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petroniaI figured, worst case scenario: this'll err on the side of forgettably fluffy, possibly lacking in coherency, but still enjoyable. What happened was that by the second half, I started fighting the film so hard on the premises it was selling me that I couldn't stay immersed in what was happening onscreen. Turns out it's possible to fuck up the characterization in a James Bond film. WHO KNEW? Not me -- for the record, I saw every "modern" one (i.e. with Judy Dench as M) in the theatre from Goldeneye on down, and 80% of the older ones on home video. I have watched Octopussy. I have watched A View To A Kill. What I'm saying is, it's not that I haven't given the series critical thought -- I gave it tons, circa Casino Royale -- merely that I had no idea characterization could be a dealbreaker in this context. But somehow they managed it.
Actually, it felt like an attempt not only to reboot the Craig era, but right back past the Brosnan era. Who ordered that? Was that even supposed to be on the menu?? If I wanted a more realistic old-school MI6 I could, er, watch TTSS again.For the ninth time.
Javier Bardem was excellent, though. All the actors were maybe a bit too good for this script. ...It's not a mediocre film, is the thing: the cinematography is brilliant, way above pay grade for an action flick, and locally speaking there are scenes and setups that come off well. Even the characterization issues, to be generous, were the result of going out on the right limb; but the branch broke and the analogy with it, and all involved tumbled down the cliff of NOPE.gif. Kind of like Prometheus, maybe. Or Iron Man 2: at one point I literally thought, "oh no this is just like how IM2 managed this really complex balancing act, then halfway through it starts unravelling BEFORE YOUR EYES."
Actually, it felt like an attempt not only to reboot the Craig era, but right back past the Brosnan era. Who ordered that? Was that even supposed to be on the menu?? If I wanted a more realistic old-school MI6 I could, er, watch TTSS again.
Javier Bardem was excellent, though. All the actors were maybe a bit too good for this script. ...It's not a mediocre film, is the thing: the cinematography is brilliant, way above pay grade for an action flick, and locally speaking there are scenes and setups that come off well. Even the characterization issues, to be generous, were the result of going out on the right limb; but the branch broke and the analogy with it, and all involved tumbled down the cliff of NOPE.gif. Kind of like Prometheus, maybe. Or Iron Man 2: at one point I literally thought, "oh no this is just like how IM2 managed this really complex balancing act, then halfway through it starts unravelling BEFORE YOUR EYES."
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Date: 2012-11-12 09:01 am (UTC)i liked the film and had a "forgettably fluffy" experience watching it myself! tbh though once i got to javier bardem i just sort of shelved all other concerns and watched for him haha
although his character was probably too compelling to me, i kept wondering why bond didn't just defect lol, idk i guess the message at the end of the film is "bond, james bond. mi6's super effective and super loyal dumb killer assassin spy dog." ???? idk i... guess i can go with that.
(also bond secretly wolverine or something bc mysteriously heals up to normal bond levels of superhuman badassery mid-movie with basically no explanation given at all? oh well.)
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Date: 2012-11-12 09:58 am (UTC)Other thematic stuff I had trouble with:
* "Bond must get back to the basics! Let's reboot the sandbox past even the Brosnan era, with a posh middle-aged dude M and a pert secretary Moneypenny and no lasting emotional consequences for Bond past the end of the movie. Also, no newfangled gadgets" -- LITERALLY NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS, WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS
* "Old school bureaucratic yet patriotic Britishness is what this is all about" -- no it isn't, you have mistaken it for the movie with Gary Oldman in, Bond is English but has never been about England
* "Bond has tragic dead parents and a dilapidated manor in the Scottish highlands with an old gameskeeper" -- he comes from a very old wizarding family you see SRSLY WHO WROTE THIS**
Mechanics stuff I had trouble with:
* M can't shoot and was hapless in general -- oh hell no
* Sexy Silva moll plot point was executed (har) extremely unimaginatively, set against series standard
* Moneypenny secondary character arc made no sense as written
* The entire opening premise was OOC, M's best call should have been to let Bond handle that one dude because THIS IS 007 WE'RE TALKING ABOUT, AND ONE MEASLY HENCHMAN DUDE
* I don't know why they didn't make it so that Bond went AWOL chronologically close after Quantum and only came back after 4 years, the stakes for the rest of the movie (HR churn at MI6, suddenly being questioned on his age and physical/mental fitness) would make way more sense
Stuff I liked:
* The idea of going to town on the psychosexual undertones of M-the-older-woman versus her "favourite" agents was actually really good? I haven't re-watched obv but it seems to me that female!M was introduced in the 90s in a very 90s version of affirmative action, i.e. here is a lady who will play the role exactly as a man would, let us lampshade how a change of gender makes no difference do you see! Whereas the Craig films allowed it to be different, in the sense that whatever frisson/chemistry was there (maternal? sexual?) was specific to this Bond and this M. I'm just not that sold on the execution of how it panned out in the end. In particular since the upshot is that you've eliminated probably the most interesting recurring dynamic in these movies.
* Slightly more bureaucratic shenanigans within fantasy MI6 -- actually getting to see other agents, desk jockeys, etc.
* Javier Bardem definitely too good for the script
* Bond's flirting with new Q indistinguishable from flirting with new Moneypenny -- weirdly it feels like we're moving toward the ideal, expressed to me when I was 17, that there should be Bond Boys as well as Bond Girls and that this should be completely unremarked upon within the movie itself, and have no impact on audience perception of Bond's masculinity -- I mean, when I was 17 this was a mindblowing thought experiment which I expected to remain a thought experiment forever
** This one really threw me out. Like completely, the way you get thrown out sometimes when reading fanfiction and someone's interpretation just makes you go NOPE. There is no way Bond -- Craig's Bond least of the lot -- came out of that class, though of course the point is he can pass anyhow anywhere.
