I apologise for suggesting the end to NTTD was generic - it isn't so for a Bond film - you are quite right.
What frustrated me about the island climax was the sense I wasn't watching a Bond film by this point, but something Vin Diesel or Bruce Willis might have partaken in, maybe one of those interminable Expendables films, or yes, a Marvel Comics movie. Just so OTT violent. And it went on and on... I was quite appalled to see this kind of sloppy, unimaginative filmmaking in a Bond movie. It is a style which is becoming more generic for the action thriller genre.
I am sure you've read YOLT. Bond is grieving at the novel's beginning. CraigBond doesn't grieve for any of his women, not even for Vesper until belatedly we watch his pilgrimage to her graveside. We've seen him go on massive benders because he's "enjoying death" or enjoying fishing, downing Vesper's on a plane to forget his woes, but he never grieved. In YOLT, the novel, M allows Bond an opportunity of redemption, which opens up both the evil and the good in his life. Ultimately, happiness is not granted to Bond, but he doesn't die; the ending of the novel is hard to accept and emotionally heartrending. We want Bond to know he has a child, but he will leave Kissy Suzuki without knowing. The ending of the novel isn't entirely ambiguous, but we don't know what will ensue.
The end of NTTD is a done deal. Bond is dead.
Now, I get CraigBond has been denied a happy ending [ has he ever been happy? ] but this film offers me more of the same circumstances created in Spectre, except because Blofeld is in prison or dead, we have a substitute Blofeld in Safin. It's a film about Bond and Madeleine's relationship and we'd done that last time out. In terms of brooding CraigBond, he's still trying to figure out where he fits into the crazy world. There's no redemption until the very end. Earlier, when it really was there for him, he backs away when confronted with a violent issue he can't fathom, doesn't even investigate it, stews for five years and stumbles back into the game for a favour. Didn't he do that in Skyfall? So, he has a kid, grows out of his emotional underpants and dies. Hardly the most challenging of structures.
I enjoyed the film. I just don't think it's a great film. There was too much not to like about it and unfortunately CraigBond's modern take on super-spy-dom which drew further and further away from Ian Fleming has finally left me totally cold.
CraigBond has been, from his inception, heavily influenced by his "environment" in spy fiction at least as much as Book Bond, and both more so than previous takes of Cinema Bond.
Remember the outcry when Lazenby dared to be afraid? Or when Dalton dared to be a human being?
Craig's Bond has been influenced by Bourne. He's been influenced by Mission Impossible. The real reason the nanobot thing feels cheap to me is that it's directly lifted from Metal Gear Solid 4's evolution of the FOXDIE virus (from the first Metal Gear Solid) which causes the protagonist, who is infected and now understands he's probably immune but may infect the entire world, to contemplate suicide (and originally apparently had an ending wherein it happened before the creator's team talked him out of it, which led to something pretty beautiful). CraigBond started showing a very heavy Metal Gear Solid influence with Skyfall, and a lot of it persists through Spectre and NTTD.
What I'm getting at is that you're not wrong, I think you might just be missing a reference point or two in a way you weren't with previous incarnations.
But that's something beautiful, isn't it? That a new generation can revere something enough to respect it enough to let it evolve? To be willing to take chances?
CraigBond mourns in a different way. CraigBond thinks he's a cold blooded killer, but we know better; book Bond is upfront on multiple occasions that he's not. There are other differences early on, too. CraigBond was *always* a way of exploring other possible facets of the character that were underexpressed in the films and related to BookBond, but not necessarily 1:1.
So, I guess... yeah. They could've done it differently. But maybe they didn't think CraigBond was best served to that end. Or maybe they didn't know how.
Personally, I'm holding out for more literal adaptations of the books, actually set in the time period the books take place in, with more glances into Bond during WWII. And while I think that's a very unlikely outcome, the space is wide open for them to try it.
/rant
Thanks for giving us this topic of conversation. I've really enjoyed it.
Well said! 100% agree with this. I finally found someone else who is just as pissed off as I am that they didn't use this material from YOLT. What we got instead was utter garbage. It would have carried more weight and meaning had Bond wanted to penetrate the garden of death with Blofeld inside, rather than Safin, who we knew very little about. And seeing an amnesia ridden Bond at the end would have been just as tragic an ending.
