![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drwexI will say first off that these people know how to make a (new) Bond film. This one has enough story continuity to make things interesting and just the right amount of the things you want in a Bond film - guns, women, fast cars, the right drinks, gadgets, humor. It also does OK at the "let's try to reboot a classic Bond trope."
To talk about this I want to split things: looking at Spectre as a film-qua-film, where I think it fares not so well, and looking at it specifically as a "Bond film" where the most important thing is that I left the theater well-satisfied. I don't think I can do this without some spoilers so I'll cut-tag.
One of the hallmarks of the Daniel Craig Bond films is that they're reaching back for some of the gritty edge that characterized both the Fleming novels and the early Connery films, while at the same time trying to lose some of the gross sexism. M was a woman for a while, and Judy Densch not only kicked ass in the role the filmmakers have the good sense to keep her death significant and important to the plot threads linking these movies. Now we have a Moneypenny who is a black woman who is competent and important. Craig-era Bond doesn't shy away from showing off conventionally attractive women (the trope) but it does present them as people with lives and agency over their own futures. They are people, not furniture ornaments. Bond does have sex with them, but not when drunk and it gives at least a very good appearance of mutual consent rather than one-sided seduction.
This new agency is particularly true for Léa Seydoux, the latest "Bond girl" . Her character (Swan) is an MD with a troubled past, on the run from her family and her father's syndicate, with a conscience, and with many hard decisions to make in very small amounts of time. Yes, she's (repeatedly) kidnapped and Bond does rescue her. But she also rescues him at least twice and the scene on the train where Bond tries to teach her about guns is priceless.
The way Seydoux plays it makes the important moment where she has to decide whether to continue or to cut and run all the more powerful. Yes, she loves Bond but there's a real question of whether that's enough to overcome her doubts and fears and for her to commit to one path or another is her choice. If anything, I fault Craig's acting here as he comes across utterly stone-faced, without the level of reaction I want him to have to her obvious struggles.
The other thing I liked is that both Swan and Bond face parallel choices, even if M has to spell it out for the audience - a license to kill is also a license NOT to kill. One of the better themes running through Bond is why does he do what he does. The Craig-as-Bond film arc so far is digging into that and I still think it has potential, though the execution in the films themselves remains clumsy.
If Seydoux gets two thumbs up, I have to give thumbs down to the way the script plays Christoph Waltz's Blofeld. I am SO bored of Bond villains who are just plain insane. In Skyfall we had Silva (insane); before that Dominic Greene (insane). And so on. If the scriptwriters can't come up with a villain motivation beyond "he's nuts" then it gets dull pretty fast. I think Waltz does the best he can with what he's given, but Blofeld just isn't scary. He's annoying. If Blofeld's story is nothing more than "nutcase builds global empire to enact his personal revenge" then boy are you all wasting a lot of potential.
The movie turns on the premise that Bond has to stop the villain's plans for world domination. OK, fine. This time, the world is to be dominated via a linked computer intelligence network called "Nine Eyes". That's an obvious reference to Five Eyes, one of the bigger revelations of the Snowden documents. I give the filmmakers credit for trying to make the film relevant. The bad men are all white English-speaking types, so props for not using brown or black people as villains. What scares us (as it scares M in this movie) is not somebody with nuclear weapons - it's the set of agencies acting as though they were outside any law collecting all our data and watching every move, every conversation, every phone call.
The problem, though, is that the film leaves us with the impression that this kind of thing only happens because the paid agents of madmen are in charge. When in reality it's well-meaning honest people in charge - people who would certainly describe themselves as patriots and who think they are keeping us all safer by making privacy nearly impossible. I would also say that this film pretty utterly fails in having people of color in more than one interesting place.
The film also falls into the canonical stupid trope of "lone hacker is better than all possible computer security systems." Really? That's unimaginative and stupid. I would love to have seen Q go online and bring in his own network of grayhats. Or really about six other relevant plot variants I could think up if I spent two minutes on it.
Being a Bond film one is expected to suspend one's disbelief of the flying abilities of helicopters (and their pilots) and various other physical objects. I get that and sort of expect it, just like I expect every car chase in every old European city will feature cars going down a stone staircase (scattering pedestrians optional). So I'm glossing over all the physics- and object-based things. I also thought the green-screen work was a little too obvious in places.
