The budget to me is interesting as some of my favourite scenes from the DC era were the ones at M's home in CR and Skyfall and with Vespers boyfriend in QoS. I would guess they were all filmed at Pinewood and didn't cost that much in comparison to some of the action scenes.
this is fascinating as I'm very much the same way, the majority of my favorite scenes in the Craig are very intimate small scenes like the shooting match between bond and Silva and Bond alone at the bar in Turkey and not some prolonged stunt laced action scene that required millions to create.
Could a Bond film be made that was mostly dialogue & exposition (with maybe a fight scene and a shooting) without bloody great explosions? I for one would love just one Bond flick that was quiet for a change...
The budget to me is interesting as some of my favourite scenes from the DC era were the ones at M's home in CR and Skyfall and with Vespers boyfriend in QoS. I would guess they were all filmed at Pinewood and didn't cost that much in comparison to some of the action scenes.
this is fascinating as I'm very much the same way, the majority of my favorite scenes in the Craig are very intimate small scenes like the shooting match between bond and Silva and Bond alone at the bar in Turkey and not some prolonged stunt laced action scene that required millions to create.
Great scenes. I also loved the scene on the train with Vesper. Saying that I really enjoyed the chase in CR, now that was an action sequence
I really enjoy the poker scenes and the conversation with M on the phone at the end. The meeting with Vesper's ex is excellent too. Then again, in Bond films I've always enjoyed the dialogue heavy scenes.
Could a Bond film be made that was mostly dialogue & exposition (with maybe a fight scene and a shooting) without bloody great explosions? I for one would love just one Bond flick that was quiet for a change...
A straight out adaptation of OP the short story, though you'd need to add a fight scene!
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
Here here! More story and dialogue please. I am finding in my own viewings that I am enjoying the first half of films far greater than the action packed conclusions.
I was thinking about how much I love the briefing scenes in Bond films. Also, really dig the scenes between M and Mallory in SF. They're the type of scenes I think ring true to an espionage thriller, along with tailing people and infiltrating buildings - all of which require less money on stunts and explosions (though maybe on sets). Bond stalking Patrice in Shanghai, breaching Carver's building in Hamburg and Bond gaining entry into Los Organos are some of my favourite sequences in the recent Bond films.
Film: Tomorrow Never Dies | Girl: Teresa di Vicenzo | Villain: Max Zorin | Car: Aston Martin Volante | Novel: You Only Live Twice | Bond: Sir Sean Connery
I was thinking about how much I love the briefing scenes in Bond films. Also, really dig the scenes between M and Mallory in SF. They're the type of scenes I think ring true to an espionage thriller, along with tailing people and infiltrating buildings - all of which require less money on stunts and explosions (though maybe on sets). Bond stalking Patrice in Shanghai, breaching Carver's building in Hamburg and Bond gaining entry into Los Organos are some of my favourite sequences in the recent Bond films.
It's one of the hallmarks of the classic Bond film. Set-up, briefing, infiltration, girl, battle, bang. Brilliant.
I'd like to begin that I see no problem with the new Craig Bond films, so wouldn't think the budget
Is a problem. Bond has a history of spending the money that's needed, and doing as much
" In camera" as possible, which is expensive.
The money spent is all up there on the screen. As pointed out to me long ago, moving an entire crew to
Some of the most exotic locations, housing and feeding them costs ! But if you want to see these breathtaking
Places, it has to be done. Or we could go back to the old idea of using stock footage and film it in a studio.
Could a Bond film be made that was mostly dialogue & exposition (with maybe a fight scene and a shooting) without bloody great explosions? I for one would love just one Bond flick that was quiet for a change...
A straight out adaptation of OP the short story, though you'd need to add a fight scene!
I could see that being a hour-long TV show, but for a movie you'd have to add so much you'd lose the original story. Plus Bond is basically a secondary character. Plus you'd have to tell a lot of it in flashback, which is a tricky business.
Could a Bond film be made that was mostly dialogue & exposition (with maybe a fight scene and a shooting) without bloody great explosions? I for one would love just one Bond flick that was quiet for a change...
