Spoilers: This May Seem Only Tangential, but Kim Sherwood Chosen to Write Bond Trilogy . . .

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  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent
    edited November 2021

    I think he seems totally on edge in that scene, to be honest. If Roger had done TLD I almost imagine him sitting down in a comfy chair behind the door when Pushkin walks in, cool as a cucumber; not lashing out and shouting. I wouldn't say he's even in control- it goes wrong and he has to improvise, twice. As I say, Dalton is the one Bond who would never have eaten that grape: he just misses the swagger and confidence all of the others had, and it's a key part of what audiences respond to about Bond. He never gives off that air that he thinks he's amazing and he doesn't really do anything that's cool. It may have been a big part in why audiences didn't really take to him.

    I'm not sure what you mean when you say you don't imagine yourself being Craig's Bond. You're not..?


    I dunno, I see this and I'm not getting the vibe that this is a guy who's a bundle of nerves and short on self-confidence.


  • SeanIsTheOnlyOneSeanIsTheOnlyOne Posts: 402MI6 Agent

    Eating the grape seems to be an important parameter in the way you consider coolness! Not for me. Sorry!

    To be honest, what Sean does in TB is absolutely not THE thing that makes me admire the man on screen.

    I just don't agree with you about Dalton. This scene couldn't be better. It shows the real Bond. If you take Moore as an example while I desperately try to make you understand my reference is Fleming's work, then there's no debate.

    It mainly depends on what you mean by coolness. When I hear Dalton with his incredible voice saying: "watch the birdie you bastard" or "more of a problem eliminator", I just find it so cool, because of the way he says it and the way he behaves at that moment.

    I never had that feeling with Craig. That's why I say it's a personal appreciation and I just don't share your vision.

  • Asp9mmAsp9mm Over the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,483MI6 Agent

    Dalton-Bond deffo isn’t in control in that hotel scene. He’s nervous, edgy and seems on the verge of panic. One of the few things Higgins and I agree on.

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  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent
    edited November 2021

    Well it's obviously fine that you like that about Dalton's performance, we all like different things. I'm just talking about that which made Bond popular with moviegoing audiences over the years: this is the Bond 26, movie part of the forum after all, not the Fleming one. Stuff like Sean harpooning a guy and saying 'I think he got the point', tossing the fan heater in the bath, wrapping a phone cord around a guy he's just pulled through a window, charming the hotel maid to the door while using her skeleton key in one seamless move, smoothly ordering Goldfinger to start losing over the radio etc. etc. etc. Swagger and coolness and his massive self confidence are just a thing that audiences like about the character. I'm desperately trying to make you understand that, and if you don't then there really is no debate. I like the books as much as the next fan, but the films moved beyond them and made Bond into a massive phenomenon which lasts to this day. My reference is to the films, because that's what the conversation is about.

    If you've never enjoyed the grape moment or the many other ones like it, then that's obviously fine, but I'm saying that it's a fundamental part of the screen character that made him popular with millions of others worldwide. It evolved from the "you've had your six" and "they were on their way to a funeral" parts of Dr No, grew a bit funnier with "she should have kept her mouth shut" lines in FRWL and became part of his screen persona. Bond is the unflappably cool guy who 'men want to be and women want to be with', as goes the age old adage from around that time. Removing that twinkle and swagger from Connery's performance and I'm not sure what you'd be left with to be honest. When you say it's not the thing you admire him onscreen as Bond for... well what are you left with? A couple of scenes where he gets tough with people, a great fight scene... but surely you can see how important his cool and swagger is to being Bond?

    Even as a kid I thought the lyrics to Thunderball got Bond wrong: he's not the "one who always runs while other walk" : he walks in a cool calm way while others run in a panic! 😊 But Dalton does run, when he needed to walk more.

    "Problem eliminator" is a cool line, sure; but there's not much of that swagger about him: it doesn't help that he actually seems to be playing a character in that scene rather than being himself: there's a sense that he's actually putting on the confidence to make Sanchez accept him, not helped by his occasional nervous eye flicks which suggest exactly that. I don't think it's even just Dalton's fault either: the seaplane stunt in LTK should be incredibly cool (he uses a harpoon to water ski behind a plane and catch it up, after all) and yet in execution it somehow isn't, I'm not even sure why. Is it the direction?


