Finally felt the need to put my thoughts on the Bond films in writing.
Zorin91
Posts: 8MI6 Agent
As long as I can remember I’ve been a huge Bond film-fan, and I’m completely honest when I say the movies are a significant part of my life. I’m born in the early 90s, so it naturally started with the Goldeneye video game. Me and my buddies would occasionally also choose a random Bond-film to watch, but it wasn’t before the internet really came along that I started really getting into Bond. I remember reading about the villains, Bond-girls, the locations etc. for hours in stretch, quizzing my father and brother every day about various aspects of the films.
Now that I’ve seen every Bond-film a tenfold times and got the films on Bluray for Christmas, me and my brothers decided to do a Bondathon. We don’t have the time to watch a film every day, not even every week, but as often as we can we watch a Bond film or two. As a part of this Bondathon we’ve ranked the Bond films, and as much as I love to compare Bond movies, I’ve never before written down my thoughts about them.
Therefore, I’ve started this topic to try and make sense of all my thoughts around each of the Bond films, and just why they’ve ended up where they have on my list. I warn you, there will be controversial opinions, there are films I’d rather have much higher on my list, but there will be films that I for some reasons (could be highly idiotic reasons) rank higher than highly acclaimed additions to the Bond series.
I was thinking I’d start from the bottom of my ranking. Although we have a few of the films left in our Bondathon I’ll start from the bottom. This just because I know deep inside that for me, no other Bond film is even nearly as bad as this one. I would wish otherwise, but I’ve got to be honest. Let’s start with…
24. Quantum of solace
Oh lord, where to start. As the first Bond film I watched in the cinema was Casino Royale, I was genuinely pumped to see this addition to the series. I loved CR and Daniel Craig was great, but I remember leaving the cinema after QoS, well.. remembering nothing. And at recent reviews I’ve come to realise it’s never gonna change. For me, this movie is a utter trainwreck. Maybe not as a film itself, but certainly within the boundaries of the film series I love to death. Let’s start with the good things, and then the trashing will commence.
In my opinion there are a few good things about QoS. I’d almost refer to them as honorable mentions because they are so few, but here it is.
The goods
Tosca
To me the Tosca opera scene is what Bond is all about. It’s a smart scene where Bond needs to use his wits to confront the villains. All with a beautiful opera backdrop, very classic, and one of the few instances where the editing works to a certain extent. Weird though that the editing shines through in one of the less frenetic dramatic scenes of the film.
Beautiful colors
I’ve always felt this film looks good. The locations aren’t necessary the most exciting, but they are used in colorful ways, highlighting certain aspects of the location, without feeling like a travel guide (ehrm. India, Octopussy)
Mathis
Mathis is in the movie. I’ll talk more about him during my CR review, but I just love the guy.
Strawberry Fields
I can’t really put my finger on exactly what I like about Strawberry Fields, but I think she reminds me of the good old Bond girl. The one who simply can’t resist Bond’s charm and gets a bitter end for it. She’s rather cute, naïve and I don’t really mind the “sacrificial lamb” role. Yes, it’s been used up and down all through the series, but with this personal Bond story, I find that it takes Craigs Bond one step further towards the abyss. Her death isn’t mega important in the grand picture, but she does matter.
Bond and Camille surrounded
A tiny bit I noticed this time around was the tiny scene where we see Bond and Camille about to be engulfed by the flames in the desert hotel. Craig and Kurylenko really shows off some great acting skills in this segment. Camille seems genuinely scared and Bond does show a very brave and human side, comforting her and shielding her from their imminent doom. They also get out of the situation in a cool way.
The bads
To start off the bads, I just want to say that although I love Bond films, I feel a serious need to slate certain of them. I try to highlight some of the goods as well as I can, but a bad Bond film is a bad Bond film. I won’t take into account the time it was made in and such, I talk about my feelings around the movie, just as I see it, here in 2018. Is it entertaining? Do I like the plot? What about the girls/villains etc. Some things matter more to me than others. For example as you’ll see in a bit, I’ll talk about the Bournesque editing of QoS, which I properly hate. On the other side I won’t slate DN or LALD for racism. It doesn’t mean I don’t think racism is wrong, it just means that it doesn’t take away from my personal experience of the film. For many this might be a wrong and hypocritical way to go about things, but that’s how it is. I look at my the film’s entertainment value and rewatchability.
