Memories from 1999: my Son was born; I had no time for the theatre, so I ended up getting TWINE on VHS when released. I enjoyed it, but I felt (back then) that it was too dark for cinematic Bond.
Strange to me that some still say Brosnan was always a pastiche of Connery & Moore as I feel TWINE was a direct precursor to the Craig films.
Of course, now we all like 'dark' thanks to this new age.
At least Dalton's Bond is finally getting some respect (me included). -{
Bane was what Renard was touted as but failed to live up to
I rather liked that Renard was different in that he turned out to be simply a dangerous and bitter little man as opposed to a confident mastermind with Oddjob/Jaws unstoppability.
Nothing wrong with that, but the imperviousness to pain was gratuitous and led me to expect more. That fact and Denise Richards were for me the weak points in an otherwise very good Bond film.
the imperviousness to pain was gratuitous and led me to expect more.
Me too first time I saw it, but in realistic terms, not feeling pain doesn't increase toughness no matter what the good Dr. says, it only leads to exhausting yourself with no warning signs, or not bothering to block head shots because they don't hurt, leading to sudden (if painless) traumatic loss of consciousness. )
the imperviousness to pain was gratuitous and led me to expect more.
Me too first time I saw it, but in realistic terms, not feeling pain doesn't increase toughness no matter what the good Dr. says, it only leads to exhausting yourself with no warning signs, or not bothering to block head shots because they don't hurt, leading to sudden (if painless) traumatic loss of consciousness. )
You make a good point, Chris, but even that aspect of Renard's inability to feel pain was barely a factor. I still have a hard time understanding why that condition was ever introduced into the storyline if they weren't going to really do anything with it.
I remember reading somewhere that Stamper ( TND) was to have the same condition,
Hence why he doesn't flinch when Bond stabs him. So it does seem odd to come up
with this Idea for two films and not play on it in either. )
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
I still have a hard time understanding why that condition was ever introduced into the storyline if they weren't going to really do anything with it.
Smells of ideas by committee to me.
That's kind of the feeling I got. And then ultimately there was too much to try to cram into one story, so that element of the tale got shorted. I wonder if there's a director's cut somewhere in which Renard's condition is explored in more detail?
Artistic home runs are hard to come by when studios are involved nowadays, TLD & CR being recent exceptions IMO.
In the OLD days, one could make a DN or FRWL or GF or TB or YOLT or OHMSS without undue interference... 8-)
it seems that every year or so we have a debate about this film im not sure why to me its run of the mill but certainly entertaining not as good as ge but a lot better than dad
The radical change for dislike would be TWINE. The more I see it, the problematic it is to me. As we all hopefully remember, we were promised character development and a more three-dimensional Bond when GE was released. It was understandable that in the first film, they only dropped hints about Bond's past, although very definite ones that we hadn't seen before.
The problem was that GE was followed by TND. I actually don't have anything against TND (in fact, I like it quite a bit) other than its release timing. It was a return to Formulaic Bond with the only hint of Bond's past being explored being a failed relationship (admittedly, that was pretty nice to see that dynamic). You're then left with TWINE, which can't really decide if it's a formulaic or of it's trying to make itself into the promised character development film that it was supposed to be.
A much better solution would have been to switch the releases of TWINE and TND. Face it: you could make TND almost any time. One of its positives is that it's not a time-sensitive film. But TWINE? It was time sensitive in the sense that if they wanted to do a film focusing on Bond's character development (like they promised), then it had to come after GE. By the time TWINE came along, a lot of people were less interested in Bond's character development or alternately, TND's tone had distracted from it. TWINE's original script draft was reportedly both very long and explored a decent bit of Bond's past...but it was thought to be too long and they tried to rehash the "epic Bond" that was seen in GE. The result was that was we had a whole host of underdeveloped villains (Renard foremost among them, obviously, though Davidov would have made an interesting red herring given the obvious faith Renard had in him), Elektra King's present being covered too much and her past being covered too little (for example, the repeated references to her mother and her mother's oil were obviously meant to be significant, but they don't really come across that way other than Elektra just ranting/out of her mind), the supposed commentary on the B-T-C Pipeline lasting all of one pretty convoluted scene, and most importantly, other than an implied past with Dr. Molly Warmflash, we don't get much about Bond's past.