    You're also saying that Craig gives off vibes of having no confidence, but I notice you ignore the little clip I posted as an example. That's the real Bond right there. And it's not a one-off in the film: that's his general vibe in the whole thing. Does that really say 'no self-confidence' to you? What would a confident man be doing in that situation?

  • SeanIsTheOnlyOneSeanIsTheOnlyOne Posts: 402MI6 Agent

    Don't forget Sanchez is probably one of the most dangerous, crual and terrifying villain in the entire series, if not the most. No world threatened this time, just a personal case involving Bond whose desire to avenge Felix and Della is off-limits. And when you look at the way he makes Sanchez's organization implode step by step, I think it's a beautiful proof of how clever and patient the guy is, he knows what he's doing while it would have been easy, not to say seducing, to let his anger take over from the beginning (that's probably why Craig's Bond is the only one to meet death if we think about it, he never really succeeded to put his emotions aside - the PTS of NTTD shows Madeleine as a much more mature person, and the fact she survives at the end and not him goes that way in my opinion).

    Well, let's just say I'm the kind of guy who has his own definition of coolness. The way Craig walks does not appear particularly impressive to me. If it helps, I don't want to be THIS guy when I see him walking in that scene, that's not a parameter I take into account, and if I had to, I think Dalton's walk in his gunbarrel is incredibly much cooler than Craig's in the clip you posted, so once again, it depends on your own appreciation...

  • SeanIsTheOnlyOneSeanIsTheOnlyOne Posts: 402MI6 Agent

    @emtiem don't forget Sanchez is probably one of the most dangerous, crual and terrifying villain in the entire series, if not the most. No world threatened this time, just a personal case involving Bond whose desire to avenge Felix and Della is off-limits. And when you look at the way he makes Sanchez's organization implode step by step, I think it's a beautiful proof of how clever and patient the guy is, he knows what he's doing while it would have been easy, not to say seducing, to let his anger take over from the beginning (that's probably why Craig's Bond is the only one to meet death if we think about it, he never really succeeded to put his emotions aside - the PTS of NTTD shows Madeleine as a much more mature person, and the fact she survives at the end and not him goes that way in my opinion).

    Well, let's just say I'm the kind of guy who has his own definition of coolness. The way Craig walks does not appear particularly impressive to me. If it helps, I don't want to be THIS guy when I see him walking in that scene, that's not a parameter I take into account, and if I had to, I think Dalton's walk in his gunbarrel is incredibly much cooler than Craig's in the clip you posted, so once again, it depends on your own appreciation...

  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent

    Sanchez is a good villain, but they're all evil. I guess I just don't find acting nervously to be a sign of self-confidence: you do, that's fine. It seems contradictory to me, but okay.

    That you find Craig's casual don't-give-a-toss actions as exemplified in that clip to be him lacking self-confidence also seems contradictory to me, but okay. Do you find Connery to lacking in cool too?

  • SeanIsTheOnlyOneSeanIsTheOnlyOne Posts: 402MI6 Agent

    Sarcasm never leads to anything positive in a debate my friend...

  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent

    There's literally nothing sarcastic in that quote.

  • Gassy ManGassy Man USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent

    This article about the value of the quip touches upon -- but does not directly address -- a reason why NTTD seems to make Craig's Bond a satiric foil. We know Bond has a penchant for not only dispatching his enemies but also adding a witticism to make their death more humiliating. He -- and we -- get to gloat at the enemy's expense.

    That's a lot of what the ending to NTTD feels like to me. Bond is killed by bombs from his own navy that have been sent at his command to destroy a weapon his boss authorized to create on an island that isn't even British territory. This after Bond is shot and infected with incurable nanobots that now make it impossible for him to be with the ones he loves. How anyone sees this as a heroic end for the Bond character is beyond me. Rather, it seems the greatest possible state of ignominy for the Bond movie character we've ever seen, the punchline to a joke at his expense.

    It's the culmination of every insult and injury to Bond possible within the construct of not only this movie but the 5-movie Craig arc. The amount of suffering Bond must go through first and the fact that his death serves no real purpose are almost funny, not in the "ha ha" sort of way but in their extremity. I mean, Bond doesn't even consider that if were alive but isolated from Swann and Mathilde, at least he's alive. There can still be some kind of relationship, if from a distance, which really isn't too difficult in this world of Zoom. And exactly how does Q know there will never be a cure? At the very least, wouldn't creating nanobots to destroy the first set be a possibility, a kind of artificial antibody? That they give up so easily is itself rather un-Bond-like, especially for Craig's version who, like the Terminator, has been presented before as only being stoppable if you kill him. Who knew it would terminate himself?