The editing
The director really did all he could to confuse me. An otherwise very exciting and cool car chase PTS ruins my first impression of the film. It’s not just that the maniacal editing makes it hard to follow, but the sheer entertainment value of the action scenes completely wither when it’s this hard to “get” what’s happening. Going into a Bond film, I don’t want to become exhausted. I want to be excited, I want to be woved, and I don’t get that at all with QoS. The action in this film is just a series of lackluster, unforgettable, terribly edited action scenes, and this did greatly contribute to my feeling of emptiness after seeing the film in the cinema as a 17-year-old. An attempt at making energetic action became incredibly dull and I will never forgive the director for it. I still can’t imagine how CR, with the amazing parkour sequence, airport sequence (Underrated IMO) etc. were followed by this lousy action. QoS action is nothing of what Bond is about. Shame on you, Forster.
The title song
Possibly the worst title song ever? I might put DAD behind, but a major difference here is that I genuinely feel they made an effort (Madonna’s song feels more like a joke, spewed out on a lazy day). I do like the first segment of the song, it feels very Bondian to me, but as soon as Alicia’s singing starts it just gets so incredibly….in lack of other words, LAME!! I can’t describe it any other way. It’s just a mash-up of twenty different ideas lead by two otherwise great artists. Did no one sit down with these two and said “Let’s just take it easy. This is getting way out of hand.” It would honestly have been better purely instrumental, just please lose White’s tiny ridiculous guitar sounds. It’s an utter crap song and I truly hate it.
The pacing and script
Tightly intertwined with the frantic editing, comes the pacing of QoS, At a running time of 1 hour and 47 hour it’s one of the shortest Bond films, and it suffers from it. The film moves from action scene to action scene with a rapid pace, and when it slows down I feel the script is rather uninspired. It’s often these quieter moments that are actually the most memorable in Bond films (Fishing, fly fishing? From AVTAK, and Bond and Scaramanga’s dinner in TMWTG springs to mind). I struggle to see much of these moments in QoS and a better script and maybe 10-15 minutes added would’ve contributed greatly to make QoS a more interesting result.
The writer’s strike had a huge impact on the film, but I’m reviewing the film we’ve got, not what it could have been. Like Bond 25, the film truly should’ve been pushed back for at least a few months, to make the pacing and script flow better. I honestly remember only one quote I really like from the film (Tosca’s not for everyone), and it’s not even from Bond. What does Bond say in this film? Forgettable.
The villains
The absolute biggest gripe for me with this film is the villains. I’ve always found the villains to be the most interesting factor of the Bond films. If I myself could get a role in a Bond film, I’d most certainly want to play the main villain rather than Bond himself. From the cold and calculated Drax to the ridiculous media magnate Elliot Carver, the villains always to shine through to me and I love almost the whole lot of them. Dominic Greene…not so much. He doesn’t do anything really and the attempts at making him menacing throughout the film falls flat for me. He’s not scary at all. The killing of Strawberry Fields is a homage to Goldfinger, and it does up the stakes for Bond, but it doesn’t make Greene anymore interesting. Only in the frantic fight in the hotel, his sheer violent desperation gives him some relevance in my realm of baddie-loving, but it’s all too late. He’s practically already been beaten. And contrary to general public opinion, I find the way he dies rather boring.
Further we’ve got the General Medrano, very generic. I won’t slate the Camille/rape plot, the only thing I find interesting about Camille, but other than that he doesn’t really gel well into a Bond film for me. He’d fit better in a series like Narcos or El Chapo. Not that Sanchez from Licence to kill is any better in this regard, but in LTK it’s executed in a far better way, relating to the plot around Leiter and his wife. Where you get afraid of Sanchez and you feel he’s a real danger to Bond, Medrano’s just a upjumped baboon. Speaking of Medrano, what happened to the good old henchman? Introducing Elvis, the filmmakers use him for some (not funny) comedic relief, and that’s about everything. Like many of the other villains, he doesn’t do anything, and isn’t even remotely a threat to anyone. Why even have him in there?
