Oberhauser is the name of Bond's ski instructor in Fleming's short Octopussy, and making him the man who raised Bond after the death of his parents is not something irrelevant. If the "family" link between Bond and the villain doesn't disturb me, the fact the guy has been watching Bond all along and only aims to make his life a real mess because of some childhood resentment is very disappointing. Also, using the middle name "Stavro" was not a very smart move considering Oberhauser is Austrian and never mentions greek roots. When fan service is poorly used, the result follows. It's like if they didn't assume this new Spectre iteration, which was not necessarily supposed to feature Blofeld.
I don't quite get these objections to be honest- what's the issue with slightly changing Bond's Oberhauser backstory? And I don't see why he has to mention Greek roots in order to have them. This version's mother may have been half Polish half Greek, as Blofeld himself was in the books. I'm not sure movie Bond has ever mentioned being half-Swiss and yet Skyfall appears to confirm that he has that in common with the book version.
I don't have any issue with that. I precisely explained it makes sense to create a "family" link between Bond and Oberhauser considering they have a special relationship in Fleming's short story. The thing I don't get is why they considered a character named Blofeld should be in the movie. Because they had the rights back in their hands after McClory passed away ? There are different versions of SPECTRE, and having the chief being another person than Blofeld himself doesn't disturb me at all. The revival Gardner dealt with in some novels like Role of Honour and Nobody Lives Forever with Tamil Rahani as number 1 proved it. Furthermore, in the October 2014 script version by Logan and revised by Purvis & Wade, the main character is named Franz Oberhauser aka Heinrich Stockmann. So why did they change it if they didn't initially intend to have a character named "Blofeld" ?
I guess because if you're bringing back SPECTRE why wouldn't you use Blofeld. You mention Gardner but even he had a Blofeld in there, despite Blofeld being dead.
It would have been interesting to see a version where the villain is revealed just to be Oberhauser Jr from Bond's youth and not Blofeld. It would remove the slightly meta issue of the revelation that Bond and his famous arch nemesis Blofeld knew each other as kids, which does kick us out of the movie rather, but would it still have been a problem even if we hadn't heard of the baddie previously? I'm sure less so, but it's still a bit contrived that Bond and the baddie of this film played with the same toys. Would we forgive it? I wasn't keen on it when one of the Benson novels had Bond's school bully as one of the baddies.
I don't think many Bond fans have complained about the recurring use of Spectre in the first Bond films, or how that set up Bond and Blofeld's eventual confrontation (though they might have complained about its execution). It was the attempt to retroactively make SPECTRE and Blofeld the forces behind Craig-Bond's prior adventures that made fans complain.
I believe Blofeld and SPECTRE's primary value is their capacity for repeated use. So setting and using them up in a single film raises the question why bother? Creating a one-and-done villain would have worked just as well for the film. If the filmmakers wanted to use a recurring enemy organization, they already had Quantum. If they wanted to use a mastermind/behind-the-scenes spymaster, they already had Mr. White. If they wanted a villain with personal ties to Bond, they could have used Oberhauser. So there was little reason to use Blofeld and SPECTRE, aside from nostalgia and the excitement about recovering the rights to them, and grafting them onto the Craig films proved unsurprisingly awkward.
I don’t recall many people saying that it would definitely be a terrible idea when the title of Spectre was announced, indeed I remember excitement at the idea of Blofeld potentially making a return- I think there’s a lot of hindsight going on.
You are right, fans don’t complain about those initial films being interlinked, but still there are always cries for the upcoming films to be standalone and have no arc- I don’t understand it either. But the loudest voices in Bond fandom always seem to regard the early films as perfect and the latest films as terrible, but that doesn’t really reflect polls of the majority.
It was also just silly that Dom Greene was working for Spectre/Blofeld but none of the offscreen baddies that Bond met during the 6 years between the events of QOS and Skyfall were
As I have previously posted, I believe that Alberts family plan to retire from the bond business and sell their shares, and that's why they rushed to use Blofeld and spectre, (and kill Bond) for compression, they got the rights to Casino Royale in 1997 but didn't rush to use it in 99 or 02.
Collateral damage of retcon. Skyfall is written as a standalone and I never heard anyone anticipating Silva would actually become a member of Spectre. I think it doesn't work, otherwise what about the NATO list for instance ? Silva could have sent it to Oberhauser, and it would have been interesting to see MI6 discovering this issue is not solved because of new undercover agents killings, which could have led Bond to Oberhauser through a more subtle way than this video clip M allegedly recorded during the Skyfall events. Sciarra is someone important indeed and we can wonder why she didn't push the investigatation forward, even while Bond is abroad. If, at this point, she suspects the existence of an organization involving Sciarra to be behind all this, she can tell some people she deeply has faith in about it. It would have been a relevant move from the head of MI6.
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,843MI6 Agent
I had to look that up myself as I didn't think it was the right date. I thought they got the rights back in 2000 and I remember reading that in the Kiss Kiss Bang Bang book by Marcus Hearn but apparently not. Anyway, it was only a year out so not too bad! 🙂
"The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
there was excitement about the title SPECTRE and about Waltz being cast, apparently as Blofeld (I dont think that was confirmed til we saw the film). there was excitement about Waltz due to his performance in two Tarantino films, where his softspoken manner was scary. We could only imagine great things done with Waltz as a Bond villain, and knowing the film would be called SPECTRE, could imagine him specifically as a great Blofeld and could imagine a great film to go with his imagined perfromance as Blofeld. We can still all try to imagine a great film that could have been made called SPECTRE, with Waltz as Blofeld.
The hindsight began as soon as we saw the actual film that got released
After Skyfall many of us thought EON was on a roll, so when the return of Spectre was rumored fans were optimistic. The filmmakers would do it justice through the Skyfall approach of re-thinking old concepts! I remember having confidence in EON but wondering how introducing Spectre into what could be Craig's last film would work. Perhaps the organization was being set-up as a long-term nemesis, for the benefit of not just Craig but the next Bond actor? I certainly wasn't expecting Bond to find out about Spectre and then meet and defeat Blofeld all in one film. When Waltz was announced as Blofeld I was not enthusiastic, since it seemed like an uncreative choice. And then the script leaks came, which suggested a mess was in the making, and then the film itself. The goodwill and optimism created by Skyfall led many fans to think EON would somehow strike gold again and avoid the potential hazards of reintroducing SPECTRE and Blofeld so late in Craig's run. In hindsight, that optimism was misplaced, but in 2012 who could have anticipated Spectre's shoddy attempt at retroactive continuity or Blofeld turning out to be Bond's resentful childhood pseudo-stepbrother?
Watched the excellent review of Spectre by Calvin Dyson on YouTube this evening.
One point came up in the Comments section - the scene where Blofeld says 'I came to your house one time when you were a girl' and she replies 'I don't remember that' - is meant to reference the opening scene of Ingloroius B.... where he plays Hans Lander and Lia Seydoux played one of the farmer's young girls, it's an in-joke or reference.
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Thunderbird 2East of Cardiff, Wales.Posts: 2,816MI6 Agent
edited March 20
To me rhis is where SP goes wrong, after SF started to undo the damage.
By that, I mean SF did its own thing, making it a story about M-Mansfield and her fall from grace, with an original 'insider' baddie. It didn't try to latch into CR-06 or QoS, it just told its own story, and brought M-Penny and Q2 into the format and was fair by them too.
SP was a heavy handed retread reminder of the first two films and had Blofeld and Spectre wedged in to establish a connection to Fleming and the old film era. The fact its all backdrop exposition and grandstanding is bad news, and it does not really clarify how Quantum morphed into Spectre, how Blofeld took such dominant control and in such a short time too.
Madeline would have been a facinating character in her own right, but as White's daughter and later in NTTD the mother of Bond's daughter, she is a character used to bridge two agendas and little beyond that. Lea Seydou is a good actress, but she is given scant material ro work with.
Its a sad fact Blofeld could have been anyone in Quantum and Quantum itself could have remained a viable threat, which could have helped to make both SP and NTTD far better than they actually were.
Skyfall was made to put an underline under what had gone before, its closing scenes suggest the promise of getting back to business as normal... But due to a lack of ideas, a lack of effort, SP and NTTD - esp the latter, are scripts that were too obsessed in raking around in backstory and side details to bother doing anything original or inspirational. Cwetainly nothing that has the 'wow-we' factor of the earlier Bond films
SP pushed the envelope thin, to a point which could have been a conclusion, if an open ended onem Instead, NTTD pushed that thin exhaustion to a blatent point of no return, amd the film suffers for it.
I don't envy the next scriptwriter who has to do something new, fresh and original. Which they must, if Bond is to recapture the success of CR-06 as well as the legacy of the whole series overall.
This is Thunderbird 2, how can I be of assistance?
