The brother connection is very deliberately downplayed in NTTD because it was a crap idea. NTTD was doubling down on enough dodgy choices from SPECTRE; 30 seconds about their shared history might have been a bridge too far.
ha! now you're tempting me to debate PostModernism! this'll be less fun than discussing Hitchcock or the Beatles...
PostModernism is basically an architectural style that was adopted into Art Criticism and then into other fields.
In architecture, instead of building yet another out-of-place glass and steel monstrosity, they started adding details that were sort of in the style of the surrounding neighborhood or referenced the history of the site. so a glass and steel monstrosity with an imitation Victorian dormer pasted on top might look slightly less out-of-place. Glass and steel was Modernism, that imitation dormer pasted on top made it PostModern.
Art critics extended this aesthetic to discuss art that incorporated a multiplicity of styles, arguing that also reflected the multiplicity of experiences in the real world. in the 80s, a painting with two or more contrasting styles was more PostModern than one with only one style, and the art teachers. critics and curators at the time valued more PostModern as better than less, so this aesthetic of collaged styles became the dominant trend. Extended also into music and film. Sample based hip-hop was often argued as being inherently PostModern. A filmmaker like Tarantino is very PostModern, especially Kill Bill where each section is in a different filmmaking style, sometimes changing styles abruptly in the same scene.
I've seen this logic extended into marketing (niche marketing: acknowledging there is no one one-size-fits-all market, that selling different products to different niche markets might actually make the seller richer) and even political campaigns (micro-campaigning, different messages to different constituencies: ironically conservative politicians are very good at this)
curses!! my 80s self would be disgusted to know I was still worrying about definitions of PostModernism 35 years later. And no I still cant give a concise definition, but I don't think its the same as Nihilism.
On postmodernism I'd recommend, 'Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction' (OUP, 2002) - by the late Christopher Butler, the most droll and erudite of my old tutors.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
"A filmmaker like Tarantino is very PostModern, especially Kill Bill where each section is in a different filmmaking style, sometimes changing styles abruptly in the same scene."
A feature of postmodernism is the idea of undermining narrative.
Although I wouldn't go so far as to call Tarantino postmodern. He's generally far too conventional.
Postmodernism is simply the artistic period after Modernism. It has literally hundreds of different proponents of ideals and theories across dozens of genres of works. To reduce it to a Chinese fortune cookie definition is about as helpful as The Simpsons definition: "Weird for the sake of weird."
But one clear line of thought in film and literature is deconstruction. Postmodernists often take existing tropes and formulas and deconstruct them, arguing, among other things, that the conscious attempt by an artist to render a thought is also influenced by perhaps unconscious elements the artist may communicate that are in turn perceived by the audience.
So, for example, when White artists render a world where only White people seem to exist (e.g., the TV sitcom Friends, set in NYC, one of the most diverse cities in the U.S. and one where non-Whites outnumber Whites), the artist may believe they are depicting reality. But a postmodernist thinker would realize this is just the reality the artist believes to be true, in this case, one which a White artist who probably doesn't associate with minorities believes is realistic because it's all they know, false as it may be.
Deconstructing the text -- that is, taking it apart and looking at how the pieces fit together in other ways -- can yield new, equally valid interpretations, such as metanarratives (defined in most cases as a kind of overarching narrative and in others as a new story based on the same elements and their presentation). Thus, the work of art is no longer what the artist may have intended but instead the story of a racist artist who yearns to live in a world where minorities don't exist.
When enough deconstruction occurs, it can reach the public consciousness, to the degree that it may be possible to create texts that lampoon this sensibility in clever, self-referential ways. The TV show Batman was precisely that. It used camp -- purposeful exaggeration of something's poor taste or execution -- to make fun of both comic books and the people who believe in them. They did so by deconstructing Batman, not merely as a hero, but the sort of exaggerated do-gooder that was beyond the pale. They poked fun at conventions in the comic books (the metanarrative of the superhero) -- like labeling devices so children would know what they were -- and went overboard, labeling even the most obvious and mundane of Batman's equipment. The joke wasn't just on the comic book genre but on the audiences who believed in such things. In fact, Batman was intended to be serious originally, but when executives got cold feet because they thought the whole thing was ridiculous, they went the other direction and made it campy.
Deconstruction is just one element of post modernism, and in fact, there are many different schools of thought about even how to deconstruct a text. Read Derrida or Saussure, for example. Many people in art, films studies, and literature, for example, say we are no longer in the postmodern period but some form of post- postmodern.