An exception to this dross gathering of clowns is Mr.White. The actor manages to be both intimidating and entertaining at the same time, and in another dimension he would have even more screen time as the face of the Quantum organization. Thankfully he reprises his role in Spectre in one of that film’s greatest scenes. Kudos to him.
M, Leiter, disuse of Mathis and digital nonsense
Now I’ve come to the nitpicking part. There will always be smaller things in Bond films that can irritate me, but normally I manage to shrug these off without a whiff. In this film though, they just add to my whining list, sinking the ship deeper into the sea.
When it comes to Judi Dench, I do love her as M. She’s a commanding presence and a welcome change to the grumpy old chaps of the 60s-80s. What I don’t like about her is how often she seems to distrust Bond. (What on earth does she have to do in Bolivia by the way, or Kazan, Russia in the end for that matter? Isn’t she supposed to be running a whole organization from back home, rather than chasing down Bond?). The dynamic between M and in this film is very weird, he just doesn’t have her back, even if Bond’s her best agent and there clearly is a mutual respect between the two. I don’t really buy it, and in this film I think her extended involvement is a distraction from a plot that badly needed other persons to have more to do. I’m sorry M, this time you missed.
Next up, you have Felix Leiter. He’s playing a small role in one of the more interesting side plots, but he’s got almost nothing to do. He just sits around looking bored, far removed from the cool American guy we got to know the film before. Stripped of his entertainment value Leiter becomes another hollow character in a film inhabited by a huge amount of hollow characters. Come to think of it, too many characters suffer from this in the movie. We can talk about Mathis in this regard as well. Left for dead in a dark street in the Bolivian night, merely 15-20 minutes, I don’t know, after being re-introduced in a fine way. It’s just a waste of such a great character. In a way, both Mathis, Leiter and M suffer in QoS, in different ways. They become just further examples of how to ruin well-established beloved characters.
Modern films, also in Skyfall which I think is great, have a tendency to rely too much on technology, and my last nitpick is that QoS does as well. For some reason all the touch screens and fancy digital stuff, most prominent in the MI6 headquarters irritate me so much. It all just seems so overcomplicated and “smart”. It’s supposed to be cool, but to be honest I feel like even the MI6 struggle with the system. We live in a digital age, but bring it down a notch. The fancy screens really remind me more of the Spielberg film Minority Report, set in 2054, in that film done in a far more elegant and fitting way than in QoS.
Summary
Many will think that this review is an unfair and brutal assessment of QoS, but it may well be the only Bond film to actually make me kind of angry. I can’t believe that this was greenlighted. Even if it’s not at all badly acted and it clearly has a huge budget, the film manages to ruin almost every aspect that I love about Bond. After watching it several times after that cinema experience ten years ago, I still sit here with the same feeling. A feeling of emptiness.
Rating: 001 of 007
Now that I’ve seen every Bond-film a tenfold times and got the films on Bluray for Christmas, me and my brothers decided to do a Bondathon. We don’t have the time to watch a film every day, not even every week, but as often as we can we watch a Bond film or two. As a part of this Bondathon we’ve ranked the Bond films, and as much as I love to compare Bond movies, I’ve never before written down my thoughts about them.
Therefore, I’ve started this topic to try and make sense of all my thoughts around each of the Bond films, and just why they’ve ended up where they have on my list. I warn you, there will be controversial opinions, there are films I’d rather have much higher on my list, but there will be films that I for some reasons (could be highly idiotic reasons) rank higher than highly acclaimed additions to the Bond series.
I was thinking I’d start from the bottom of my ranking. Although we have a few of the films left in our Bondathon I’ll start from the bottom. This just because I know deep inside that for me, no other Bond film is even nearly as bad as this one. I would wish otherwise, but I’ve got to be honest. Let’s start with…
24. Quantum of solace
Oh lord, where to start. As the first Bond film I watched in the cinema was Casino Royale, I was genuinely pumped to see this addition to the series. I loved CR and Daniel Craig was great, but I remember leaving the cinema after QoS, well.. remembering nothing. And at recent reviews I’ve come to realise it’s never gonna change. For me, this movie is a utter trainwreck. Maybe not as a film itself, but certainly within the boundaries of the film series I love to death. Let’s start with the good things, and then the trashing will commence.