    If Blofeld set out to ruin Bond's life, he not only succeeded but succeeded brilliantly.

    So, when Swann says at the end, "His name was James Bond," it feels like a quip to me. I know it's intended to pay homage to both the line and its legacy for the character, but if Bond had said it after offing some villain, we'd all laugh. It feels to me like Craig and the production are having a laugh with how Bond's story ends.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/ancient-history-adding-insult-injury-131236274.html

  • SeanIsTheOnlyOneSeanIsTheOnlyOne Posts: 402MI6 Agent

    Ok, if you say so, my mistake. I thought your question about Connery's degree of coolness went that way, and I was a little bit surprised you asked it considering my username...

    Sean is obviously my Bond, the ultimate one, and I'm fed up when I see people desperately trying to convince me Craig's Bond is great (I don't say it's your case don't worry) while I just feel indifferent when I see him on screen. I never had any sympathy for that guy (now he's dead it's even worse, because I only identitfy with heroes who live on), and I find him neither charismatic nor classy.

    Don't ask me why, it's a personal appreciation, based on a feeling. There's no concrete explanation. It's like a girl you don't have attraction for while she's considered by many other people as attractive...

  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent

    Ok, if you say so, my mistake. I thought your question about Connery's degree of coolness went that way, and I was a little bit surprised you asked it considering my username...

    It's possible you could like him without thinking he's cool; you certainly didn't seem to enjoy the grape moment from Thunderball so I'm just trying to get a handle on your point of view. Personally I love Connery's cool factor and swagger in the films, and every Bond apart from Dalton has inhabited that in their own way, so I think it's an essential part of the character.

  • hcantrellhcantrell CharlottePosts: 170MI6 Agent

    Jesus Christ, Gassy Man you love to hear yourself write don't you? Bravo for reading far too deeply into everything that's been put to screen in the Craig era. Reading your unending, pretentious prose is like being strapped to a seat-less chair and having my balls beaten with a knot of rope. Analyzing a film is one thing, but diving into an enormous conspiracy theory about the 5 film arc being a complete deconstruction of the "white male," when there's plenty of other explanations for why Bond is the way he's portrayed or why certain story elements are there is unnecessary and boringly tiresome.

    "I don't think the dead care about vengeance."
  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent
    edited November 2021

    That's a lot of what the ending to NTTD feels like to me. Bond is killed by bombs from his own navy that have been sent at his command to destroy a weapon his boss authorized to create on an island that isn't even British territory. This after Bond is shot and infected with incurable nanobots that now make it impossible for him to be with the ones he loves. How anyone sees this as a heroic end for the Bond character is beyond me. Rather, it seems the greatest possible state of ignominy for the Bond movie character we've ever seen, the punchline to a joke at his expense.

    Yes, you keep saying ignominy but you never explain it. He saves millions of people and is remembered with great honour by everyone who survives in the film- that's the opposite of ignominy, but you'll ignore that.

    That the situation is initially brought about by M's mistake doesn't make it a dishonourable death for Bond. How many other Bond films start with Bond or the British making mistakes and bringing the plot about? GoldenEye, Thunderball, Living Daylights, For Your Eyes Only etc. etc. You'll ignore that too.

    I mean, Bond doesn't even consider that if were alive but isolated from Swann and Mathilde, at least he's alive. There can still be some kind of relationship, if from a distance, which really isn't too difficult in this world of Zoom. 

    Because if the killer virus is allowed to get out there into the world it could pass from person to person (as it did from Madeline to Bond to kill Blofeld) and eventually make its way to his family. He dies for them. Honourable, not ignominious.

    So, when Swann says at the end, "His name was James Bond," it feels like a quip to me. I know it's intended to pay homage to both the line and its legacy for the character, but if Bond had said it after offing some villain, we'd all laugh. It feels to me like Craig and the production are having a laugh with how Bond's story ends.

    I think you're determined to see it that way, yes, and if you'll contort that line into that meaning then there's probably nothing they could have done which you wouldn't have seen in that way.

