world spanning master plan I was imagining. Bolivia doesn't seem to feature that much in the film and I (like most of the audience) know very little about it. Other than a montage near the end of sad Bolivians who don't have enough water, there is very little effort to make me care about any of these stakes.
A plot doesn't have to involve the whole world in peril but you have to make me understand the dangers and consequences.
The evil general that the bad guys are manipulating to let them take over seems like a douche...but it gives the impression this is an unstable country with governments changing all the time. I dunno if that's really the case (Bolivia is in South America, right?) but that was how I felt watching the film.
The villain is this short evil French guy called Dominic Green but like the rest of the film he's just bland and not nearly memorable enough. Other than a scene where he goes insane with an axe near the end of the film (which is memorable because it seems so out of character), I really can't remember anything about him.
His minion is evil worse. A dorky looking guy with a bowl hair cut called Igor. No really.
Igor doesn't seem to have any super skills...or any particular skills at all. Why isn't he a lethal assassin wanted by the CIA or an Israeli traitor, hunted by MOSAD or a member of a disbanded special operations unit, wanted for war crimes OR FUCKING ANYTHING. Instead we have a man with a silly name and bad hair whole looks really worried the whole time.
He gets killed during the final battle when the fleeing bad guy tells him to go fight bond (which he looks terrified at the prospect of doing) and then gets blown up by a random explosion.
Not exactly thrilling.
Why is this so dull? It's like vanilla Bond!
The first film you could cut the tension with a knife and half the movie they are just playing cards!
Here Bond is on a merciless mission of revenge against a world spanning evil organisation...and its totally uninteresting.
That's sort of an accomplishment right there.
In this film M sends a secret agent to help Bond and I swear to God when she first arrived I thought it was going to be a twist and it would turn out M had actually sent him a hooker to get it out of his system so he could pay attention to the mission.
It wasn't just her porn-star-like name of 'Strawberry Fields' or the fact she was wearing a rubber over coat when she first arrived and it looked like she didn't have anything on under it. What made me suspect a twist was coming was that she was SO stereotypical of what we would expect from a Bond girl.
She told Bond that she didn't approve of his play boy ways and his charms certainly wouldn't work on her etc etc.
I was thinking "Seriously? We're doing this?"
It was so telegraphed that she is going to shag him in a couple of scenes and then die that I couldn't believe they were playing it straight.
But they were.
How did we come to this after the first films awesome sexy seduction of the bad guys wife, or the complex, mutual attraction with Vesper?
Why does this woman who claims not to approve of Bond complete reverse her view and decide to up and fuck him?
He makes a joke about offering her a drink or something in the hotel room and the next scene they are naked in bed together with her saying she can't believe she did that.
Neither could I, frankly.
In the first film, if you asked me why, for example, that one bad guys wife had a fling with Bond, I could give you lots of reasons that the film demonstrated.
Her husband is an abusive prick, Bond is super sexy and charming in his scenes with her and she is clearly attracted to dangerous men who are bad for her.
Why does 'Strawberry Fields' (I seriously can't believe they called her that) do a 180 on everything she has said and get it on with Bond?
Because she's a Bond girl and its what she's there to do.
That's why they put her in and its her role in the story.
Show up, complain, shag Bond, get killed.
That's the second time I've given that as an answer for why the film does something and it really says a lot about the problem this film has.
Things aren't happening because they are cool or exciting or make sense.
They are happening because its a Bond film and the makers feel obligated.
Obligation is not exciting or sexy; its boring, its workman like, its drudgery. Bond has become a check list, a schedule, a time table.
The end sequence offers us yet another strange example of this phenomenon.
The bad guy lives in a big mansion in the middle of the desert that is powered by some kind of Hydrogen power cells that make the whole building incredibly unstable and prone to being destroyed in a series of explosions if they get damaged.
Why would anyone want to be in such a ridiculous building? A building so dumb even a character in the film questions how dangerous it is?
Because this is a Bond film and we have to have lots of explosions for the end sequence, right?
Blowing things up has become the equivalent of clocking in for work in the morning.
After all this there is a weirdly tagged on sequence where Vespers former lover, who turns out to be a bad guy who seduces women with connections so the bad guys can manipulate them (in Vespers case by pretending he was being held hostage), gets arrested.
Why wasn't this guy the main baddie? Or at least a replacement for Igor? He sounds like sort of an evil Bond, seducing women but for sinister purposes, might give Bond pause to reflect on his own behaviour etc.
But nah, forget that nonsense! Lets just tag on a token scene where he gets arrested at the end of the movie.
Frustratingly, Mr White escapes early on in the film and isn't recaptured before the end of it. So we don't even getting any fucking closure on any of this!
The reason this film gets so much bile from me is the failure of expectations. For the first time in years I was excited about Bond again and I was looking forward to the next instalment.
It was set up so perfectly but instead we get this bland, uninspired, by the numbers, forgettable tosh.
At the time of writing this, a new film called Spectre is on the way, and apparently Mr White will return so I might finally get the closure I've been waiting for.
It's telling how bad this film was that the next film (Skyfall) doesn't refer to it, or the Quantum organisation (which Bond has failed to destroy throughout all this crap! He just foiled their plans, rather than wipe them out.)
Kinda makes you wonder why I'm referring to it so much right now.
I should probably stop.