In my opinion there are a few good things about QoS. I’d almost refer to them as honorable mentions because they are so few, but here it is.
The goods
Tosca
To me the Tosca opera scene is what Bond is all about. It’s a smart scene where Bond needs to use his wits to confront the villains. All with a beautiful opera backdrop, very classic, and one of the few instances where the editing works to a certain extent. Weird though that the editing shines through in one of the less frenetic dramatic scenes of the film.
Beautiful colors
I’ve always felt this film looks good. The locations aren’t necessary the most exciting, but they are used in colorful ways, highlighting certain aspects of the location, without feeling like a travel guide (ehrm. India, Octopussy)
Mathis
Mathis is in the movie. I’ll talk more about him during my CR review, but I just love the guy.
Strawberry Fields
I can’t really put my finger on exactly what I like about Strawberry Fields, but I think she reminds me of the good old Bond girl. The one who simply can’t resist Bond’s charm and gets a bitter end for it. She’s rather cute, naïve and I don’t really mind the “sacrificial lamb” role. Yes, it’s been used up and down all through the series, but with this personal Bond story, I find that it takes Craigs Bond one step further towards the abyss. Her death isn’t mega important in the grand picture, but she does matter.
Bond and Camille surrounded
A tiny bit I noticed this time around was the tiny scene where we see Bond and Camille about to be engulfed by the flames in the desert hotel. Craig and Kurylenko really shows off some great acting skills in this segment. Camille seems genuinely scared and Bond does show a very brave and human side, comforting her and shielding her from their imminent doom. They also get out of the situation in a cool way.
The bads
To start off the bads, I just want to say that although I love Bond films, I feel a serious need to slate certain of them. I try to highlight some of the goods as well as I can, but a bad Bond film is a bad Bond film. I won’t take into account the time it was made in and such, I talk about my feelings around the movie, just as I see it, here in 2018. Is it entertaining? Do I like the plot? What about the girls/villains etc. Some things matter more to me than others. For example as you’ll see in a bit, I’ll talk about the Bournesque editing of QoS, which I properly hate. On the other side I won’t slate DN or LALD for racism. It doesn’t mean I don’t think racism is wrong, it just means that it doesn’t take away from my personal experience of the film. For many this might be a wrong and hypocritical way to go about things, but that’s how it is. I look at my the film’s entertainment value and rewatchability.
The editing
The director really did all he could to confuse me. An otherwise very exciting and cool car chase PTS ruins my first impression of the film. It’s not just that the maniacal editing makes it hard to follow, but the sheer entertainment value of the action scenes completely wither when it’s this hard to “get” what’s happening. Going into a Bond film, I don’t want to become exhausted. I want to be excited, I want to be woved, and I don’t get that at all with QoS. The action in this film is just a series of lackluster, unforgettable, terribly edited action scenes, and this did greatly contribute to my feeling of emptiness after seeing the film in the cinema as a 17-year-old. An attempt at making energetic action became incredibly dull and I will never forgive the director for it. I still can’t imagine how CR, with the amazing parkour sequence, airport sequence (Underrated IMO) etc. were followed by this lousy action. QoS action is nothing of what Bond is about. Shame on you, Forster.
The title song
Possibly the worst title song ever? I might put DAD behind, but a major difference here is that I genuinely feel they made an effort (Madonna’s song feels more like a joke, spewed out on a lazy day). I do like the first segment of the song, it feels very Bondian to me, but as soon as Alicia’s singing starts it just gets so incredibly….in lack of other words, LAME!! I can’t describe it any other way. It’s just a mash-up of twenty different ideas lead by two otherwise great artists. Did no one sit down with these two and said “Let’s just take it easy. This is getting way out of hand.” It would honestly have been better purely instrumental, just please lose White’s tiny ridiculous guitar sounds. It’s an utter crap song and I truly hate it.
