What MUST Daniel change in Skyfall to make his Bond complete?
Halcon
Zen TemplePosts: 487MI6 Agent
Hello gentlemen, and ladies...
perhaps he doesnt need to change anything in your opinion...
but much as i enjoy his take on Bond, i feel that Daniel MUST incorporate Bond's sophistication (refinement, class, style, sublety...etc) into the role.
he's ignored it purposely or he hasnt been able to make this layer of Bond rise when necessary (understandable in CR, but not so much in QOS).
whay say you fine folks??
perhaps he doesnt need to change anything in your opinion...
but much as i enjoy his take on Bond, i feel that Daniel MUST incorporate Bond's sophistication (refinement, class, style, sublety...etc) into the role.
he's ignored it purposely or he hasnt been able to make this layer of Bond rise when necessary (understandable in CR, but not so much in QOS).
whay say you fine folks??
Comments
I think its a little unfair to say Bond shows no refinement in CR, he is beginning to explore that side of life now he is exposed to it! Vesper gives him a bit of a kick up up the casino chips in the process. Note how the new 007 revels in his tailored dinner suit once he has it on, and loves the booze and food as he explores them in the relevant scenes. He is the character we know at the end of CR. - QoS made a hosh of it, due to a flim-flam storyline and an unbalanced slam from character scene, action scene, character scene, action scene narrative yo-yo.
I will wait to see what SF is like, but I am cautiously hopeful it will tick the right boxes.
Bond is essentially a foodie who likes some expensive things: clothes, watches, cars, etc. That definition could apply to countless nouveau riche posers. Granted, Bond's taste in material possessions is above average, but I don't really think that makes him sophisticated. I have seen plenty of clods in high-end cars wearing Rolexes. Not to say Bond is a clod. One area in which Bond truly stands out is that he conducts himself with dignity and good manners, which is not something I could say about many people in the crude times we live in. And I think Daniel Craig has been perfectly fine in showing this aspect of Bond's character. Consider the scene in QoS with Greene at the party. I thought this was handled very well, especially "My friends call me Dominic"… "I'm sure they do". Nice bit of subtle menace there..
As a point of comparison, examples of fictional spies I would consider sophisticated include Harry Palmer, John Drake, and Quiller.
A Gent in Training.... A blog about my continuing efforts to be improve myself, be a better person, and lead a good life. It incorporates such far flung topics as fitness, self defense, music, style, food and drink, and personal philosophy.
Agent In Training
well...
i cant quite see it, of course i dont expect it in CR, what with Bond being all 'brutish' and such...in fact, Craig's take on refinement in CR is dead on imo (his taste being unrefined) and Vesper (...i still lose my breath at the sound of her name...incredible job by Eva) really is the sophisticated layer in Bond for this film.
as for QOS...there were hints...but Daniel again struggled with them purposely or not (the french villian whose name i forget on the other hand oozes class and refinement even in his garish short sleeve get-up in the end!)
i find interesting that when Daniel smiles he seems very refined, therefore the early scene in which he opens the trunk and tells White "its time to get out" is by far his most refined moment so far.
my interpretation - Bond's ignorance in art, literature etc. doesnt detract from his classiness or refinement. its true that Flemming imo makes it a point to describe Bond as becoming agitated and impatient with those above the 'bourgeois' as they are described as self involved and protected from the harsh realities of the underworld.
i agree with your take on Bond's manner making him sophisticated (more so than his knowledge of art), the way he carries himself. its one of the great contrasts of the character - a spy who must fade into the background yet carries himself as a king.
In QOS, there are scenes in which Bond is meant to look unrefined, (the Mathis in dumpster scene for ex.) but in others Craig fails to exude a certain charisma
(take the scene in which Bond and agent Fields walk into their hotel room. a scene in which Craig should of elicited comparisons to a sleek black panther owning his territory, and instead he barrells into it room to room with all the sleekness of a gorilla, grunting as he went).
I agree completely. It's almost entirely an invention of the films. In fact, Fleming seemed to go out of his way at times to make sure that Bond *wasn't* portrayed as sophisticated or snobbish.
It was always the villains in the novels that were educated and erudite, surrounding themselves with wealth and expensive items, and Bond was portrayed as pedestrian in contrast. The pitfall of snobbery was even a major theme in OHMSS.
In the short story 'The Living Daylights', it is the irritating Saunders/Sanders (they have slightly different names in the book/film for some reason) who was the erudite one, able to name the classical songs that are being played by the orchestra. In the movie, they inverted this to make Bond the sophisticated one and Saunders the pedestrian ('It's a Stradivarius; they all have names.') Meanwhile, Bond is depicted as reading a raunchy German pulp dime novel on the flight to his mission.
Then you have the trip to Shrublands in Thunderball - during the trip there, the cabby assumes he's a snob (because of the destination), until Bond changes his mind with talk about Brighton auto racing and prostitutes!
Not to mention the fact that many of Bond's favored items weren't the outrageous status symbols they are now today. His first Bentley was a previously wrecked pre-war antique that had a plain hexagonal bolt where the hood ornament used to be, which he converted to a two-seater and had an aftermarket supercharger attached.
No, I don't think the Bond of the novels was 'sophisticated', at all. He was a rough man who didn't like sitting in comfortable furniture (Quantum of Solace short story). He is, however, a man who knows what he likes, and has strong preferences of his own. He has confidence when ordering food and drink, and has clear opinions on things like Pinaud shampoo and shoelaces and tea (which is mud in his opinion).
Bond as a 'sophisticate' is one of the things that bugs me the most about the films. I watched OHMSS last night and groaned out loud at Lazenby's, 'Mmm, Beluga caviar. North of the Caspian!' (not to mention all his ridiculous frilly outfits). The switcheroo between Saunders and Bond in TLD annoys me because it's the exact opposite of Fleming's portrayal in that story.
The most annoying thing, though, is how the films make Bond an expert at everything - another groaner from OHMSS was when Lazenby walks into M's study and randomly remarks on one of M's prized butterflies by its Latin scientific name. Come on, give me a break...
And then there's all the scenes in which every hotel manager and restauranteur and tailor around the world knows him by name and treats him like he's the most important guest they've ever had, and his reputation for martinis is known by his villains before he meets them... psh.
Anyway, as a huge fan of the novels first, I think Craig's portrayal is just fine. I can see how someone who is a fan of the movies first might see him as too unrefined, though.
I agree with much of what you wrote, and I think you've summed up some of the reasons Daniel Craig's Bond is closer to Fleming's vision than many acknowledge.
I do feel compelled to note that I have no problem with sophisticated heroes. I'm a big fan of the fictional spies I mentioned earlier—Harry Palmer, John Drake, and Quiller—all of whom are quite sophisticated. That's part of why I like them.
On a personal level, I am not much like Fleming's Bond when it comes to tastes. I love art, music, and literature. I probably would be like the literary Saunders, recognizing each piece of classical music, or at least trying to.
A Gent in Training.... A blog about my continuing efforts to be improve myself, be a better person, and lead a good life. It incorporates such far flung topics as fitness, self defense, music, style, food and drink, and personal philosophy.
Agent In Training
The same goes for me. After all, my handle here is named for one of the villains.
But I think the literary Bond's relative lack of sophistication is one of the things that made him easy to relate to.
The brillant invention of Fleming was to make an anti-hero an epic hero. I don't think Hollywood knew what to do with Fleming's chain-smoking, womanizing, semi-alcoholic, inveterate gambler, so they turned him into another version of the English Gentlemen Adventurer along the lines of Simon Templar, Richard Hannay, Raffles, Bulldog Drummond, Dennis Nayland Smith, etc. This was a stereotype that was tired and worn out before WWII.
Tired and worn out stereotype for sure......but then in a stroke of genius Harry and Cubby cast a relatively unknown Scottish C-list actor named Sean Connery and the English Gentleman Adventurer now has a very believable dark side as a cold blooded assassin and blunt instrument and pioneered a jarring change to what was "acceptable" behavior on the part of the "hero/good guy" in action/adventure films. When Connery put two in the spine of Professor Dent in "Dr. No" it was the beginning of the end of the age of innocence to the depiction of violence in mainstream films.
I also think Bond should use more cunning and less brute force. I groaned when Bond broke the handle on the door in the QoS. He should simply have found an "Out of order" sign and hung it on the dor.
Well, I certainly think that' what the film maker intended with CR, the making of Bond.... but made a total bollocks of it.
As I've pointed out numerous times elsewhere, the suit changing crap fails totally; Vesper trades him a Brioni tux... in place of his Brioni tux!!!! **** ludicrous! The guy's been clad head to toe in Brioni with none-to-cheap John Lobb shoes since she met him! He wears a four grand Armani leather jacket, for Christsake, carries an Amex Centurion black card. Knows his poncy cocktail recipe
None of this becoming Bond stuff works. EON's attempt to take Bond down a class fails totally to convince. Very poor story telling. He's Bond already.
These are schools of the social elite, the upper classes. The privileged and the the VERY wealthy.
No, James Bond is a very "sophisticated" person, though I agree he may not been particularly high-brow, artistic or intellectual.
Unfortunately that version of Bond (which, I would suggest was already a watered down version of the literary Bond) didn't last long.
Good point.....but it did last at least through the first four Connery films and paved the way for the modern cinematic action hero.
The cinematic Bond, even as portrayed by Connery was never really an anti-hero. Connery's Bond and those who followed (with the exception being Dalton in LTK) were company men who loyally served Queen and Country. It's just that there was a hero who was hedonistic, having lots of sex with lots of women, and who killed his enemies in a very cruel and sometimes sadistic fashion followed by some very dark but humorous comments which suggested that he rather enjoyed it (which is very unlike the literary Bond).
Well, you can thank product placement for all of that. I'm sure the script didn't call for two Brioni tuxedos specifically. I imagine the screenwriters envisioned him as being less well-dressed for the first part of the film (as indicated by the dialogue/tux switcheroo), but then the marketers came along and shoveled in the fancy clothes and pretty much destroyed what they were going for there.
As for his cocktail recipe, that IS from the book which the movie is an adaptation of...
And surround himself with likeable actors, that's the thing about Craig, there is a hollowness to him, like Grant, so he needs buzzy folk around him to make a contrast. When Hugh Grant has to carry a film by himself it's a fail, but when there are others he's good a bouncing off them. Craig is a bit the same.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Yeah, sure the recipe is from Fleming.
But as the film of CR is attempting to promote an image of James Bond that was never in Fleming - ignorant, uncouth, entering a 'new' environment - it, the sophisticated knowledgeability of the drink, might have been best left out.
Bit like JB dressing in rags before Vesper changed him...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
He had a knowledge of the criminal mind and the mannerisms of the criminal. Outside of living like there was no tomorrow, his tastes were not necessarily refined or polished, just extreme.
Knowing that this will spark criticism from the readership (which is good and healthy), Sean Connery brought an originality to the character of James Bond, and being the relative first, had that advantage. George Lazenby brought a new perspective on the character that, by YOLT brought a touch of the Flemming character back to the screen. Timothy Dalton added an original perspective that captured some of Flemming's character. Although I enjoy all renditions of the Bond character in cinema, Roger Moore was little more than THE SAINT as James Bond and Pierce Brosnan brought a combination of REMINGTON STEELE and unbridled arrogance to the screen.
Unless the Bond franchise would have taken a different course and made a motion picture noire, set in the 50s or 60s and maybe filmed in black and white, Bond needs to remain somewhat contemporary and that requires his film "rebirth" once or twice in a generation. The trick is to remain contemporary and yet capture the essence that Flemming intended.
The world, as we have witnessed, has grown less refined. It is more fast paced, gritty, violent, with less time for the niceties of a more gentrified existence. As the leaders of the world in government, business, and every walk of life increase the policy of "Deceive, Inveigle and Obfuscate", Daniel Craig well reflects a covert warrior without the benefit of needing to demonstrate the superiority of one culture or politic over another. Good and evil are too vague with a fuzzy line between right and wrong in the modern world. If Flemming's Bond were to conduct his trade in the modern world, yet remain as much of a Tory as possible, I think he would resemble strongly the character of James Bond as portrayed by Daniel Craig.
but yes i would have fallen out of my seat laughing...
yes these are very good points...one would think that the Bond movies are made for the Bond fans but the 'comtemporary-izing' of Bond is cleary for the current audience.
as others have posted here, since there is a progressive vanishment of the classy, elegant and measured, it is understandable that Craig's films would show it less and less as well.
Even if the particular example is questioned, I think the point being made stands as Bond is fit, well trained & tenacious. He is not however a hulking superman, he often wins by smarts and cunning. This element has been missing in Craig's Bond to date, and a number of contributors to this and other sites have suggested it would be a welcome return to have Bond face a superior foe (Oddjob, Red Grant, huge Sumo wrestler from YOLT etc) and to see him really pushed beyond his limits to the point where he has to dig deep to mentally outwit his opponent. I have only felt CraigBond to be in real physical danger in the stairwell confrontation. Mostly it's been a continuous 'block-slap- block -slap Bourneathon' to date. Very nicely done to be sure, but lacking in tension for me. I think that DC could do a very good job of bringing this off like Connerry used to do by showing us his thought processes in a tight spot.
not 'necessarily' or not??
agree completely...