Comments
Oberhauser is the name of Bond's ski instructor in Fleming's short Octopussy, and making him the man who raised Bond after the death of his parents is not something irrelevant. If the "family" link between Bond and the villain doesn't disturb me, the fact the guy has been watching Bond all along and only aims to make his life a real mess because of some childhood resentment is very disappointing. Also, using the middle name "Stavro" was not a very smart move considering Oberhauser is Austrian and never mentions greek roots. When fan service is poorly used, the result follows. It's like if they didn't assume this new Spectre iteration, which was not necessarily supposed to feature Blofeld.
I don't quite get these objections to be honest- what's the issue with slightly changing Bond's Oberhauser backstory? And I don't see why he has to mention Greek roots in order to have them. This version's mother may have been half Polish half Greek, as Blofeld himself was in the books. I'm not sure movie Bond has ever mentioned being half-Swiss and yet Skyfall appears to confirm that he has that in common with the book version.
I don't have any issue with that. I precisely explained it makes sense to create a "family" link between Bond and Oberhauser considering they have a special relationship in Fleming's short story. The thing I don't get is why they considered a character named Blofeld should be in the movie. Because they had the rights back in their hands after McClory passed away ? There are different versions of SPECTRE, and having the chief being another person than Blofeld himself doesn't disturb me at all. The revival Gardner dealt with in some novels like Role of Honour and Nobody Lives Forever with Tamil Rahani as number 1 proved it. Furthermore, in the October 2014 script version by Logan and revised by Purvis & Wade, the main character is named Franz Oberhauser aka Heinrich Stockmann. So why did they change it if they didn't initially intend to have a character named "Blofeld" ?
I guess because if you're bringing back SPECTRE why wouldn't you use Blofeld. You mention Gardner but even he had a Blofeld in there, despite Blofeld being dead.
It would have been interesting to see a version where the villain is revealed just to be Oberhauser Jr from Bond's youth and not Blofeld. It would remove the slightly meta issue of the revelation that Bond and his famous arch nemesis Blofeld knew each other as kids, which does kick us out of the movie rather, but would it still have been a problem even if we hadn't heard of the baddie previously? I'm sure less so, but it's still a bit contrived that Bond and the baddie of this film played with the same toys. Would we forgive it? I wasn't keen on it when one of the Benson novels had Bond's school bully as one of the baddies.
I don't think many Bond fans have complained about the recurring use of Spectre in the first Bond films, or how that set up Bond and Blofeld's eventual confrontation (though they might have complained about its execution). It was the attempt to retroactively make SPECTRE and Blofeld the forces behind Craig-Bond's prior adventures that made fans complain.
I believe Blofeld and SPECTRE's primary value is their capacity for repeated use. So setting and using them up in a single film raises the question why bother? Creating a one-and-done villain would have worked just as well for the film. If the filmmakers wanted to use a recurring enemy organization, they already had Quantum. If they wanted to use a mastermind/behind-the-scenes spymaster, they already had Mr. White. If they wanted a villain with personal ties to Bond, they could have used Oberhauser. So there was little reason to use Blofeld and SPECTRE, aside from nostalgia and the excitement about recovering the rights to them, and grafting them onto the Craig films proved unsurprisingly awkward.
I don’t recall many people saying that it would definitely be a terrible idea when the title of Spectre was announced, indeed I remember excitement at the idea of Blofeld potentially making a return- I think there’s a lot of hindsight going on.
You are right, fans don’t complain about those initial films being interlinked, but still there are always cries for the upcoming films to be standalone and have no arc- I don’t understand it either. But the loudest voices in Bond fandom always seem to regard the early films as perfect and the latest films as terrible, but that doesn’t really reflect polls of the majority.
It was also just silly that Dom Greene was working for Spectre/Blofeld but none of the offscreen baddies that Bond met during the 6 years between the events of QOS and Skyfall were
As I have previously posted, I believe that Alberts family plan to retire from the bond business and sell their shares, and that's why they rushed to use Blofeld and spectre, (and kill Bond) for compression, they got the rights to Casino Royale in 1997 but didn't rush to use it in 99 or 02.
They got the rights in 99, not 97.
