RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Media Quantum of Solace: worst Bond title ever?

I like the song. It's not Bondish at all, but I hated the Brosnan and Dalton Bonds, so any change was good.

Brosnan was held back by the producers. He wanted to do the Daniel Craig-type ass-kicking but they kept neutering the character...

Goldeneye kicked all kinds of ass. The rest were piss-poor.

Goldeneye was good and I like the stuff with Michelle Yoeh in Tomorrow Never Dies.

Die Another Day started out well but fell apart when Pro's favorite Catwoman showed up.

Interestingly enough, the guy who directed Goldeneye, Martin Campbell, was also the director of Casino Royale. That would seem to confirm that the problem was the producers who, one can see, clearly started edging Brosnan back to the Roger Moore silliness with each subsequent film.

I am barely speaking to you for a yet to be determined amount of time.

Barley speaking to me? What about malt speaking, or hops speaking?

Que?

Saw the film today at a digital showing (which made for a much nicer showing), and I have to say its better than Casino Royale.

Once again though, it was a great action film, just not a Bond film.
It reminded me somewhat of the Jason Bourne films, just with a British guy in his place.

Storywise its a continuation of the previous film, with a lot of plot points and characters carrying over to this film.

Without spoiling things, the end of the film certainly indicates that its the end of the origin, and back to the original films as you get the classic bullet shot, followed by the end credit music being the classic Dr. No Bond theme tune!

Maybe the next film will be a remake of Dr. No.

Sometimes it gets a bit ridiculous with Bond being chased by the bad (and good) guys every five minutes , and the main villain and his sidekick never really seem that scary (they both look gayer than Rob Kamphausen dancing with Captain Sammitch in Beardgays bedroom).

That said, if you enjoyed Casino Royale, you should enjoy this as well.

Shame I couldnt fast forward through that shitty new theme song at the begining!

and no one can preach this vision better than you, sweetie



but isn't "what makes a bond movie" the things everyone began to hate about bond movies, prior to these two?

By everyone, that would be the few people here.
Seeing as Bond movies were still pulling in big bucks, and most people did not like the casting of Craig prior to the first films release, I'd hazard a guess that not that many people were really that upset by the traditional Bondisms, in fact, I am sure the fact the franchise has been going since 1962, I'd say most people expect Bondisms.

The last Brosnan film was still a huge success, and many people wanted him to continue, unlike say George Clooney in the Bat franchise.

According to IMDB, Casino Royale did only $6 million more than Die Another Day, in the USA, so it was hardly reviving a dying franchise now was it!

And just for the record, each film took more than the one before with all the Brosnan films!

The stupid thing is, I don't know anyone who really liked the last couple. Yet we still all went and saw them. bond has become one of those isntitutions that seems to continue on reputation rather than merit.

Well, since Casino Royale was supposed to be an origin-ish story . . . there were not Bondisms yet.

How people expected them to be there when he's pretty much "still getting started" is beyond me. You don't develop quirks and habbits all at once. The general public just expects way too much when developing a character that's been around for so long.

So, it's their loss if they give up on it after just one film.

**shrug**




It would've been nice if he could've continued . . . I enjoyed his version of Bond when he wasn't being limited (like Moore was). You'd catch glimpses here and there in the last couple he did but it was feeling like he was slipping into Moore's version of Bond.



I'll admit, I was against Craig as the new Bond. Bond isn't blonde. But . . . when we finally rented it and saw it . . . I was convinced. Craig could/can be a good Bond and have me enjoy it.




As a side . . . this stupid title and the song . . . Gods how stupid.



Just my two cents.

I like the title! The song is okay till the singing starts, then it just sounds fucktarded.

The new Casino Royale is what brought me into Bond. Honestly, I never liked Bond. Goldeneye was good but I always hated cartoonish spy/espionage. I view most bond movies in the same way I view Jason Statham movies: eye candy popcorn movies with lots of tits, ass, and explosions, but no substance. C.R. had more of a "Bourne Identity" type feel to it, so I liked it.

Never was much of a Bond fan either. I thought Goldeneye was cool, but the one after that was so stupid I thought I'd never watch a Bond movie again. I tried watching a couple of the Sean Connery films once and fell asleep.

I only went to see Casino Royale because it looked different from the previous ones, and I liked it. I'm looking forward to the new one.

I thought "Casino Royale" was almost universally praised.

Sorry I just dont get that at all.
Are you saying that before Dr. No, Bond was an entirely different person with absolutely no traits that he has had for the 40+ years that the franchise has been going?

Plus, its not about just his manerisms and quirks, its about the whole stylisation of the movie, the characters and the world around him.

For instance, when Batman Begins came out, we didnt see a Batman who was not the Batman you expected, and that was an origin.

