Hitchcock didn't write the script. That was written by Joseph Stefano (of The Outer Limits fame), based on the novel by Robert Bloch. As with any collaborative effort, more than one person influenced the final version of the film, but the movie follows the basic plotting of the novel, the difference being there's more about Norman Bates and his mother from the start. Also, the novel ends with Norman's split personality revealing he's the actual psycho and the mother personality is the one that has been trying to keep him from killing -- but, of course, the reader knows they're dealing with someone with profound mental illness.
recalling the previous CraigBond films, Dench-M almost got fired because she lost a list of agents! and looking at her record of success in those first three movies, I'm on the side of the Parliamentary inquiry on that once, she screwed up everything she was seen to touch.
But losing a list of agents is literally a paperwork error compared to what Fiennes-M has done this time. He definitely should not be there to give the toast in the final scene.
The only thing I recall DenchM succeeding at in the first three CraigBonds was arresting Vespers old boyfriend at the end of Quantum... I wonder if it was just the cases she worked on with Bond that were such fiascos, if she was more successful working with other double-oh's we never see? In which case yes we are following the adventures of MI6's answer to Maxwell Smart in these last five movies. Except that Maxwell Smart usually succeeded by the end of each episode, even if it was a comedy of errors getting there and Chief always got one of his migraines trying to talk to him. I think the comparison is unfair to Maxwell Smart.
Well, no, what most good movies do is show enough that the rest is inescapable. For instance, we know Dryden is both Bond's superior and a duplicitous agent. There's no reason to explain why he has a gun in his drawer because agents carry guns, and because he's duplicitous, why wouldn't he keep one there? Since Bond is already present in the office when Dryden arrives, it's not a leap for us to know he searched Dryden's desk and removed the bullets. There's no reason for supposition because, Occam's Razor, the most obvious answer is the correct one. The script has done its job.
In NTTD, the audience has to work considerably harder (unless they just accept anything because the script tells them to).
Why do you need to see reviews and the like making the same point?
Hitchcock didn't write the script. That was written by Joseph Stefano (of The Outer Limits fame), based on the novel by Robert Bloch. As with any collaborative effort, more than one person influenced the final version of the film, but the movie follows the basic plotting of the novel, the difference being there's more about Norman Bates and his mother from the start. Also, the novel ends with Norman's split personality revealing he's the actual psycho and the mother personality is the one that has been trying to keep him from killing -- but, of course, the reader knows they're dealing with someone with profound mental illness.
those difference are interesting, and subtly change the meaning of the story. I should read the book sometime.
One other aspect of Hitchcock's "no spoilers" policy I know about (repeated in just about every article about Psycho) is once he bought the rights, he also sent employees to buy every printed copy of the book they could find, so the public couldn't actually read the book before seeing the film! Must have been nice for Bloch to make all those sales so quick (Hitchcock effectively paying $$$ a second time for exclusive rights to tell the story) but humiliating his work was effectively withdrawn from the market. I'm surprised his publisher didn't rush a second printing if sales were that good, I wonder if Hitchcock made a secret deal with them too.
Lets talk about Psycho some more since its certainly a much better film, and nobody minds the psychobabble in that one.
What is typical? Asking for the story to make sense and actually show us what's going on? You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but you may just find it cheaper to just watch clouds going by and put the story together in your head. It would be as much work but not require a writer nor for you to purchase a ticket.
We wouldn't end up with a five hour film if the writing is good. The Guns of Navarone clocks in at 158 minutes, or five minutes shorter than NTTD. At the end, I not only have zero questions about what I just saw, but I'm eminently satisfied. It, too, features agents on a desperate mission to attack a fortress with the odds against them and a race against the clock. Each also has a personal story that connects to the mission and the people they're with. But in less time than NTTD, it tells a complete story, from the start of the mission to its conclusion, focusing on multiple characters, both male and female, and with each fleshed out as real people even within its fantasy-adventure universe. It has many key dramatic scenes, including one where a traitor is outed. There's humor, action, suspense, violence, tragedy -- the whole gamut of emotions. The pacing is consistent, and I never feel like the writer(s) or director are cutting corners because they lack the sophistication to actually show us the story. At the end, I'm not left with any questions, like "Why'd he do that?" or "How come that character behaves so inconsistently?" or "How come nobody notice this?"
By comparison, NTTD is like someone took the scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor of The Guns of Navarone and then decided they were going to try to shoehorn a story out them, no matter how little sense they make because, you know, World War 2 and the audience can figure out the rest.
