I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and it is a great Bond flick.
However, I think this movie has bad timing with its release. I just don't think the world is necessarily ready for the emotional ending and Bond dying. The world has collectively experienced 18+ months of suffering and leaving a movie theater (for me my first time going to a theater since the pandemic) sad isn't very fun. Its exponentially more sad if you're a life long Bond fan.
Had we not just gone through a world pandemic with all this death around us, I think the movie would have been better received and accepted.
But for me, the movie checked everything off for a Craig Bond film so I did enjoy it and will watch again in the theater.
Hey Nap! I’m glad you enjoyed my review (and I realize “enjoyed” doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with it). You’re right about the double blow. Losing Bond AND Leiter in the same movie? Sheesh! Maybe I’m still getting over the shock and disappointment and perhaps I’ll enjoy NTTD more on subsequent viewings. At least I hope so!
Thanks for answering John and I don't know what difference it makes as all fathers are different.
I have a 3 year old boy, with the same blue eyes as mine, so I think it did tug on my heartstrings.
I would comment though that Bond is not a dad in the true sense of the word: he has a daughter yes, but he knows nothing of it until the moment he sees her in Swann's childhood home. He doesn't want kids and they don't fit into his world, lifestyle, job or mindset. However, that doesn't change the fact that Mathilde is there and she's just a little girl who is innocent, she has not asked to be born, but she deserves a good upbringing despite her origins, or maybe more apt, because of her origins.
Bond doesn't bond with the girl (pun intended) there's no time to do that. He has no emotional connection to her directly, only to her mother who he ultimately protects with his life so that she can live her life and bring up her little girl.
That's how I read it - I don't think the writers or producers have tried to suggest there's an emotional connection between Bond and Mathilde, but it is a little poignant nevertheless, especially when you consider Bond's origins as being the orphaned innocent child when his parents die in the Alps. Mathilde still has her mother, so perhaps things will be different?
Will we have a Mathilde story in 20 years time? I think Tanatino is either in pre-production or actually shooting just such a film now, based on the avenging daughter of Vernita Green - he's waited to use the same actor, who's now all grown up.
What’s up Charmed? Nice to be back to take part in the discussion about our favorite superspy. I have been reading some of the other reviews and it’s clear to me that my generally negative opinion of the movie isn’t shared by many. That’s fine and as always I appreciate being exposed to other points of view. My expectations for NTTD were very high and I was really hoping they would knock it out of the park for Craig’s final outing. To me the final results fell far short of that, but perhaps I was expecting too much. I’m sure I’ll have additional thoughts as time passes, and I hope to be able to share them with you folks. I must say, though, that’s it’s great to have a new Bond movie to discuss after all this time. Who knows when we’ll get another one!
Yes. Couldn't agree more. All interesting points guys. It's good to read others' opinion.
I can understand Bond accepting his need to sacrifice himself. He puts his life on the line in every film for Queen and Country and the greater good, it's just on this occasion he runs out of luck (I'll always regard DC's Bond as Unlucky Alf though), and his sacrifice is even more personal. You could even throw a couple of mottos into the mix; "Orbis non sufficit" - The world would not be enough for him, living in it, without his family. "There's no point in living if you can't feel alive" - He certainly wouldn't feel alive, not being able to be with him family. However, he did let Q (Desmond Llewelyn) down big style; "Always have an escape plan". C'mon James, even Baldrick had a ****** plan...!!
I don't think I'll ever agree or accept that killing Bond off and so vividly on screen was the right thing to do. Perhaps only if this was the last official Bond film ever, as we know it. (Perhaps it is?)
I completely see where you're coming from and it's an angle on that aspect of the story I'll need to turn around in my head a little more. Maybe I could frame my perspective on the daughter a little differently.
This movie brings back or introduces several elements that represent major changes to the Bond formula. Bond truly loving someone and then losing that person through tragedy/betrayal (that's happened 2 times before, or 3 if you count Electra, or 4 if you count M). An older Bond accepting his age and retiring (actually retiring, not just temporarily leaving the service to go on a rogue mission). Bond showing complete disrespect towards M. The death of Felix. And, of course, Bond's own death. Plus we get all the new characters and have to follow along with what's happening with the gang at MI6. That's already a LOT to pack into one movie!