Which leads me to believe the producers and writers really don't know what they are doing anymore with this franchise.
The end of NTTD is generic, compared to the end of the YOLT novel, which was a far better, more complex ending - and just as tragic. To criminally ignore this and go down a different route (not a better one) shows disrespect to the original source material, and pisses off the fanbase too.
Well yes, you're not supposed to enjoy it, any more than you're supposed to want Tracy to die. But it's the end of the story.
As to how will he return? Well the same way Robin Hood appeared in more films after he died in Robin & Marian, or how Batman did after he faked his death and disappeared in Dark Knight Rises. Or even the same way he came back after saying 'never again' and retiring in NSNA, or getting visibly too old to do it anymore in AVTAK.
It pisses off a few members of the fanbase, most seem to like it.
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,998Quartermasters
edited October 2021
So...Daniel Craig's swan song has been as polarizing - to a large segment of the diehard fanboy base - as his very casting was in 2005.
Shocking. Positively shocking.
Personally, I prefer to see Craig's five-picture arc as a closed circuit: insulated from the rest of the franchise; a fairly elegant saga in and of itself. For those who disapprove of Craig, or who are merely pissed off at how NTTD ended, might I recommend considering that the comfy old 'status quo' Bond has merely been in stasis since the credits rolled on Die Another Day, and might just come back, wearing a new face and sporting a fresh supporting cast. Of course, even if that happens, it's highly likely that Eon will find a way to alienate or otherwise piss off a traditional percentage of the fan base. C'est la guerre.
I enjoyed NTTD quite a lot, and feel it actually elevates Craigger's lesser outings, like QoS and SP. Of course, as always, opinions and mileage may vary.
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
TDKR was going there, but stopped just short in the final scene (something NTTD should have done). The Last Jedi is another one. These 2 films seems to have influenced the direction of NTTD (TLJ in particular).
Asp9mmOver the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,541MI6 Agent
edited October 2021
TDKR was 9 years ago. And they didn’t even kill him off as you say. So just Star Wars then, and that wasn’t even the main character, he was just shoehorned in. You could argue that Marvel did it, but that was a film filled with heroes where a couple died, not the main title character. Still Wolverine as far as that goes. Hardly a trend is it.
Luke Skywalker wasn't the main character? Are we talking about the same franchise? And yes, marvel have been doing it. There is a trend right now with franchises, but if you don't think there is, and EON were being ground-breaking in their decision to kill Bond off, and doing it mainly to please the Bond fans, then I'm happy for you. You got exactly what you wanted.
Asp9mmOver the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,541MI6 Agent
edited October 2021
Luke wasn’t the main character. Rey was. It wasn’t Luke’s film or story. He wasn’t the lead. Should have been, but that’s another discussion we don’t want to get into.
Killing Bond off is groundbreaking, it’s never been done or even thought it would be done before now. That last sentence of yours makes it sound like you’re so mad about the idea that you can’t even acknowledge how epic that move was and that you even really hate the fact that some people enjoyed it. Which indeed seems to be a trend 🤣
Spot on mate! I'm actually really jealous of the people who liked it. I really wish I could too. I have never felt this angry about a Bond film since DAD. 😓
Asp9mmOver the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,541MI6 Agent
Looks like I'll have to, the same way I did with Brosnan's tenure. Here's hoping Bond 26 gives me more what I need in a Bond film (something like LTK or CR).
It may sit with you a bit more easily with time; it's a bit of a shock (and indeed a lot of its power comes from the fact it's this character we've known for so long who's been killed, which is arguably a cheat or a bold masterstroke depending on how you look at it); but I feel like the new things that the film had shown us, together with the ending of Spectre which was already the final closure to the MI6 part of Bond's life, it would have felt like a bit of a wimping out if he'd somehow gone back to being 007 again. He'd discovered something more profound to life (and what better for an assassin to actually create life) so to have him knocked unconscious with amnesia or something, and for the adventure to just continue with Russian spies or whatever would have been a bit underwhelming.