The final problem I want to talk about is that this series seem unable to manage more than two real characters per film. Previously that was Bond and M, as Dame Judy Dench absolutely crushed it. The new M seems to take the role of flailing guy as Bond and Swan dominate this picture. I realize not everyone is Joss Whedon in being able to write ensemble casts but M, Q, and Moneypenny all have a great deal of potential that goes nowhere, once again. The film brings them in on the action, which is great, but other than one scene of Moneypenny at home and one scene of M facing off with C you don't get the sense that these are real people with interesting stories of their own.
Reading all the above might give you the idea that I didn't enjoy the film - that's not true. I walked out with a big grin, pumped up in the way a good action picture pumps me up. If you're at all a Craig Bond fan go see this. It's arguably better than any of the previous ones except "Casino Royale", which was such a novel change of course for Bond films.
To talk about this I want to split things: looking at Spectre as a film-qua-film, where I think it fares not so well, and looking at it specifically as a "Bond film" where the most important thing is that I left the theater well-satisfied. I don't think I can do this without some spoilers so I'll cut-tag.
One of the hallmarks of the Daniel Craig Bond films is that they're reaching back for some of the gritty edge that characterized both the Fleming novels and the early Connery films, while at the same time trying to lose some of the gross sexism. M was a woman for a while, and Judy Densch not only kicked ass in the role the filmmakers have the good sense to keep her death significant and important to the plot threads linking these movies. Now we have a Moneypenny who is a black woman who is competent and important. Craig-era Bond doesn't shy away from showing off conventionally attractive women (the trope) but it does present them as people with lives and agency over their own futures. They are people, not furniture ornaments. Bond does have sex with them, but not when drunk and it gives at least a very good appearance of mutual consent rather than one-sided seduction.
This new agency is particularly true for Léa Seydoux, the latest "Bond girl" . Her character (Swan) is an MD with a troubled past, on the run from her family and her father's syndicate, with a conscience, and with many hard decisions to make in very small amounts of time. Yes, she's (repeatedly) kidnapped and Bond does rescue her. But she also rescues him at least twice and the scene on the train where Bond tries to teach her about guns is priceless.
The way Seydoux plays it makes the important moment where she has to decide whether to continue or to cut and run all the more powerful. Yes, she loves Bond but there's a real question of whether that's enough to overcome her doubts and fears and for her to commit to one path or another is her choice. If anything, I fault Craig's acting here as he comes across utterly stone-faced, without the level of reaction I want him to have to her obvious struggles.
The other thing I liked is that both Swan and Bond face parallel choices, even if M has to spell it out for the audience - a license to kill is also a license NOT to kill. One of the better themes running through Bond is why does he do what he does. The Craig-as-Bond film arc so far is digging into that and I still think it has potential, though the execution in the films themselves remains clumsy.
If Seydoux gets two thumbs up, I have to give thumbs down to the way the script plays Christoph Waltz's Blofeld. I am SO bored of Bond villains who are just plain insane. In Skyfall we had Silva (insane); before that Dominic Greene (insane). And so on. If the scriptwriters can't come up with a villain motivation beyond "he's nuts" then it gets dull pretty fast. I think Waltz does the best he can with what he's given, but Blofeld just isn't scary. He's annoying. If Blofeld's story is nothing more than "nutcase builds global empire to enact his personal revenge" then boy are you all wasting a lot of potential.
The movie turns on the premise that Bond has to stop the villain's plans for world domination. OK, fine. This time, the world is to be dominated via a linked computer intelligence network called "Nine Eyes". That's an obvious reference to Five Eyes, one of the bigger revelations of the Snowden documents. I give the filmmakers credit for trying to make the film relevant. The bad men are all white English-speaking types, so props for not using brown or black people as villains. What scares us (as it scares M in this movie) is not somebody with nuclear weapons - it's the set of agencies acting as though they were outside any law collecting all our data and watching every move, every conversation, every phone call.
The problem, though, is that the film leaves us with the impression that this kind of thing only happens because the paid agents of madmen are in charge. When in reality it's well-meaning honest people in charge - people who would certainly describe themselves as patriots and who think they are keeping us all safer by making privacy nearly impossible. I would also say that this film pretty utterly fails in having people of color in more than one interesting place.