Bond having a child is, to me, a formula change of equal importance to him retiring to marry the woman he loves or even dying. And in my opinon, it just wasn't treated like that. Again imho, the daughter was just a plot device, shoehorned in in a misguided effort to add more emotional weight to an already overloaded story.
On another note, I clearly remember when my son was 3! Good times and you have some amazing years ahead!
A bit off topic, but all the talk of Bond having a daughter in the film, reminded me of him having a son in "James Bond: The Authorised Biography" by John Pearson. The biography says that had a child with the female character in You Only Love Twice. The child was 8 when Bond met the woman again, and he took the child to his family home in Scotland for a holiday.
I heard somewhere that this biography has been accepted as part of the Bond canon. It would be good if some of the missions he had in it were included or built-on for future films.
"He puts his life on the line in every film for Queen and Country and the greater good, it's just on this occasion he runs out of luck". Yes, this is something that has put a downer on me a bit, and I've yet to see the film. The idea that Bond runs out of luck, fatally, is a major blow to my understanding of the character and the myth.
As an aside, the Craig films portray Bond's 007 career as very short and with only one SPECTRE-based mission, unlike the 1960s films where SPECTRE was present throughout. For me SPECTRE and Bond are inseparable.
Thanks for your reply and for your confirmation that the amazing years are ahead for my boy - love him to bits and he's packed so much into the last 3 years, which have gone by so quickly.
I am reminded of OHMSS, not just because of the music cues and so on, but because NTTD poses the same question as OHMSS: What might have been?
Had Tracey lived, what would have happened to the couple? A child surely but a peaceful and secure future for all? Doubtful. Had Bond lived at the end of NTTD, could he have been a father to Mathilde? I somehow don't see Craig's Bond as being able to do it you know. He was so awkward when peeling an apple for her that I don't think it was in his nature.
As I've posted elsewhere, Bond is not a superhero. He's not bulletproof nor missile proof (but he does survive a few bombs in NTTD I note) and he will die, as we all will. He is a man, flawed, fragile and finite. We might not want to see our hero die, but he has to at some point and it makes perfect sense to me that he'd do it to protect not only his love and daughter, but to ensure that the Heracles can't kill massive swathes of the planet's populace. The fact that it'd be a quick death is just a bonus - I'd take that over a lot of other things.
I've not seen the film yet, so don't know if the death scene gives the screenwriters a way to ressurect him. If there is no actual shot of his body being blown to bits, and it is only inferred or assumed that he died... no body found etc. Then maybe he is not dead. But again, I've not seen the film.
There’s no wiggle room I’m afraid. When watched in slow motion, he’s around 10m from the nearest of 2 missile strikes and you see the trail of one within a yard or two behind him, so I think smithereens are involved.
Not sure I care to go see this film at the theater anymore....after reading everything here the only scene that still compels me to go watch it is the Blofeld scene...wonder if that one scene is worth the 12 bucks🤔
The finale of the film is really not that different to what Bond aims to do in the novel of Moonraker, an act of self-sacrifice. That was the first treatment Fleming wrote for a movie that fell through, so he used it as Moonraker. It's a bit different to other books, because the villain is a famous public figure, which means it can't be happening in the real world. A bit like Tomorrow Never Dies and Carver the media magnate. So the reviewer who suggested they could go back to Fleming's novels to find a way to end him, well they weren't far off.
"(I will say the bit where Bond and his family are fleeing the bad guys in an SUV approaches satire of a family outing, but in this dreary rendition, even that seems wishful thinking.)"
It jarred me more when Bond is on full Commando gear walking around Safin's lair, looking great in full kick-ass Bond mode, but followed by his partner and child. In the past we may have had a Bond girl wearing what was earlier a nice dress/outfit, now grubby and torn, in tow. We now have Bond followed by his partner in normal civvies, carrying their daughter. It made me think of a Bond parody in a Saturday Night Live sketch; "Hey imagine everybody if Bond was married with kids..!") It felt a bit like a sequel to a goofy spy film, where this time his wife and child are onboard.
I know Bond has to move with the times and evolve and be more reflective of modern day society. I have no issue with that. I also know some of my views when it comes to Bond are a bit old fashioned. However, I think it lacks imagination and creativity to just give Bond a daughter, have her central to the story and kill him off in an over sentimental hurrah. I think they could have created a more, thought provoking, clever ending. Just use YOLT Fleming! Madeleine being pregnant, Bond unaware he's going to be a father, have the ending left open and the audience thinking did he survive or not?
