Things I would have done differently...
darenhat
The Old PuebloPosts: 2,029Quartermasters
This is simply a list of things that I felt could have been done better in CR. I know many think that the film is perfect, which is understandable, but I had many expectations which were never met. I suppose this thread is for people to post the things they think could have strengthened CR or maybe expected to see in CR. There are no right or wrong ideas...just the things that you think would have made CR a better film.
My list:
The gunbarrel...I don’t mind it being at the end of the PTS, but would it have hurt to have been similar to the gunbarrel we’re accustome to? The same style has been used, with slight differences, for five actors...it shouldn’t change.
Bond’s Licence to Kill...Let’s see what makes it a challenge to become a 00. M stated that any thug could kill...so why is the 00 section not rife with thugs? Bond’s two kills should have been highly-challenging and intelligent kills. If the point of the PTS was to show Bond was not a honed instrument, then we need to see how much more he is sharpened by the end of the film. Shooting a man in the leg at the end of the film is no different than shooting a man in a chair at the beginning.
A new M. If the audience can adjust to seeing a new Bond for over two hours, surely we can adjust to seeing a new M for ten minutes. If this a newly conceptualized character, why bring trappings of Pierce Brosnan into it? It wasn’t hard to swallow a change of both M and Bond for GE, why would CR be any different? This was a chance for a completely fresh take, sullied by a ‘relic of the Brosnan era’.
A ‘real’ character arc...show us how Bond is different at the end of the movie. We’ve seen Bond tortured in TWINE, we’ve seen Bond lose a love in OHMSS, we’ve seen Bond resign in LTK, we’ve seen Bond be betrayed in DAD. Why is it different this time? I know the film is supposed to take place before the others, but the issues need to have more impact portrayed on screen and not on what the filmmakers assume the audience is thinking. Bond’s resignation had no impact for me, becuase as far as I knew he just joined the Secret Service. He didn’t seem well liked, and we never got a chance to feel that there was any ‘bond’ between him and his job. I felt it would have been great if somehow, after the torture, we get the impression that M never really followed up on his convalescence...an air of uncaring attitude perhaps displayed in a phony sentiment like the delivery of some anemic flowers...something like that would make a life with Vesper much more alluring than a life in the service where Bond’s breath and limb seem so easily dismissed. A clear moment that defines what Bond is choosiing when he leaves the service would make Vesper’s betrayal so much more painful. At that point we know Bond would be choosing a life of possible physical pain over a future possibly fraught with emotional pain.
A moment after Vesper’s betrayal where Bond seems beaten, and the villian seems unstoppable...
Since Le Chiffre was already dead, the story could have been helped if there was still a looming threat leaving Bond to face either failure brought about by his damaged emotional state, or a chance to rise above the depression and defeat the villian as his evil dreams are about to come to fruition...thus giving Bond a ‘double’ victory...one over the baddie and one over his own personal demons.
No traitorous Mathis...I felt Bond, just like in the book, should lose at the gambling table because of his own hubris and miscalculation...not because Mathis ratted him out. This was a moment for Bond’s character to shine...an ability to overcome one’s faults is much more laudable than the ability to blame someone else for your problems.
And lastly, don’t be shy about the Bond theme! It’s good - use it...the free-running sequence was awesome and could have been better with Monty Norman’s classic tune sprinkled within! Saving the music for the end only made the last scene ridiculously ant-climactic for me.
My list:
The gunbarrel...I don’t mind it being at the end of the PTS, but would it have hurt to have been similar to the gunbarrel we’re accustome to? The same style has been used, with slight differences, for five actors...it shouldn’t change.
Bond’s Licence to Kill...Let’s see what makes it a challenge to become a 00. M stated that any thug could kill...so why is the 00 section not rife with thugs? Bond’s two kills should have been highly-challenging and intelligent kills. If the point of the PTS was to show Bond was not a honed instrument, then we need to see how much more he is sharpened by the end of the film. Shooting a man in the leg at the end of the film is no different than shooting a man in a chair at the beginning.
A new M. If the audience can adjust to seeing a new Bond for over two hours, surely we can adjust to seeing a new M for ten minutes. If this a newly conceptualized character, why bring trappings of Pierce Brosnan into it? It wasn’t hard to swallow a change of both M and Bond for GE, why would CR be any different? This was a chance for a completely fresh take, sullied by a ‘relic of the Brosnan era’.
A ‘real’ character arc...show us how Bond is different at the end of the movie. We’ve seen Bond tortured in TWINE, we’ve seen Bond lose a love in OHMSS, we’ve seen Bond resign in LTK, we’ve seen Bond be betrayed in DAD. Why is it different this time? I know the film is supposed to take place before the others, but the issues need to have more impact portrayed on screen and not on what the filmmakers assume the audience is thinking. Bond’s resignation had no impact for me, becuase as far as I knew he just joined the Secret Service. He didn’t seem well liked, and we never got a chance to feel that there was any ‘bond’ between him and his job. I felt it would have been great if somehow, after the torture, we get the impression that M never really followed up on his convalescence...an air of uncaring attitude perhaps displayed in a phony sentiment like the delivery of some anemic flowers...something like that would make a life with Vesper much more alluring than a life in the service where Bond’s breath and limb seem so easily dismissed. A clear moment that defines what Bond is choosiing when he leaves the service would make Vesper’s betrayal so much more painful. At that point we know Bond would be choosing a life of possible physical pain over a future possibly fraught with emotional pain.
A moment after Vesper’s betrayal where Bond seems beaten, and the villian seems unstoppable...
Since Le Chiffre was already dead, the story could have been helped if there was still a looming threat leaving Bond to face either failure brought about by his damaged emotional state, or a chance to rise above the depression and defeat the villian as his evil dreams are about to come to fruition...thus giving Bond a ‘double’ victory...one over the baddie and one over his own personal demons.
No traitorous Mathis...I felt Bond, just like in the book, should lose at the gambling table because of his own hubris and miscalculation...not because Mathis ratted him out. This was a moment for Bond’s character to shine...an ability to overcome one’s faults is much more laudable than the ability to blame someone else for your problems.
And lastly, don’t be shy about the Bond theme! It’s good - use it...the free-running sequence was awesome and could have been better with Monty Norman’s classic tune sprinkled within! Saving the music for the end only made the last scene ridiculously ant-climactic for me.
Comments
I also didn't like the whole bit about Bond breaking into M's apartment. I think she would've canned his arse for that. Can't imagine the literary Bond doing something so stupid, or Connery's, etc.
Other than those bits, I felt the movie was absolutely fantastic.
-Roger Moore
e to his own organization, and the whole scene seemed to be a stretch. In their quest to make Bond seem a badass, Campbell and the writers over-reached, just as they did in the "misogynist dinosaur" bit 11 years earlier, when they felt the need to make another kind of statement.
Agreed. I was surprised that Bond still had a head (or at least a job) after the embassy incident. This would have 'the final straw' IMO.
Great guys; M fires Bond 10 minutes into the film. I'd barely nicked my popcorn by then.
I thought the break in made sense (insofar as anything really makes sense in a Bond film) in that Bond needed information from an MI6 computer. I would imagine he was laying low after the embassy and M's home was easier to break into than MI6.
And of course, the literary Bond or Connery's Bond most certainly would have done the same thing: if their respective writers had chosen to write it that way. Shall we enumerate the list of unlikely events/decisions, etc ... described by Fleming and Connery's Bond writers? It's a pretty long list. For example: How many supersecret installations/headquarters for megalomaniacs guarded by the entire extras population of Hollywood has Bond broken into and survived? I would think the MI-6 chief's apartment would be a lead-pipe cinch.
Besides, the break-in was in fact the "first straw," wasn't it?
These were events that occurred 'later' in Bond's career, though. By this time, it seemed as if M and Bond had cemented a strong relationship. The relationship Craig and Dench had at that point was at a much different stage.
Maybe it should be looked at as he was going somewhere safe and even a rebuke from M was still the human contact he was seeking after just obtaining 00 status and nearly buggering it all up?
The fact that he plays Poker and not Bacarrat. His Aston Martin is a left drive not right. That he fell in love so fast. The brake in to M's house was a hard swollow but could happen. The liking of Vespa's fingers in the shower and him changing shirts very five minutes of the movie were kind of hard to belive.
Fiona: But of course, I forgot your ego, Mr. Bond. James Bond, who only has to make love to a woman and she starts to hear heavenly choirs singing.
They should also have let the last line in the book be the last line in that telephone conversation.
I felt the line was kinda diluted by the rest of the conversation, almost too casual...kinda of like: "You know Vesper?...Yeah, the b*tch? Well, she's dead."
I might agree if, like the novel, that was the end of the story. But we know that it continues with the Mr. White coda and in Bond 22, so I can't really fault them for that. Besides, he still had to say the line or a lot of people would have had a fit.
Villers could have easily been Moneypenny and Q could have instructed Bond on how to use the defibrillator, fight the poison, etc. The absence of these classic characters was completely unneccessary. Putting them in would have made Casino Royale seem more like a traditional Bond film and thus increased my enjoyment of the picture.
-Roger Moore
I also would not have fleshed out the lack of high-octane action in the movie, in the way the writers did in CR. The two action set-pieces preceding Bond at the Casino were nice and entertaining, but they were clearly there to overcompensate and make up the numbers on the action. They were not needed, and I feel they were more a result of the writers and directors being afraid to strip back Bond too much. The fight on the stairwell and the moments thereafter of Bond confronting himself in the mirror, were perfect of how the novel should have been fleshed out with doses of actions all the way through the movie: less grandiose, more down in the dirt. The fight on the stairwell, Vespers shock, Bond's shaken confrontation in the mirror, all told us important things about the characters aswell. Rather than packing the first half hour full of Brosnan-esque set pieces, the time could have been better spent with more time showing Bond achieving Double-00 status, or generally fleshing out the character of Bond, and why he does what he does. If need be, cut down the length of the movie.
Use non linear narrative. Open with Bond in a Casino, same as in the book, and use flashbacks and a disjointed narrative in order to show who Bond is; he's first two kills that earned him double-00 status etc. It's never really been done before in a Bond movie, and could work well.
If the defibrillator scene is the best idea Eon & co can come up with as their alternative to Moneypenny and Q, then I agree their absence was completely unnecessary. If anything, it was the defibrillator scene that should have been absent from Casino Royale.
Fleming's Bond was a creature of the Cold War, to the bone. The films took that definition from him for the most part from the get-go, I rather like how CR re-introduced a context as topical and vital as terrorism to Bond, it seems to fit nicely. Hopefully we'll get into more of the Organization in the next film, which already has a very SPECTRE-like feel to me (maybe that's projecting, I dunno, just feels cool and very very Bond
The point is the presence of Q and Moneypenney wasn't necessary. There are at least 18 films in which aficinados can watch them play the same scene over and over. That ought to be enough for anybody.
I'm with you on the first two action set pieces, spectacular as they were, and your ideas for Bond(Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing TSWLM done like the book, with Bond appearing late in the movie). But I really don't think the audience would have cottoned to "Bond a la Bergman" art film, with non-linear narrative and other flourishes. Some folks are going nuts trying to figure out how CR fits into the "chronology" of the other films.
I agree with you, blueman. Bond has always been a product of his particular time. The irony is that Bond of the books was a Cold War agent, but in the films, he spent a large portion of time battling a terrorist organization. Currently, the trend is to bring Bond back to his literary roots, but without that Cold War facet. Today's literary Bond is close to becoming very much the cinematic Bond that fought SPECTRE.
Thanks. Of course I don't mean that the time line would be entirely fragmented; perhaps I didn't explain it well. Basically, I would have opened the movie with Bond in the casino, just like in the book, and then after the pre-title sequence, I would adapt the chapter 'Dossier for M' so that as well as informing us about the mission, and thus the movies plot, it would serve as a way to go back to Bond's past and show us more detailed scenario's of how he became a double-0 etc. After those scenes, which wouldn't take up half hour of the movie to be sure, we would jump into a straightforward narrative again.
Like I say, I would have no problem with that. In fact in my review I said the movie could have started with Bond on the train -- with some sort of scene explaining what he was doing there, of course -- and I would have been perfectly happy. Of course, I like your idea even better because it's even more like the book. In fact, they might have canned the set pieces for the dossier idea and simply elaborated on the two 00 kills that are already shown. It might also have been nice to see an example of the terrorism, but Eon, probably wisely, steered clear of that. (On the other hand, if terrorism is going to be this Bond's big nemesis, the moviemakers are going to have to face it sooner or later and show us some: they can't rely on recent events in the U.S., Britain and Spain forever).
Having said that, I'm not sure most Bond geeks and even today's more casual fans would have been satisfied without some really elaborate "action" sequences. I'm not a huge fan of the action genre, but I have to admit I enjoyed those two sequences, even though I agree they were a bit superfluous.
Like I say, I would have no problem with that. In fact in my review I said the movie could have started with Bond on the train -- with some sort of scene explaining what he was doing there, of course -- and I would have been perfectly happy. Of course, I like your idea even better because it's even more like the book. In fact, they might have canned the set pieces for the dossier idea and simply elaborated on the two 00 kills that are already shown. It might also have been nice to see an example of the terrorism, but Eon, probably wisely, steered clear of that. (On the other hand, if terrorism is going to be this Bond's big nemesis, the moviemakers are going to have to face it sooner or later and show us some: they can't rely on recent events in the U.S., Britain and Spain forever).
Having said that, I'm not sure most Bond geeks and even today's more casual fans would have been satisfied without some really elaborate "action" sequences. I'm not a huge fan of the action genre, but I have to admit I enjoyed those two sequences, even though I agree they were a bit superfluous.
As to what #22 will bring...well, that's the question, isn't it? I think it remains to be seen whether the overall tone of CR is a 'novelty' or not. I certainly think you can 'up' the action quotient, if it must be done, without losing the fundamental non-silliness of the piece. And the movie-going audience certainly seems to be responding well thus far. If #22 retains the basic 'New' Formula (darker, more serious) whilst incorporating bits and pieces of the Precious Classic Formula---i.e., Q and Moneypenny---and the script is good, I think the chances of success are pretty good. Craig is Bond, however, for the foreseeable future, and I'm actually really happy about that
However, if a totally unflappable, superhuman Bond is the 'meat'---and groaner one-liners the 'potatoes'---perhaps I'll try the seafood platter
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM