James Bond

Spectre is a good Bond but again with a weak ending. Several really strong scenes, but just like in Skyfall the film doesn’t succeed as a satisfying whole, it all feels somehow artistically unconnected, and of course Spectre shares also the same flaws as Skyfall. Mendes is not that good in creating interesting characters which also function within the narrative.

The new sensibility which was brought to the franchise by Casino Royale, and which tackled the route to the sublime virtuosity of Quantum of Solace, is again often brought down to a lot of pseudo stuff. The potential to a great film was there in both Bonds by Mendes, but I can always see where the potential wasn’t used or only used in a half baked way. But as I said, some strong scenes along the way. 6,5/10

People may have seen this the Roger Moore Spectre trailer :smiley:

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Nice. What if …

But I actually got used to Craig in the Bond role, finally. He was too much Bourne to be Bond for me, but in Skyfall things got better, more Bondish so to speak, and in Spectre I even liked him as 007.

And, by the way, and 80+ Bond is Moore something for the afterlife, so let’s save Sir Roger’s comeback for later

Yes agree re Moore. When I was attending an audience with Roger Moore not so long ago the trailer above was played, and the audience went wild.

Like that. Well done and shows just how generic all the scenes are. Which of course is how we like it.

Actually I don’t see much from the Bourne films in the Bond films. Maybe I should rewatch the Bournes one day, they are nice but not very remarkable action films with some thriller aspects, but some seem to see a bit more in them.

I don’t like the idea of Bond having a backstory, especially the one that is revealed in Spectre.

In Skyfall it seemed okay, but in Spectre they’re pushing things too far.
If you turn him into a character of flesh & blood, the action also becomes a bit ridiculous: no person, not even the best special agent in the world, could ever survive so many dangerous situations and assaults on his life. A little backstory is enough to give a character some color, to lift him above pure cartoonish level, but it’s easily overdone

To be fair, the producers knew back in 2006 that carrying on in the Brosnan manner wasn’t going to work; and while the backstory introduced for Bond isn’t terribly original, I’d make a couple of points: 1) they’ve actually stuck fairly close to Fleming’s conception of Bond’s past and 2) whoever replaces Craig (either for the next film or the one after) will likely wipe the proverbial slate clean and another direction will be taken on.

First of all, I do appreciate how the new Craig Bonds try to tell the story of the origins of Bond, even though Bond is old and it is a post 9/11 world, so they are taking some creative liberties with the chronological order. But for the most part, that works. It is a retelling for the modern era. I think the first three Craig Bonds are an excellent trilogy of establishing 007 and telling how he became what he is. Casino Royale was an amazing Bond movie. Quantum of Solace was a minor, but by-the-book Bond movie, and Skyfall was so ambitious it almost carried too much weight. All of them have flaws, but they went to great lengths lifting the quality of the Bond franchise.

Spectre on the other hand I think was a pile of shit, the more I think about it. It has huge logical flaws, a lousy script, wastes characters and actors like cannon fodder, and presents the audience with a senseless arrangement of expensive scenery without proper reasoning and logic. There is so much ridiculous crap in this movie I can hardly take it seriously. This is a very unfortunate downward spin for the franchise and I hope they will at some point make it up.

Good points John & Seb. I’m actually rewatching the Craig Bonds, and watching them now as if they were a mini-series, more or less detached from the rest of the franchise. They aren’t really, of course, but I noticed that the two first Craig bonds (especially Quantum, a film I didn’t like thus far) work better within the context of the four movies forming a seperate Bond franchise

And yes, with a new bond they’ll start over again with a clean slate, don’t think anyone can take over this Craig Bond

Quantum of Solace is really the absolutely underrated Bond film. It is done with a pure cinematic feeling in every tiny second no other Bond film comes even close. The OUTW of the Bond series in conception and execution.

Keep saying it Stan and eventually someone will agree with you :wink:

Well, I didn’t dislike it this time around …

Its one of the newer Bonds I should try and get myself to watch one day.

He he, but actually a lot of people who hated Quantum of Solace at first began to appreciate it after a re-watch. It probably will one day, when it got some patina on it, receive a similar status as On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

It is one of my favourite films meanwhile, and it gets better with every viewing .

Casino Royale (Campbell, 2006)

-“I’m the money.”
-“Every penny of it.”

Well! It’s been a while. SpagvemberFest proved very difficult to maintain and something had to go, so I’ve not had any Bond action in a few weeks. But I finally got my Daniel Craig on last night, and it was well worth the wait.