That's a good comparison -- it's even filmed in a similar stark way -- though I think it may improve with some of us who are disappointed right now. In time, we'll get another Bond, and it'll be easier to view this in concert with all the films. Inevitably, there'll be comparisons to how OHMSS was received in mixed ways initially but later determined to be classic.
Thanks, @chrisno1! I really wanted to like this one more -- the trailers certainly made it look like a different film, one closer to a traditional Bond. Little did I realize those were all the best bits.
That was me about the TV stuff. I think you're right, though I've watched any number of things, from Bond to truly epic cinema like The Bridge on the River Kwai or The Guns of Navarone, all on a big flatscreen, a "phablet" phone, and on my computer monitor while working, and the wide and long shots still look terrific. Part of it is because back then, the effort was to frame things a particular way and to make sure everything was in focus and had depth of field. The color palette complimented everything else so nothing just faded. In the past few decades, though, much of that has gone out the window, with a more documentary approach and an artsy blurring of backgrounds and such. That's what NTTD relied heavily on, along with Fukunaga's brooding quality to the pacing. Or so I felt.
Here's the thing: My biggest problem with NTTD is not that they killed Bond. I told people back in 2012 that's how they were going to wrap this up, after seeing The Dark Knight Rises and knowing how closely CR and Skyfall mirrored Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. I was actually surprised they didn't kill him in Spectre.
My biggest problem is that NTTD doesn't earn much of the emotions it wants to evoke. It really is more like a graphic novel in that bits and pieces are there to intellectually communicate the ideas, but the rest is left up to the audience to bring to the table. This is different than, say, OHMSS, where we fall in love with Tracy as much as Bond as we watch her spitfire resolve, cool under fire, rescue of Bond, vulnerability during his proposal, and ultimate demise in such a cruel and ironic way. I'd say much the same for Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale. That's why in both films, the weakest elements to the romance are the montage scenes that merely summarize weeks or months. These movies actually built up the narrative course to their fateful conclusion, so I felt Bond's losses at their ends.
Here, there is little of any kind of romance or relationship onscreen. Seydoux and Craig never really have any chemistry, they're never really ever shown happy, and the film never really has romance (nor did the last one really -- I though the relationship between Swann and Bond had no more lasting feeling than a typical dalliance in the earlier Bond films, where you know he'll be on to the next conquest in a few weeks). We're shown some obligatory kissing scenes, but the rest is just image. I'm sure if you took screen caps here and there and pasted them into a file, you'd very much get a graphic novel with a look here and there to communicate what a film should do in whole scenes.
So, the daughter felt like a prop or token. Like taking a puppy to the park, we get seen in a whole new light by people, even if we're exactly the same as we were before. Mathilde felt more like a manipulation. The easiest way to test if NTTD earned credibility in this department is if we have to say, "You need to be a parent to fully appreciate what's going on." No, we shouldn't. If a film earns its emotional props, there's no requirement for the audience to have special experiences to feel them. The film itself constructs all that. Otherwise, you'd have to have lost someone in a drive by shooting to feel Bond's loss at the end of OHMSS or had a lover drown herself to feel the same in CR.
That’s a really good summary Peter Hunt got that connection and you believed it all. And despite the ending you feel ok and that Bond will revenge Tracy
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,747Chief of Staff
If that's directed at me, thanks! You know, it's funny that Hunt took a very modern approach to OHMSS, combining elements of traditional filmmaking with the more artsy (and low budget) approach of the New Wave directors that would become standard a few years later.
I've always felt that part of the reason Lazenby was so poorly received is because Hunt's camerawork didn't love on him as much as Young's, Hamilton's, and Gilbert's did on Connery. There are some moments -- the bits at headquarters, for example, and during the proposal scene. But Hunt often filmed him from oblique or unflattering angles or in partial frame.
At one point, I thought it was because Hunt was trying to disguise Lazenby's novice acting skills, but if you watch closely, Lazenby's physical presence is just as good as Connery's His ability to emote with his face and body language is on par. Even Lazenby's vocal delivery is good, if arguably not quite as naturally smooth as his predecessor's, perhaps because it sounded looped so often. If I didn't know better, I'd think Hunt just didn't like Lazenby and was trying to highlight him less or show him less memorable ways.
But he did exactly the opposite with Diana Rigg. Whenever she was shown, it was very much with the traditional gaze. And Hunt did seem to understand that if the audience didn't fall in love with her, too, then her demise at the end would be meaningless. Now, a lot of this comes from Fleming's novels, where on the page he invested in much the same ideas, something missing from many of the Bond novels by other writers later and books and movies in general these days, where things are shorthanded or merely hinted at.
Craig, by the way, has also benefitted from the same effort as Connery and Rigg. Each director has worked hard to give Craig numerous "beauty shots" in each film, even in the visually scatterbrained Quantum of Solace. Much like with Leonardo DiCaprio, the effort pays off by elevating performances. That's not to say Craig isn't giving good performances as Bond. It's that if he was treated as more an afterthought in so many scenes, we wouldn't get to know him as well. I've always thought the reason Lazenby took so long to be accepted by fans is because they had to watch OHMSS numerous times over the years to see enough of him to get what was going on.
I enjoy these posts @Gassy Man and feel it must have been you made a similar point some years ago - that in his film Universal Soldier (I think) Lazenby is shot by the director like he's the star unlike in OHMSS.
That said, I never really get much chemistry between him and Ring. I just don't buy her in that movie, and to some extent Vesper either. Part of it is that we can all relate to Bond's lusty adventures but it's hard to identify with his genuine love interest because that stuff is subjective, and he is too narcissistic a character to fall in love, it seems.
It is, just to see Blofeld scoop up his cat and do a foxtrot around his cell with his furry friend.
He also tries to convince the authorities he is mad, so you see him in conversation with the cat - but instead of miaowing, he is mooing. That way, they can tell he's mad.
Comments
I caught it at the IMAX pre-release last night.
I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and it is a great Bond flick.
However, I think this movie has bad timing with its release. I just don't think the world is necessarily ready for the emotional ending and Bond dying. The world has collectively experienced 18+ months of suffering and leaving a movie theater (for me my first time going to a theater since the pandemic) sad isn't very fun. Its exponentially more sad if you're a life long Bond fan.
Had we not just gone through a world pandemic with all this death around us, I think the movie would have been better received and accepted.
But for me, the movie checked everything off for a Craig Bond film so I did enjoy it and will watch again in the theater.
Hey Nap! I’m glad you enjoyed my review (and I realize “enjoyed” doesn’t necessarily mean you agree with it). You’re right about the double blow. Losing Bond AND Leiter in the same movie? Sheesh! Maybe I’m still getting over the shock and disappointment and perhaps I’ll enjoy NTTD more on subsequent viewings. At least I hope so!
Thanks for answering John and I don't know what difference it makes as all fathers are different.
I have a 3 year old boy, with the same blue eyes as mine, so I think it did tug on my heartstrings.
I would comment though that Bond is not a dad in the true sense of the word: he has a daughter yes, but he knows nothing of it until the moment he sees her in Swann's childhood home. He doesn't want kids and they don't fit into his world, lifestyle, job or mindset. However, that doesn't change the fact that Mathilde is there and she's just a little girl who is innocent, she has not asked to be born, but she deserves a good upbringing despite her origins, or maybe more apt, because of her origins.
Bond doesn't bond with the girl (pun intended) there's no time to do that. He has no emotional connection to her directly, only to her mother who he ultimately protects with his life so that she can live her life and bring up her little girl.
That's how I read it - I don't think the writers or producers have tried to suggest there's an emotional connection between Bond and Mathilde, but it is a little poignant nevertheless, especially when you consider Bond's origins as being the orphaned innocent child when his parents die in the Alps. Mathilde still has her mother, so perhaps things will be different?
Will we have a Mathilde story in 20 years time? I think Tanatino is either in pre-production or actually shooting just such a film now, based on the avenging daughter of Vernita Green - he's waited to use the same actor, who's now all grown up.
What’s up Charmed? Nice to be back to take part in the discussion about our favorite superspy. I have been reading some of the other reviews and it’s clear to me that my generally negative opinion of the movie isn’t shared by many. That’s fine and as always I appreciate being exposed to other points of view. My expectations for NTTD were very high and I was really hoping they would knock it out of the park for Craig’s final outing. To me the final results fell far short of that, but perhaps I was expecting too much. I’m sure I’ll have additional thoughts as time passes, and I hope to be able to share them with you folks. I must say, though, that’s it’s great to have a new Bond movie to discuss after all this time. Who knows when we’ll get another one!
Yes. Couldn't agree more. All interesting points guys. It's good to read others' opinion.
I can understand Bond accepting his need to sacrifice himself. He puts his life on the line in every film for Queen and Country and the greater good, it's just on this occasion he runs out of luck (I'll always regard DC's Bond as Unlucky Alf though), and his sacrifice is even more personal. You could even throw a couple of mottos into the mix; "Orbis non sufficit" - The world would not be enough for him, living in it, without his family. "There's no point in living if you can't feel alive" - He certainly wouldn't feel alive, not being able to be with him family. However, he did let Q (Desmond Llewelyn) down big style; "Always have an escape plan". C'mon James, even Baldrick had a ****** plan...!!
I don't think I'll ever agree or accept that killing Bond off and so vividly on screen was the right thing to do. Perhaps only if this was the last official Bond film ever, as we know it. (Perhaps it is?)
I completely see where you're coming from and it's an angle on that aspect of the story I'll need to turn around in my head a little more. Maybe I could frame my perspective on the daughter a little differently.
This movie brings back or introduces several elements that represent major changes to the Bond formula. Bond truly loving someone and then losing that person through tragedy/betrayal (that's happened 2 times before, or 3 if you count Electra, or 4 if you count M). An older Bond accepting his age and retiring (actually retiring, not just temporarily leaving the service to go on a rogue mission). Bond showing complete disrespect towards M. The death of Felix. And, of course, Bond's own death. Plus we get all the new characters and have to follow along with what's happening with the gang at MI6. That's already a LOT to pack into one movie!
Bond having a child is, to me, a formula change of equal importance to him retiring to marry the woman he loves or even dying. And in my opinon, it just wasn't treated like that. Again imho, the daughter was just a plot device, shoehorned in in a misguided effort to add more emotional weight to an already overloaded story.
On another note, I clearly remember when my son was 3! Good times and you have some amazing years ahead!
A bit off topic, but all the talk of Bond having a daughter in the film, reminded me of him having a son in "James Bond: The Authorised Biography" by John Pearson. The biography says that had a child with the female character in You Only Love Twice. The child was 8 when Bond met the woman again, and he took the child to his family home in Scotland for a holiday.
I heard somewhere that this biography has been accepted as part of the Bond canon. It would be good if some of the missions he had in it were included or built-on for future films.
"He puts his life on the line in every film for Queen and Country and the greater good, it's just on this occasion he runs out of luck". Yes, this is something that has put a downer on me a bit, and I've yet to see the film. The idea that Bond runs out of luck, fatally, is a major blow to my understanding of the character and the myth.
As an aside, the Craig films portray Bond's 007 career as very short and with only one SPECTRE-based mission, unlike the 1960s films where SPECTRE was present throughout. For me SPECTRE and Bond are inseparable.
Thanks for your reply and for your confirmation that the amazing years are ahead for my boy - love him to bits and he's packed so much into the last 3 years, which have gone by so quickly.
I am reminded of OHMSS, not just because of the music cues and so on, but because NTTD poses the same question as OHMSS: What might have been?
Had Tracey lived, what would have happened to the couple? A child surely but a peaceful and secure future for all? Doubtful. Had Bond lived at the end of NTTD, could he have been a father to Mathilde? I somehow don't see Craig's Bond as being able to do it you know. He was so awkward when peeling an apple for her that I don't think it was in his nature.
As I've posted elsewhere, Bond is not a superhero. He's not bulletproof nor missile proof (but he does survive a few bombs in NTTD I note) and he will die, as we all will. He is a man, flawed, fragile and finite. We might not want to see our hero die, but he has to at some point and it makes perfect sense to me that he'd do it to protect not only his love and daughter, but to ensure that the Heracles can't kill massive swathes of the planet's populace. The fact that it'd be a quick death is just a bonus - I'd take that over a lot of other things.
I'm still on my downer @sirso , almost a whole week from seeing the film. James Bond shouldn't die. End of.
It's a far cry from Alan Partridge's TSWLM re-enactment.
Going for my second viewing Saturday and hoping to feel a bit more positive afterwards🤞
Unfortunately that’s how I feel. Never gives up and keeps going - think if / when I watch it again I’ll have to miss the last few minutes
I've not seen the film yet, so don't know if the death scene gives the screenwriters a way to ressurect him. If there is no actual shot of his body being blown to bits, and it is only inferred or assumed that he died... no body found etc. Then maybe he is not dead. But again, I've not seen the film.