The film also falls into the canonical stupid trope of "lone hacker is better than all possible computer security systems." Really? That's unimaginative and stupid. I would love to have seen Q go online and bring in his own network of grayhats. Or really about six other relevant plot variants I could think up if I spent two minutes on it.
Being a Bond film one is expected to suspend one's disbelief of the flying abilities of helicopters (and their pilots) and various other physical objects. I get that and sort of expect it, just like I expect every car chase in every old European city will feature cars going down a stone staircase (scattering pedestrians optional). So I'm glossing over all the physics- and object-based things. I also thought the green-screen work was a little too obvious in places.
The final problem I want to talk about is that this series seem unable to manage more than two real characters per film. Previously that was Bond and M, as Dame Judy Dench absolutely crushed it. The new M seems to take the role of flailing guy as Bond and Swan dominate this picture. I realize not everyone is Joss Whedon in being able to write ensemble casts but M, Q, and Moneypenny all have a great deal of potential that goes nowhere, once again. The film brings them in on the action, which is great, but other than one scene of Moneypenny at home and one scene of M facing off with C you don't get the sense that these are real people with interesting stories of their own.
Reading all the above might give you the idea that I didn't enjoy the film - that's not true. I walked out with a big grin, pumped up in the way a good action picture pumps me up. If you're at all a Craig Bond fan go see this. It's arguably better than any of the previous ones except "Casino Royale", which was such a novel change of course for Bond films.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-11-09 09:55 pm (UTC)If you don't mind a change of subject, I've noticed lately that lots of people are saying "bored OF," when for the first 50 years of my life, people used "with" as the preposition with "bored." Since I see that you said this in talking about the film, I was wondering if you could talk to me about it. When did "bored WITH" give way to "bored OF"? Is there a reason for the change, or is it just general linguistic drift? Do you mean different things when you say that you're "bored OF" something than when you're "bored WITH" a thing?
(This isn't meant as some kind of backhanded correction. I've noticed that a lot of people are using this construction lately, and since I find words and people both interesting, how people use words interests me greatly. So it's a genuine question. In the Mirror universe, I'm a psycholinguist. :-)
no subject
Date: 2015-11-09 09:59 pm (UTC)The first critique is to add to your issues with the "villain" of surveillance -- I said to Andy that I felt they did a TERRIBLE job of characterizing (a) why people actually want surveillance (usually for patriotic & honest reasons, regardless of how misguided I think that is) and also (b) why total surveillance IS ACTUALLY A BAD THING. This movie told us it was bad, but didn't actually tell us WHY it was bad. I also agree that you need a human element, but I don't feel the movie sold its case on that either (SUPER SPOILERS: why doesn't Bond destroy that security footage? why would he leave that behind? he knows they'll come to that location, he knows the footage is there -- what the fucking fuck? makes him look ignorant and bad at his job!)
So, I *also* felt the way Moriarty (yes that's his name dammit) was characterized was meant to be critical of millennials. His cocky attitude, how young he looked (despite being 39!), his insistence that old ways were bad, that technology solves everything... it felt like the same old "those kids and their phones!" bullshit I hear so often (right, cuz no one over 40 is obsessively attached to their smartphones/devices). I may be oversensitive, but I think I'm actually just well-placed to spot it.
Second spoiler is one that I STRONGLY RECOMMEND NOT READING, (perhaps even if you saw the movie) as this fell into a "once I noticed it, I couldn't unsee it, and it kinda ruined the movie for me." You can probably enjoy the movie a lot more if you don't notice this thing. This critique/spoiler is NOT PLOT RELEVANT. It's about how you make a movie. So. Stop here.
I fucking HATED the cinematography. Normally I adore focus-pulling, it's one of my favorite camera techniques, when it is used well. I could not get over how irritated I was that I was never allowed full depth of field to note background details. We got it in moments like with Monica by the pool (so it's not like they forgot to pack/use those lenses) but when we go into the secret room, WHY. CAN'T. I. LOOK. AT. THE. WALLS. WHY???????? There's shit all over the walls, I WANT TO OBSERVE IT. Why the fuck did you bother to dress the set and then LITERALLY PREVENT ME FROM SEEING IT. I am forced to look at the actors faces. That's fine on a first-watch, but one thing I love about film is noticing small details on endless rewatches. The short range of focus completely ruins that. It ruined it already! The shot over the front of the car -- why is the hood ornament NOT in focus? holy fuck this was so annoying. Sam Mendes, what are you doing?