Despite having the budget and frippery of a typical 21st century blockbuster, Casino Royale keeps pretty much all of the stakes fairly small, by Bond standards, doubtless due to this being a reboot and subsequently a reintroduction to the character of Jimmy B and his universe. Well, all of the stakes are kept fairly small apart from, um, the stakes. I’ve seen scores of otherwise action-packed spag westerns screech to a halt for a poker scene so my heart sank when I saw that the centrepiece of this pic was going to be a mega session of Texas Hold 'Em. But director Martin Campbell - who also helmed Pierce Brosnan’s 007 debut GoldenEye eleven years previously - keeps the poker action interesting, clear and tense, albeit largely via the simple trick of having Pazzi from Hannibal (Scott, 2001) provide Eva Green with card-by-card commentary. Plus of course the poker itself was interspersed with some terrific action set-pieces, in-keeping with the rest of the movie. I mean, there would be plenty of terrific action set-pieces, wouldn’t there? It’s Bond. But Casino Royale really hits the target in that regard, whether it’s a fight in a stairwell or a Venetian building collapsing into the Grand Canal. And how good was that free-running chase? I was so inspired I tried to free-run up the stairs for a poo earlier today but I just stubbed my toe and almost shat myself, alas.

So, how was Daniel? Well, I liked him but I don’t know if I found him to be especially “Bond”, although I appreciate that that was largely the intention; to present us with a quite different Bond to any we’d seen. He’s got that immovable granite face, and he always appears to be either smirking slightly or scowling slightly. Either way, if I was on set with Mr. Craig I’d have to resist the urge to push a knitting needle into his head, see how far I could push it before it hit skull. Mads Mikkelsen was a memorable villain but he’s just got a “villain” face, hasn’t he? Giancarlo Giannini was also a great addition in a supporting role. Judi Dench was excellent once again - as one would expect - as the only returning cast member, but this casting choice was IMO a queer one, what with Casino Royale being a reboot rather than a continuation of the previous Bond timeline. I guess Dame Judi has simply now played two “M”'s, rather than continued in the role. The reboot nature of the pic meant that, for once, there was a justification for bringing us yet another Leiter and Jeffrey Wright does well with the role in a short space of time. Still can’t top Jack Lord, though. Shame there was no Q of any kind this time, although tbh I prefer Bond with less gadgets anyway. Chris Cornell’s theme was a grower. Didn’t care for it at the opening credits but it sat well in the picture itself, and I found myself humming away to it by the end.

All of which brings us to Casino Royale’s Bond girl, Eva Green. IMO, She’s not a conventional jawdropper in the Bond Girl tradition, not by a long shot, but at the same time she definitely has a quality about her that elevates her above many of her peers, in this movie as well as several others (Sin City: A Dame to Kill For to a degree, but I’m thinking most immediately of 2014’s The Salvation, also starring Mads Mikkelson). She doesn’t compare aesthetically to Ursula Andress, Britt Ekland, Carolyn Munro, Jill St.John or Diana Rigg but I can see why the filmmakers selected her to be this woman over whom Bond would fall hook, line and sinker, even though in the end I didn’t entirely buy into the romance. It should’ve persisted over a couple of movies, IMO.

So, that’s my first Daniel Craig Bond squared away, and I don’t think I adequately illustrated it there but I really enjoyed it. Top three Bondness, for sure. Quantum of Solace tonight or tomorrow hopefully, then I’m doubling back on myself for the 1967 incarnation of Casino Royale. David Niven, hmm? Ding, dong!

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Also rewatched it recently. My thoughts are similar, but a bit more negative in relation to the card games, the romance and the chase scenes on foot, Tarzan in the urban jungle so to speak. I think it’s a fair movie, but as a reboot it seems to waver between actually recreating the franchise and creating a new one, a sort of Bond mini-series that picks up a few characters and ideas but seems otherwise detached from the rest of the movies. When I first saw Casino Royale I thought Craig was Royale but not Real, a good action man but no Bond. My thoughts about the actor (and the character) are more positive these days, but I still think he’s a Bond like no Bond has ever been before. Some say he’s closer to the character created by Fleming, but while reading Fleming (and i read quite a few Bond novels) I never thought of a Craig-like Bond.

I’m not into poker and these poker games only held up the movie for me. Luckily there were a few breaks so Bond could jump around for a few minutes, but that felt too much like a trick to save the day, or the game if you wish. In a spagh these card games went on for minutes and already were boring, here the game went on for ages and I felt bored to death.

And then the romance. I agree that the romance should’ve persisted over a couple of movies, now it seems to much as if Bond were on her Majesty’s secret service once again. And Eva? Maybe it wasn’t Eva, or her looks, maybe it was Bond, or again Craig: I just couldn’t see them as a couple. A flirt maybe, but not a real romance.

But, as said, a fair movie, as long as you don’t think too much about Bond.

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Quantum of Solace (Forster, 2008)

What is that tuneless gibbering debacle masquerading as a Bond theme by the usually reliable Jack White and Alicia Keys? Why must this movie be the first Bond film that doesn’t work as a standalone picture? Did I read somewhere that, because of the writer’s strike, parts of the script were cobbled together on the fly by director Marc Forster and Daniel bloody Craig (obviously I did read that, about ten minutes ago)? And what in shitting bumwrong is a “quantum of solace”, anyways?? James Bond’s 22nd (official) movie outing happily racks up a list of issues before it’s even started. Well, amongst these faults we can also add “bad aim” because, despite its best efforts to shoot itself in the foot, Quantum of Solace is a fantastic picture. No, really.

