Path taken by Bond in Safin's lair
SeanIsTheOnlyOne
Posts: 541MI6 Agent
Did anayone notice that after opening the silo doors for the first time, Bond takes a different path than the one he took to get access to the control room after Nomi left the island with Madeleine and Mathilde (with the staircase where he gets rid of Primo and Safin's goons) ?
Despite Q's help, isn't it risky from Bond to take another path assuming there could be other goons and Safin is armed and hiding somewhere with a better knowledge of the area ? Does anyone know why Bond does that ? Is the second path supposed to be a shortcut to the glider ?
Thanks.
Comments
I did not notice and do not remember. But I did notice the last half hour of the film was spent exploring the villain's headquarters, something we really haven't seen in decades (since Moonraker?) and something I've been begging for them to do in one of these new films. The fact you've spotted he followed a different route makes it even better, in that sense, as we explore more. But in terms of in-universe logic, that seems like a big mistake for CraigBond. No wonder...
...he didn't make it out of the villain's headquarters alive!
SPOILERS
Whilst NTTD makes more of a traditional idea of the villain's lair than other Craig Bond films, Bond's exploration of the lair feels different to that in classic Bond movies of the 60s and 70s in the sense that, now, he has the MI6 team, Q and M, on comms for him during critical phases of his mission on the island. In the past, Bond would be scoping the lair either on his own or together - and only 'in person' - with a female companion or allied militia who are equally in physical danger and awestruck by what they're discovering.
The idea of MI6 using state-of-the-art comms to provide, from a safe distance, crucial real-time direction and commentary during missions has been a feature of the movies, more or less, since CR06, although it wasn't really till SF that this figured in a dramatically significant way. This new element of the genre is meant to reflect an idea about the reality of conducting espionage in the twenty first century. It also evokes video game experience, rather like the tutorial mode in games where players are given mission objectives and instructions. When Bond takes a new route, this is perhaps analogous with a player going 'off script' to venture into other areas of the game's environment. But unless used as cleverly as in the PTS of SF, the genre's new element of direct instruction by MI6, mid-action, can actually have a dulling effect and even make it feel as if Bond needs to be less dependent on his own resources and wit during critical phases of a mission. Recognising this problem, the writers of NTTD temporarily put Bond and Nomi in a comms 'blind spot' inside Safin's facility. They also work in a joke about Bond finding his way around the rusty controls of a WW2 missile silo faster than Q can give him expert instructions.
At the end of the PTS of SF we have a brilliant moment with M and Tanner, at MI6 HQ in London, looking devastated by the outcome of a mission and M's part, as the character calling the shots, in Bond's apparent fate. In NTTD there's an attempt to re-live that effect with a focus on Q, on comms, dealing with his feelings about the outcome for Bond on Safin's island. Ben Wilshaw has his opportunity as an actor to match Dame Judi's SF PTS moment of grief. But I'd argue that, despite the shock ending, this doesn't hit home with quite the impact it had in SF (partly because of the idea that what happens in NTTD is a hero's choice rather than the result of a judgement call by M - but mainly because SF did it first).
To my mind there's nothing quite as exciting as Bond, Tanaka, Kissy and the ninjas making short work, in YOLT, of Blofeld's volcano lair without thought of real-time comms (any more sophisticated than 'watching it all on TV'!): a bikini-clad Kissy has had to perform a dangerous swim to get Bond's message to Tanaka while M has to wait aboard his sub for (what would be) a de-brief after the event. Even Holly Goodhead in MR, who certainly knows her way around a space station, has to join Bond in improvising a way of alerting Earth's authorities to the presence of Drax's lair-in-space without the benefit of direct comms (either with those authorities or with Colonel Scott). Bond and Holly have to disable the space station's radar jamming system to expose Drax's Noah's Ark and attract the cavalry. Again, for me that challenge makes it more thrilling...