A straight out adaptation of OP the short story, though you'd need to add a fight scene!
I could see that being a hour-long TV show, but for a movie you'd have to add so much you'd lose the original story. Plus Bond is basically a secondary character. Plus you'd have to tell a lot of it in flashback, which is a tricky business.
There's a few short stories could fit that bill, qos, hilderbrand, and what's the name of the story where the military dispatch rider gets killed and bond stakes out the scene in the woods?
As I understand it, when it comes to movie budgets the rule of thumb has been to spend 50 percent of them outside of the production costs (pre-production, filming and post-production) on marketing. So if a movie costs $100 million to make, you'll need an additional $50 million to sell it. I've read that some say it's closer to 35 or 40 percent, but it's still a lot to me. That really jacks up the cost of filmmaking when they are releasing a project internationally and trying to get as many bottoms in those theater seats everywhere on the globe.
The thing about the early EON films was the fact that with the first three films, they already had the Fleming stories and where they were set. There was minimal globetrotting in the first two. That may have been one of the reasons they chose them (yes they were popular because of Kennedy's favorite reads) - they did most of the interiors in Pinewood. The location shoots were not as large as far as the amount of crew members and production support (food, construction crafts, etc.). They almost had the productions of small independent films. All the exteriors in DN were done in Jamaica. The biggest expense they probably had was creating No's lab at Pinewood. FRWL was similar - except more of the budget probably went to the locations in Turkey than in the sets.
I think what started ballooning the budgets was the large scale explosions in DN. The novel didn't have these. So, when they did FRWL, they decided to throw in a few more expensive cinematic stunts and explosions (the boat chase and the helicopter attack shot in Scotland) - which were not in the novel. Up goes the budget. Then we get to GF. The novel pretty much takes place in England, Miami and Kentucky and in the beginning in Latin America.
Now they were smart in doing all the PTS at Pinewood - it was creative and we had one big explosion and that was it. However, instead of keeping Bond in England when he goes snooping around GF's factory, they stick it in Switzerland. Up goes the budget. It wasn't really necessary (England has many, many beautiful countryside locations), but for some reason they though it was. For this film, a big chunk of the cost went to creating Fort Knox , Goldfinger's briefing room with the trick table and model, the action set pieces of the attack in the third act and kitting out the Aston. Now I always believed Fleming creating this novel with the idea in would make good cinema which is why he came up with such a grand plot, so there was no getting around the increased budget - and it was also why EON probably went with it after FRWL - even larger scale and more spectacle. It's probably also why they followed that with TB - Fleming and the other writers designed it purposely to be made into a film, which gave EON another excuse to go even bigger in scale with the budget.
You can see where this was all going and as I believe, it all started with adding those big bangs at the end of DN that were not in the novel.
Fleming started out writing the thrillers as just literature. Though I think when he got to MR he may have though about it's potential as cinema, I don't think he kept that as the main point in writing them until he got to DN and GF. However, since EON was turning these into international releases, they had to have the writers keeping that in mind when adapting the stories and they also had to keep putting in more stunts, explosions and location shooting, so up goes the budgets. As filmmaking got more expensive over the decades, so did the EON budgets - because they kept the same filmmaking blueprint that had returned the big profits - more locations, bigger stunts and fx and explosions. Just look at MR. Fleming set it all in England - by the time they finally got around to making it they had to keep to their huge blueprint and voila - globetrotting, huge explosions, fx, hundreds of extras and on.
After most of Fleming's titles were used up, they figured - no problem. We have the blueprint (Bond globetrotting, big fx, lots of female extras and puns) so we'll just keep in enough reference to Fleming's ideas to maintain some degree of uniqueness and integrity and ride with it. Here lies the problem.
The Connery films and OHMSS were pretty much Fleming's creation adapted for film. Even though the budgets increased, they still had Fleming's Bond and his original missions as their basis so you were guaranteed a good plot. Well now we have long gone past that (minus CR) and EON is still using that bigger is better blueprint. Sure they used the reboot to get more into Fleming's character, but after that they were back to square one with no Fleming novels to use. Producing films costing hundreds of millions of dollars that rests on a few scenes from some of the original novels and short stories that have not been filmed will almost certainly never measure up to those original films that were all Fleming.
