The hot fad in Hollywood these days is to take a tired old franchise, strip the many layers of paint that have accumulated over the years and try it again. The so-called reboot films like Batman Begins, Casino Royale, and the upcoming Star Trek ostensibly restart the franchise. That’s all well and good, and I did like both those films, but they felt a little cold to me.
There are plenty of standard issue action heroes out there. Batman and James Bond always had just a bit more magic to them. Everyone seems to like a “realistic” Batman and an emotionally complex James Bond. I’ll take Michael Keaton in the Bat Wing and Sean Connery in a jet pack over that any day.
Martin Campbell, the Casino Royale director, is a capable director - presumably, the kind of solid journeyman the producers were wanting for such a reboot, who could pretty much implement their will in a clear and concise manner (and under budget, since the Brocollis still own the rights, and by all accounts, they still run a tight ship). He did Goldeneye, (another “reintroduction” of the Bond character, albeit not a reboot) which was the last decent “Bond as rakish charmer” movie, as far as I’m concerned. But he also did bothZorro movies, which were both, IMO, good examples of how action movies can blow stuff up real good and still be truly booooring.
Marc Forster, on the other hand, seems to be more of an upstart auteur, and I’m very interested in where he’ll take the Bond aesthetic. In addition to Monster’s Ball, and Finding Neverland, both of which I liked a lot, he made Stranger Than Fiction, which is one of my absolute favorites of the last few years. He also made the adaptation of The Kite Runner, which I haven’t seen but comes very highly recommended.
He’s not got much of a history with action movies, but I think given the plotline (Bond gets caught between his duty and his desire for revenge), a director who can deftly handle pathos would be more welcome than someone who can blow shit up on command.
This doesn’t look much like Dr No prt 22, but it does look a lot like Casino Royale 2.
It’s great, but is it Bond? Bond as we know and love? Are we all admitting that the Bond we know and love is crappy?
I believe the point is that the previous Bond movies differed from the Ian Fleming novels, though not as badly as the Matt Helm movies differed from the Donald Hamilton novels. Those of us who enjoyed the Fleming movies like the new Bond genre.
I have to agree. Connery, Dalton and to a lesser extend Brosnan all played Bond as a very charming and suductive Brittish thug in a tux. Really it was only Moore who played him as a foppish aristocrat.
For the record, I really liked Pierce Brosnan as Bond. But with the exception of Goldeneye and possibly The World is Not Enough, they kind of ruined his films with too much stupid storyline and invisible car crap.
He was surprisingly good in the action sequences, at least in Goldeneye, but the character was such a dandy that it defused any tension. Inches away from getting his head lopped off by a helicopter blade, or being sawn in half, or streaking down a gas pipeline at sixty miles and hour? Narry a hair out of place. And by the time of Die Another Day, he seemed as tired of the role as I was of him. Given more compelling storylines no doubt he could have done better, but he was still selected primarily for being a pretty boy, and while he could do a sincere effort at being a cad, as shown by his anti-Bond turn in The Tailor of Panama, he wasn’t really capable of delivering the kind of intensity or thuggishness needed in Casino Royale.
And I thought The World Was Not Enough had a pretty idiotic storyline (seriously, a terrorist who has a bullet migrating through his brain which makes him stronger until it kills him). Tomorrow Never Dies was pretty dumb, too, but at least it had Michelle Yeoh.
Yeah, this has me worried a little bit. Too much of the trailer Flutterby linked to was evocative of the cold, drab opening scenes of Casino Royale, and the linked site has a photo from *USA Today * that shows Bond once again chasing someone up a sharp incline in an almost exact replica of the chase scene in *Casino Royale * ([Link, second photo down).
I loved Casino Royale and I still have high hopes for QoS, but I have to admit to being worried that the reboot is already becoming too formulaic .
James Bond defined formulaic long before Casino Royale came out. I prefer this formula to the one that gave us Tomorrow Never Dies, or Diamonds are Forever or View to a Kill.
And that’s coming from a guy who actually kinda liked those movies :o
I agree. But to virtually replicate popular scenes from one film to the next is a bit much. What I’ve seen so far would be the equivalent of having a blond girl with a knife in her belt walk in from the ocean in From Russia With Love; a brutal train fight in Goldfinger; or another henchman with a steel-brimmed hat in Thunderball.
I must plead ignorance to all Bond movies sans Connery, as I’ve not seen but mere snippets of any of them. This is because prior to Craig I’ve never been able to buy anyone else as Bond.
(And, as much as I like Craig and think he’s perfect for the reboot, I recently watched a couple of the Connery Bond movies and still have to give the nod to him as the best Bond. Craig is a close second, though.)
You won’t get any argument from me. I think this is the best it’s been since From Russia With Love.
That being said, I have a big fat soft spot in my heart for Tim Dalton (he was Bond back when I first started watching these movies in theaters), and I still think Live and Let Die is one of the better of the movies. Many people would probably disagree with me on that last point.
It does look like a direct sequel, which IMHO is no bad thing. While the films have never followed on the later books (which were made out of order as films) are all linked and form a continuous narative.
Basically from Thunderball to the end of Octopussy (with the exception of The Spy Who Loved Me) is the Spectre/Blofeld arc with Bonds fall from grace, reinstatement and disillusionment with the service. It would be good to see them remade in this fashion.
I for one would also like to see a remake of Live and Let Die, without the easy smile and raised eyebrow. Although it’s a shame we can’t clone Jane Seymour for the role of Solitaire again.
He’s not running up a sharp incline; that’s just an artifact of the low camera angle. You can see that his foot is flat on the pavement than the shadow to the perspective left is narrow, indicating that he’s not leaning over forward relative to ground as you would expect if the pavement were at an angle. (She sun appears overhead to perspective right). Curiously, in the first picture he appears to be wielding a Walther PP or PPK (and definitely the 7.65mmx17mm), although that’s not the gun he has in the running pic.
Concerns about falling into a new formula are well founded (the last Bourne movie certainly did that) but I’ll wait and see how the new film pans out before calling judgment. I know what tropes I would be avoiding or inverting to avoid doing that, and I’m curious to see how they spin out the revenge story.
Thanks for the different…ahem…perspective there, Stranger.
It’s just that that photo appeared to be an almost exact replica of a publicity shot that I recall seeing (seemingly all over the place) about a year ago which showed Craig running up the crane at the construction site in an almost identical pose and with the same facial expression. I was confident I could easily come up with it now in order to show you the similarity, but for some reason it seems to have slipped into obscurity. Either that, or my Google-fu just ain’t what it once was.
At any rate, thanks again. I’ll withhold judgement for the time being and hope for the best.
