Ah, Mr. Bond. I've been expecting you...
Nov. 25th, 2002 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyWent to see the new Bond movie yesterday, and a number of thoughts strike me about it, some good, some bad. If you don’t’ want to see any spoilers, don’t click
For starters, an absolutely cracking first half hour – the film opens so promisingly. A twist in the intro, torture, chases, well-choreographed stunts. I was, in short, suckered into thinking that this was going be to be a really good film. It stays that way right up until Halle Barry’s utterly unconvincing character shows up, and then it’s downhill from there all the way.
Some general thoughts:
1) Bond Villains need either conviction or charisma to allow for suspension of disbelief. Casting someone with neither doesn’t help the film and leads to the audience thinking too much about the plot. In this case, that’s the last thing you want.
2) If you are pretending to be an incredibly successful diamond mine owner, it helps if you own a diamond mine – or at least something that looks like one to even the most cursory inspection.
3) Top Tip for wannabe international supervillains: having completed your doomsday device, just get on and use it to conquer the world. Don’t – and I can’t stress this enough, Don’t - hold a press launch for it first.
4) If you must hold a press launch, it is inadvisable to personally invite the person you know to be MI6’s top agent.
5) Top Tip for MI6: If your top agent, who has saved the world on no fewer than twenty previous occasions, suggests that there may be a traitor in the department, it’s wise to at least consider the possibility that he may be right.
6) Top Tip for American Intelligence: No matter how good Halle Berry looks in a leather jumpsuit, she isn’t Diana Rigg; so tell her not to bother trying.
7) A person with skin exposed who is immersed in arctic water has less than one minute to live. Even if they survive, the hypothermia will take hours of recovery time, and they will suffer severe frostbite. They will not be up for a quick run around the block, no matter how many men with guns are chasing them.
8) Pulling someone out of a 10-minute immersion in ice-cold water and plunging them into a hot pool is likely to prove fatal, not a wonder-cure.
9) Halle Berry is a good actress. Please give her good characters to play in future.
10) Madonna’s theme tune is, for want of a better word, Shit. Shit, shit shit shit shit.
I think a good summation is that this is a Bond film that’s desperate to prove it is a Bond film; the incidental music references previous Bond Themes (I picked up on From Russia With Love, Live & Let Die, and Diamonds are Forever, although the Diamonds are Forever reference isn’t surprising as they’ve used much the same plot idea), the scene in Q’s lab with all the ‘old gadget’ references (all from Connery films, to put the audience in mind of the series’ Golden Age) just to reinforce the idea in the audience’s mind that John Cleese is Q really (it also made me thing that a fight sequence in Q’s lab would work very well in a future film, using all the various gadgets lying about), and even the “Birds of the Caribbean” visual joke all serve to shove the idea that you’re watching a James Bond Film. Frankly, I’d rather they’d worked harder on a plot that holds together than on the little jokes.
One to catch on video.
For starters, an absolutely cracking first half hour – the film opens so promisingly. A twist in the intro, torture, chases, well-choreographed stunts. I was, in short, suckered into thinking that this was going be to be a really good film. It stays that way right up until Halle Barry’s utterly unconvincing character shows up, and then it’s downhill from there all the way.
Some general thoughts:
1) Bond Villains need either conviction or charisma to allow for suspension of disbelief. Casting someone with neither doesn’t help the film and leads to the audience thinking too much about the plot. In this case, that’s the last thing you want.
2) If you are pretending to be an incredibly successful diamond mine owner, it helps if you own a diamond mine – or at least something that looks like one to even the most cursory inspection.
3) Top Tip for wannabe international supervillains: having completed your doomsday device, just get on and use it to conquer the world. Don’t – and I can’t stress this enough, Don’t - hold a press launch for it first.
4) If you must hold a press launch, it is inadvisable to personally invite the person you know to be MI6’s top agent.
5) Top Tip for MI6: If your top agent, who has saved the world on no fewer than twenty previous occasions, suggests that there may be a traitor in the department, it’s wise to at least consider the possibility that he may be right.