So EON has rather boxed itself in a corner. They have all those films and all this history embedded in the worldwide culture along with the series original blueprint and they created a permanent expectation in the millions of fans around the world of what a Bond film is supposed to be - lots of travel, lots of big explosions and fx and just enough plot to hang them on - and very little of it having come from Fleming's mind.
Ok, I enjoy the set pieces myself. It's one of the things I also look forward to like everyone else. However, I don't need a return to the day when the plot had to do with a global anything. Yes, the Bond novels were based on the global cold war and outside of the Spang brothers and Blofeld the villains were just agents working for Russia or China. Why they had to have Le Chiffre working for QUANTUM I never understood - the plot would have been fine if the people he had to pay back was someone like the Russian mob or nasty arms dealers. So instead they decided they had to resurrect SPECTRE and Blofeld - which of course will justify keeping their blueprint of globe trotting and big fx. Yes, they kept the blueprint in CR to pad out the plot and maintain a sense of similarity to the old films, but they did it pretty well (except the sinking building in the third act - they already did some large set pieces, but because the blueprint demanded big fx at the end, they had to put it in.) Ok, there was no Blofeld or SPECTRE in QOS, but let's face it - they knew what they were doing (and as it turned out, Blofeld was involved in all the plots all along).
So, now what? Will they keep the large budgets and fx? What do you think? As I said, they boxed themselves in a tight, expensive little corner surrounded by the expectations of a world wide audience that grew up on the films (and many have never even read a Fleming novel) and the blueprint they established and the expectations of the corporate conglomerates that help finance and market them. What I can only hope is that whatever they come up with in the next few films it will not involve some global conspiracy or global control of the media, hacking, water supplies or another personal revenge plot. I hope it will be more scaled down to just a greedy weird villain with weird habits or arms traffickers or whatever and keep the locations few and focus more on character scenes. That would certainly help trim the budget to an extent.
As to the original question of the post - yes, the budget IS a big part of the problem IMO - because it allows them to put too much emphasis on the size of the big bangs and foreign locales which then forces them to create scripts that have to have reasons to lead up to those set pieces rather than focusing on plots with meat on them and interesting fleshed out characters that we want to see even more than some big bang or stunt.
Good post, CA, though I'd point out that Fleming had Bond snoop around Goldfinger's facilities in both England and Switzerland, and Maibaum opted to eliminate the sequences at Reculver for pacing reasons. Otherwise I pretty much agree with everything above.
So, now what? Will they keep the large budgets and fx? What do you think? As I said, they boxed themselves in a tight, expensive little corner surrounded by the expectations of a world wide audience that grew up on the films (and many have never even read a Fleming novel) and the blueprint they established and the expectations of the corporate conglomerates that help finance and market them. What I can only hope is that whatever they come up with in the next few films it will not involve some global conspiracy or global control of the media, hacking, water supplies or another personal revenge plot. I hope it will be more scaled down to just a greedy weird villain with weird habits or arms traffickers or whatever and keep the locations few and focus more on character scenes. That would certainly help trim the budget to an extent.
As to the original question of the post - yes, the budget IS a big part of the problem IMO - because it allows them to put too much emphasis on the size of the big bangs and foreign locales which then forces them to create scripts that have to have reasons to lead up to those set pieces rather than focusing on plots with meat on them and interesting fleshed out characters that we want to see even more than some big bang or stunt.
Your answer here is pretty much where I'm at.
It's analogous to having a child at college. The child doesn't fully appreciate what money is yet or how hard it is to make because it is simply there. So, as a parent, you not only pay for college, but you give that child an allowance of $1,000 a month to spend however he or she wants. The child sees all sorts of other kids -- some getting by on much less and some getting even more. He or she sees what's possible with less money, but doesn't feel the need to save or conserve, even if the experiences will be more fulfilling. He or she simply feels obligated to spend all $1,000.