Yes, there were some nice touches such as the origin of the vodka martini etc, but there was very little within the two movies that really tied in with the previous films.
The humourous one liners were pretty much gone.
The action and fight scenes were far too over the top for Bond as he was never a generic action hero, and ends up making him look like a Bruce Willis, Stallone, Schwarzeneger etc action hero.

Yes its an origin, but many of Bonds personality traits would have either been there already, or starting to form.
What we got was an entirely different person with an entirely different personality.

To be honest, I do think you have to be British to really understand what is wrong with the new Bond, as its one of those things that we all grew up with as being a British cultural icon, much in the same way Superman or Captain America are cultural American icons.
Any major deviation from their basic characteristics, and people will be up in arms about it.

If they came out with a new Superman origin film, where he starts out being a moody teenage emo who hates his parents, and doesnt want to save anybody before changing his mind, I doubt too many people would be happy about it!

Actually, you just described "Smallville."

racist.



i agree with this.

however, previous james bond films, at least for me, were overtly silly in an austin powers "judo chop" type sense.

i enjoyed casino royale because it was a more "realistic" type of film. to me, it sounds like you'd prefer the bond films to be less realistic -- which is fine, i wouldn't disparage that.

i though brosnan / goldeneye was awesome, but thought the subsequent bond films with pierce at the helm got more and more ridiculous in a 1960s notion. casino royale was refreshing in that it put who i envisioned as james bond in a (more) real scenario. ...though i'd totally buy if your argument was that this hurts bond, overall, and you'd prefer there were some "bondier" silly moments

I just gotta ask, is Craig functionally retarded or something?

I just read an interview where they asked him who would be the better Bond, McCain or Obama. Craig responded "Obama would be better because...he'd be willing to quite literally look the enemy in the eye and go toe-to-toe with them."

WTF? Doesn't this guy realize that McCain was the war hero who was tortured for years in a prison camp in ways that make the shit that happens to Bond look like, well, a movie?

You know what this thread needs, Rob? More Obama.

Oh, sorry. I didn't see G-man's post in the new page.

Sorry, rob.

damn it G-man...

We aim to please, my little Chilean friend.

The real retard was the idiot who asked him that question.

Which was part of what made it Bond, and what made it a highly successful franchise for over 40 years.

If you want more realism (if you can call the over the top stunts, realism) then that is what films like the Bourne films are for.
Why copy every other action spy film, when they had their own successful niche?

Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace could have been made without using the Bond name and characters etc, and nobody would have ever associated it with being Bond.
You remove everything that 40 years of history has built up, and just use the name James Bond, that doesnt make it a Bond film.

Take the original Casino Royale.
Its got a bunch of Bond Characters in it, and the name of a Flemming book, but was it really a Bond film?

Heh. Good point.

Yeah, sorry, meant the last couple of Brosnan ones.

Yet another "bitter old man who doesn't like the guy who took over the character he played decades ago" rant.

Actually, it's not, rex. I know that you're the resident expert on bitter, but had you read the article you would have seen that Moore was talking about the direction of the films themselves. He doesn't like the kind of violence it displays. He even said he didn't like the violence in his own last Bond film.

Exactly

So, you're saying that he, in fact, isn't bitter. Doesn't that contradict what you said earlier about him being bitter at Craig?

yup

rex, just because you like to go back to your old job and yell at the new janitors that they don't wipe up vomit as well as you did doesn't mean that every person is as bitter as you about their replacements.

Its always so cute when the two of you stick up for each other.

Timothy Dalton and Brosnen were the best Bonds. They made the only three movies I could actually sit through.

Brosnen was charming without being pussy like Roger Moore and Dalton had a more memorable don't-fuck-with-me-or-I'll-feed-you-to-the-sharks attitude.

If Moore was a bitter old man, jealous of the guy who replaced him, then surely he would have complained about Brosnan and Dalton, cause you know, they were Bond in between Moore and Craig.

One of my biggest complaints about this "revamped" Bond is that its too action/violence orientated, making it a generic action film rather than the unique action/spy films they were originally.

I love generic action films, but I dont want every action film to be generic.

As far as ratings go, I can only speak for the UK, but all the original films up to the first Dalton one, were PG, meaning they were aimed at pretty much the whole family, but from Licence to kill onwards, they have all been aimed at a slightly older crowd by including more violence (LTK was a 15 rating but all others are 12).

I can understand exactly where Moore is coming from on this.

I probably started watching Bond films when I was about five years old, I'd guess, which is why I suppose I am a Bond version of a Trekkie, but with the current ratings, the current generations of kids are missing out on the new Bond films, so they cant really grow up with them.

Bond definitely has taken a new direction, and even the games reflect this. Just as the movies are trying to appeal to a different audience, the "Quantum of Solace" video game seems to be, as well; It feels like every other modern gimmicky action game... Doesn't hold a candle to Goldeneye, or even Nightfire.