I remember watching Casino Royale the first time and the sinking building finale really frustrated me: in Vesper's betrayal of Bond they'd found something new and interesting and dramatic in a Bond film where there had been nothing like that before, but they got nervous and put in another routine Bond action scene where he beat people up, where instead I really wanted them to move to the actual story that was gripping people.
The story had to end either way, and for a guy like Bond it's only really going to end one way, let's face it.
But another version of Bond will appear, so we get to have our cake and eat it.
Problem with ending this film with the faked death ending from Fleming's You Only Live Twice is they basically already adapted that concept in the beginning of SkyFall.
But there's plenty of other ideas from You Only Live Twice scattered through this movie, just sort of resequenced and reimagined a bit.
James Bond s not immortal. He's gotta die some day. Dont you think that inevitable event could make for a good story?
Yes indeed to the Skyfall thing. And that same story included his return too, but done in a less naff way than having him an amnesiac and trying to kill M, which just is a bit silly. The writers were very open about his death in Skyfall being an adaptation of the YOLT death angle.
I tried to laugh at your comment about the life raft too :D But this forum software is annoyingly inflexible!
I think Bond will only die when his films stop making money. Any death before then will just be a going-away present for the actor who happened to be playing him. And no matter how many deaths there are, Bond cheerfully proposing to light a cigarette under the Moonraker will always feel like the right way for him to go. But he never did, and though Fleming threatened to bump off Bond several times, he ended what he repeatedly called his last Bond novel, TMWTGG, with a lovely passage better than any death scene.
I agree with you that Skyfall had already used up the fake-out death from YOLT. And since Bond had already ridden into the sunset in Spectre, the filmmakers thought needed a bigger ending for Craig's second send-off. I don't feel it fully worked, in part because it felt so overdetermined, but I can see how the filmmakers arrived at that solution.
Comments
@otacon 01 Please don't address me as "my dude"
I apologise for suggesting the end to NTTD was generic - it isn't so for a Bond film - you are quite right.
What frustrated me about the island climax was the sense I wasn't watching a Bond film by this point, but something Vin Diesel or Bruce Willis might have partaken in, maybe one of those interminable Expendables films, or yes, a Marvel Comics movie. Just so OTT violent. And it went on and on... I was quite appalled to see this kind of sloppy, unimaginative filmmaking in a Bond movie. It is a style which is becoming more generic for the action thriller genre.
I am sure you've read YOLT. Bond is grieving at the novel's beginning. CraigBond doesn't grieve for any of his women, not even for Vesper until belatedly we watch his pilgrimage to her graveside. We've seen him go on massive benders because he's "enjoying death" or enjoying fishing, downing Vesper's on a plane to forget his woes, but he never grieved. In YOLT, the novel, M allows Bond an opportunity of redemption, which opens up both the evil and the good in his life. Ultimately, happiness is not granted to Bond, but he doesn't die; the ending of the novel is hard to accept and emotionally heartrending. We want Bond to know he has a child, but he will leave Kissy Suzuki without knowing. The ending of the novel isn't entirely ambiguous, but we don't know what will ensue.
The end of NTTD is a done deal. Bond is dead.
Now, I get CraigBond has been denied a happy ending [ has he ever been happy? ] but this film offers me more of the same circumstances created in Spectre, except because Blofeld is in prison or dead, we have a substitute Blofeld in Safin. It's a film about Bond and Madeleine's relationship and we'd done that last time out. In terms of brooding CraigBond, he's still trying to figure out where he fits into the crazy world. There's no redemption until the very end. Earlier, when it really was there for him, he backs away when confronted with a violent issue he can't fathom, doesn't even investigate it, stews for five years and stumbles back into the game for a favour. Didn't he do that in Skyfall? So, he has a kid, grows out of his emotional underpants and dies. Hardly the most challenging of structures.
I enjoyed the film. I just don't think it's a great film. There was too much not to like about it and unfortunately CraigBond's modern take on super-spy-dom which drew further and further away from Ian Fleming has finally left me totally cold.
I guess what I would suggest to that is...
CraigBond has been, from his inception, heavily influenced by his "environment" in spy fiction at least as much as Book Bond, and both more so than previous takes of Cinema Bond.
