The Craig films (might have been brought up before)

Bond fan from Oz

Does it REALLY bother anyone that all the Craig films (so far) have been tied together with SPECTRE? That bit of throwaway information Blofeld gives Bond doesn't get to me in the slightest.

I did the CR/QOS double-bill, and QOS really stands on its own.

SP works fine as stand-alone, and is its own film.

What does everybody else think?

Wint and Kidd far-out

It doesn't bother me personally. Admittedly it does seem in some ways like a sudden split decision to make use of the fact that they can now use Blofeld and SPECTRE freely with no legal setbacks since the passing of Kevin McClory. Still they do a very good job of explaining things by making the organization QUANTUM a sub-branch of SPECTRE and even tying in the point that Blofeld was secretly backing Silva's seemingly independent revenge scheme is a unique and charming touch.

Dirty Punker

The last part about Silva bugs me.
What did they spend all the money on? Helis, guns? Patrice's Audi?
Didn't seem like much of a money pit to me as he didn't even use explosives to blow up MI6.
And the heli in the end could've been a rental, supposed to be returned :v

walther p99

I've made it no secret that i hate how they shoehorned Silva in as part of Spectre. Only because at no point in Skyfall is it hinted at that Silva is working for anybody but himself. Wasn't it enough of a connection to Skyfall that they collected the contents from Skyfall lodge and all the other characters (M,Q, Moneypenny) and events (MI6 destruction) carried over? I think it was unnecessary to include Silva. I still like to think of Skyfall as Craig's one stand alone film at the moment. No Quantum, No Vesper, No Mathis, etc. Spectre definitely seemed like it was trying to cash in on Marvel's films.

Wint and Kidd far-out

Your points are both taken. If Silva had made it clear at all that Quantum was financing his interests, it would make a difference to the impact. It does seem a trifle needlessly overboard. Skyfall was presented as being to Craig's reboot as Goldfinger was to the original continuity. Goldfinger was working for himself apart from the original SPECTRE and when you watch Skyfall as walther p99 points out Silva is presented in the exact same light.

caractacus potts

I always liked that all Connery's villains, except Goldfinger, worked for SPECTRE.
And I used to stare very closely at Goldfinger looking for some subtle clue I might have missed proving he was working for SPECTRE too.
But this was planned from the very beginning, whereas this last Craig film is a very awkward ret-con.


Yes the addition of Sylva to the grand conspiracy is particularly annoying, and devalues what was very much his own unique motivation.
Also there was supposed to be a time gap before Skyfall, during which CraigBond becomes jaded with his job. But Blofeld only references the characters from the three adventures we have seen in film, not the presumed many unseen adventures prior to Skyfall.

And all the criminal activities of Quantum in the first two films suddenly seem completely wrong, now we know they were primarily motivated to make the half-brother feel bad. They don't even make sense given that retroactive motivation. Wouldn't there have been simpler ways to piss off the half-brother?

Did Blofeld hire the North African guy to seduce and blackmail Vesper, projecting somehow that she would one day be Bond's lover? What if there was a better card player in the service when M found out about le Chiffre's high stakes poker game? she wouldn't even have assigned Bond, Bond wouldn't meet Vesper, thus the blackmail of Vesper would have been wasted. And that's just one point of contingency amongst many Blofeld must have been assuming.

this actually makes the hearse/gondola assassination attempt look like an efficient scheme, in comparison. Mid70s Moore films make more sense than SPECTRE.

caractacus potts

by the way there is a thread somewhere where one of our fellow agents argued Skyfall makes more sense now we know Sylva was also working for Blofeld. May be a few pages back.

_______________________________________________________
EDIT: here it is, in the SPECTRE section:
"Blofeld Behind Everything Actually Helps Skyfall Make Some Sense"
https://ajb007.co.uk/topic/47523/blofeld-behind-everything-actually-helps-skyfall-make-some-sense/
and the OP Gassy Man is usually quite sensible so his argument is worth consideration.

Miles Messervy

IMO, the Spectre retcon makes all of Craig’s films retrospectively worse. Prior to Spectre, CraigBond’s character arc made some logical sense. If Spectre had been a stand-alone film generally unconcerned with the prior films, the status quo would have been maintained. Now it’s just a silly mess. It is for this reason that I have come to view Spectre as the worst entry in the franchise. None of the other weak entries diminished what had come before.