6) Top Tip for American Intelligence: No matter how good Halle Berry looks in a leather jumpsuit, she isn’t Diana Rigg; so tell her not to bother trying.
7) A person with skin exposed who is immersed in arctic water has less than one minute to live. Even if they survive, the hypothermia will take hours of recovery time, and they will suffer severe frostbite. They will not be up for a quick run around the block, no matter how many men with guns are chasing them.
8) Pulling someone out of a 10-minute immersion in ice-cold water and plunging them into a hot pool is likely to prove fatal, not a wonder-cure.
9) Halle Berry is a good actress. Please give her good characters to play in future.
10) Madonna’s theme tune is, for want of a better word, Shit. Shit, shit shit shit shit.
I think a good summation is that this is a Bond film that’s desperate to prove it is a Bond film; the incidental music references previous Bond Themes (I picked up on From Russia With Love, Live & Let Die, and Diamonds are Forever, although the Diamonds are Forever reference isn’t surprising as they’ve used much the same plot idea), the scene in Q’s lab with all the ‘old gadget’ references (all from Connery films, to put the audience in mind of the series’ Golden Age) just to reinforce the idea in the audience’s mind that John Cleese is Q really (it also made me thing that a fight sequence in Q’s lab would work very well in a future film, using all the various gadgets lying about), and even the “Birds of the Caribbean” visual joke all serve to shove the idea that you’re watching a James Bond Film. Frankly, I’d rather they’d worked harder on a plot that holds together than on the little jokes.
One to catch on video.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 03:51 am (UTC)And the villain was way cooler and more interesting when he was played by the Korean. The western guy seemed to have attended the Roger Moore School Of Acting Through Facial Ticks and conveyed every emotion by curling his upper lip (sneer, snarl, smile - all the same) whereas the Asian actor was actually kinda sexy and evil.
I thought Halle Berry was kinda cute tho...
no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 03:55 am (UTC)Did you notice that when he changed identity he grew a few inches as well? Bloody impressive this plastic surgery these days.
Also, yes, you're right. Bad CG is still irritating. Either do it for real, or use model work - which is still better than Bad CG.
Re:
Date: 2002-11-25 04:03 am (UTC)I also noticed his speech patterns completely changed as well - or rather disappeared into the two verbal ticks that accompanied the curled lip.
I think the problem with the bad CGI was more that it was just so obvious at that point that what Bond was doing was physically impossible which bugged me.
It did occur to me that they could just about get away with him swimming under the water if you assume that what the ice is on top of is not arctic water - but is in fact one of them magic Icelandic hot springs and so the water beneath the ice is warmer than the ice itself - something funny has been happening with the wind chill factor. That would seem to be backed up by the fact that Bond then pops up in a little tropical pool inside the dome.
On the other hand I still wondered how he found his way there with no goggles - the water would have stung his eyes horribly and it is bloody hard to navigate with your vision being blurred by salt water.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 04:14 am (UTC)11) When Isaac newton invented gravity he included a sub-clause that acts as a get-out for British secret agents.
As for the ice...Ice doesn't form on the hot springs - that internal pool would have to have been separately heated. Unless, as you say, it's one of those magic hot springs. A bit like Baked Alaska in reverse. That would explain it. Yes.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 04:24 am (UTC)Incidentally,
---
no subject
Date: 2002-11-25 04:21 am (UTC)Yeah, I pretty much panned the film myself
Date: 2002-11-29 01:12 pm (UTC)The touching on the grotesque and sadistic, the diamond-studded mutant Korean, and the swash-buckling blade fighting are my offers of evidence.
Furthermore, I felt and still feel that this level of 'realism' and turning Bond into a theatre of pain loses a great deal more than it gains. The self-irony that makes Bond palatable at his chauvenistic worst was lost due to it.
I was also turned off by yet another satellite-as-major-plot device in this third-in-a-row Brosnan Bond film.
Still, I like your idea about a fight scene in HQ with the old gadgets. The preconditions have been set ... and didn't one Brosnan Bond film already have that kind of direct HQ attack (where he then uses the speedboat on the Thames)?