Remember the outcry when Lazenby dared to be afraid? Or when Dalton dared to be a human being?
Craig's Bond has been influenced by Bourne. He's been influenced by Mission Impossible. The real reason the nanobot thing feels cheap to me is that it's directly lifted from Metal Gear Solid 4's evolution of the FOXDIE virus (from the first Metal Gear Solid) which causes the protagonist, who is infected and now understands he's probably immune but may infect the entire world, to contemplate suicide (and originally apparently had an ending wherein it happened before the creator's team talked him out of it, which led to something pretty beautiful). CraigBond started showing a very heavy Metal Gear Solid influence with Skyfall, and a lot of it persists through Spectre and NTTD.
What I'm getting at is that you're not wrong, I think you might just be missing a reference point or two in a way you weren't with previous incarnations.
But that's something beautiful, isn't it? That a new generation can revere something enough to respect it enough to let it evolve? To be willing to take chances?
CraigBond mourns in a different way. CraigBond thinks he's a cold blooded killer, but we know better; book Bond is upfront on multiple occasions that he's not. There are other differences early on, too. CraigBond was *always* a way of exploring other possible facets of the character that were underexpressed in the films and related to BookBond, but not necessarily 1:1.
So, I guess... yeah. They could've done it differently. But maybe they didn't think CraigBond was best served to that end. Or maybe they didn't know how.
Personally, I'm holding out for more literal adaptations of the books, actually set in the time period the books take place in, with more glances into Bond during WWII. And while I think that's a very unlikely outcome, the space is wide open for them to try it.
/rant
Thanks for giving us this topic of conversation. I've really enjoyed it.
Well said! 100% agree with this. I finally found someone else who is just as pissed off as I am that they didn't use this material from YOLT. What we got instead was utter garbage. It would have carried more weight and meaning had Bond wanted to penetrate the garden of death with Blofeld inside, rather than Safin, who we knew very little about. And seeing an amnesia ridden Bond at the end would have been just as tragic an ending.
Which leads me to believe the producers and writers really don't know what they are doing anymore with this franchise.
The end of NTTD is generic, compared to the end of the YOLT novel, which was a far better, more complex ending - and just as tragic. To criminally ignore this and go down a different route (not a better one) shows disrespect to the original source material, and pisses off the fanbase too.
Well yes, you're not supposed to enjoy it, any more than you're supposed to want Tracy to die. But it's the end of the story.
As to how will he return? Well the same way Robin Hood appeared in more films after he died in Robin & Marian, or how Batman did after he faked his death and disappeared in Dark Knight Rises. Or even the same way he came back after saying 'never again' and retiring in NSNA, or getting visibly too old to do it anymore in AVTAK.
It pisses off a few members of the fanbase, most seem to like it.
So...Daniel Craig's swan song has been as polarizing - to a large segment of the diehard fanboy base - as his very casting was in 2005.
Shocking. Positively shocking.
Personally, I prefer to see Craig's five-picture arc as a closed circuit: insulated from the rest of the franchise; a fairly elegant saga in and of itself. For those who disapprove of Craig, or who are merely pissed off at how NTTD ended, might I recommend considering that the comfy old 'status quo' Bond has merely been in stasis since the credits rolled on Die Another Day, and might just come back, wearing a new face and sporting a fresh supporting cast. Of course, even if that happens, it's highly likely that Eon will find a way to alienate or otherwise piss off a traditional percentage of the fan base. C'est la guerre.
I enjoyed NTTD quite a lot, and feel it actually elevates Craigger's lesser outings, like QoS and SP. Of course, as always, opinions and mileage may vary.
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
Again, I'm not really sure what's generic about definitively killing James Bond, which has never really been done before.
It's the latest gimmicky trend in Hollywood right now, that's why.
Who else have Hollywood killed off recently apart from Wolverine? But even that was years back now.
TDKR was going there, but stopped just short in the final scene (something NTTD should have done). The Last Jedi is another one. These 2 films seems to have influenced the direction of NTTD (TLJ in particular).
TDKR was 9 years ago. And they didn’t even kill him off as you say. So just Star Wars then, and that wasn’t even the main character, he was just shoehorned in. You could argue that Marvel did it, but that was a film filled with heroes where a couple died, not the main title character. Still Wolverine as far as that goes. Hardly a trend is it.