He or she really only needs $500 to meet his or her needs. So what does he or she spend the remainder on? Anything frivolous he or she wants -- clothes, movies, concerts, fast food, online gambling, or whatever.
Now, the problem isn't that the child has an extra $500. There are kids at college with even more. The problem isn't that the child spends it. That's what it's there for. The problem is how the child spends it and on what. At the end of the month, despite all the frivolous spending, the child is no more happy or fulfilled. They just have a lot of receipts and junk in the dorm room. Meanwhile, other kids are spending money more carefully and are happier. In the long run, they come out ahead. By the way, when the parent was younger, he or she was much poorer and had to learn how to stretch a dollar and be happy. Part of the reason he or she has the money as an adult to give to the child comes from what he learned to do creatively when he or she was younger and didn't have enough.
Maybe, just maybe, cutting that child's allowance to $500 (or less) would encourage him or her to not just spend for the sake of spending, but to spend carefully and to be better at using the money they have.
To me, this is where the Bond films are. They spend huge amounts of money. The bang that they get from the bucks, though, doesn't seem to translate into much for the viewer, or at least much commensurate with the amount. At least that's been the last three Bonds for me, which all looked like they could have been made with half the money they spent.
"...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
So, now what? Will they keep the large budgets and fx? What do you think? As I said, they boxed themselves in a tight, expensive little corner surrounded by the expectations of a world wide audience that grew up on the films (and many have never even read a Fleming novel) and the blueprint they established and the expectations of the corporate conglomerates that help finance and market them. What I can only hope is that whatever they come up with in the next few films it will not involve some global conspiracy or global control of the media, hacking, water supplies or another personal revenge plot. I hope it will be more scaled down to just a greedy weird villain with weird habits or arms traffickers or whatever and keep the locations few and focus more on character scenes. That would certainly help trim the budget to an extent.
As to the original question of the post - yes, the budget IS a big part of the problem IMO - because it allows them to put too much emphasis on the size of the big bangs and foreign locales which then forces them to create scripts that have to have reasons to lead up to those set pieces rather than focusing on plots with meat on them and interesting fleshed out characters that we want to see even more than some big bang or stunt.
Your answer here is pretty much where I'm at.
It's analogous to having a child at college. The child doesn't fully appreciate what money is yet or how hard it is to make because it is simply there. So, as a parent, you not only pay for college, but you give that child an allowance of $1,000 a month to spend however he or she wants. The child sees all sorts of other kids -- some getting by on much less and some getting even more. He or she sees what's possible with less money, but doesn't feel the need to save or conserve, even if the experiences will be more fulfilling. He or she simply feels obligated to spend all $1,000.
He or she really only needs $500 to meet his or her needs. So what does he or she spend the remainder on? Anything frivolous he or she wants -- clothes, movies, concerts, fast food, online gambling, or whatever.
Now, the problem isn't that the child has an extra $500. There are kids at college with even more. The problem isn't that the child spends it. That's what it's there for. The problem is how the child spends it and on what. At the end of the month, despite all the frivolous spending, the child is no more happy or fulfilled. They just have a lot of receipts and junk in the dorm room. Meanwhile, other kids are spending money more carefully and are happier. In the long run, they come out ahead. By the way, when the parent was younger, he or she was much poorer and had to learn how to stretch a dollar and be happy. Part of the reason he or she has the money as an adult to give to the child comes from what he learned to do creatively when he or she was younger and didn't have enough.
Maybe, just maybe, cutting that child's allowance to $500 (or less) would encourage him or her to not just spend for the sake of spending, but to spend carefully and to be better at using the money they have.
To me, this is where the Bond films are. They spend huge amounts of money. The bang that they get from the bucks, though, doesn't seem to translate into much for the viewer, or at least much commensurate with the amount. At least that's been the last three Bonds for me, which all looked like they could have been made with half the money they spent.
Good post, CA, though I'd point out that Fleming had Bond snoop around Goldfinger's facilities in both England and Switzerland, and Maibaum opted to eliminate the sequences at Reculver for pacing reasons. Otherwise I pretty much agree with everything above.
Thanks for the correction - it's been a while since I read the novel, but I still think they could have saved the Swiss location shooting budget if they had just had transferred the car shadowing and factory scenes from Switzerland to just Kent. Though this may have been the case where Richard Maibaum & Paul Dehn kept the Swiss scenes in because they were still sticking as close to the novels as they could - and some of that might be because Fleming himself was still alive and as far as they know may have been able to see the finished film - I still think if they had put it all in Kent it would not have bothered Fleming that much. I don't know if anyone ever reported as to his opinion of them changing the plot from grand theft to irradiating the gold supply - he was after all ill at the time and may have not been as in touch with the production, outside of visiting Pinewood when they were shooting some scenes. Still, it would be interesting to know how he felt about the screenplay.
As I understand it, Fleming said some less-than-complimentary things about DN on its release, and Cubby & Harry encouraged him to keep quiet about his negative thoughts on the movies and just give general comments.
I've been giving this some thought and three things occurred to me in regard to the OP.
Is part of the problem that we have grown up and expect more? For instance, when I saw DAF in the cinema as an impressionable seven year old, I was blown away by it. If I watched it now however, for the very first time, I'd be pretty underwhelmed. Our expectations and anticipation increase with maturity.
Following on, is the 'Bond formula' itself also a constraint? We anticipate and expect certain things from a Bond film and when the producers attempt to vary that formula - Craig's Bond never quite getting the girl (at least until Dr Swann), his inexperience (Vesper's betrayal, Fields's death in QoS etc) - not everyone is happy with the experiment.
Is part of the problem also that our sensibilities have changed? If we watched a straightforward 'Bond mission' film now, without the depth of character involvement which (and Gassy Man you will know far more about this than I do) leads to increased jeopardy and drama, would we be equally underwhelmed?
I'm not sure then that the budget is the main problem - maybe it's our expectations/anticipation, maturity, desire for an original plot within formula constraints, and changing sensibilities....
^ Great post. Not to simplify what you said so well but I think you're highlighting the simple fact of differing tastes between people.
The examples you mention with Craig's films having fiddling with the formula frustrate me, but don't frustrate others. The 80s Bond films in the US didn't perform well, but for some fans are considered the finest period in the franchise.
Isolating fandom is probably important, I just don't like the modern films as much as the old ones purely because I know and love the old ones so much??
The formula remains largely there, but the way it's layered may change and put people off:
I've been giving this some thought and three things occurred to me in regard to the OP.
Is part of the problem that we have grown up and expect more? For instance, when I saw DAF in the cinema as an impressionable seven year old, I was blown away by it. If I watched it now however, for the very first time, I'd be pretty underwhelmed. Our expectations and anticipation increase with maturity.
Following on, is the 'Bond formula' itself also a constraint? We anticipate and expect certain things from a Bond film and when the producers attempt to vary that formula - Craig's Bond never quite getting the girl (at least until Dr Swann), his inexperience (Vesper's betrayal, Fields's death in QoS etc) - not everyone is happy with the experiment.
Is part of the problem also that our sensibilities have changed? If we watched a straightforward 'Bond mission' film now, without the depth of character involvement which (and Gassy Man you will know far more about this than I do) leads to increased jeopardy and drama, would we be equally underwhelmed?
I'm not sure then that the budget is the main problem - maybe it's our expectations/anticipation, maturity, desire for an original plot within formula constraints, and changing sensibilities....
See, the funny thing is I have the opposite reaction. I watch the contemporary films and am underwhelmed. While Diamonds are Forever has some dodgy special effects, its scope is still wider than anything in the last three Bond films. The oil platform lair at the end, which has an actual battle, eclipses the near-deserted SPECTRE lair in Spectre, for instance, where Bond shoots it out with a couple guys and, I guess, thumbs it home. Blofeld has much more screen time in the former than the latter. The fight int he elevator is more gripping and brutal than the fight in the train car. There is genuine humor and weirdness in the older film, especially with Wynt and Kidd, compared to the few jokes that misfire in Spectre. John Barry's very early 1970s score is wistful and mysterious, whereas the title song for Spectre alone is pretty forgettable. I'm not sure what we're getting in the more recent Bond films that actually is better.
