I really liked Casino Royale. The tone was great and I thought Craig was great too. I did however feel like Mikkelsen was a henchman rather than the main bad guy, like it was a prequel movie or that there was a big reveal missing or something. So as much as I liked it, I do remember a feeling of “oh, they’re just going to leave it there?” I can’t remember enough details to say why that was but I think it was that Mikkelsen’s character was a mid-level boss and the film never delivered the final boss. Or something along those lines.
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Movie 22 - Quantum of Solace
The shortest of all of the Bond series, Quantum aimed to in a way address the issue raised by DT in making the events of Royale a dip of the toe into a much larger secretive criminal organisations structure and world. Michael G Wilson says Royale was purposely written to lead in to Royale (though that is never that clear from the first films perspective). At this point in the franchises long history this film represented the largest canonical continuation between films ever conducted for Bond and Craig would later reveal that this was never the plan with various elements chopped and altered due to the production being rushed and the writer strike meaning he and the director had to workshop too much of the film together.
How much did Quantum get right and/or get wrong in its bid to be the first Bond true sequel?Comment
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I like Question of Sport.
Of course, the editing is like a child who's had too much sugar being left in charge of the TV remote control and there's the issue of Olga's fake tan.
It felt "pure" though. I've read somewhere that the best way to watch QoS is back-to-back with CR and, as it's pretty much a straight continuation, it feels like a fourth act to CR.
The performances from the main cast are strong, the opera scene is great, the apartment fight was brutal and Gemma Arteton was, well...
A solid 7/10 for me.Comment
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I saw Quantum quite late... maybe after I saw Skyfall. The reports of the movie weren't great at the time. And I saw it eventually and what's funny is that I can't remember a thing about it. Every other Craig film I at least remember bits or feelings or impressions. With this one, nothing.Comment
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It'd be a very unremarkable entry even if it were better made. It's such a crashing disappointment compared to Royale and the direction spoils it from the outset let alone the laundry list of other issues. It's almost more impressive that this run survived Quantum than it is Royale relaunched itComment
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The sweeper is best part of the entire film haha.Comment
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“The trouble with [Quantum of Solace], it was a bit of a ****-show, to say the least,”
"Craig further explained that his first turn as Bond, 2006’s Casino Royale, was a positive experience, partially because he was able to tune out gossip and Hollywood politics going on behind the scenes. “I remember [shooting Casino Royale] with massive fondness. And all this other **** was going on around it, which was meaningless at the time because I knew we had a good film, I knew Casino was good. You kind of go, ‘Wait and see, it’s going to be great, don’t worry,'” he said.
However his experience shooting Quantum of Solace was not the same. A writers’ strike caused the film to begin shooting without a completed script. “On Quantum, we were ****ed. We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it,” Craig recalled to Time Out in 2011 (as reprinted by Collider). Instead, he and director Marc Forster had to pick up the slack. “The rules were that you couldn’t employ anyone as a writer, but the actor and director could work on scenes together. We were stuffed.”
Complicating matters even further, Craig had begun to feel the weight that came with playing Bond.
“I would sort of yearn [for] the person I was when I did Casino,” he admitted on The Empire Film Podcast. “Too much knowledge sometimes is not a good thing. I was sort of in the dark about a lot of things, about how things worked, the mechanics of it, how the world really viewed Bond — all of those things. I just didn’t understand them.”
Most fans and critics alike regard Quantum of Solace as the weakest film in Craig’s Bond tenure. Still, that didn’t stop the flick from being a commercial success. Quantum of Solace raked in more than $580 million at the global box office, ranking among the highest grossing movies of 2008."
I saw it a weekish ago and found the whole thing was a mess.
The biggest crime was the piss-poor shakeycam in the action sequences.
Originally posted by QualityChimp View PostI've said elsewhere I bought the Bond Collection and am blasting through the Craig era Bonds in prep for No Time To Die.
Quantum of Solace
I wanted to give this the benefit of the doubt because it's been ages since I've seen it, but it's just so poor.
I recently saw Olga Kurlenko in The Courier and Sentinelle (both Netflix) and she was really good, but I didn't click that she was the main Bond girl in this because, I'll be honest, I think they went the Blackface route to make her fit the character
That shouldn't detract from her excellent performance, but yikes.