While Psycho is a very different genre and story than NTTD, one of the reasons it is so enduring is because it shows us everything dramatic that's necessary for the story to work. It doesn't collapse on itself. Even the coda at the end where Norman Bates' insanity is explained works because though it's exposition, it absolutely fits within the context of patient/psychologist that at the heart of the trying to understand his character.
The movie never cuts corners. We meet the lovers, we see the robbery and escape, we watch Norman interact with his victim, we see her murder, we meet the sister, we follow her efforts (along with the lover's) to find out what happened, we meet the detective and follow him to his doom, we end up back at the Bates Motel to its conclusion, and finally we see an attempt at diagnosis -- which the psychiatrist even admits is just a best guess since they're dealing with insanity of a kind they've never quite before. Everything rolls along. There are no major questions left at the end that the script doesn't answer -- the only question is just who and what Norman Bates are, but within the logic of the story, there's no way we'll ever fully know because he is simply insane. It all makes sense.
But imagine if there was a scene where a cop stopped at the motel and sees the body lying on the bathroom floor through the window. Instead of investigating -- instead of even asking questions -- he just gets back in his car and leaves. There's no attempt to reconcile his inexplicable behavior with the script. But the audience says, "Well, you know there are lazy cops in the world, so it's not hard from me to believe he would just drive away because he doesn't want to do the paperwork." And this has to happen for the story to continue, otherwise Bates would have been apprehended right then and there. Some audiences might say, "Who cares? It's only a movie. And it was so good and scary, I don't need to know why the cop just left. Look, the story told me he left, that's enough." Other people might say, well, you're entitled to your opinion, but your standards don't seem particularly high.
Or what if the psychologist at the end broke down and said, "I can't go in there. He scares me too much!" even though as the state psychologist, that's his job and it doesn't make any sense for someone in his position to think and behave like this. The rationale of "Golly, Norman is a scary killer, so it makes sense that people would be terrified of him" wouldn't fly for anyone who then wonders how someone with so little professionalism could have gotten the job in the first place. "Budget cuts" probably wouldn't cut it.
Psycho delivers the goods. It makes some promises to the audience -- to both enlighten and entertain -- in a way that seems both satisfying and complete. NTTD doesn't.
well now I'm just going to have to rewatch every Hitchcock film again with an eye to "plot holes" or similar missing details. Such homework! there's only about fifty of them, and they're almost all masterpieces.
You could be right, he was a master storyteller and quite philosophical about his craft in interviews. Camera angles, and positions of objects, even unseen by the characters, were integral to the way he told a story. And he'd long since perfected his craft by the time he got to Psycho. Psycho was a deliberate attempt to challenge himself to do things differently.
Even if somebody else got the writing credit, he was absolutely responsible for the story presented to the audience. Wasn't the word "auteur" invented specifically for him? Most of his films were based on other peoples books, but usually he just wanted the nugget of a good idea and would pay for it, yet changed everything else to make his idea of a good story. And he famously threw Raymond Chandler's screenplay in the trashcan right in front of him, yet Chandler still got the credit for Strangers in a Train.
I can't think of an actual plot hole in any Hitchcock film I've ever scene. Every Hitchcock film I've watched has characters who are properly drawn so the story and their actions make sense. That's not to say the characters don't have other choices than the ones they take, but the plots and development make it clear why they choose what they do.
Notorious is a great example. Cary Grant's character is a charming but hardened spy, very much like Bond is drawn in the books. He's been surveilling Ingrid Bergman, the daughter of an infamous neo-Nazi, and knows that despite her unsavory reputation, she opposes everything he stands for. But out of respect to her father, she does not publicly denounce him, resulting in her being a pariah. That alone creates sympathy for her, but Grant and his minders concoct a scheme. Because another neo-Nazi is sweet on her, they know she's the perfect mole to plant in his organization, which is up to no good that has greater implications to threaten decent society. Because Grant has watched her closely, he's developed feelings for her, and she's equally drawn to him. She agrees to work for the U.S. against the neo-Nazis, not just out of moral duty but because she loves Grant and wants to please him. But -- in the ways emotions can be ironic and contradictory -- the more she does to please him in this regard, the more some part of him is jealous and despises her for doing it. The film takes the time to show us these emotions and why, and it's this conflict that actually drives the story more than all the neo-Nazi stuff, which is also compelling, because we care about both Grant and Bergman. They are flawed people with noble intentions, but we understand their flaws and nobility because the story takes the time to show it all on screen.