But maybe a seven year old watching SPECTRE for the first time - and with a lack of films of competing vision with which to compare it - would be blown away. And if he watched it regularly enough, would love it - warts and all.
Any maybe a fifty year old watching DAF for the first time would not notice the amount of screen time Blofeld has, nor the number of guards in the climactic battle, nor appreciate the humour and weirdness, quite so much as us...
As some of you may have read today ,my post on FRWL , I took this on holiday last week ,so my first job when I arrived home ,was to wack on the film ,whilst the book still burned in my mind ,Questions ,
(1) why was Kronsteen , in the book ,Changed from a Russian /Moscow chess champion ,to a Czech champion ?
(2) why was the chess match moved from Moscow ?
(3) why was KLEBB killed at the end ,and not bundled off in a laundry basket ?
(4) why was the periscope changed from a Turkish one to a British one in the film ?
there are more ,but this is a start
As some of you may have read today ,my post on FRWL , I took this on holiday last week ,so my first job when I arrived home ,was to wack on the film ,whilst the book still burned in my mind ,Questions ,
(1) why was Kronsteen , in the book ,Changed from a Russian /Moscow chess champion ,to a Czech champion ?
(2) why was the chess match moved from Moscow ?
(3) why was KLEBB killed at the end ,and not bundled off in a laundry basket ?
(4) why was the periscope changed from a Turkish one to a British one in the film ?
there are more ,but this is a start
Comments
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
Great scenes. I also loved the scene on the train with Vesper. Saying that I really enjoyed the chase in CR, now that was an action sequence
Now not so much.
So that's a yes I guess.
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
"Better make that two."
A straight out adaptation of OP the short story, though you'd need to add a fight scene!
{[] Buenos dias!
It's one of the hallmarks of the classic Bond film. Set-up, briefing, infiltration, girl, battle, bang. Brilliant.
"Better make that two."
I agree
I could see that being a hour-long TV show, but for a movie you'd have to add so much you'd lose the original story. Plus Bond is basically a secondary character. Plus you'd have to tell a lot of it in flashback, which is a tricky business.
"From Dance Into The Fire"....?
"From That Fatal Kiss"....?
The thing about the early EON films was the fact that with the first three films, they already had the Fleming stories and where they were set. There was minimal globetrotting in the first two. That may have been one of the reasons they chose them (yes they were popular because of Kennedy's favorite reads) - they did most of the interiors in Pinewood. The location shoots were not as large as far as the amount of crew members and production support (food, construction crafts, etc.). They almost had the productions of small independent films. All the exteriors in DN were done in Jamaica. The biggest expense they probably had was creating No's lab at Pinewood. FRWL was similar - except more of the budget probably went to the locations in Turkey than in the sets.
I think what started ballooning the budgets was the large scale explosions in DN. The novel didn't have these. So, when they did FRWL, they decided to throw in a few more expensive cinematic stunts and explosions (the boat chase and the helicopter attack shot in Scotland) - which were not in the novel. Up goes the budget. Then we get to GF. The novel pretty much takes place in England, Miami and Kentucky and in the beginning in Latin America.
Now they were smart in doing all the PTS at Pinewood - it was creative and we had one big explosion and that was it. However, instead of keeping Bond in England when he goes snooping around GF's factory, they stick it in Switzerland. Up goes the budget. It wasn't really necessary (England has many, many beautiful countryside locations), but for some reason they though it was. For this film, a big chunk of the cost went to creating Fort Knox , Goldfinger's briefing room with the trick table and model, the action set pieces of the attack in the third act and kitting out the Aston. Now I always believed Fleming creating this novel with the idea in would make good cinema which is why he came up with such a grand plot, so there was no getting around the increased budget - and it was also why EON probably went with it after FRWL - even larger scale and more spectacle. It's probably also why they followed that with TB - Fleming and the other writers designed it purposely to be made into a film, which gave EON another excuse to go even bigger in scale with the budget.
You can see where this was all going and as I believe, it all started with adding those big bangs at the end of DN that were not in the novel.
Fleming started out writing the thrillers as just literature. Though I think when he got to MR he may have though about it's potential as cinema, I don't think he kept that as the main point in writing them until he got to DN and GF. However, since EON was turning these into international releases, they had to have the writers keeping that in mind when adapting the stories and they also had to keep putting in more stunts, explosions and location shooting, so up goes the budgets. As filmmaking got more expensive over the decades, so did the EON budgets - because they kept the same filmmaking blueprint that had returned the big profits - more locations, bigger stunts and fx and explosions. Just look at MR. Fleming set it all in England - by the time they finally got around to making it they had to keep to their huge blueprint and voila - globetrotting, huge explosions, fx, hundreds of extras and on.
After most of Fleming's titles were used up, they figured - no problem. We have the blueprint (Bond globetrotting, big fx, lots of female extras and puns) so we'll just keep in enough reference to Fleming's ideas to maintain some degree of uniqueness and integrity and ride with it. Here lies the problem.
The Connery films and OHMSS were pretty much Fleming's creation adapted for film. Even though the budgets increased, they still had Fleming's Bond and his original missions as their basis so you were guaranteed a good plot. Well now we have long gone past that (minus CR) and EON is still using that bigger is better blueprint. Sure they used the reboot to get more into Fleming's character, but after that they were back to square one with no Fleming novels to use. Producing films costing hundreds of millions of dollars that rests on a few scenes from some of the original novels and short stories that have not been filmed will almost certainly never measure up to those original films that were all Fleming.
So EON has rather boxed itself in a corner. They have all those films and all this history embedded in the worldwide culture along with the series original blueprint and they created a permanent expectation in the millions of fans around the world of what a Bond film is supposed to be - lots of travel, lots of big explosions and fx and just enough plot to hang them on - and very little of it having come from Fleming's mind.
Ok, I enjoy the set pieces myself. It's one of the things I also look forward to like everyone else. However, I don't need a return to the day when the plot had to do with a global anything. Yes, the Bond novels were based on the global cold war and outside of the Spang brothers and Blofeld the villains were just agents working for Russia or China. Why they had to have Le Chiffre working for QUANTUM I never understood - the plot would have been fine if the people he had to pay back was someone like the Russian mob or nasty arms dealers. So instead they decided they had to resurrect SPECTRE and Blofeld - which of course will justify keeping their blueprint of globe trotting and big fx. Yes, they kept the blueprint in CR to pad out the plot and maintain a sense of similarity to the old films, but they did it pretty well (except the sinking building in the third act - they already did some large set pieces, but because the blueprint demanded big fx at the end, they had to put it in.) Ok, there was no Blofeld or SPECTRE in QOS, but let's face it - they knew what they were doing (and as it turned out, Blofeld was involved in all the plots all along).
So, now what? Will they keep the large budgets and fx? What do you think? As I said, they boxed themselves in a tight, expensive little corner surrounded by the expectations of a world wide audience that grew up on the films (and many have never even read a Fleming novel) and the blueprint they established and the expectations of the corporate conglomerates that help finance and market them. What I can only hope is that whatever they come up with in the next few films it will not involve some global conspiracy or global control of the media, hacking, water supplies or another personal revenge plot. I hope it will be more scaled down to just a greedy weird villain with weird habits or arms traffickers or whatever and keep the locations few and focus more on character scenes. That would certainly help trim the budget to an extent.
As to the original question of the post - yes, the budget IS a big part of the problem IMO - because it allows them to put too much emphasis on the size of the big bangs and foreign locales which then forces them to create scripts that have to have reasons to lead up to those set pieces rather than focusing on plots with meat on them and interesting fleshed out characters that we want to see even more than some big bang or stunt.
It's analogous to having a child at college. The child doesn't fully appreciate what money is yet or how hard it is to make because it is simply there. So, as a parent, you not only pay for college, but you give that child an allowance of $1,000 a month to spend however he or she wants. The child sees all sorts of other kids -- some getting by on much less and some getting even more. He or she sees what's possible with less money, but doesn't feel the need to save or conserve, even if the experiences will be more fulfilling. He or she simply feels obligated to spend all $1,000.