In a strange way, this brings me back to NTTD. The Craig Bond films have been deconstructing the Bond character as we knew him. Casino Royale could have gone either way, but it was clear afterward he was no longer the guy that we started with using Connery. It's pretty easy to create metanarratives, too -- such as Bond essentially being a toxic White male who is satirized until his ignominy in NTTD. He ends up with nothing, Blofeld essentially wins since it was his goal to ruin Bond's life, Great Britain nearly brings ruin to the world by creating a horrible new weapon of mass destruction, and the hero commits suicide through a bombing of his own making. Meanwhile, the primary female characters all triumph, including his girlfriend and daughter who appear to inherit everything in a world where the males cause all the trouble.
Only quibble with this is the Bond character didn't start with Connery, even if he did end up directly influencing it, and much labelled deconstruction for Craig is actually application of the source. If I were going down that route I would suggest it's a deconstruction of Britain rather than Bond - though of course the two are forever entwined.
Good point, though I was referencing the Eon films, which to me, established their own version that was reasonably consistent in definition until the Craig era, and really then, more or less through Casino Royale. Even some of the half hearted jabs by M in the Brosnan era are blunted when he proves her wrong.
You'd think, but then some of the reductive attempts to define it missed the forest for the trees. Guess that comes from learning the term in Trivial Pursuit rather than actual study.
Is anyone able to post a photo of the google map-style map shown on the smartphone in Norway, when they discover Nomi (and Ash) is near? I ask for selfish reasons. If I remember the map correctly I live in the area.
I watched the flick today on blu ray. This was my third viewing in total. After the first cinema viewing I gave it 7/10. After the second cinema viewing I tried to ignore the ending and just enjoy the film. I upgraded my score to 8/10. After watching the blu ray today I think I’m going to give it a final score of 7.5/10.
The film has some very good elements particularly Matera, Jamaica and Cuba. Seeing Hammersmith bridge was great as well for personal reasons.
I found today the whole 007 handle thing tedious and the ending is just wrong. Safin and Blofeld were poor. Overall the film had potential and could/should have been much better.
you're not going to go bother Madeleine and Mathilde at their house are you? They may only be make-believe characters, but I think they've had quite enough to deal with already!
Watched NTTD for the third time last night, on DVD this occasion. My Dad was watching with me and he'd not seen it before.
When it finished his only reaction was "Well, that's the end of Daniel Craig." I wasn't sure if this was a positive or a negative statement. He thought the film was at least twenty minutes too long and said if I hadn't had the pause button available to stop and explain aspects of the story [I did this three times] he wouldn't have had a clue what those nanobots were all about. Somewhere in the conversation he said "It's a typical Bond film. Lots of shooting and lots of noise. I thought Daniel Craig was showing his age a lot."
From my POV, watching it a third time hasn't mellowed me towards it. The film is too long, I was really bored by the time the Poison Garden was reached. Including the lengthy climatic fights / gun battles on the island as four separate incidents, I reckon there's only nine action sequences in it, which is only about average for a Bond film, much less though than much shorter films like Moonraker and You Only Live Twice. It simply struggles to hold my interest. Quality isn't winning over quantity either as, the Matera chase aside, the action is dreary and long winded. I kept wishing it was a straight forward mission, perhaps pulling OO7 out of retirement because it was Blofeld; the whole Safin / Madeleine / Mathilde / Bond dynamic is entirely misplaced, slows down the story and unnecessarily complicates it. It is all included to ensure Bond dies. The really interesting section of the story was M's involvement in Heracles and once he's reconciled to Bond that's brushed under the carpet a little too easily.
In Spectre, Mr White says his wife left a long time ago. He says LEFT, not DIED. So I assume he's referring to a second wife [the woman we saw him sat next to at the Opera in QOS] and not Madeleine's mother. I suspect no one thought of this when they wrote the PTS of NTTD however.
It's funny how one's elderly parents can become quite judgemental about Bond actors showing their age. Mum felt Sean Connery was past it in Never Say Never Again (she was roughly the same age herself) and when a trailer for Craig's Quantum of Solace came along and showed his face, she went 'Oh dear!' She was in her late 70s then.
I have only see NTTD once. Honestly, I struggle to face it again, it seems to have no real charm, it's an unhappy Bond. I'd watch it on 4K on a nice new TV as an event, but I still wouldn't want to actually fork out again to see it. Maybe I could arrange for a fan on this site to post me it and I can post it back, at a later date?