In "Vertigo" (my favourite Hitchcock film), Jimmy Stewart follows Kim Novak to a boarding house. From the street he sees her in the window of a room. She never leaves, and the concierge denies all knowledge of her ever being there when he goes to investigate. The room is empty and hasn't been used. No explanation is ever given. I don't know if that counts as a plot hole.
That one is debatable. Some argue that Stewart's character is seeing things -- that is, as he falls under the spell of the mystery, he begins projecting. Is it really her he sees in the window or merely a shape or image from his point of view that looks like her? We know he suffers from nightmares, and later, when he thinks he's found Novak's doppelganger and "turns her into" the other, his visual obsessions become more obvious. Others argue it's not impossible for her to have slipped past the concierge, especially if she wasn't in disguise as Carlotta, more or less what this person posits:
Someone must drive her car away -- if it was there in the first place.
We also know that the husband and Novak are having an affair and conspiring to mislead Stewart in some way. It's entirely possible this is an elaborate effort to further confuse him and, though a long shot, that the concierge could even be in on it.
One of the clever things about a movie titled "Vertigo" is we know we're going to be off balance from the start. Though Stewart isn't the literal narrator, we do see the film mostly from his point of view. An argument could be made that it's going to be disorienting, both to mimic what the character is going through in the mystery and to call into question the line between his obsessive qualities and the reality of the world he operates in.
It may sound like I'm splitting hairs here, but the challenge is -- as with Psycho -- we're dealing with a story that at its heart questions the mental state of its character. That adds a layer of ambiguity other stories -- like NTTD -- can't really get away with. They're straightforward action adventures. Some even question at the end what happens. Does Novak commit suicide? Is she merely startled? Did someone push her? Or did the Carlotta curse fulfill itself?
My point is: if you haven't seen anybody who sees Blofeld's artificial eye as a issue it's very likely a sign that it's not such a problematic plothole you think it is.
I did about 10 minutes to come up with these. I don't have the time right now to pour through reviews, but I'm going to assume there must be others out there who have similar observations.
This one incorporates a discussion on the bionic into the overall silliness of how SPECTRE could somehow steal such a well-guarded bioweapon and yet not break Blofeld out of prison. (That does call into question how if they can sneak a bionic eye into his head they can't find some other way to spirit him out.)
This one incorporates a discussion on the bionic into the overall silliness of how SPECTRE could somehow steal such a well-guarded bioweapon and yet not break Blofeld out of prison. (That does call into question how if they can sneak a bionic eye into his head they can't find some other way to spirit him out.)
@Gassy Man I think I raised this point in another thread and was informed politely that a gaol break was a cliché (my phrase).
I don't want to get into this very protracted debate, but you do seem to be fussing over the interpretation of the phrase "plot hole." I thought a plot hole was something unexplained and, for better or worse, the bionic eye is explained. It is also moronic and doesn't make any sense in a real world - as I also pointed out somewhere many posts back - but as @Number24 did respond, this is James Bond and it isn't supposed to be very real. I'd certainly concur on that - volcano craters with pace rocket launch pads anyone?
Surely, a plot hole should be something completely unexplained. When I recently watched The Spy Who Dumped Me, a major character is shot dead in the opening twenty minutes and then materialises alive and well at the climax with no explanation other than we see him alive and well. That is a plot hole. I think also of Skyfall, where the shrapnel from a uranium tipped bullet would have killed OO7 long before he ever returned to MI6. No explanation there either. Of course, in both examples I can figure out a reason to explain what has happened, but I shouldn't need to; that is poor writing.
I don't think the bionic eye is a plot hole at all. It is, as I said, just hopelessly daft and rather convoluted.
It comes across so badly IMO because the CraigBond interpretation has so often emphasised his character as being so real, down to earth, emotionally hinged, that to put in this flight of fancy feels like a throwback to the worst of Moore and Brosnan. The more I think on the plot points of NTTD - and I am trying not to - the more I consider them to be as flippant as those in DAD or MR. The solemn tone of NTTD, of CraigBond overall, does not lend itself to stupendously outrageous plots and the business with the eye and the nanobots is much too sci-fi to be taken seriously on any level. The balance is all wrong.
