gritty shmitty
the headlight
Posts: 26MI6 Agent
Anyone fed up of people or publicity banging on about a "grittier bond"? It gets so tedious. Just hurry up and make more bond films that are fun to watch! That is what matters!
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They've also centred it around Bond himself rather than the villains, who all seem a bit second rate.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I think you hit the nail on the head. "Gritty" has to be the selling point if you consider that reputation the films have earned -- rightly or wrongly -- over the years. They're seen as fantasy and it makes sense to tout CR as more realistic, which I think is another way of saying "gritty."
And that's a good point about the focus on Bond. I hope the series continues to highlight his character, although they can't skimp on the villainy. They make Bond look good.
The focus on Bond reminds me of the unofficial movies like the original Casino Royale and NSNA. It's like they're obsessed with the idea they've got Bond rather than anything to give him to do.
Gritty? Cos they can't do witty, glamorous, awe-inspiring or intelligent!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Where has anyone said that recently?
I'm sorry. I must have misunderstood. In that case, you're wrong
With Casino Royale, its looking like they may just achieve the right level of grittiness. I'm a little biased, I love the novels and have always longed for a film which reflected their tone (certainly at leas CR's). What will hopefully make it work in Casino Royale is that they are willing to make Bond a little less professional and yes "more human". With DAD and TWINE, it was like watching Action Man try to show emotion whilst bullets whizzed past his head yet conviniently missed. Not a Brosnan insult there, but a screenplay/script insult.
If they do it right with CR though, they will need to offer some variety - we've heard Bond 22 will be a revenge story, which I'm a little worried about.
as for memorable villains: those ran out when they ran out of fleming novels
so wouldnt the solution be to return to Fleming?
I may have misunderstood NP's original post completely, because I don't really disagree with any of you. I don't think the mission needs to be "personal," either, but I do like the idea that Bond is more than just a foil for an over-the-top villain (and many of them were pretty much interchangeable as megalomaniacs out to conquer the world types). The villain, as I said before, has to be a worthy adversary, of course, but Bond's character can be explored, too, beyond the taste for martinis and girls. What I get from the Bond 22 rumors is that the story will continue CR's. I get no sense that it's a "Bond on his own" story, only that he discovers a puppet-master behind-the-scenes, so to speak. The fact that there is a personal element involved doesn't hurt it at all. Didn't hurt Goldfinger, and Bond made it very clear he wanted some payback for Jill Masterson, even his mission was officially sanctioned.
I don't know -- for me, taking bits and pieces of a story and fretting over them is a mistake. At the end of the day, it's if the story works as a whole that counts.
No one I know sits on the edge of his or her seat wondering what might happen next in a Bond film anymore or bubbling with that mixture of amazement and affirmation that I still sometimes feel when watching the older Bonds. In more recent years, the films seemed to have been made with the assumption that the audiences lack the gray matter to comprehend subtlety, all but the most obvious of jokes, and characters and plot points that go beyond a simple formula. To me, they haven't been fun in a long time.
1)Each of these so-called realistic Bond films had fantastic elements. FRWL had Rosa Klebb with her poison tipped shoes, OHMSS had Blofeld and his hypnotized beauties, LTK's fantastic elements were kept to a minimum although it still had Q, and TWINE had a villain who feels no pain. I think it's one thing for CR to be realistc. However I think it should be realistic only within the Bond universe.
2)I've discussed this in another thread, and I've received assurances on this point, but I think that simply because CR is realistic, it still should have moments of fun, like FRWL and OHMSS.
I completely agree. I loved TWINE (I don't agree with Gassyman that it was 'pedestrian') and as for DAD, it's being OTT reminds me of another Bond film; TSWLM which I consider to be the sixth greatest Bond film of all time and the last absolute Bond masterpiece. The key difference between DAD and TSWM would have to be the execution. The execution in DAD (mainly due to the script) was horrible. That's really the thing that annoys me the most about EON. Instead of trying to write a terrific script and getting the execution right, they end up throwing the baby out with the bath water, so to speak.
Very true; but all the previous 'personal' missions have been very simplistic hackneyed revenge plots or similar- not a clever way of making it personal. In CR Bond is on a journey and gets affected by what happens to him personally; just as the lead character in a film should do. The story is actually about him for once, which is a more mature way of doing 'personal'.
And if being affected by an assignment is 'personal', then every Bond film is- he ends up caring for and practically falling in love with a woman in every one.
Exactly- everything's relative. Can you imagine Jason Bourne having a huge ridiculous fight on top of a tower crane, blowing up pretty much everything on the runway of an airport, or attempting to gamble his enemy to death in a glamorous casino? The Bourne films aren't exactly realistic themselves, but Bond is still on a high level of silliness above them.
[quote=benskellyI don't think there was anything wrong with the level of spectacle and fun that DAD was going for, it just made some huge mistakes and was horribly directed and edited. People (even the producers) are mistaking bad execution with "a need for change".[/quote]
I dunno- if something's shallow and derivative then I'm not sure much improvment in execution will help. It probably did need a good re-think.
Perhaps, but I'm still hoping that CR will have the "silliness" of previous Bond films.
Well, look at TLD- the last non-personal one according to you. He clearly cares for the girl quite a lot in that one, and has a 'personal' involvement in that he's seen his colleague murdered and has personal knowledge of Pushkin ('If it has to be done'). Everything's 'personal' on some level.
Well, it looks to be about as silly as TLD or most 80's Bonds. I'm happy with that.
I dunno- if you've got a rougher looking Bond I don't think the point is to make him look exactly the same as the Bond who've gone before, otherwise what's the point of doing something new- embrace the new qualities- vive la difference!
Then why give him not one, but two Aston Martins? Apart from its appearance in the novel, why put the new Bond in a tux? There obviously are many visual cues intentionally put into CR to remind us that this is the same Bond, or at least more same than different.
But to your point: Not that CR/Craig needs to look like what's come before, but my point is that they did put a lot of effort to make CR visually appealing, Craig included. I don't know if it's just me, but based on what we've seen so far, it looks like they've studied practically every unflatering shot of Craig collected by the CNB people, and deliberately did the exact opposite in terms of wardrobe, make-up, camera angles, lighting, etc., i.e., they really glammed him up; and whatever they couldn't glam up, they exploited, as they did with the first CR poster. Frankly, it's not to far from one of those total makeover reality shows!
If they wanted to go totally gritty, why not go the Jason Bourne route (for the lack of a better example), which was a drab that worked and IMO could work for Bond? That's my point, that the efforts to make Craig really look good are plainly obvious, but that some of the scenes in the video reminded me of the "unguarded" shots that CNB just love.