I bought the blu ray on release day. I’ve watched the film once and the Jamaica scenes once after that. I’ve not had a burning desire to trouble the blu ray player since.
No, this is not one of my favourite Bond movies and that's putting it mildly. I only watched it twice in the cinema and once at home. This is unprecedented for me with a Bond movie. It would seem that... I don't like this one!
(a) I've never liked Craig as Bond. I acknowledge that he's a good actor, and have been waiting for me to warm to him like I did with Roger Moore (I didn't like his casting at first but grew to love him over the course of his films) but it didn't happen. Doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed his movies, esp CR06 and SF.
(b) This film is weakly plotted (I referred earlier to "gimmicks") and doesn't deliver what I have come to expect from a Bond film.
One trivial point relatively speaking is... it's long. So if you don't like it, it's not like a quick one to sit through. Mind you, same could be said of QoS which Is short but seems like a long film. In some ways, NTTD could be a sequel to that.
@Hardyboy likes this film so I shouldn't quote him in this way but the film reminds me of his thread about TMWTGG, 'Cranky, oh so cranky!' where he explained how so many in the cast - M, Moneypenny and so on - were out of sorts with Bond. Naturally they all seem like a bunch of raving optimists on a stash of MDMAs compared to how Bond gets treated in this film. The only one happy to see Bond is that weird Ash bloke who smiles like a nutter in a slasher movie.
This is all very well if you can buy into the plot but if you can't...
Comments
The brother connection is very deliberately downplayed in NTTD because it was a crap idea. NTTD was doubling down on enough dodgy choices from SPECTRE; 30 seconds about their shared history might have been a bridge too far.
ha! now you're tempting me to debate PostModernism! this'll be less fun than discussing Hitchcock or the Beatles...
PostModernism is basically an architectural style that was adopted into Art Criticism and then into other fields.
In architecture, instead of building yet another out-of-place glass and steel monstrosity, they started adding details that were sort of in the style of the surrounding neighborhood or referenced the history of the site. so a glass and steel monstrosity with an imitation Victorian dormer pasted on top might look slightly less out-of-place. Glass and steel was Modernism, that imitation dormer pasted on top made it PostModern.
Art critics extended this aesthetic to discuss art that incorporated a multiplicity of styles, arguing that also reflected the multiplicity of experiences in the real world. in the 80s, a painting with two or more contrasting styles was more PostModern than one with only one style, and the art teachers. critics and curators at the time valued more PostModern as better than less, so this aesthetic of collaged styles became the dominant trend. Extended also into music and film. Sample based hip-hop was often argued as being inherently PostModern. A filmmaker like Tarantino is very PostModern, especially Kill Bill where each section is in a different filmmaking style, sometimes changing styles abruptly in the same scene.
I've seen this logic extended into marketing (niche marketing: acknowledging there is no one one-size-fits-all market, that selling different products to different niche markets might actually make the seller richer) and even political campaigns (micro-campaigning, different messages to different constituencies: ironically conservative politicians are very good at this)
curses!! my 80s self would be disgusted to know I was still worrying about definitions of PostModernism 35 years later. And no I still cant give a concise definition, but I don't think its the same as Nihilism.
On postmodernism I'd recommend, 'Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction' (OUP, 2002) - by the late Christopher Butler, the most droll and erudite of my old tutors.
"A filmmaker like Tarantino is very PostModern, especially Kill Bill where each section is in a different filmmaking style, sometimes changing styles abruptly in the same scene."
A feature of postmodernism is the idea of undermining narrative.
Although I wouldn't go so far as to call Tarantino postmodern. He's generally far too conventional.
Postmodernism is simply the artistic period after Modernism. It has literally hundreds of different proponents of ideals and theories across dozens of genres of works. To reduce it to a Chinese fortune cookie definition is about as helpful as The Simpsons definition: "Weird for the sake of weird."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0DwRAVJZ4A&ab_channel=Fredrickhyf4
But one clear line of thought in film and literature is deconstruction. Postmodernists often take existing tropes and formulas and deconstruct them, arguing, among other things, that the conscious attempt by an artist to render a thought is also influenced by perhaps unconscious elements the artist may communicate that are in turn perceived by the audience.
So, for example, when White artists render a world where only White people seem to exist (e.g., the TV sitcom Friends, set in NYC, one of the most diverse cities in the U.S. and one where non-Whites outnumber Whites), the artist may believe they are depicting reality. But a postmodernist thinker would realize this is just the reality the artist believes to be true, in this case, one which a White artist who probably doesn't associate with minorities believes is realistic because it's all they know, false as it may be.
Deconstructing the text -- that is, taking it apart and looking at how the pieces fit together in other ways -- can yield new, equally valid interpretations, such as metanarratives (defined in most cases as a kind of overarching narrative and in others as a new story based on the same elements and their presentation). Thus, the work of art is no longer what the artist may have intended but instead the story of a racist artist who yearns to live in a world where minorities don't exist.
When enough deconstruction occurs, it can reach the public consciousness, to the degree that it may be possible to create texts that lampoon this sensibility in clever, self-referential ways. The TV show Batman was precisely that. It used camp -- purposeful exaggeration of something's poor taste or execution -- to make fun of both comic books and the people who believe in them. They did so by deconstructing Batman, not merely as a hero, but the sort of exaggerated do-gooder that was beyond the pale. They poked fun at conventions in the comic books (the metanarrative of the superhero) -- like labeling devices so children would know what they were -- and went overboard, labeling even the most obvious and mundane of Batman's equipment. The joke wasn't just on the comic book genre but on the audiences who believed in such things. In fact, Batman was intended to be serious originally, but when executives got cold feet because they thought the whole thing was ridiculous, they went the other direction and made it campy.
Deconstruction is just one element of post modernism, and in fact, there are many different schools of thought about even how to deconstruct a text. Read Derrida or Saussure, for example. Many people in art, films studies, and literature, for example, say we are no longer in the postmodern period but some form of post- postmodern.
In a strange way, this brings me back to NTTD. The Craig Bond films have been deconstructing the Bond character as we knew him. Casino Royale could have gone either way, but it was clear afterward he was no longer the guy that we started with using Connery. It's pretty easy to create metanarratives, too -- such as Bond essentially being a toxic White male who is satirized until his ignominy in NTTD. He ends up with nothing, Blofeld essentially wins since it was his goal to ruin Bond's life, Great Britain nearly brings ruin to the world by creating a horrible new weapon of mass destruction, and the hero commits suicide through a bombing of his own making. Meanwhile, the primary female characters all triumph, including his girlfriend and daughter who appear to inherit everything in a world where the males cause all the trouble.
Only quibble with this is the Bond character didn't start with Connery, even if he did end up directly influencing it, and much labelled deconstruction for Craig is actually application of the source. If I were going down that route I would suggest it's a deconstruction of Britain rather than Bond - though of course the two are forever entwined.
Good point, though I was referencing the Eon films, which to me, established their own version that was reasonably consistent in definition until the Craig era, and really then, more or less through Casino Royale. Even some of the half hearted jabs by M in the Brosnan era are blunted when he proves her wrong.
What an amazing post, sir!!!
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
😎
"Postmodernism is simply the artistic period after Modernism."
Yeah, the name sort of tips it off, doesn't it?
You'd think, but then some of the reductive attempts to define it missed the forest for the trees. Guess that comes from learning the term in Trivial Pursuit rather than actual study.
Is anyone able to post a photo of the google map-style map shown on the smartphone in Norway, when they discover Nomi (and Ash) is near? I ask for selfish reasons. If I remember the map correctly I live in the area.
I watched the flick today on blu ray. This was my third viewing in total. After the first cinema viewing I gave it 7/10. After the second cinema viewing I tried to ignore the ending and just enjoy the film. I upgraded my score to 8/10. After watching the blu ray today I think I’m going to give it a final score of 7.5/10.
The film has some very good elements particularly Matera, Jamaica and Cuba. Seeing Hammersmith bridge was great as well for personal reasons.
I found today the whole 007 handle thing tedious and the ending is just wrong. Safin and Blofeld were poor. Overall the film had potential and could/should have been much better.
you're not going to go bother Madeleine and Mathilde at their house are you? They may only be make-believe characters, but I think they've had quite enough to deal with already!
Yes. It's an invasion of privacy isn't it? I'd better ask the NSA or GCHQ!
Thanks! I'd say the red dot is near the Atlantic Road. I seem to remember Bond zoomer the map too.
Watched NTTD for the third time last night, on DVD this occasion. My Dad was watching with me and he'd not seen it before.