I am beginning to wonder if the film's problems in general stem from the decision to make Safin the overarching bad guy and not Blofeld. Safin's adversarial relationship within the story is not to Bond, it is to Madeleine Swann and her family history. This skews the emphasis away from Bond. I could accept this, but why do we then need all the Spectre stuff as well? Only to plunge the metaphorical dagger between Bond and Madeleine. The producers / writers / director could have tidied this up tremendously and still retained the Death of James Bond by removing Safin's role completely. So we'd lose a pretty and pretty gruesome opening gambit in Finland, but I can live with that if it makes the film more presentable. It'd be more straight forward and I expect that'd annoy plenty too, but most of the best Bond films are straight forward, the narrative twists are not in the basic plot, they are in the incidents which revolve around it. This one seems to have it in reverse.
N.B. Finland should of course read Norway. Apologies to any citizens who may be adversely effected by this error.
That's a whole lot of links you've found, but only about four of them are about my question. The artificial eye is riddicolous, I think we all agree on that. There are a lot of riddicolous things in Bond movies and often we enjoy it.
I asked about the artificial eye as a plot hole problem and you found four people who think it is. Maybe you're making this bigger and worse than it is?
Well, it’s not a popularity contest, nor is it required that a review literally state the case to show the bionic eye is problematic. I simply did a quick search and turned up a fair amount of discussion in ten minutes’ time. If you wish for more, you should go through the reviews to see what you can find. But I don’t think doing so validates an opinion any more or any less. That would be an appeal to popularity fallacy.
Do you have a No Time to Die review that states today’s audiences are more sophisticated than those in the past? Do you have more than four of them? If not, by your standards, your statement must be making a bigger deal out of things than it is, even bigger apparently than the bionic eye. It’s also a straw man to say that there are a lot of ridiculous things in a Bond movie and we often enjoy them — that doesn’t mean any ridiculous thing must be enjoyable.
People are using the term “plot hole” pretty loosely. The original definition is an inconsistency that cannot be explained by the logic of the story. I realize that the combination of the Web and misuse may have in the popular sense turned the definition into something else, but it's the original definition I always use. The bionic eye is not a plot hole. It’s just crappy writing. It would be like discovering at the end the Bond who dies is a clone and the real Bond is safe and happy with his family. Or that everything after Bond is blown over from the explosion in Matera is a dream because he was knocked out. There’s nothing to stop the story with a revelation that seems to come out of nowhere but is convenient to the plot. Some audiences would just feel cheated that the writing hadn’t done the work a good script does to prepare us.
The limited number of people who're upset about the bionic eye not being explained doesn't prove you're wrong, but it may be a hint you're making it bigger than it is.
Do you really think the eye is comparable to explaining away the ending of NTTD by claiming Bond was a clone or ut was a dream? In that case you should really consider the posibility you're making this a far bigger deal than it is.
Nothing “proves” I’m wrong or right any more than it “proves” you’re wrong or right. The only thing we have are opinions arrived at by our reasoning. I’ve posted mine along with the reasoning. You're free to agree or disagree, but I’m not engaged in a competition to win something. I am interested in discussion because that may help me to see my own reasoning through another lens as well as that of others, but at the end of the day, I still have my own opinion.
I’m still waiting on your NTTD reviews that say today's audiences are more sophisticated. Do you have them? Did you have them before you made your assertion? If not, then perhaps you see my point.
Comparable in what way? As I used it, which is an example of an element that isn’t a plot hole but weakens the story because the audience isn’t adequately prepared for it? Absolutely. If you're going to interpret that as something else, like its proportionality to the overall outcome of the story or its effect, then you’re just twisting what I said to service a position you have.
Comments
Hitchcock didn't write the script. That was written by Joseph Stefano (of The Outer Limits fame), based on the novel by Robert Bloch. As with any collaborative effort, more than one person influenced the final version of the film, but the movie follows the basic plotting of the novel, the difference being there's more about Norman Bates and his mother from the start. Also, the novel ends with Norman's split personality revealing he's the actual psycho and the mother personality is the one that has been trying to keep him from killing -- but, of course, the reader knows they're dealing with someone with profound mental illness.
recalling the previous CraigBond films, Dench-M almost got fired because she lost a list of agents! and looking at her record of success in those first three movies, I'm on the side of the Parliamentary inquiry on that once, she screwed up everything she was seen to touch.
But losing a list of agents is literally a paperwork error compared to what Fiennes-M has done this time. He definitely should not be there to give the toast in the final scene.