Don't get me wrong, I do very much like TWINE, but it's like they attempted to cram in a bunch of unnecessary things at the expense of some very necessary things. I guess it's open to debate regarding which things were and were not necessary, although I genuinely think if you wanted a very dark tone to the film, you could have omitted the Christmas Jones character altogether (regardless of whether Denise Richards would have played her or not, I thought she felt a bit shoehorned in...and by the way, if you do deem her necessary, can you at least give her a bit of background?).
(TND is) a film that gets a bad rep A LOT but also one that I do enjoy. I've always wondered if they thought "okay, we've got a film showing a little bit of Bond's past, NOW we have a perfect opportunity to make a formulaic! But we'll revisit the concept later." Because in a way, they seem to try to do this in TWINE, but it just doesn't "click".
(SNIP)
Allow me to expand on TWINE, then. It's certainly a FUN film and if it's on TV, I'm not going to flip the channel unless the New York Mets or Detroit Tigers happen to be playing, but I contend that it's the most uneven Bond film, in terms of the plot, that's ever been made. The most intriguing thing about TWINE is that, Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist aside, everyone stays in character WITH THEMSELVES throughout the movie in spite of this. What makes the film so uneven, I think, were its severe pacing problems and overly-complex plot.
The pacing, at times, actually rivals QoS as seemingly "sped up". Look at, for example, the helicopter attack on Zukovsky's caviar building. Or, for that matter, the fight in the submarine's control room (NOT the reactor room). The latter happens so fast we barely remember it. Yet, at other points, the pacing was ploddingly slow. Take the reactor room fight. How many times did he have to drop the reactor rod, anyway? I get it that Renard's beginning to weaken, but Bond sure isn't.
The plot also suffers from being stuck inbetween the realm of too long and too short. As a movie, it's the longest Bond of the Pre-Reboot Era. CR and SF are of course quite a bit longer, with CR beating SF by just two minutes. Yet, if one watches CR, especially, it seems shorter than TWINE, doesn't it? Likewise, each time I watched SF, it seemed shorter than TWINE. I've heard many, many times about how long TWINE was, but how many threads about CR, especially, or even SF citing running time as the problem? Yet, in spite of these complaints that the film was too long, we also see tons of complaints about characters being underdeveloped (especially Renard) or having odd "blank spots" in their backgrounds (including the single-most-developed character in the film, Elektra King).
However, the 128-minute TWINE was supposedly originally slated to go over or around 160 minutes. Much of the filler footage that we saw as DVD extras was part of that, but whole entire scenes never made it in off the scrip, either. Although I'm NOT going to advocate for a 160-minute-long "classic era" Bond film, what if they had trimmed the running time to maybe 145 minutes and filled in both Renard's background as well as some of the odd-feeling "blank spots" with the characters?
I agree it's a totally different Bond movie, but I wonder if that's less by design and more by the way they edited and paced it, giving it not the "healthy hybrid" of shoot-'em-up, beat-'em-up, good old-fashioned action and character development seen in CR, but rather the "stunted hybrid" remains of a film meant to focus on character development with intermittent action sequences that were likely grafted on some time later (I say grafted on later rather than added in at the last moment because, as mentioned, nobody really breaks character in any kind of bizarre way) that on more than one occassion just seem out of place.
Also, in defense of TWINE as originally conceived, much of Renard's "blank spot" background WAS actually given, but wound up on the cutting room floor. Ditto the fleshing out of Elektra King's background (such as her memories of her mother AND, as a vital plot point, even playing Renard for a sucker) and some of Valentin Zukovsky's ulterior motives (plus he SURVIVES, though perhaps that was better to have left on the cutting room floor), and the almost certainly ethnic Armenian villagers' presence and relevance to the plot is explained far better [EDIT from reposting this: they're Armenians, NOT Azeris, and I found out it was a big plot point at one stage]. The BTC pipeline is paralleled much better than it was in the final product. Too bad they never pulled the trigger on giving the film a longer running time/were scared of it even running as long as it did...I bet had you even seen 145-150 minutes, it would have worked out way better than what we actually saw. If we imagine these scenes where they were originally supposed to be, the pacing of the film also seems a bit more normal and less "jumping around".