Luke Skywalker wasn't the main character? Are we talking about the same franchise? And yes, marvel have been doing it. There is a trend right now with franchises, but if you don't think there is, and EON were being ground-breaking in their decision to kill Bond off, and doing it mainly to please the Bond fans, then I'm happy for you. You got exactly what you wanted.
Luke wasn’t the main character. Rey was. It wasn’t Luke’s film or story. He wasn’t the lead. Should have been, but that’s another discussion we don’t want to get into.
Killing Bond off is groundbreaking, it’s never been done or even thought it would be done before now. That last sentence of yours makes it sound like you’re so mad about the idea that you can’t even acknowledge how epic that move was and that you even really hate the fact that some people enjoyed it. Which indeed seems to be a trend 🤣
Spot on mate! I'm actually really jealous of the people who liked it. I really wish I could too. I have never felt this angry about a Bond film since DAD. 😓
I admire that honesty. Thank you.
Just do what I do with the Star Wars sequel trilogy and ignore that they ever existed or that I’d ever seen them.
👍️
Looks like I'll have to, the same way I did with Brosnan's tenure. Here's hoping Bond 26 gives me more what I need in a Bond film (something like LTK or CR).
It may sit with you a bit more easily with time; it's a bit of a shock (and indeed a lot of its power comes from the fact it's this character we've known for so long who's been killed, which is arguably a cheat or a bold masterstroke depending on how you look at it); but I feel like the new things that the film had shown us, together with the ending of Spectre which was already the final closure to the MI6 part of Bond's life, it would have felt like a bit of a wimping out if he'd somehow gone back to being 007 again. He'd discovered something more profound to life (and what better for an assassin to actually create life) so to have him knocked unconscious with amnesia or something, and for the adventure to just continue with Russian spies or whatever would have been a bit underwhelming.
I remember watching Casino Royale the first time and the sinking building finale really frustrated me: in Vesper's betrayal of Bond they'd found something new and interesting and dramatic in a Bond film where there had been nothing like that before, but they got nervous and put in another routine Bond action scene where he beat people up, where instead I really wanted them to move to the actual story that was gripping people.
The story had to end either way, and for a guy like Bond it's only really going to end one way, let's face it.
But another version of Bond will appear, so we get to have our cake and eat it.
But another version of Bond will appear, so we get to have our cake and eat it.
Oh yes, indeed...
“The story had to end either way, and for a guy like Bond it's only really going to end one way, let's face it.”
Well said, particularly with respect to Craig’s Bond. (We all know Roger’s Bond is still out there doing his thing.)
🤣
Problem with ending this film with the faked death ending from Fleming's You Only Live Twice is they basically already adapted that concept in the beginning of SkyFall.
But there's plenty of other ideas from You Only Live Twice scattered through this movie, just sort of resequenced and reimagined a bit.
James Bond s not immortal. He's gotta die some day. Dont you think that inevitable event could make for a good story?
By the way, did anybody else notice this is CraigBond's first film to end with a life-raft?
Just that he wasn't on it...
Yes indeed to the Skyfall thing. And that same story included his return too, but done in a less naff way than having him an amnesiac and trying to kill M, which just is a bit silly. The writers were very open about his death in Skyfall being an adaptation of the YOLT death angle.
I tried to laugh at your comment about the life raft too :D But this forum software is annoyingly inflexible!
I think Bond will only die when his films stop making money. Any death before then will just be a going-away present for the actor who happened to be playing him. And no matter how many deaths there are, Bond cheerfully proposing to light a cigarette under the Moonraker will always feel like the right way for him to go. But he never did, and though Fleming threatened to bump off Bond several times, he ended what he repeatedly called his last Bond novel, TMWTGG, with a lovely passage better than any death scene.
I agree with you that Skyfall had already used up the fake-out death from YOLT. And since Bond had already ridden into the sunset in Spectre, the filmmakers thought needed a bigger ending for Craig's second send-off. I don't feel it fully worked, in part because it felt so overdetermined, but I can see how the filmmakers arrived at that solution.