The only thing I recall DenchM succeeding at in the first three CraigBonds was arresting Vespers old boyfriend at the end of Quantum... I wonder if it was just the cases she worked on with Bond that were such fiascos, if she was more successful working with other double-oh's we never see? In which case yes we are following the adventures of MI6's answer to Maxwell Smart in these last five movies. Except that Maxwell Smart usually succeeded by the end of each episode, even if it was a comedy of errors getting there and Chief always got one of his migraines trying to talk to him. I think the comparison is unfair to Maxwell Smart.
Well, no, what most good movies do is show enough that the rest is inescapable. For instance, we know Dryden is both Bond's superior and a duplicitous agent. There's no reason to explain why he has a gun in his drawer because agents carry guns, and because he's duplicitous, why wouldn't he keep one there? Since Bond is already present in the office when Dryden arrives, it's not a leap for us to know he searched Dryden's desk and removed the bullets. There's no reason for supposition because, Occam's Razor, the most obvious answer is the correct one. The script has done its job.
In NTTD, the audience has to work considerably harder (unless they just accept anything because the script tells them to).
Why do you need to see reviews and the like making the same point?
Gassy Man said:
Hitchcock didn't write the script. That was written by Joseph Stefano (of The Outer Limits fame), based on the novel by Robert Bloch. As with any collaborative effort, more than one person influenced the final version of the film, but the movie follows the basic plotting of the novel, the difference being there's more about Norman Bates and his mother from the start. Also, the novel ends with Norman's split personality revealing he's the actual psycho and the mother personality is the one that has been trying to keep him from killing -- but, of course, the reader knows they're dealing with someone with profound mental illness.
those difference are interesting, and subtly change the meaning of the story. I should read the book sometime.
One other aspect of Hitchcock's "no spoilers" policy I know about (repeated in just about every article about Psycho) is once he bought the rights, he also sent employees to buy every printed copy of the book they could find, so the public couldn't actually read the book before seeing the film! Must have been nice for Bloch to make all those sales so quick (Hitchcock effectively paying $$$ a second time for exclusive rights to tell the story) but humiliating his work was effectively withdrawn from the market. I'm surprised his publisher didn't rush a second printing if sales were that good, I wonder if Hitchcock made a secret deal with them too.
Lets talk about Psycho some more since its certainly a much better film, and nobody minds the psychobabble in that one.
What is typical? Asking for the story to make sense and actually show us what's going on? You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but you may just find it cheaper to just watch clouds going by and put the story together in your head. It would be as much work but not require a writer nor for you to purchase a ticket.
We wouldn't end up with a five hour film if the writing is good. The Guns of Navarone clocks in at 158 minutes, or five minutes shorter than NTTD. At the end, I not only have zero questions about what I just saw, but I'm eminently satisfied. It, too, features agents on a desperate mission to attack a fortress with the odds against them and a race against the clock. Each also has a personal story that connects to the mission and the people they're with. But in less time than NTTD, it tells a complete story, from the start of the mission to its conclusion, focusing on multiple characters, both male and female, and with each fleshed out as real people even within its fantasy-adventure universe. It has many key dramatic scenes, including one where a traitor is outed. There's humor, action, suspense, violence, tragedy -- the whole gamut of emotions. The pacing is consistent, and I never feel like the writer(s) or director are cutting corners because they lack the sophistication to actually show us the story. At the end, I'm not left with any questions, like "Why'd he do that?" or "How come that character behaves so inconsistently?" or "How come nobody notice this?"
By comparison, NTTD is like someone took the scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor of The Guns of Navarone and then decided they were going to try to shoehorn a story out them, no matter how little sense they make because, you know, World War 2 and the audience can figure out the rest.
number24 said:
Now I've learned the word "supposition"!
just don't confuse it with the word "suppository", that's completely different.
While Psycho is a very different genre and story than NTTD, one of the reasons it is so enduring is because it shows us everything dramatic that's necessary for the story to work. It doesn't collapse on itself. Even the coda at the end where Norman Bates' insanity is explained works because though it's exposition, it absolutely fits within the context of patient/psychologist that at the heart of the trying to understand his character.
The movie never cuts corners. We meet the lovers, we see the robbery and escape, we watch Norman interact with his victim, we see her murder, we meet the sister, we follow her efforts (along with the lover's) to find out what happened, we meet the detective and follow him to his doom, we end up back at the Bates Motel to its conclusion, and finally we see an attempt at diagnosis -- which the psychiatrist even admits is just a best guess since they're dealing with insanity of a kind they've never quite before. Everything rolls along. There are no major questions left at the end that the script doesn't answer -- the only question is just who and what Norman Bates are, but within the logic of the story, there's no way we'll ever fully know because he is simply insane. It all makes sense.