That definitely contributed to my agreement with your opinion that this is not a good movie, though overall it's a stellar Bond film.
Andy also totally didn't notice the camera-over-focused issue until I pointed it out to him about 3/4 of the way through the movie, though once I did, he was pointing it out every time I noticed it. :-\
no subject
Date: 2015-11-09 09:59 pm (UTC)http://www.timeout.com/london/film/daniel-craig-interview-my-advice-to-the-next-james-bond-dont-be-shit
no subject
Date: 2015-11-09 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-09 10:33 pm (UTC)WRT the cinematography... it's a choice. It goes with the bad green-screening. I agree that it was not very good camera work but I don't expect good camera work in Bond films.
I totally agree with Monica. SUPER awesome and hot and yet that was the most Problematic Sex in a film that felt full of honest attempts to make the sex non-problematic.
I also agree that the film did a terrible job of explaining WHY the bad thing was bad. We just are supposed to assume that if the (crazy) bad guys want it well it MUST be bad. Sheesh.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-09 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-09 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-09 11:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-10 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-10 04:27 am (UTC)I read all of what you said and I think you're spot on for everything but one point.
Now we have a Moneypenny who is a black woman who is competent and important.
She was shown to be competent and important in 'Skyfall', even to the level of Bond's. And what is she in this movie? The Secretary. Who doesn't even warrant her birthday being remembered. Really not ok.
I realize that the original Moneypenny was the secretary and long-suffering and this is the new one. But they didn't give her anything bad-ass to do in this movie; she just took dictation. Grrr.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-10 06:59 am (UTC)We're not going to watch Cinema Paradiso, or On the Waterfront, or Yojimbo, but we'll have just as much fun just the same.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-10 06:07 pm (UTC)It sounds as if "bored OF" might be talking about the long term, something like "I'm bored of Tom Hanks because he's in every movie," whereas "bored WITH" might talk about a single session, like "I'm bored with this story today; let's go for a walk, and I'll try writing again tomorrow."
no subject
Date: 2015-11-10 06:51 pm (UTC)http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/bored-by-of-or-with
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVqodZFSERs (MacMillan)
no subject
Date: 2015-11-10 06:54 pm (UTC)I would like to see him finish out this story arc at least. I do like the notion that Bond is sort of like The Doctor in this respect, but I'm not tired of Craig.
THAT said, having a Black 007 would be fantastic, imo.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-11 09:06 pm (UTC)Adding to the echo chamber: not a great film, but a good progression in the Bond series.
One thing that bothered me was the torture scene: that's a level of on-screen gore that's new, and I strongly disapprove of. It's too Robocop (and the technique sucked in that movie, too). Show Bond strapped down to a chair; show Blofeld meticulously meticulously meticulously positioning the cameras "because I want to capture every angle, because I'm going to watch this again, and again, and again", and then the door slams closed and all you hear is the screaming. If you must, you can have torture instruments evilly starting to deploy before the door slams closed and you hear their whining/spinning-up sound before the screams. But don't show me that crap on-screen, that's just wrong.
Also, if Swan gets refrigerated in the next movie, I'm going to be pissed.
I'd love it if Spectre is a recurring villain:
Spectre: the big intro
Next movie: new premise; Swan is field agent support; Blofeld escapes in the post-credits teaser
Next movie: new premise; drop subtle hints about Spectre, the kind of hints that you only catch on re-watch. With Swan out of the picture, this gives opportunity for Moneypenny.
Next movie: Spectre movie, Swan reappears: "While you were doing unimportant stuff in Indonesia, I was tracking Blofeld. C'mon."
By "field agent support", I don't mean action sidekick, but more like "the sidekick doing stuff from the hotel room" or maybe running a low-risk distraction. Sometimes it works; sometimes the plot twist is that they get captured. Right now, Q tends to be that role, but doing it remotely from London.
I'd also like a unicorn pony, too. :)
no subject
Date: 2015-11-25 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-25 12:52 pm (UTC)