Dominic Greene is a rubbish Mastermind, though. When we first meet him, he's just hanging around the docks, making doodle art with a rubber stamp!
He doesn't seem menacing, just the kind of humourless prick who tags along on a work's outing and only get the last round of drinks because most people have gone home, or has a meal with starter, main, pudding and alcohol, then insists we split the bill, even if you've just had a main and a soft drink. Bastard.
All this would possibly be excusable if the expected action sequences were any good, but they're absolutely ruined by shakeycam. There's a bit where Bond is tussling with an escaping double-agent and they tumble on some ropes and he's hanging by his foot on a rope. I genuinely had no idea if it was Bond or the double-agent for several seconds.
Look, I'm not exaggerating - here's the opening car chase, including the 1037 cuts in this 35 second clip.
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Movie 23 - Skyfall
Already nine years old, Skyfall became the new most successful Bond film with Craig's third outing seeing us delve a little into his history and his relationship with M. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the franchise, it marked a wide journey the series had been on between this anniversary effort and Die Another Day ten years before it.
Does Skyfall hold up as much as its reputation?Comment
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Skyfall is one of those movies where it seems to entirely fall apart if you remotely think about it, built on very convenient coincidences that are then sold as a villain's plan. But if you don't think about it, what you have is a very slick, well produced, atmospheric spy adventure thriller. It oozes quality, in my view. A really enjoyable movie.
But for me, there are several Bond moments in here that remind me why I think Bond is a thing that perhaps should have been allowed to disappear back the late '80s. It has a misogynistic taint in places that feel like part and parcel of the character's legacy.Comment
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Skyfall has always been a slightly frustrating film for several reasons. The central premise of the film is fine and it's well made but I've never understood the fascination people seem to have with it. It's far from the worst the franchise has to offer but I'd place it very far from the best too, I don't know if a combination of Adele worshipping and a reaction to the quality improvement over Quantum is to play too.
The DB5 is very awkward. It's a great nod in Royale but when Bond flips out the ejector seat button and machine guns it it's jarring as up until that point Craig's era doesn't use this stuff and it makes no sense the DB5 is fitted suddenly with this kind of kit. Other stuff like the train blast are stupid too as there's no logic to it either on many levels. It exists in that moment for no other reason than to just happen.
Skyfall is also the point where it felt like the series was pushing to appear less problematic in its handling of female characters but actually became arguably worse than its ever been. I can't remember where I read it; whether it was a forum post or a review or an interview etc but for No Time to Die I recall reading that it's okay for James Bond to be chauvinistic but it's not okay for a James Bond movie to be that and NTTD is possibly the closest the franchise has ever come to getting that right, Skyfall doesn't one bit.
The ending at Bond's home sucks too, it's a very mundane end to a film that looks great but is very forgettable in its components.Comment
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Well, I love Skyfall.
Picking holes in the plot of James Bond films is like complaining that water is wet! It's a thrill ride from start to finish with a great cast, good action, rousing score and ridiculously over-the-top baddie.
I don't really like the Adele song though.Comment
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I just want to say that, for all this Idris Elba / Tom Hardy / whoever else the papers say should be the next James Bond, I hope they cast somebody younger.
I'm all in for George McKay.Comment
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Movie 24 - Spectre
The currently penultimate Bond movie, with James now more heavily in pursuit of the Spectre organisation that is quickly revealed to be the real threat behind Vesper, Quantum and the events in Skyfall (...). He meets Madeleine Swan who is the daughter of the recurring Mr White and faces the new incarnation of Blofeld with some plot twists along the way. The end of the film recurring the theme of Bond walking away from the spy life for love.
Where does Spectre stand in the great canon of Bond and Craig's era?
Is it a strong film or quality wise was the writing on the wall?Comment
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For me Spectre is a film that I can extract elements that I like but broadly the sins of Skyfall are dialled up heavily here and then the last hour happens and the film completely collapses in on itself. There's that reminder everytime of how I can't believe the Daniel Craig era has been so much more successful when there's more bad than good and if Quantum was Bond at its dullest then Spectre is its worst in terms of being convoluted.Comment
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Sorry, bit behind.
Skyfall was brilliant.
Not only was it a marked improvement over QoS, but it had a solid story with an emotional punch and it looked bloody lovely. Wasn't fussed on the theme beforehand, but seeing Bond sinking in the opening credits and the piano intro sent shivers in the cinema.
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