Do You Like Being Ahead Of Bond

Sir Hillary Bray

In the "Hating TB" thread, darenhat brings up an interesting point about the film -- namely, that for most of the film the audience knows more about what's going on than Bond does.

In films like FRWL, TB and TSWLM, we are told major plot elements "in advance" and then watch Bond do detective work to uncover things we already know (who the baddie is, etc.). My question for this esteemed group is:

Do you like being "ahead" of Bond, dislike it, or not have a strong preference either way?

Personally, the films I listed above are some of my favorites. That's not necessarily because of this element, but I do enjoy when the films are written this way. While CR has elements of this (e.g., we meet Le Chiffre before he does) Bond catches up with us pretty quickly. I would argue that we have not really had a film written in this way since TLD, and I would enjoy having one done that way again.

Thoughts?

John Drake

Cool title. Man I thought this was going to be some kind of existential thread on the nature of the self.

I think it really depends on the writing and the plot. It can be a lot of fun watching Bond figuring things out and it does create tension if you know Bond is walking towards a danger he is unaware of.

Alex

John Drake wrote:

Cool title. Man I thought this was going to be some kind of existential thread on the nature of the self.

Just a slight typo, already taken care of!

Napoleon Plural

I don't like the chess game films so much where we already know what's happening and clinically watch it unfold like a Kubrick picture. I prefer to relate to the hero so can't do that if know more than him. But others prefer that dispassionate approach, which Craig sort of fits in with, being a crueller character. Yet his is the ultimate example where we don't know the twist and nor does he.

Too many debuts have that thing of cutting away from the hero, the chess game analogy like TLD and GE. It may be because they're unsure of the leading man's star quality. IMO it is bad for a debut. For most of Dr No and CR we're with the hero, same for LALD. I could have done with more cut aways to Le Chiffre in CR as the film progressed however, as well as more about that shadowy organisation he works for.

Sir Hillary Bray

Napoleon Plural wrote:

I don't like the chess game films so much where we already know what's happening and clinically watch it unfold like a Kubrick picture. I prefer to relate to the hero so can't do that if know more than him. But others prefer that dispassionate approach, which Craig sort of fits in with, being a crueller character. Yet his is the ultimate example where we don't know the twist and nor does he.

Too many debuts have that thing of cutting away from the hero, the chess game analogy like TLD and GE. It may be because they're unsure of the leading man's star quality. IMO it is bad for a debut. For most of Dr No and CR we're with the hero, same for LALD. I could have done with more cut aways to Le Chiffre in CR as the film progressed however, as well as more about that shadowy organisation he works for.

Good points all. My counter-argument would hinge on FRWL. Don't know how you feel about that film, so this may be moot, but I cannot imagine the villains or the story coming alive nearly as well if done any other way. Your chess analogy is apt, because Bond is played like a pawn right up until he kills Grant, and it's riveting stuff IMO. Also, the Grant character and his creepiness would be almost totally missed if we met him when Bond did. For me, the scenes on the train, culminating with his speech to Bond, are all the more effective because we have never heard him speak and because we know he's impersonating Nash and that he killed Kerim. I will grant (pun intended ), maybe FRWL is the only film for which this argument works, but still...

Loeffelholz

Your thread poses an interesting and fair question, Sir Hillary, and it really starts in Fleming's novels.

The first major departure was FRWL, where Fleming shows us the machinations set up to entrap Bond---one third of the novel!---before Bond ever appears in person, but he'd already shown the murder of the diamond smuggler at the beginning of the DAF book, so it wasn't unprecedented, except in its scope....

Fleming does this again in DN, to a lesser degree (we actually see the killing of Strangways)...and in TB, of course, albeit utilizing a more conventional chapter-by-chapter approach to jumping back and forth between Bond's activities, the plotting by SPECTRE, the hijacking of the plane, back to Bond, etc. I think this was partially a way of Fleming spreading his wings a bit, and keeping the writing of the novels fresh for his own benefit, as perhaps he feared being too boring and formulaic in the way the books were structured...plus, of course, the TB novel was essentially a literary adaptation of the film treatment he'd famously done with Whittingham and McClory.

But it goes to a more fundamental question, in terms of both how books are written, and how films are plotted and filmed: the differing approaches of 'Third Person Limited' and 'Third Person Omniscient' point of view. With 'Limited,' we experience and discover things at the same time the protagonist does. With 'Omniscient,' we're privy to things beyond the protagonist's immediate knowledge.

They're two very different ways of plotting, obviously, and I'd assert that the films chose the more detached 'Omniscient' approach far more often than not; 'Limited' is a form more often used in traditional mysteries, for obvious reasons, while 'Omniscient' is better suited for broader epic-style adventures, which is what the films essentially are, I think.

The most singular exception would be OHMSS, in my own opinion---an epic adventure film which adheres, fairly stridently, to a 'Limited' point of view perspective.

Both approaches have their merits. As someone has alluded, the CR film is a sort of hybrid of these two approaches, where we see Le Chiffre shorting the airline stock, which puts him in a financial bind...but from Act II on, it becomes more 'Limited,' as we basically experience the story along with Bond.

To answer the question posed in the title of the thread, I'd have to reply: It depends ;% ...upon how well a particular film pulls off its particular approach.

Both Fleming and Eon have proven that each style can be effective, in its respective (and separate! :v ) medium :007)

Georgiboy

Even though I like twists and surprise endings in movies, I like to be able to see what is coming up for bond to face in the future, so yes, I like being ahead of Bond. Just like some of you said, Grant on FRWL would not have been as good without us seeing what he was up to at the same time as bond. {[]