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Date: 2012-11-12 05:58 pm (UTC)But talking about Bond's class, it would make sense if his mother was the mistress of a peer and he grew up in both worlds.
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Date: 2012-11-12 06:57 pm (UTC)Yeah, you would think it had to be something like that -- he has to be somehow class-less, you know? Also, not to spoiler (even though you are still reading this XD) but I couldn't suspend my disbelief in the action itself of the last act. It's the same problem as Prometheus: in order to fit the thematics and the visuals, the characters must behave like idiots.
Mind you it didn't occur to me at all that Bond is canonically a Scotsman because Sean Connery! Apparently even Fleming started to write that in.
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Date: 2012-11-12 07:44 pm (UTC)You can't really ruin a movie like this with spoilers, unless there's a huge plot twist like the one in Quantum of Solace!
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Date: 2012-11-12 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-12 09:23 pm (UTC)I tried reading Game of Kings on the plane, btw. Maybe I was just tired, but it's really hard to read because of the vocabulary and because everyone talks in riddles and because of all the people/places/dates, but also, not very well written??? And the whole thing depends on you being totally fascinated by Lymond, which uh, I am not. Should I keep going? Does the writing improve?
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Date: 2012-11-12 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-13 03:53 am (UTC)i don't actually remember if the first craig bond movie was better about the sexism / female characters being written as fully fleshed-out humans (never saw quantum of solace), so i mean, i noted the sexism here, but wasn't really fussed about it because i figured, it's... bond.. it's.... included in the ticket price lol
being only passingly familiar with bond as i am, i WAS really surprised that naomie harris ended up being eve moneypenny and NOT THE NEW M???????? dang what!!!! i mean ralph fiennes is an ok guy i guess but...
actually yeah the more i think about it and the more it sinks in that like literally yes moneypenny is fiennes!m's new secretary, the more i'm confused about why they did that LOL
i'm also confused about Q in the sense that i don't/didn't really give a shit about him but my really fujoshi fangirl friend was really into him and apparently so is the internet haha. did bond really flirt with him? i didn't catch that at all!?
re: M, i more or less liked how her role ended up playing out. i didn't mind that she wasn't a badass fighting lady with guns, i mean, it made sense to me. she worked a desk job for years, it's not like she would have been used to firing weapons! she was pretty unapologetically bitchy about it all throughout though and that was great to me haha.
crying about wizarding family bond / lymond!bond, i can't unsee it now and it's a really jarring image..... i honestly wasn't thinking about it much when i watched the movie bc i was going along with the logic of low-tech bond has to fight and win in low-tech ways (which for me was like, the running theme of the movie and the running theme of craig!bond, who is the bond who physically runs through walls [the only moment of craig!bond1 i actually remember]) and it made a sort of visceral sense to me that they'd just set the final fight in this positively medieval setting and then also set it on fire haha.
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Date: 2012-11-13 03:55 am (UTC)see it for javier bardem :3
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Date: 2012-11-13 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-13 05:45 am (UTC)If the whole situation needed to be resolved by wizard duel, now, that is a good reason to drive up to the moors.
Not even the first Craig Bond movie! Even the Brosnan ones were pretty good about calling Bond on the way he uses women and gets them killed. Like, that is something that always happens, it's part of the character, but it hasn't actually been shrugged off since Tomorrow Never Dies -- the whole Severine episode was jarring to me because you literally have to go back to Roger Moore era for that level of shittiness. NB: TND also features Michelle Yeoh as a kickass agent who never needs Bond to rescue her, so. I don't think the 90s movies get enough credit. XD
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Date: 2012-11-21 10:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-22 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-26 03:27 am (UTC)Severine episode was jarring to me because you literally have to go back to Roger Moore era for that level of shittiness
It was terrible. It didn't even sink in for me that she was akchully for reals dead--and not just faking--until after that sequence was over, because I couldn't believe they'd made her that disposable in a present-era Bond film.
RE: the new Q, I'm all for Bond Boys (and D-Craig certainly has the requisite effortless seme-tude + unscathable masculinity to pull them off) but this Q was SO very megane-moe / AU CLAMP character that it was almost unnerving.
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Date: 2012-11-26 08:09 pm (UTC)Ha! So was mine. As for Q, it was impossible to look at him and not think of the doujinshi.
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Date: 2012-12-10 02:23 pm (UTC)I feel like this movie couldn't decide what it wanted to be? As if after all the critical acclaim of Tinker Tailor suddenly some TBTB was all HEY I KNOW LET'S MAKE THIS FEEL MORE LIKE LE CARRE. Except, no, Bond is the kind of film where, to quote a friend, the audience prefers to see him jump out of one airplane into another airplane while driving an aston martin and smoking three cigars. Why can't ppl stay true to their niches gah TO THINE OWN SELF, etc.
Oh one thing though - while I too did not enjoy the conceit, it happens that the old wizarding family thing is lifted from Fleming canon. The parents' names/his orphaning were in the books, but the unspoken tragic orphaning event was added by the producers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond_(literary_character)
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Date: 2012-12-10 06:39 pm (UTC)Weirdly enough, the part that truly distracted me was M's porcelain bulldog, because Control had one on his desk too. APPARENTLY IT IS DE RIGUEUR FOR THE BRITISH SPYMASTER. It wasn't made a point of in TTSS, but once I saw it I couldn't stop staring at it during those scenes, because it looked exactly like John Hurt. XD; I cursorily tried to find one while in London but couldn't.
Sorry had not responded to this
Date: 2012-12-10 08:20 pm (UTC)