Remington

Honestly, it bothers me more than the CGI surfing in DAD. That just affected one film. The retcon tarnishes the three prior films. They should've just stuck to Quantum. I also love to watch CR/QOS as a double bill and then SF as a standalone. The way it should be. I put SP in the same camp as CR' 67 and NSNA, although I enjoy those much more. I'm sure my SP bashing has gotten old but I gotta rant somewhere. )
-{

JTM

The way I always explain it to myself is that Blofeld lied, plain and simple. He’s a super villain with access to endless sources of human, imagery, open-source, communications, financial and cyber intelligence and he simply uses that to try to manipulate and anger Bond. With that wealth of intel it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to say he could’ve just gained basic knowledge of the past film’s events and Bond’s family history through all his sources and used that to make up the whole “It was all me, James. It's always been me. The author of all your pain.” story.

caractacus potts

yeh that makes sense.
We watch him torment Madeleine with the footage of her fathers suicide. And he literally puts a drill inside Bond's brain. So that's the simplest way to explain it and still be happy: Blofeld's just messin' with him.

but Mr Whyte does tell us about his relationship with SPECTRE, can't remember if he says Oberhausers name or not ... so that weakens the "just messin with ya" defense, there is an independent witness.
And of course Bond recognises Oberhauser as his halfbrother at the big meeting scene. No simple explanation out of that problem, even if it is distinct from the "behind everything" problem.

I say blame the VR goggles from Brosnan's last film. That could undo everything we don't like.

Bond fan from Oz

We can always look at each film as stand-alone.

I don't think about DN when watching FRWL. We are always watching the very movie we are watching.

caractacus potts

well it helps if you're wondering "who is that lady Bond is having a picnic with?" at the beginning.

but you're right, SPECTRE does not make the previous three films any worse, in and of themselves, we can still watch Sylva carry out his own zany agenda without worrying about what Blofeld claims in some completely different film.
It's just SPECTRE itself that is annoying. Maybe we should file it alongside Never Say Never Again (McClory!!!) and not worry about it anymore.

Gassy Man

caractacus potts wrote:

by the way there is a thread somewhere where one of our fellow agents argued Skyfall makes more sense now we know Sylva was also working for Blofeld. May be a few pages back.

_______________________________________________________
EDIT: here it is, in the SPECTRE section:
"Blofeld Behind Everything Actually Helps Skyfall Make Some Sense"
https://ajb007.co.uk/topic/47523/blofeld-behind-everything-actually-helps-skyfall-make-some-sense/
and the OP Gassy Man is usually quite sensible so his argument is worth consideration.

That might have been me. I think Skyfall's plot is pretty dumb, but with the additional framing of Spectre, some things get smoothed out. For instance, why would the supposedly brilliant computer hacker Silva bent on revenge against M need to steal a physical hard drive rather than just hack into a laptop for the same information unless under orders from Blofeld to also humiliate or kill Bond? How could Silva have anticipated so much -- and so accurately, like where an impromptu hearing for M would be held and precisely when -- if Blofeld hadn't already been monitoring things from the inside out? It's actually easier for me to believe that Blofeld was pulling strings all along than the seemingly random machinations required for Silva's plot to work. That said, I still think most of the Blofeld stuff was, as my friends in the UK might say, pants.

Bond fan from Oz

Gassy Man wrote:

I think Skyfall's plot is pretty dumb, but with the additional framing of Spectre, some things get smoothed out. For instance, why would the supposedly brilliant computer hacker Silva bent on revenge against M need to steal a physical hard drive rather than just hack into a laptop for the same information unless under orders from Blofeld to also humiliate or kill Bond? How could Silva have anticipated so much -- and so accurately, like where an impromptu hearing for M would be held and precisely when -- if Blofeld hadn't already been monitoring things from the inside out? It's actually easier for me to believe that Blofeld was pulling strings all along than the seemingly random machinations required for Silva's plot to work. That said, I still think most of the Blofeld stuff was, as my friends in the UK might say, pants.

That sir, is a brilliant analysis! -{

Gassy Man

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