Kicking off without a traditional “Gun Barrel Sequence” and straight where we left off at the end of Casino Royale, Double-Oh-Seven has Mr. White (sadly neither the Harvey Keitel OR Bryan Cranston versions, alas) in the trunk of his car and is taking him for a good old torture-up but as soon as Jim and M get to the “‘Quantum’? What the fuck are you chatting about, you divnut?” question already rending the cinema audiences asunder - oh noes! Some previously extraneous extra in the corner of the room turns out to be a fellow scallywag and BLAM! Bond’s off on what is already his second chase of the movie, and it’s only been on five bloody minutes!

And so it goes, with James following a trail that takes him around the world as usual, but this time commander Bond - is he still a commander, in this rebooted universe? - seems ready and willing to pop a cap into the ass of anybody who even looks at him sideways. “Can you try not to kill every lead we find, Bond?” implores M. “No. Up yours, Judi Dench!” implies Bond right back with that trademark Danny Craig smirk/scowl on his inscrutable granite-face, I’m going to assume. “Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out.” Probably. And kill’ em all is exactly what he does for the next ninety minutes or so as he edges towards QoS’s big bad, Dominic Greene, all smarm, slime and psychosis, orchestrating a coup in Bolivia so’s he can seize control of almost all of the water in the country in order to extort the new regime and make a tidy packet for Greene and his associates in the shady and mysterious “Quantum” group. The actor who played Greene, the brilliant Mathieu Amalric, stated that he was aiming for a Nicolas Sarkozy/Tony Blair hybrid and you can certainly see it.

So what was good and what didn’t hit the mark this time out? Let’s have the good stuff up first: Daniel Craig was very good here, arguably better than he was in Casino Royale. Judi Dench gets even more screen time as M and that’s never a bad thing. Mathieu Amalric was superb as mentioned (although I appreciate that many might prefer Bonds villains to be a bit more monstrous, or dangerous in and of themselves like Scaramanga or Begbie out of Trainspotting with the bullet in his noggin). And, as with the previous movie, Jeffrey Wright (Leiter) and Giancarlo Giannini (Mathis) did good work in smaller supporting roles. The story was tight - I was expecting the exact opposite having seen some reviews and given the writer’s strike in effect at the time of QoS’s production - and the action was frenetic and plentiful.

Faults? Well, as good as Daniel was, he felt less like a “Bond” here than any other representation of the character I’ve seen so far. With no deep or long-standing affinity for Bond myself I’m not overly concerned by this but I would imagine that there might be one or two stalwart fans of the franchise who, whilst enjoying the new direction, likely lament the loss of those qualities that made James Bond uniquely “James Bond”, nonetheless. Olga Kurylenko wasn’t bad as a Bond girl but she wasn’t a stand-out either by any means, but Gemma Arterton was IMO awful. The character was piss-poor and so was she in the role. The tradition of the Villainous Bond Henchman took a real smack to the ballbags this time out with that cocknob with the neckbrace and Rowan Atkinson’s hairstyle from the original series of The Black Adder. I could take that limp salad out right here, right now. And I’m stark naked. And, as mentioned at the top of the review, that theme from the monstrously talented Jack White and the equally gifted Alicia Keys was one of the worst in the entire franchise, and there has been some proper stinky bum smeg in that department over the years, as we know.

But overall, I can’t see how Quantum of Solace has picked up a relatively bad rap (only a 65% positive rating with movie review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes; incidentally, Spectre has roughly the same approval rating too, now the hoopla has settled). I can only assume it’s down to the continued watering down of the essence of what it is to be a Bond film, combined with this movie’s failure to be able to stand alone without its more warmly-received predecessor. But I have to say, I really enjoyed Quantum of Solace. My first thoughts were that I liked it almost as much as Casino Royale but, in writing about it, I might have talked myself into preferring it. I’ll have to think on that for awhile.

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Biggest problem of all the Bond Fans in the world was the rapid cutting of the action scenes, and that is generally a fast instead of a slow film, And then the really important things like no Q, no Moneypenny (thank bog in heaven for that) and that gun-barrel thing at the end and not at the beginning (which even makes sense in relation to the content)
And maybe that the film does not explain everything.

The title song is not great, but I like it. At least it is rock and no pop, just like the film, which is also rock and no pop.

And actually the film does not have a henchman, another favourite complaint.

And both bond girls have this time not only an important function for the film’s narrative, they also have a lot to do with bond getting his quantum of solace at the end.
Too bad you did not like Arterton, for me she was great in her small role, and the whole sequence of Bond and co arriving at Bolivia over the hectic taxi drive and the hotel switching to the screwing part is plain fantastic.