Collateral damage of retcon. Skyfall is written as a standalone and I never heard anyone anticipating Silva would actually become a member of Spectre. I think it doesn't work, otherwise what about the NATO list for instance ? Silva could have sent it to Oberhauser, and it would have been interesting to see MI6 discovering this issue is not solved because of new undercover agents killings, which could have led Bond to Oberhauser through a more subtle way than this video clip M allegedly recorded during the Skyfall events. Sciarra is someone important indeed and we can wonder why she didn't push the investigatation forward, even while Bond is abroad. If, at this point, she suspects the existence of an organization involving Sciarra to be behind all this, she can tell some people she deeply has faith in about it. It would have been a relevant move from the head of MI6.
I had to look that up myself as I didn't think it was the right date. I thought they got the rights back in 2000 and I remember reading that in the Kiss Kiss Bang Bang book by Marcus Hearn but apparently not. Anyway, it was only a year out so not too bad! 🙂
My bad, 1999 is the right answer according to a quick Google.Still, I wonder was there much temptation to use it for the 40th anniversary in 02
there was excitement about the title SPECTRE and about Waltz being cast, apparently as Blofeld (I dont think that was confirmed til we saw the film). there was excitement about Waltz due to his performance in two Tarantino films, where his softspoken manner was scary. We could only imagine great things done with Waltz as a Bond villain, and knowing the film would be called SPECTRE, could imagine him specifically as a great Blofeld and could imagine a great film to go with his imagined perfromance as Blofeld. We can still all try to imagine a great film that could have been made called SPECTRE, with Waltz as Blofeld.
The hindsight began as soon as we saw the actual film that got released
After Skyfall many of us thought EON was on a roll, so when the return of Spectre was rumored fans were optimistic. The filmmakers would do it justice through the Skyfall approach of re-thinking old concepts! I remember having confidence in EON but wondering how introducing Spectre into what could be Craig's last film would work. Perhaps the organization was being set-up as a long-term nemesis, for the benefit of not just Craig but the next Bond actor? I certainly wasn't expecting Bond to find out about Spectre and then meet and defeat Blofeld all in one film. When Waltz was announced as Blofeld I was not enthusiastic, since it seemed like an uncreative choice. And then the script leaks came, which suggested a mess was in the making, and then the film itself. The goodwill and optimism created by Skyfall led many fans to think EON would somehow strike gold again and avoid the potential hazards of reintroducing SPECTRE and Blofeld so late in Craig's run. In hindsight, that optimism was misplaced, but in 2012 who could have anticipated Spectre's shoddy attempt at retroactive continuity or Blofeld turning out to be Bond's resentful childhood pseudo-stepbrother?
Watched the excellent review of Spectre by Calvin Dyson on YouTube this evening.
One point came up in the Comments section - the scene where Blofeld says 'I came to your house one time when you were a girl' and she replies 'I don't remember that' - is meant to reference the opening scene of Ingloroius B.... where he plays Hans Lander and Lia Seydoux played one of the farmer's young girls, it's an in-joke or reference.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
To me rhis is where SP goes wrong, after SF started to undo the damage.
By that, I mean SF did its own thing, making it a story about M-Mansfield and her fall from grace, with an original 'insider' baddie. It didn't try to latch into CR-06 or QoS, it just told its own story, and brought M-Penny and Q2 into the format and was fair by them too.
SP was a heavy handed retread reminder of the first two films and had Blofeld and Spectre wedged in to establish a connection to Fleming and the old film era. The fact its all backdrop exposition and grandstanding is bad news, and it does not really clarify how Quantum morphed into Spectre, how Blofeld took such dominant control and in such a short time too.
Madeline would have been a facinating character in her own right, but as White's daughter and later in NTTD the mother of Bond's daughter, she is a character used to bridge two agendas and little beyond that. Lea Seydou is a good actress, but she is given scant material ro work with.
Its a sad fact Blofeld could have been anyone in Quantum and Quantum itself could have remained a viable threat, which could have helped to make both SP and NTTD far better than they actually were.
Skyfall was made to put an underline under what had gone before, its closing scenes suggest the promise of getting back to business as normal... But due to a lack of ideas, a lack of effort, SP and NTTD - esp the latter, are scripts that were too obsessed in raking around in backstory and side details to bother doing anything original or inspirational. Cwetainly nothing that has the 'wow-we' factor of the earlier Bond films
SP pushed the envelope thin, to a point which could have been a conclusion, if an open ended onem Instead, NTTD pushed that thin exhaustion to a blatent point of no return, amd the film suffers for it.
I don't envy the next scriptwriter who has to do something new, fresh and original. Which they must, if Bond is to recapture the success of CR-06 as well as the legacy of the whole series overall.