I think [TWINE] teaches another lesson: if you've got a nice, long story to tell, then do it or remove all references to subplots that can't be included. Don't just keep them in there to fill up the running time. Short films can be good, too.
Starting to get my beef with TWINE? It's a fun film, don't get me wrong, but it essentially passed the threshold of "compact, action-packed movie", yet didn't quite meet the threshold of the "character development film" it should have been. It could have been one one of the best, period. Instead, it was a bit half-baked, IMO.
Yes, and you stated your case quite eloquently, sir. I can't fault a word of it.
Luckily, for me, when I see a movie with lots of nice bits awkwardly jammed in a movie too short for its adequate telling of the full tale, my brain can fill in the missing parts at super-speed whilst I'm watching, to make an okay movie a great one. Kind of like organic branching of hypothetical material.
A good non-Bond example of this is Spider-man 3. Same problems as TWINE. But I love them both.
I think you sort of get it, chrisisall. Maybe I should have been a bit more to the point. If I had to pick ONE sentence out of that entire post, it would be this one...
"You're then left with TWINE, which can't really decide if it's a formulaic or if it's trying to make itself into the promised character development film that it was supposed to be."
We got promised a character development film and we wound up with a film that really couldn't decide what it was. It was quite different, but I felt as though this wasn't really the Bond we were promised. It was good, and I do watch it, but it was also not what EON was selling it as.
Comments
Strange to me that some still say Brosnan was always a pastiche of Connery & Moore as I feel TWINE was a direct precursor to the Craig films.
Of course, now we all like 'dark' thanks to this new age.
At least Dalton's Bond is finally getting some respect (me included). -{
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
Nothing wrong with that, but the imperviousness to pain was gratuitous and led me to expect more. That fact and Denise Richards were for me the weak points in an otherwise very good Bond film.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
You make a good point, Chris, but even that aspect of Renard's inability to feel pain was barely a factor. I still have a hard time understanding why that condition was ever introduced into the storyline if they weren't going to really do anything with it.
Hence why he doesn't flinch when Bond stabs him. So it does seem odd to come up
with this Idea for two films and not play on it in either.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
That's kind of the feeling I got. And then ultimately there was too much to try to cram into one story, so that element of the tale got shorted. I wonder if there's a director's cut somewhere in which Renard's condition is explored in more detail?
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
The whole film smelled of this to me. I've written on it before quite a bit, but will do so again, albeit a bit later.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
I agree. For me, TWINE is more hit than miss.
In the OLD days, one could make a DN or FRWL or GF or TB or YOLT or OHMSS without undue interference... 8-)
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
Starting to get my beef with TWINE? It's a fun film, don't get me wrong, but it essentially passed the threshold of "compact, action-packed movie", yet didn't quite meet the threshold of the "character development film" it should have been. It could have been one one of the best, period. Instead, it was a bit half-baked, IMO.
Luckily, for me, when I see a movie with lots of nice bits awkwardly jammed in a movie too short for its adequate telling of the full tale, my brain can fill in the missing parts at super-speed whilst I'm watching, to make an okay movie a great one. Kind of like organic branching of hypothetical material.
A good non-Bond example of this is Spider-man 3. Same problems as TWINE. But I love them both.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
"You're then left with TWINE, which can't really decide if it's a formulaic or if it's trying to make itself into the promised character development film that it was supposed to be."
We got promised a character development film and we wound up with a film that really couldn't decide what it was. It was quite different, but I felt as though this wasn't really the Bond we were promised. It was good, and I do watch it, but it was also not what EON was selling it as.
A Formulaic/Character Development hybrid is possible, but not at a measly two hours.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
Bingo. That's exactly what I'm driving at.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS