Comments and Questions on Dr. No
Dovy
Posts: 206MI6 Agent
Hi, everybody. The following are my comments and questions about Dr. No, which I rewatched to keep track of comments. In general, the movie is very easy to follow and I think it is very coherent, with alot of bright daytime scenes making it easier to watch than the many dark scenes in Craig's films. It was a pleasure to see things in a type of perspective, without endless video-game type violence.
1. At the end of the film there were so many people trying to escape, including the Chinese nurses who served Honey and Bond. Presumably some of these people survived with enough information to help SPECTRE continue its work.
2. In the first office briefing, M seems to be relatively new in his role because he mentioned the reduction in deaths since his arrival. It sounded like Bond had already been working for MI6 under M's predecessor.
3. Arriving in Jamaica, how did Bond know to tell the driver to turn the car at the first right. Why had nothing ever been discovered about Pleydell -Smith's secretary Miss Taro at the embassy as a leak and spy for Dr. No and who is eventually arrested? Presumably she would have had alot to reveal about SPECTRE to the intelligence agencies. And yet it doesn't seem that way in subsequent films.
4. It's nice to get a look at Bond's home which he apparently used very rarely.
5. Why did the assassins have to take away the bodies of Strangways and his secretary?
6. Why would Dr. No bother to have Bond killed by a tarantula planted by the professor instead of being killed by some assassin, and how was the tarantula hidden so long until the middle of the night? How did the producers make it so realistic?
8. How was it that the Americans had no way of discovering anything whatsoever about Crab Key Island for what seems like a long time prior to Bond being sent to Jamaica?
9. It's interesting that Dr. No mentions Spectre without referencing Blofeld as the head of Spectre. In a way it creates a perspective for all the work of the other villains even with no mention of Spectre, including the next film and even Auric Goldfinger.
10. The "dragon" tank seems like an unnecessary and silly addition in the story.
11. How was it that Honey would mention in the river to Bond that mosquitos like the salt on one's skin, as if Bond didn't know anything about mosquitos, or the fact that the female mosquitos suck blood. I noticed that Honey refers to Bond as a "detective" and Dr. No even refers to him as a policeman. No correction was made assuming that whoever came to sabotage Dr. No was not a simple detective or police operative (which may have been appropriate in a scenario without any fancy gadgets). The air passageway was flooded while Bond was crawling through it, but somehow not a drop of water founds its way out into the exposed building rooms themselves.
Comments
Hi again, Dovy- this time I'll tackle more than one of your questions.
3) Miss Taro had nothing to reveal about SPECTRE. She had been hired by Professor Dent and told very little. Similarly with Annabel Chung (the freelance photographer).
5) The idea as per Fleming was to give the impression (or at least the possibility) that Strangways and Trueblood had run off together. The film rather spoils that with the blood found.
6) Similarly, the idea was that Bond was to be found dead from a poisonous bite as opposed to having been murdered. The tarantula (a centipede in the novel) was smuggled in by a very quiet obese man dressed as a waiter.... Ignore that, I'm just having fun. And a real spider was used, though Bob Simmons (regular stuntman) stood in - when you can see Sir Sean's face there's a sheet of glass between him and the arachnid.
10) The "dragon" has a little more to do in the book. A subplot concerning cranes (the birds, not the machines) has been removed for the film.
Edit - oh, and 11) Yes, the water through the pipe is a known plot hole which makes little or no sense.
Hi Dovy, I will try to comment on one of your statements. I have recently watched Dr No in cinema, which was a great experience. What a fantastic start to the franchise. I was surprised to see how incredibly colorful the movie is on the big screen.
2) Although it isn't specified, it is a fair assumption. One thing I really like about Dr No is that the movie drops you smack dash in the middle of this world. James Bond is a seasoned agent, the staff of MI6 is already fully established. It looks like "just another day in the life of James Bond", no origin story, not an elaborate set-up of the characters. M might be relatively new, but it is certainly not his first day on the job.
Good point. But we do get a few clues from his briefing meeting with M.
Anyway, I guess we should wonder if it's time for the canon to produce at least one film that delves into the life of Bond before he became 007, sort of a prequel biography as soon as he left university or something.
I also intrigued by the fact that Bond gets referred to as a detective and as a policeman. Dr. No at least knew he was an MI6 operative, not a policeman.....
I take it as a putdown by Dr No. Using "just a stupid policeman" as a derogatory term. Taking away his status as a "special" MI6 agent and turning him into "just another" policeman as an insult.