When it finished his only reaction was "Well, that's the end of Daniel Craig." I wasn't sure if this was a positive or a negative statement. He thought the film was at least twenty minutes too long and said if I hadn't had the pause button available to stop and explain aspects of the story [I did this three times] he wouldn't have had a clue what those nanobots were all about. Somewhere in the conversation he said "It's a typical Bond film. Lots of shooting and lots of noise. I thought Daniel Craig was showing his age a lot."
From my POV, watching it a third time hasn't mellowed me towards it. The film is too long, I was really bored by the time the Poison Garden was reached. Including the lengthy climatic fights / gun battles on the island as four separate incidents, I reckon there's only nine action sequences in it, which is only about average for a Bond film, much less though than much shorter films like Moonraker and You Only Live Twice. It simply struggles to hold my interest. Quality isn't winning over quantity either as, the Matera chase aside, the action is dreary and long winded. I kept wishing it was a straight forward mission, perhaps pulling OO7 out of retirement because it was Blofeld; the whole Safin / Madeleine / Mathilde / Bond dynamic is entirely misplaced, slows down the story and unnecessarily complicates it. It is all included to ensure Bond dies. The really interesting section of the story was M's involvement in Heracles and once he's reconciled to Bond that's brushed under the carpet a little too easily.
In Spectre, Mr White says his wife left a long time ago. He says LEFT, not DIED. So I assume he's referring to a second wife [the woman we saw him sat next to at the Opera in QOS] and not Madeleine's mother. I suspect no one thought of this when they wrote the PTS of NTTD however.
It's funny how one's elderly parents can become quite judgemental about Bond actors showing their age. Mum felt Sean Connery was past it in Never Say Never Again (she was roughly the same age herself) and when a trailer for Craig's Quantum of Solace came along and showed his face, she went 'Oh dear!' She was in her late 70s then.
I have only see NTTD once. Honestly, I struggle to face it again, it seems to have no real charm, it's an unhappy Bond. I'd watch it on 4K on a nice new TV as an event, but I still wouldn't want to actually fork out again to see it. Maybe I could arrange for a fan on this site to post me it and I can post it back, at a later date?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Absolutely agree. The end meant I’d not happy to watch again. Goes against everything written about Bond
I bought the blu ray on release day. I’ve watched the film once and the Jamaica scenes once after that. I’ve not had a burning desire to trouble the blu ray player since.
I'm with ichaice. After I bought the film I've only watched it through once, which is unheard of for me with Bond movies.
Me too. I can’t imagine me watching the Safin Island scenes again.
The ending of it means I’m not keen to watch it again, which is a pity as other parts of the movie are great
Moderator by name, moderate in nature 🤣
I saw NTTD 8 times in the cinema…it would have been more but I was waiting for friends to find time 👀🤣
No, this is not one of my favourite Bond movies and that's putting it mildly. I only watched it twice in the cinema and once at home. This is unprecedented for me with a Bond movie. It would seem that... I don't like this one!
(a) I've never liked Craig as Bond. I acknowledge that he's a good actor, and have been waiting for me to warm to him like I did with Roger Moore (I didn't like his casting at first but grew to love him over the course of his films) but it didn't happen. Doesn't mean I haven't enjoyed his movies, esp CR06 and SF.
(b) This film is weakly plotted (I referred earlier to "gimmicks") and doesn't deliver what I have come to expect from a Bond film.
(c) The ending.
Agreed. Twice in the cinema and once at home for me too. I had planned 6 to 8 times in the cinema and only went twice as had it booked
(d) The music. Recycling earlier themes doesn't make it a good score.
Edit: It makes it rely on emotional resonances achieved by earlier better films.
One trivial point relatively speaking is... it's long. So if you don't like it, it's not like a quick one to sit through. Mind you, same could be said of QoS which Is short but seems like a long film. In some ways, NTTD could be a sequel to that.
@Hardyboy likes this film so I shouldn't quote him in this way but the film reminds me of his thread about TMWTGG, 'Cranky, oh so cranky!' where he explained how so many in the cast - M, Moneypenny and so on - were out of sorts with Bond. Naturally they all seem like a bunch of raving optimists on a stash of MDMAs compared to how Bond gets treated in this film. The only one happy to see Bond is that weird Ash bloke who smiles like a nutter in a slasher movie.
This is all very well if you can buy into the plot but if you can't...
Roger Moore 1927-2017