But imagine if there was a scene where a cop stopped at the motel and sees the body lying on the bathroom floor through the window. Instead of investigating -- instead of even asking questions -- he just gets back in his car and leaves. There's no attempt to reconcile his inexplicable behavior with the script. But the audience says, "Well, you know there are lazy cops in the world, so it's not hard from me to believe he would just drive away because he doesn't want to do the paperwork." And this has to happen for the story to continue, otherwise Bates would have been apprehended right then and there. Some audiences might say, "Who cares? It's only a movie. And it was so good and scary, I don't need to know why the cop just left. Look, the story told me he left, that's enough." Other people might say, well, you're entitled to your opinion, but your standards don't seem particularly high.
Or what if the psychologist at the end broke down and said, "I can't go in there. He scares me too much!" even though as the state psychologist, that's his job and it doesn't make any sense for someone in his position to think and behave like this. The rationale of "Golly, Norman is a scary killer, so it makes sense that people would be terrified of him" wouldn't fly for anyone who then wonders how someone with so little professionalism could have gotten the job in the first place. "Budget cuts" probably wouldn't cut it.
Psycho delivers the goods. It makes some promises to the audience -- to both enlighten and entertain -- in a way that seems both satisfying and complete. NTTD doesn't.
well now I'm just going to have to rewatch every Hitchcock film again with an eye to "plot holes" or similar missing details. Such homework! there's only about fifty of them, and they're almost all masterpieces.
You could be right, he was a master storyteller and quite philosophical about his craft in interviews. Camera angles, and positions of objects, even unseen by the characters, were integral to the way he told a story. And he'd long since perfected his craft by the time he got to Psycho. Psycho was a deliberate attempt to challenge himself to do things differently.
Even if somebody else got the writing credit, he was absolutely responsible for the story presented to the audience. Wasn't the word "auteur" invented specifically for him? Most of his films were based on other peoples books, but usually he just wanted the nugget of a good idea and would pay for it, yet changed everything else to make his idea of a good story. And he famously threw Raymond Chandler's screenplay in the trashcan right in front of him, yet Chandler still got the credit for Strangers in a Train.
I can't think of an actual plot hole in any Hitchcock film I've ever scene. Every Hitchcock film I've watched has characters who are properly drawn so the story and their actions make sense. That's not to say the characters don't have other choices than the ones they take, but the plots and development make it clear why they choose what they do.
Notorious is a great example. Cary Grant's character is a charming but hardened spy, very much like Bond is drawn in the books. He's been surveilling Ingrid Bergman, the daughter of an infamous neo-Nazi, and knows that despite her unsavory reputation, she opposes everything he stands for. But out of respect to her father, she does not publicly denounce him, resulting in her being a pariah. That alone creates sympathy for her, but Grant and his minders concoct a scheme. Because another neo-Nazi is sweet on her, they know she's the perfect mole to plant in his organization, which is up to no good that has greater implications to threaten decent society. Because Grant has watched her closely, he's developed feelings for her, and she's equally drawn to him. She agrees to work for the U.S. against the neo-Nazis, not just out of moral duty but because she loves Grant and wants to please him. But -- in the ways emotions can be ironic and contradictory -- the more she does to please him in this regard, the more some part of him is jealous and despises her for doing it. The film takes the time to show us these emotions and why, and it's this conflict that actually drives the story more than all the neo-Nazi stuff, which is also compelling, because we care about both Grant and Bergman. They are flawed people with noble intentions, but we understand their flaws and nobility because the story takes the time to show it all on screen.
Notorious is seamless, complex, and organic.
NTTD is the Wish version.
In "Vertigo" (my favourite Hitchcock film), Jimmy Stewart follows Kim Novak to a boarding house. From the street he sees her in the window of a room. She never leaves, and the concierge denies all knowledge of her ever being there when he goes to investigate. The room is empty and hasn't been used. No explanation is ever given. I don't know if that counts as a plot hole.
That one is debatable. Some argue that Stewart's character is seeing things -- that is, as he falls under the spell of the mystery, he begins projecting. Is it really her he sees in the window or merely a shape or image from his point of view that looks like her? We know he suffers from nightmares, and later, when he thinks he's found Novak's doppelganger and "turns her into" the other, his visual obsessions become more obvious. Others argue it's not impossible for her to have slipped past the concierge, especially if she wasn't in disguise as Carlotta, more or less what this person posits:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueFilm/comments/1e21bf/vertigo_1958/
Someone must drive her car away -- if it was there in the first place.
We also know that the husband and Novak are having an affair and conspiring to mislead Stewart in some way. It's entirely possible this is an elaborate effort to further confuse him and, though a long shot, that the concierge could even be in on it.
One of the clever things about a movie titled "Vertigo" is we know we're going to be off balance from the start. Though Stewart isn't the literal narrator, we do see the film mostly from his point of view. An argument could be made that it's going to be disorienting, both to mimic what the character is going through in the mystery and to call into question the line between his obsessive qualities and the reality of the world he operates in.
It may sound like I'm splitting hairs here, but the challenge is -- as with Psycho -- we're dealing with a story that at its heart questions the mental state of its character. That adds a layer of ambiguity other stories -- like NTTD -- can't really get away with. They're straightforward action adventures. Some even question at the end what happens. Does Novak commit suicide? Is she merely startled? Did someone push her? Or did the Carlotta curse fulfill itself?
My point is: if you haven't seen anybody who sees Blofeld's artificial eye as a issue it's very likely a sign that it's not such a problematic plothole you think it is.
That's bizarre. It's not a matter of how popular the point is but the point itself -- that's actually a logical fallacy.
But I just did a quick Google search. Here are just some of the places where people at the very least question it:
https://www.newsweek.com/james-bond-no-time-die-unanswered-questions-1635129
https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/q3idfb/there_is_something_i_dont_understand_about_nttd/
https://www.looper.com/627488/biggest-unanswered-questions-in-no-time-to-die/
https://screenrant.com/james-bond-no-time-to-die-unanswered-questions/
https://usa.kaspersky.com/blog/bond-cybersecurity-in-craig-era/25635/
https://www.moviemistakes.com/film13556
I did about 10 minutes to come up with these. I don't have the time right now to pour through reviews, but I'm going to assume there must be others out there who have similar observations.
Oh, here's a review a few pages later that calls the bionic eyeball ridiculous:
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/bond-cars/no-time-die-top-gear-review
This one incorporates a discussion on the bionic into the overall silliness of how SPECTRE could somehow steal such a well-guarded bioweapon and yet not break Blofeld out of prison. (That does call into question how if they can sneak a bionic eye into his head they can't find some other way to spirit him out.)
https://www.moviequotesandmore.com/no-time-to-die-2021-movie-review/
Ha, just for kicks, I decided to see if any video reviews comment on it, but I really don't have time to skim more, haha. Here's one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcNVBOVHMKo&ab_channel=Filmento
This one incorporates a discussion on the bionic into the overall silliness of how SPECTRE could somehow steal such a well-guarded bioweapon and yet not break Blofeld out of prison. (That does call into question how if they can sneak a bionic eye into his head they can't find some other way to spirit him out.)
@Gassy Man I think I raised this point in another thread and was informed politely that a gaol break was a cliché (my phrase).
I don't want to get into this very protracted debate, but you do seem to be fussing over the interpretation of the phrase "plot hole." I thought a plot hole was something unexplained and, for better or worse, the bionic eye is explained. It is also moronic and doesn't make any sense in a real world - as I also pointed out somewhere many posts back - but as @Number24 did respond, this is James Bond and it isn't supposed to be very real. I'd certainly concur on that - volcano craters with pace rocket launch pads anyone?
Surely, a plot hole should be something completely unexplained. When I recently watched The Spy Who Dumped Me, a major character is shot dead in the opening twenty minutes and then materialises alive and well at the climax with no explanation other than we see him alive and well. That is a plot hole. I think also of Skyfall, where the shrapnel from a uranium tipped bullet would have killed OO7 long before he ever returned to MI6. No explanation there either. Of course, in both examples I can figure out a reason to explain what has happened, but I shouldn't need to; that is poor writing.
I don't think the bionic eye is a plot hole at all. It is, as I said, just hopelessly daft and rather convoluted.
It comes across so badly IMO because the CraigBond interpretation has so often emphasised his character as being so real, down to earth, emotionally hinged, that to put in this flight of fancy feels like a throwback to the worst of Moore and Brosnan. The more I think on the plot points of NTTD - and I am trying not to - the more I consider them to be as flippant as those in DAD or MR. The solemn tone of NTTD, of CraigBond overall, does not lend itself to stupendously outrageous plots and the business with the eye and the nanobots is much too sci-fi to be taken seriously on any level. The balance is all wrong.
I am beginning to wonder if the film's problems in general stem from the decision to make Safin the overarching bad guy and not Blofeld. Safin's adversarial relationship within the story is not to Bond, it is to Madeleine Swann and her family history. This skews the emphasis away from Bond. I could accept this, but why do we then need all the Spectre stuff as well? Only to plunge the metaphorical dagger between Bond and Madeleine. The producers / writers / director could have tidied this up tremendously and still retained the Death of James Bond by removing Safin's role completely. So we'd lose a pretty and pretty gruesome opening gambit in Finland, but I can live with that if it makes the film more presentable. It'd be more straight forward and I expect that'd annoy plenty too, but most of the best Bond films are straight forward, the narrative twists are not in the basic plot, they are in the incidents which revolve around it. This one seems to have it in reverse.
N.B. Finland should of course read Norway. Apologies to any citizens who may be adversely effected by this error.
Finland??!!!!! 😖😱😡🤬😠😤
😁 Calm down, Number24. This is only what us Scots feel like when told that James Bond is English.
🤯💩👿👹👺😵😠!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh yes, definitely.
Finland❓❓❗❗❗❗❔❔❓❓❓❓❓
That's a whole lot of links you've found, but only about four of them are about my question. The artificial eye is riddicolous, I think we all agree on that. There are a lot of riddicolous things in Bond movies and often we enjoy it.
I asked about the artificial eye as a plot hole problem and you found four people who think it is. Maybe you're making this bigger and worse than it is?
@Number24 Sorry, I was hung over this morning
Disclaimer now inserted.
It's (nearly) Christmas time and in that spirit I'm willing to forgive even this. 😄
Well, it’s not a popularity contest, nor is it required that a review literally state the case to show the bionic eye is problematic. I simply did a quick search and turned up a fair amount of discussion in ten minutes’ time. If you wish for more, you should go through the reviews to see what you can find. But I don’t think doing so validates an opinion any more or any less. That would be an appeal to popularity fallacy.
Do you have a No Time to Die review that states today’s audiences are more sophisticated than those in the past? Do you have more than four of them? If not, by your standards, your statement must be making a bigger deal out of things than it is, even bigger apparently than the bionic eye. It’s also a straw man to say that there are a lot of ridiculous things in a Bond movie and we often enjoy them — that doesn’t mean any ridiculous thing must be enjoyable.
People are using the term “plot hole” pretty loosely. The original definition is an inconsistency that cannot be explained by the logic of the story. I realize that the combination of the Web and misuse may have in the popular sense turned the definition into something else, but it's the original definition I always use. The bionic eye is not a plot hole. It’s just crappy writing. It would be like discovering at the end the Bond who dies is a clone and the real Bond is safe and happy with his family. Or that everything after Bond is blown over from the explosion in Matera is a dream because he was knocked out. There’s nothing to stop the story with a revelation that seems to come out of nowhere but is convenient to the plot. Some audiences would just feel cheated that the writing hadn’t done the work a good script does to prepare us.
The limited number of people who're upset about the bionic eye not being explained doesn't prove you're wrong, but it may be a hint you're making it bigger than it is.
Do you really think the eye is comparable to explaining away the ending of NTTD by claiming Bond was a clone or ut was a dream? In that case you should really consider the posibility you're making this a far bigger deal than it is.
Nothing “proves” I’m wrong or right any more than it “proves” you’re wrong or right. The only thing we have are opinions arrived at by our reasoning. I’ve posted mine along with the reasoning. You're free to agree or disagree, but I’m not engaged in a competition to win something. I am interested in discussion because that may help me to see my own reasoning through another lens as well as that of others, but at the end of the day, I still have my own opinion.
I’m still waiting on your NTTD reviews that say today's audiences are more sophisticated. Do you have them? Did you have them before you made your assertion? If not, then perhaps you see my point.
Comparable in what way? As I used it, which is an example of an element that isn’t a plot hole but weakens the story because the audience isn’t adequately prepared for it? Absolutely. If you're going to interpret that as something else, like its proportionality to the overall outcome of the story or its effect, then you’re just twisting what I said to service a position you have.
I absolutely agree on what you write about proof. These are opinions we're talking about.
I'm taking a break from our talk now because I want watch a movie. I wish everyone a really nice day. 🙂
Enjoy it.