He or she really only needs $500 to meet his or her needs. So what does he or she spend the remainder on? Anything frivolous he or she wants -- clothes, movies, concerts, fast food, online gambling, or whatever.
Now, the problem isn't that the child has an extra $500. There are kids at college with even more. The problem isn't that the child spends it. That's what it's there for. The problem is how the child spends it and on what. At the end of the month, despite all the frivolous spending, the child is no more happy or fulfilled. They just have a lot of receipts and junk in the dorm room. Meanwhile, other kids are spending money more carefully and are happier. In the long run, they come out ahead. By the way, when the parent was younger, he or she was much poorer and had to learn how to stretch a dollar and be happy. Part of the reason he or she has the money as an adult to give to the child comes from what he learned to do creatively when he or she was younger and didn't have enough.
Maybe, just maybe, cutting that child's allowance to $500 (or less) would encourage him or her to not just spend for the sake of spending, but to spend carefully and to be better at using the money they have.
To me, this is where the Bond films are. They spend huge amounts of money. The bang that they get from the bucks, though, doesn't seem to translate into much for the viewer, or at least much commensurate with the amount. At least that's been the last three Bonds for me, which all looked like they could have been made with half the money they spent.
Very funny you two. It came to me while I was having my dinner, from a view to kill. :007)
Tp what is it with you and bears at the moment?
"Ach, bother!"
+1.
Thanks for the correction - it's been a while since I read the novel, but I still think they could have saved the Swiss location shooting budget if they had just had transferred the car shadowing and factory scenes from Switzerland to just Kent. Though this may have been the case where Richard Maibaum & Paul Dehn kept the Swiss scenes in because they were still sticking as close to the novels as they could - and some of that might be because Fleming himself was still alive and as far as they know may have been able to see the finished film - I still think if they had put it all in Kent it would not have bothered Fleming that much. I don't know if anyone ever reported as to his opinion of them changing the plot from grand theft to irradiating the gold supply - he was after all ill at the time and may have not been as in touch with the production, outside of visiting Pinewood when they were shooting some scenes. Still, it would be interesting to know how he felt about the screenplay.
Is part of the problem that we have grown up and expect more? For instance, when I saw DAF in the cinema as an impressionable seven year old, I was blown away by it. If I watched it now however, for the very first time, I'd be pretty underwhelmed. Our expectations and anticipation increase with maturity.
Following on, is the 'Bond formula' itself also a constraint? We anticipate and expect certain things from a Bond film and when the producers attempt to vary that formula - Craig's Bond never quite getting the girl (at least until Dr Swann), his inexperience (Vesper's betrayal, Fields's death in QoS etc) - not everyone is happy with the experiment.
Is part of the problem also that our sensibilities have changed? If we watched a straightforward 'Bond mission' film now, without the depth of character involvement which (and Gassy Man you will know far more about this than I do) leads to increased jeopardy and drama, would we be equally underwhelmed?
I'm not sure then that the budget is the main problem - maybe it's our expectations/anticipation, maturity, desire for an original plot within formula constraints, and changing sensibilities....
The examples you mention with Craig's films having fiddling with the formula frustrate me, but don't frustrate others. The 80s Bond films in the US didn't perform well, but for some fans are considered the finest period in the franchise.
Isolating fandom is probably important, I just don't like the modern films as much as the old ones purely because I know and love the old ones so much??
The formula remains largely there, but the way it's layered may change and put people off:
"Better make that two."
Any maybe a fifty year old watching DAF for the first time would not notice the amount of screen time Blofeld has, nor the number of guards in the climactic battle, nor appreciate the humour and weirdness, quite so much as us...
(1) why was Kronsteen , in the book ,Changed from a Russian /Moscow chess champion ,to a Czech champion ?
(2) why was the chess match moved from Moscow ?
(3) why was KLEBB killed at the end ,and not bundled off in a laundry basket ?
(4) why was the periscope changed from a Turkish one to a British one in the film ?
there are more ,but this is a start
I don't think those choices have anything to do with budget. Did you mean to post it here? http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/41323/little-niggles/page/31/