There’s no wiggle room I’m afraid. When watched in slow motion, he’s around 10m from the nearest of 2 missile strikes and you see the trail of one within a yard or two behind him, so I think smithereens are involved.
sadly.
To sum up the plot and the Craig Bond legacy, I'll misquote Neil Young:
It's better to burn up than to fade away.
Not sure I care to go see this film at the theater anymore....after reading everything here the only scene that still compels me to go watch it is the Blofeld scene...wonder if that one scene is worth the 12 bucks🤔
I like 99% of it. It’s just that last bit I need to block out. It would be right up there in the list if not for that
Oh, I agreed with every word of your review!
The finale of the film is really not that different to what Bond aims to do in the novel of Moonraker, an act of self-sacrifice. That was the first treatment Fleming wrote for a movie that fell through, so he used it as Moonraker. It's a bit different to other books, because the villain is a famous public figure, which means it can't be happening in the real world. A bit like Tomorrow Never Dies and Carver the media magnate. So the reviewer who suggested they could go back to Fleming's novels to find a way to end him, well they weren't far off.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
"(I will say the bit where Bond and his family are fleeing the bad guys in an SUV approaches satire of a family outing, but in this dreary rendition, even that seems wishful thinking.)"
I know what you mean @Gassy Man
It jarred me more when Bond is on full Commando gear walking around Safin's lair, looking great in full kick-ass Bond mode, but followed by his partner and child. In the past we may have had a Bond girl wearing what was earlier a nice dress/outfit, now grubby and torn, in tow. We now have Bond followed by his partner in normal civvies, carrying their daughter. It made me think of a Bond parody in a Saturday Night Live sketch; "Hey imagine everybody if Bond was married with kids..!") It felt a bit like a sequel to a goofy spy film, where this time his wife and child are onboard.
I know Bond has to move with the times and evolve and be more reflective of modern day society. I have no issue with that. I also know some of my views when it comes to Bond are a bit old fashioned. However, I think it lacks imagination and creativity to just give Bond a daughter, have her central to the story and kill him off in an over sentimental hurrah. I think they could have created a more, thought provoking, clever ending. Just use YOLT Fleming! Madeleine being pregnant, Bond unaware he's going to be a father, have the ending left open and the audience thinking did he survive or not?
That's a good comparison -- it's even filmed in a similar stark way -- though I think it may improve with some of us who are disappointed right now. In time, we'll get another Bond, and it'll be easier to view this in concert with all the films. Inevitably, there'll be comparisons to how OHMSS was received in mixed ways initially but later determined to be classic.
Thanks, @chrisno1! I really wanted to like this one more -- the trailers certainly made it look like a different film, one closer to a traditional Bond. Little did I realize those were all the best bits.
OHMSS any time for me, despite the ending I always feel hope with OHMSS
That was me about the TV stuff. I think you're right, though I've watched any number of things, from Bond to truly epic cinema like The Bridge on the River Kwai or The Guns of Navarone, all on a big flatscreen, a "phablet" phone, and on my computer monitor while working, and the wide and long shots still look terrific. Part of it is because back then, the effort was to frame things a particular way and to make sure everything was in focus and had depth of field. The color palette complimented everything else so nothing just faded. In the past few decades, though, much of that has gone out the window, with a more documentary approach and an artsy blurring of backgrounds and such. That's what NTTD relied heavily on, along with Fukunaga's brooding quality to the pacing. Or so I felt.
I like your version a lot better than what I saw.
Here's the thing: My biggest problem with NTTD is not that they killed Bond. I told people back in 2012 that's how they were going to wrap this up, after seeing The Dark Knight Rises and knowing how closely CR and Skyfall mirrored Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. I was actually surprised they didn't kill him in Spectre.
My biggest problem is that NTTD doesn't earn much of the emotions it wants to evoke. It really is more like a graphic novel in that bits and pieces are there to intellectually communicate the ideas, but the rest is left up to the audience to bring to the table. This is different than, say, OHMSS, where we fall in love with Tracy as much as Bond as we watch her spitfire resolve, cool under fire, rescue of Bond, vulnerability during his proposal, and ultimate demise in such a cruel and ironic way. I'd say much the same for Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale. That's why in both films, the weakest elements to the romance are the montage scenes that merely summarize weeks or months. These movies actually built up the narrative course to their fateful conclusion, so I felt Bond's losses at their ends.