  • Gassy ManGassy Man USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent

    There's a very simple solution: Don't read it. It'll make both our lives better, or at least mine, and that's the one that really counts.

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    This is getting personal, and I'd like that to stop immediately. Argue about opinions by all means but keep it impersonal.

  • Gassy ManGassy Man USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent

    Yes, I agree. I'd rather comment on how dumb @hcantrell's smug, self-important opinion is than how dumb, smug, and self-important he is. I'll endeavor to do the former.

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    Enough, already. I've been enjoying this thread, as I'm sure many have, and I'd be reluctant to close it. Please carry this on, if you must, by PMs.

  • Gassy ManGassy Man USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent

    Understood and appreciate the patience.

  • emtiememtiem SurreyPosts: 5,686MI6 Agent
    edited November 2021

    No defence about the points raised. If the assertion can't be defended against valid arguments then it's reasonable to conclude that it is not correct; you may as well close the thread to be honest Barbel.

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    I'm thinking about it, but I feel that would be a pity since there has been so much of interest in it. I'll give it another little while in the hope that it gets better.

  • hcantrellhcantrell CharlottePosts: 170MI6 Agent

    Barbel, you're really too patient with this one. Immediately after you diagnosed that the arguments in the thread were getting too personal, this is what he writes? It's just blatantly disrespectful. It's probably for the better to close the thread and let Gassy Man go back to being the interpretative genius he is in his own mind. I'm sure he has a pages and pages of personal notes lamenting about how the secret cabal of progressive forces are destroying the future of Bond one movie at a time.


    In all seriousness though it just seemed time someone called him out for what he's doing. He's not arguing in good faith and will only ever see things from his point of view. It's like arguing with a painting.

    "I don't think the dead care about vengeance."
  • Gassy ManGassy Man USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent

    Nah, please don't take the bait, Barbel. Clearly there are some people who want this thread shut down for some reason -- and their comments are rather quite alike, too -- when really all they need to do is either ignore the thread if it bothers them so much or just stop getting personal or being offended when such comments are returned in kind.

    I know I'll just ignore the comments and posters that don't seem to have relevance to anything I post. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of that already (though I also don't always have the opportunity to respond to some really good comments people make). In terms of arguing, what is there to argue about? People can share their opinions, and if they choose to argue, that's their choice. But no one should be forced to or somehow held to a standard that unless they engage in an argument, they're not doing their bit, especially if they don't see merit to some comments or understand them.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,906MI6 Agent

    @Gassy Man has been a friend of this forum for as longs I've been around, and I seem to recall he's a film scholar in real life. I don't think he's posting these lengthy variations of the same argument because he wants to steamroll anyone into agreeing with him, I think he's working through the logic of a thesis that may take final form elsewhere. Note that it is all very well reasoned, with examples and references we can all see, and a chain of logic we can all follow. I don't happen to agree with his conclusions (a simpler explanation is EON is trying to find new stories they can tell within a near exhausted formula). But its all interesting to read, and admirable to see someone support a controversial statement with academic rigour.

    (plus he has a Patrick McGoohan avatar which is worth bonus points)

    The idea these silly spy fantasies may reveal a deeper meaning than what we see on the surface is one we have discussed in the past, there's a whole thread called Subtext and themes , and the argument that Craig's five films have a deeper meaning would fit right in there. Personally I'm a big fan of overanalysing the bejeebers out of harmless pop culture artifacts.


    In the last month or so, we've had a lot of new members, and returning veterans, because of the new film. I'm glad to see all of you here, our forum had been growing rather boring recently, and I like to see all your thoughts and opinions and sane and crazy ideas. Please feel free to tell us more, and not get hung up because one member has an opinion you disagree with. All new member please come and introduce yourselves in the Welcome & Comings & Goings thread, and tell us a bit about yourselves and why you like these silly spy movies so much, and explore the rest of the forum and bump old thread you find interesting.

  • Gassy ManGassy Man USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent

    Appreciate that, @caractacus potts, and pretty much spot on. Glad to know you.

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    I wake up to this?

    I've said that I don't want to close the thread, so now you're playing with that?

    Now sit down- both of you.

    This stops right now.

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    PS A word of praise for @caractacus potts and many thanks.

This discussion has been closed.