The pacing and script
Tightly intertwined with the frantic editing, comes the pacing of QoS, At a running time of 1 hour and 47 hour it’s one of the shortest Bond films, and it suffers from it. The film moves from action scene to action scene with a rapid pace, and when it slows down I feel the script is rather uninspired. It’s often these quieter moments that are actually the most memorable in Bond films (Fishing, fly fishing? From AVTAK, and Bond and Scaramanga’s dinner in TMWTG springs to mind). I struggle to see much of these moments in QoS and a better script and maybe 10-15 minutes added would’ve contributed greatly to make QoS a more interesting result.
The writer’s strike had a huge impact on the film, but I’m reviewing the film we’ve got, not what it could have been. Like Bond 25, the film truly should’ve been pushed back for at least a few months, to make the pacing and script flow better. I honestly remember only one quote I really like from the film (Tosca’s not for everyone), and it’s not even from Bond. What does Bond say in this film? Forgettable.
The villains
The absolute biggest gripe for me with this film is the villains. I’ve always found the villains to be the most interesting factor of the Bond films. If I myself could get a role in a Bond film, I’d most certainly want to play the main villain rather than Bond himself. From the cold and calculated Drax to the ridiculous media magnate Elliot Carver, the villains always to shine through to me and I love almost the whole lot of them. Dominic Greene…not so much. He doesn’t do anything really and the attempts at making him menacing throughout the film falls flat for me. He’s not scary at all. The killing of Strawberry Fields is a homage to Goldfinger, and it does up the stakes for Bond, but it doesn’t make Greene anymore interesting. Only in the frantic fight in the hotel, his sheer violent desperation gives him some relevance in my realm of baddie-loving, but it’s all too late. He’s practically already been beaten. And contrary to general public opinion, I find the way he dies rather boring.
Further we’ve got the General Medrano, very generic. I won’t slate the Camille/rape plot, the only thing I find interesting about Camille, but other than that he doesn’t really gel well into a Bond film for me. He’d fit better in a series like Narcos or El Chapo. Not that Sanchez from Licence to kill is any better in this regard, but in LTK it’s executed in a far better way, relating to the plot around Leiter and his wife. Where you get afraid of Sanchez and you feel he’s a real danger to Bond, Medrano’s just a upjumped baboon. Speaking of Medrano, what happened to the good old henchman? Introducing Elvis, the filmmakers use him for some (not funny) comedic relief, and that’s about everything. Like many of the other villains, he doesn’t do anything, and isn’t even remotely a threat to anyone. Why even have him in there?
An exception to this dross gathering of clowns is Mr.White. The actor manages to be both intimidating and entertaining at the same time, and in another dimension he would have even more screen time as the face of the Quantum organization. Thankfully he reprises his role in Spectre in one of that film’s greatest scenes. Kudos to him.
M, Leiter, disuse of Mathis and digital nonsense
Now I’ve come to the nitpicking part. There will always be smaller things in Bond films that can irritate me, but normally I manage to shrug these off without a whiff. In this film though, they just add to my whining list, sinking the ship deeper into the sea.
When it comes to Judi Dench, I do love her as M. She’s a commanding presence and a welcome change to the grumpy old chaps of the 60s-80s. What I don’t like about her is how often she seems to distrust Bond. (What on earth does she have to do in Bolivia by the way, or Kazan, Russia in the end for that matter? Isn’t she supposed to be running a whole organization from back home, rather than chasing down Bond?). The dynamic between M and in this film is very weird, he just doesn’t have her back, even if Bond’s her best agent and there clearly is a mutual respect between the two. I don’t really buy it, and in this film I think her extended involvement is a distraction from a plot that badly needed other persons to have more to do. I’m sorry M, this time you missed.
Next up, you have Felix Leiter. He’s playing a small role in one of the more interesting side plots, but he’s got almost nothing to do. He just sits around looking bored, far removed from the cool American guy we got to know the film before. Stripped of his entertainment value Leiter becomes another hollow character in a film inhabited by a huge amount of hollow characters. Come to think of it, too many characters suffer from this in the movie. We can talk about Mathis in this regard as well. Left for dead in a dark street in the Bolivian night, merely 15-20 minutes, I don’t know, after being re-introduced in a fine way. It’s just a waste of such a great character. In a way, both Mathis, Leiter and M suffer in QoS, in different ways. They become just further examples of how to ruin well-established beloved characters.