Here, there is little of any kind of romance or relationship onscreen. Seydoux and Craig never really have any chemistry, they're never really ever shown happy, and the film never really has romance (nor did the last one really -- I though the relationship between Swann and Bond had no more lasting feeling than a typical dalliance in the earlier Bond films, where you know he'll be on to the next conquest in a few weeks). We're shown some obligatory kissing scenes, but the rest is just image. I'm sure if you took screen caps here and there and pasted them into a file, you'd very much get a graphic novel with a look here and there to communicate what a film should do in whole scenes.
So, the daughter felt like a prop or token. Like taking a puppy to the park, we get seen in a whole new light by people, even if we're exactly the same as we were before. Mathilde felt more like a manipulation. The easiest way to test if NTTD earned credibility in this department is if we have to say, "You need to be a parent to fully appreciate what's going on." No, we shouldn't. If a film earns its emotional props, there's no requirement for the audience to have special experiences to feel them. The film itself constructs all that. Otherwise, you'd have to have lost someone in a drive by shooting to feel Bond's loss at the end of OHMSS or had a lover drown herself to feel the same in CR.
That’s a really good summary Peter Hunt got that connection and you believed it all. And despite the ending you feel ok and that Bond will revenge Tracy
So which parts of the dialogue did Phoebe Waller-Bridge write that you didn’t like? 🤔
If that's directed at me, thanks! You know, it's funny that Hunt took a very modern approach to OHMSS, combining elements of traditional filmmaking with the more artsy (and low budget) approach of the New Wave directors that would become standard a few years later.
I've always felt that part of the reason Lazenby was so poorly received is because Hunt's camerawork didn't love on him as much as Young's, Hamilton's, and Gilbert's did on Connery. There are some moments -- the bits at headquarters, for example, and during the proposal scene. But Hunt often filmed him from oblique or unflattering angles or in partial frame.
At one point, I thought it was because Hunt was trying to disguise Lazenby's novice acting skills, but if you watch closely, Lazenby's physical presence is just as good as Connery's His ability to emote with his face and body language is on par. Even Lazenby's vocal delivery is good, if arguably not quite as naturally smooth as his predecessor's, perhaps because it sounded looped so often. If I didn't know better, I'd think Hunt just didn't like Lazenby and was trying to highlight him less or show him less memorable ways.
But he did exactly the opposite with Diana Rigg. Whenever she was shown, it was very much with the traditional gaze. And Hunt did seem to understand that if the audience didn't fall in love with her, too, then her demise at the end would be meaningless. Now, a lot of this comes from Fleming's novels, where on the page he invested in much the same ideas, something missing from many of the Bond novels by other writers later and books and movies in general these days, where things are shorthanded or merely hinted at.
Craig, by the way, has also benefitted from the same effort as Connery and Rigg. Each director has worked hard to give Craig numerous "beauty shots" in each film, even in the visually scatterbrained Quantum of Solace. Much like with Leonardo DiCaprio, the effort pays off by elevating performances. That's not to say Craig isn't giving good performances as Bond. It's that if he was treated as more an afterthought in so many scenes, we wouldn't get to know him as well. I've always thought the reason Lazenby took so long to be accepted by fans is because they had to watch OHMSS numerous times over the years to see enough of him to get what was going on.
I enjoy these posts @Gassy Man and feel it must have been you made a similar point some years ago - that in his film Universal Soldier (I think) Lazenby is shot by the director like he's the star unlike in OHMSS.
That said, I never really get much chemistry between him and Ring. I just don't buy her in that movie, and to some extent Vesper either. Part of it is that we can all relate to Bond's lusty adventures but it's hard to identify with his genuine love interest because that stuff is subjective, and he is too narcissistic a character to fall in love, it seems.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
It is, just to see Blofeld scoop up his cat and do a foxtrot around his cell with his furry friend.
He also tries to convince the authorities he is mad, so you see him in conversation with the cat - but instead of miaowing, he is mooing. That way, they can tell he's mad.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Its always possible for bond to survive.. Sherlock Holmes did it.
I actually think they will have no choice but to proceed as that was the case..
as for James bond beeing a code name that is an absolute none starter
they're not going to bin every thing the seriers is based on.
Sold, I'm so there! Lol