Here’s a link to the trailer for the new Bond film, A Quantum of Solace. Personally, I don’t care for it all. It looks more like a Jason Bourne film; gritty, serious, and shot with blue and sepia filters and shakey cams. I know Casino Royale was a big moneymaker, and by the immutable laws of Hollywood they absolutely must reuse a winning formula until the well is bone dry, but this isn’t the Bond I know and love. Where is the sly wink, the easy charm, and the impeccable tastes that Connery’s Bond had? James Bond isn’t supposed to be a bruiser, he’s a seducer.
That well was bone dry in the 70’s, they just kept adding water to it.
The trailer looks good to me.
Got no problem with it. As someone who’s only recently read the Bond books, I was taken aback at how much of a thug James Bond was originally. The movies changed that to a sly wink and easy charm, from a bruiser to a seducer, and I think I like the fact that they’ve gone back to the source.
Just picked up *Devil May Care * this weekend. Very much looking forward to that.
I loved Casino Royale, and expect I will quite like this one too. Even if it does have a sort of silly name.
The Bond series needs to get changed up a bit periodically - Pierce Brosnan’s was very much the charming playboy, but by the time of Die Another Day, that shtick was beyond tired.
Daniel Craig is the best Bond since Connery, as far as I’m concerned.
I read the original books over the last couple of years and much prefer them to the films, except for Casino Royale, which is a slight improvement on the book.
Devil may care did not get a good review, so it will be interesting to see what you think of it.
The name may sound it bit silly, but it is lifted from one of the original Fleming short stories. Although I suspect this film will have little to do with the book.
Looking forward to it, the trailer looks good, shame we have to wait a while.
I grew up with Timothy Dalton and Sean Connery (in reruns), so the return to non-vapidness is a good thing in my mind.
The link’s been taken off of YouTube - copyright violations apparently.
I Googled and found the official web site - there’s no trailer there unfortunately.
The plot synopsis for the new film is interesting. It appears that this movie picks up where Casino Royale left off - Bond is trying to trace the organization that was blackmailing Vesper. That’s the sort of continuity that the Bond films haven’t really tried before.
And there’s the problem. James Bond isn’t supposed to be a seducer like that and never was.
You need to go back and watch the early Connery films (Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball); Connery played Bond like a bounder with the rough edges barely concealed by dinner jacket and fashionable accessories. Far from being an excursion from the original filmatic Bond, Casino Royale was a knowning, winking return to form, hence Vesper’s dialogue in the dining car: “And it makes perfect sense; MI6 looks for maladjusted young men who will think nothing of sacrificing others for Queen and country. You know, former SAS types with easy smiles and expensive watches. Rolex?” Base brutality is nothing new in Bond films; see the train fight in From Russia With Love, which is every bit as brutal as anything in Casino Royale or the Bourne films.
The later Connery films, and the Roger Moore films that are so loved by a certain contingent were virtually parodies of the spy genre. That got old even faster than Moore’s Bond ludicrously bedding women one third his age. And after a brief and half-hearted interlude with Dalton as a somewhat rougher character, Bond films went completely cartoon during the Pierce Brosnan era. Matt Helm and Derek Flint could hardly have been more farcical. That “sly wink, and easy charm,” made it impossible to take the character as ever seriously being in danger, either of injury to himself or harm to the world at large from his failure to stop the latest madman. It was pure comedy. The Brosnan films, where they had any discernable plot at all (I’m still pretty lost on what Die Another Day was about) pretty much grafted together bits and pieces of earlier films to make a framework “story” on which to hang some impressively underwhelming and obviously green-scrreened effect sequences. The stairwell fight in Casino Royale had more action than the previous three Bond films combined.
Don’t get me wrong; Roger Moore was fine…as Simon Templar. Pierce Brosnan was also fine…as Simon Templer’s understudy. But neither was all that interesting in what were otherwise plots of clockwork predictability. Daniel Craig, on the other hand, nailed both the literary imagining and gave a sharp, raffish edge to the cinematic character in a franchise that was becoming moribound in self-parody. And the stuntwork was nothing short of phenomenal.
As for the new film (the trailer is officially released on 2 July) I’m looking forward to it. I was pleasently surprised by Casino Royale (I was figuring on some jazzed up action and at least a real actor doing what can be done in such a thin role; instead, I got a deceptively twisted story line, some shining dialogue, and a psychological depth previously unseen,) and I hope this one at least measures up. I’m even in the tiny minority of people who like the title, which is better, in my opinion, than generic airport thriller novel titles that were rejected by the Ludlum Machine.
If you want a weak satire of Bond movies, I’m sure Mike Myers will be along shortly to make another one of those shitty Austin Powers films. He’ll give you a sly wink and easy charm, plus plenty of scatological humor and penis jokes. Good fun for the entire family.
Stranger
You’re not the only one. I gasped with delight the first time I heard it. It’s smart, interesting, unusual, and, like casting Daniel Craig, an indication that the producers are going to do things their own way and what they think is right for the re-boot, and not what a focus group or whiny Brosnan fans want.
Casino Royale fucking ruled. This is going to be great too.
Oh, that one’s easy. It was a bad re-make of Diamonds Are Forever.
In Matt Helm’s defense, I must point out that Donald Hamilton’s books are far better than Dean Martin’s movies.
I prefer the Bond of the books and the early Connery movies. Though I also like For Your Eyes Only, precisely because it does NOT revolve around silly gadgets. I had high hopes for Brosnan. If only he had gotten decent writers and directors . . . But I loved Casino Royale, and I am optimistic about Quantum of Solace.
Another series of hard core spy novels turned into silly movies.
There’s an official teaser trailer here
oo I can’t wait!
Oh, good, Judi Dench will be back as M. I love that character - she’s such a steely and humorless matron, yet somehow manages to be sexy at the same time. She and Daniel Craig sparked off of each other just right.
I’m concerned because they switched directors, but this looks great.
Casino Royale is the best Bond film and should have won Best Picture at the Oscars that year. I’m serious.
Anyway, if Daniel Craig continues with the role the way he is, he’s the best Bond ever, including Connery.
Oh, well that explains why it made no sense, then.
Oddly, this by itself doesn’t seem to be the case. The director of Casino Royale directed Goldeneye (which admittedly, was the least bad of the Brosnan era) and the primary screenwriters for Casino Royale, Neal Pervis and Robert Wade, penned the lackluster The World Is Not Enough and the abominable Die Another Day. The change seems to have been a shift in the entire philosophy of Eon Productions away from a derivative formula that started with Goldfinger (with a couple of notable exceptions) and into a grittier, more plot-driven story and eschewing the use of CGI except as backdrop in favor of some very impressive live stuntwork. There was probably more than a little impetus for this from the success of the first two Bourne movies, but Casino Royale was hardly aping the formula from those films; it is more akin to From Russia With Love or The Living Daylights than a Bourne clone.
She was clearly the best thing to come out of the Brosnan films, that’s for sure. I’m just glad they didn’t carry John Cleese over; he acted like he was staring in a Monty Python skit. I kept expecting him to turn to the camera and say, “Stop this! Stop this! This is very silly.”
Stranger
nitpick–That would have been Graham Chapman , but I agree with you.
James Bond is a thug.
The last James Bond film got it more right than any other IMO…and I look forward to this one. 
There was no M before her…just shadows. She IS M.