Modern films, also in Skyfall which I think is great, have a tendency to rely too much on technology, and my last nitpick is that QoS does as well. For some reason all the touch screens and fancy digital stuff, most prominent in the MI6 headquarters irritate me so much. It all just seems so overcomplicated and “smart”. It’s supposed to be cool, but to be honest I feel like even the MI6 struggle with the system. We live in a digital age, but bring it down a notch. The fancy screens really remind me more of the Spielberg film Minority Report, set in 2054, in that film done in a far more elegant and fitting way than in QoS.
Summary
Many will think that this review is an unfair and brutal assessment of QoS, but it may well be the only Bond film to actually make me kind of angry. I can’t believe that this was greenlighted. Even if it’s not at all badly acted and it clearly has a huge budget, the film manages to ruin almost every aspect that I love about Bond. After watching it several times after that cinema experience ten years ago, I still sit here with the same feeling. A feeling of emptiness.
Rating: 001 of 007
Comments
For what it's worth, I share many of them regarding QOS. I wouldn't put it at the very bottom of the Bond film barrel, but it's definitely far down there. To me, the biggest whiff was making the whole film hinge on Bond's insatiable quest to avenge Vesper's death. This motivation is often justified as being "Fleming-esque", but in fact it is inconsistent with the core of Fleming's Bond, whose response to Vesper's death (in both the novel and film versions of CR) was to remark coldly that "the bitch is dead". That Bond was hellbent on revenge once and only once -- after Blofeld murdered his wife.
Other shortfalls of QOS include the rendition of Felix as a jaded and bitter pawn (never part of his makeup); a boring endgame for the bad guys (water rights -- what a snoozer!); and a very annoying set of action sequences that basically amount to nothing more than jump-cuts of fit guys wearing tailored suits. I don't like Fields -- she's a waste of time who is shoehorned into the plot solely so she can get murdered to provide a so-called homage far clumsier than anything in DAD (which is saying something).
Like you, I love the opera scene (superbly Bondian). I think Camille's backstory is very well-handled -- one instance in which the film's subtlety is a plus -- and I like Olga's portrayal. The desert vistas are very cool. The pallio scenes in Siena are great.
Overall though, a huge letdown after the wonderful CR.
As for the water plot, you're so right. I forgot to mention that in my review, and it's probably because of how insanely forgettable it is. We'll need to disagree about Fields though. I know so very well that she's very much shoehorned in, maybe it's just that I find the actress classic looking and rather charming, but she does at least provide some breathing space from the senseless action scenes.
My opinions aren't usually this clear, I love a good discussion and I do more than often change opinions on the Bond films, but although I've tried so damn hard to convince myself that QoS is in some way a good Bond film, I just can't find any redeeming qualities of note in it. I hope I never get that dissapointed from a new Bond film again.
This thread might be of interest, There are a few Pro v Cons threads for most of the films.
Welcome to AJB007, Zorin91 -{
are you going to do all 24 official films in this level of detail? I look forward to reading. of course you should read the books, but...
I'm going to say, in your case, wait until you've got your 24 writeups complete. Capture your thoughts at present about the films, because they are pure unadulterated reactions to the films themselves.
I personally tend to judge the films according to how close they follow the book. Once you read the books you might start doing this too, and you may never be able to appreciate the film as a thing in and of itself again.
I'm thinking of doing all the films, yes. I find it kind of a fun therapy to sit and write my thoughts about the Bond films. I have so many thoughts around these movies and writing it down makes it easier to organize them, and some day I might share the films with my own children and discuss them. It's also a perfect way to keep me writing English, as it's not my first language.
As I said I'll continue the list, but I'll have to wait till I'm done with our Bondathon. We have 5 films left (drawn randomly except for DCs films) and I'm afraid nr.23 is among these films. I'll know soon ;P
After I'm done with this project I might just read the books. Make a project of it next summer perhaps