26 replies to this topic

[00Twelve]

The title pretty much sums up the question.

I think that even though it is a Bond film, it's a great stand-alone film and the catalyst to a whole new approach to Bond.

[ckoch]

I get what you are asking 00Twelve. I think it is a great movie for this time and place however I do think it is a semi stand alone hit. If you look back on the 20 movies that came before it, you have had the series overhauled before and scaled down to the point where the films have gotten grittier and more realistic (For Your Eyes Only, OHMSS, Living Daylights) after big fantastic larger than life films (Moonraker, You Only Live Twice, A View To A Kill). In that sense I do think the series is reverting back to the former type of films for maybe the first couple of Daniel Craig films however if you are thinking if the series will become more Jason Bourneish from this point forward, I wouldn't count on it. Tendency has shown us that they will probably creep towards the point of overdramatic villians and implausable hideouts and such again. But let's certainly enjoy Casino Royale for bringing Bond back to his roots where he should stay but won't likely remain.

[Bucky]

it seemed like it was beyond being just a great bond film and was simply a great film in my opinion. it had a great story, great dialogue, and great characters.

[Judo chop]

Signs point to it moving from a great standalone film to the beginning of a great standalone series. As we use BC and AD in our calendar system to mark a momentous event in our history, so we can do the same for Bond.

BC = either "Because of Connery" or "Before Craig" and AD = "After Daniel".

It's a new era. Casino Royale marks the turn.

[Vauxhall]

It's a new era. Casino Royale marks the turn.

I would love it if this proves to be the case. I am filled with a great deal of confidence for the duration of the Craig era, but will be interested to note the direction for the seventh Bond. Hopefully we will continue to get great movies, not simply great Bond movies.

[HH007]

it seemed like it was beyond being just a great bond film and was simply a great film in my opinion. it had a great story, great dialogue, and great characters.

What Bucky said.

[FLEMINGFAN]

A dull film with no "James Bond" in it, so I guess it does not feel like part of the series.

[tdalton]

I would agree with the poster above that it is a dull film (some of the most boring action sequences I've ever seen), but it does feel very much like a Bond movie because it's obvious that they went out of their way to check off every one of the items that comprise the "Bond Formula". In that way, it does feel very much like a James Bond film, just a very boring and stale one that isn't anywhere near the quality of films like TLD, FYEO, LTK, TB, FRWL, etc.

[Harmsway]

CASINO ROYALE feels like a new series, despite checking off a lot of the moments of Bond iconography, just like BATMAN BEGINS felt like a new series despite having all the essential Batman elements.

[Mr_Wint]

As I see it, CR was Bond 21.

It wasn't a total reboot (like for instance Batman Begins) since many EON-elements are still there. Feels more like a OHMSS-TSWLM-FYEO-TLD-GE type of 'new era' film.

However, if the next 3-5 films will "copy" CR then this film will seem like the beginning of a new serie. But I dont think that will happen.

[HH007]

A dull film with no "James Bond" in it, so I guess it does not feel like part of the series.

Yeah, yeah, whatever. Maybe dull to people who don't like to have to actually pay attention during a movie.

[Harmsway]

Maybe dull to people who don't like to have to actually pay attention during a movie.

I think that ultimately has very little to do with it. Some people aren't going to like CASINO ROYALE's particular cocktail of Bond, and they can be very intelligent filmgoers.

But for me, CASINO ROYALE's particularly brand of Bond goes down smooth. I hope BOND 22 proves as satisfactory, though I wouldn't be surprised if CASINO ROYALE stays on top, despite BOND 22 edging it out in some areas.

[HH007]

Maybe dull to people who don't like to have to actually pay attention during a movie.

I think that ultimately has very little to do with it. Some people aren't going to like CASINO ROYALE's particular cocktail of Bond, and they can be very intelligent filmgoers.

True, but to call it dull? I think it's one of the best action movies in years and one of the most exciting Bonds ever. Even after multiple viewings, I have yet to get bored with it. That post I quoted just sounded like a CRAIGNOTBOND person who was bound and determined NOT to enjoy CR (believe, there are a lot of those).

Edited by HH007, 05 January 2008 - 01:46 AM.

[tdalton]

Maybe dull to people who don't like to have to actually pay attention during a movie.

I think that ultimately has very little to do with it. Some people aren't going to like CASINO ROYALE's particular cocktail of Bond, and they can be very intelligent filmgoers.

True, but to call it dull? I think it's one of the best action movies in years and one of the most exciting Bonds ever. Even after multiple viewings, I have yet to get bored with it. That post I quoted just sounded like a CRAIGNOTBOND person who was bound and determined NOT to enjoy CR (believe, there are a lot of those).

I agree with the post that you originally quoted in so far as that I found the film to be very dull. I was one who went out of the way to not hear or read any of the spoilers for the film, so even with my not knowing a lot of the minor characters and the events that were to precede the actual adaptation of Fleming's novel, I still found it to be unexciting, predictable, and rather boring. The second half of the film where it's mostly taken from Fleming's novel, the film is OK, nothing special, but OK, but it needed to be an absolutely spectacular second half after the rather awful first half.

I'm hoping that Forster will get this thing back on track with Bond 22. He's a good director, but a good director can only take as film as far as the story will allow him, and I just don't see where there can really be a particularly interesting story that can follow off of the heels of EON's Casino Royale.

[Harmsway]

I'm hoping that Forster will get this thing back on track with Bond 22. He's a good director, but a good director can only take as film as far as the story will allow him, and I just don't see where there can really be a particularly interesting story that can follow off of the heels of EON's Casino Royale.

You never know, maybe you'll be surprised. Probably not, since I do imagine that BOND 22 won't be a radical departure from what CASINO ROYALE was, but there's still a question mark there. It's really too early to write it off.

I don't think it's particularly hard to make an interesting story that follows off of CASINO ROYALE. I can think of many fascinating, bold, and creative places for the franchise to go. Hell, if all you wanted to do was follow Fleming's LIVE AND LET DIE or YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE in a loose capacity, you could do that and it would work fine.

They just have to be committed to taking the story in some unexpected directions, which they may or may not be the case. But at this point, it's still too early to make a judgment call either way.

[tdalton]

I'm hoping that Forster will get this thing back on track with Bond 22. He's a good director, but a good director can only take as film as far as the story will allow him, and I just don't see where there can really be a particularly interesting story that can follow off of the heels of EON's Casino Royale.

You never know, maybe you'll be surprised.

I don't think it's particularly hard to make an interesting story that follows off of CASINO ROYALE... hell, if all you wanted to do was follow Fleming's LIVE AND LET DIE in a loose capacity, you could do that and it would work fine. They just have to be committed to taking the story in some unexpected directions, which they may or may not do. But at this point, it's too early to make a judgment call either way.

Maybe I will be surprised (but it will certainly be on DVD if/when I'm surprised), but I really don't see where things could go from the end of Casino Royale. Bond's hunting down of the organization behind Mr. White isn't all that interesting of a story (we've seen it with SPECTRE, for instance). Remaking LALD (or any other film, for that matter) is not the way to go either, IMO. For me, the best way to go with this would be to have Bond resolve the issue of Mr. White's organization very early in the film and then move on to something else entirely.

To answer the question posed in the thread, I do see Casino Royale as a stand-alone "hit" (a "hit" in so much as it was very successful at the box office). I don't see Bond 22 doing anywhere near as well as CR, and that would, IMO, move things back towards the more light-hearted Bond adventures similar to what we saw with Moore and Brosnan's tenures.

[Harmsway]

Bond's hunting down of the organization behind Mr. White isn't all that interesting of a story (we've seen it with SPECTRE, for instance).

We've never seen it done well, and you can always frame a similar story in a more interesting light. Heck, there's not really a new story to be presented anywhere. It's all in the how, not in the what. And right now, we have no idea how they're doing it.

Remaking LALD (or any other film, for that matter) is not the way to go either, IMO.

I'm not talking about remaking. I'm talking about using the largely unused stories from those novels and developing movies off of it. There's still a lot of unused material that would fit in this sequel. Heck, you could even do a NOBODY LIVES FOREVER and have Bond on the run from assassins, since the organization has now put a price on Bond's head. Or directly adapt DOUBLESHOT.

There's endless possibilities for where the sequel could go.

To answer the question posed in the thread, I do see Casino Royale as a stand-alone "hit" (a "hit" in so much as it was very successful at the box office). I don't see Bond 22 doing anywhere near as well as CR, and that would, IMO, move things back towards the more light-hearted Bond adventures similar to what we saw with Moore and Brosnan's tenures.

How do you figure that? I actually see the exact opposite happening.

[tdalton]

Remaking LALD (or any other film, for that matter) is not the way to go either, IMO.

I'm not talking about remaking. I'm talking about using the largely unused stories from those novels and developing movies off of it. There's still a lot of unused material that would fit in this sequel. Heck, you could even do a NOBODY LIVES FOREVER and have Bond on the run from assassins, since the organization has now put a price on Bond's head. Endless possibilities.

To answer the question posed in the thread, I do see Casino Royale as a stand-alone "hit" (a "hit" in so much as it was very successful at the box office). I don't see Bond 22 doing anywhere near as well as CR, and that would, IMO, move things back towards the more light-hearted Bond adventures similar to what we saw with Moore and Brosnan's tenures.

How do you figure that? I actually see the exact opposite happening.

Doing an adaptation of Nobody Lives Forever would be an interesting direction to go, but it won't happen because EON has already indicated several times that they will never make Gardner and Benson's novels into films.


As far as box-office, I see Bond 22 being this century's LTK. TLD was fairly successful, but LTK wasn't all that successful. I could see this easily happening with Bond 22, especially if

Spoiler

it turns out to be a character study, which is what Forster's comments about looking inward into the Bond character and so on seem to indicate.

[Harmsway]

Doing an adaptation of Nobody Lives Forever would be an interesting direction to go, but it won't happen because EON has already indicated several times that they will never make Gardner and Benson's novels into films.

Well, they could still take the basic idea and do their own thing with it. It wouldn't be the first time EON did a very similar idea to the Gardner novels.

As far as box-office, I see Bond 22 being this century's LTK. TLD was fairly successful, but LTK wasn't all that successful. I could see this easily happening with Bond 22, especially if it turns out to be a character study, which is what Forster's comments about looking inward into the Bond character and so on seem to indicate.

The comparison doesn't exactly pan out. TLD wasn't even close to being CASINO ROYALE-level successful, nor did it win over the public the way CASINO ROYALE did. I know you're sure not a fan of the movie, but a lot of people are. The reasons LTK did poorly had to do with a lot of factors, one of them being a general apathy to TLD, and I don't see any of those factors coming into play with BOND 22. What factors are going to drive away audiences from BOND 22?

And Forster's comments about character indicate he's going for some depth in the character, but they hardly indicate a character study. It's like saying because Christopher Nolan commented that he wanted to explore Bruce Wayne's character, he was going to make BATMAN BEGINS an art film.

[HH007]

I agree with the post that you originally quoted in so far as that I found the film to be very dull. I was one who went out of the way to not hear or read any of the spoilers for the film, so even with my not knowing a lot of the minor characters and the events that were to precede the actual adaptation of Fleming's novel, I still found it to be unexciting, predictable, and rather boring. The second half of the film where it's mostly taken from Fleming's novel, the film is OK, nothing special, but OK, but it needed to be an absolutely spectacular second half after the rather awful first half.

Well wait a second, tdalton, I distinctly do remember you saying that you really liked CR the first time you saw it. That when you first saw it you thought it was one of the best of the series, but it was only after repeat viewings that your opinion went down. And yet now you speak like you didn't like the film from the go get. Like you found it "dull" from the first time you saw it.

And Harmsway is right, CR and Craig caught on with the public in a way that TLD (great movie) and Dalton (great Bond) sadly never did, so I also see B22 being an even bigger hit with audiences.

[tdalton]

Well wait a second, tdalton, I distinctly do remember you saying that you really liked CR the first time you saw it. That when you first saw it you thought it was one of the best of the series, but it was only after repeat viewings that your opinion went down. And yet now you speak like you didn't like the film from the go get. Like you found it "dull" from the first time you saw it.

And Harmsway is right, CR and Craig caught on with the public in a way that TLD (great movie) and Dalton (great Bond) sadly never did, so I also see B22 being an even bigger hit with audiences.

I've always said that I didn't like the first hour of the film. I thought that the action in the film (which is almost entirely contained within the first hour of the film) is very dull. I don't think that I articulated that very well in my last post, but that's what I meant to say. That's not to say, though, that the rest of the film is great. It's not, IMO, but it's not dull either. The action (which is roughly half of the film) is quite dull and feels like something that didn't quite make it into one of the Brosnan Era films. I think that if the first hour or so of the film was completely cut and was re-imagined, then the film would have been better. I think that having Bond do more investigative work that did not involve breaking into M's apartment or running around an embassy or an airport would have made the film a much stronger film. My main problem is that I find the first hour of the film so boring that I really don't have enough interest left in it to continue watching into the second hour or so of the film, where CR finally begins to take some small steps in the right direction.

I think that the main reason that I said that CR was great and that it was one of the best films in the franchise was because it was new. Believe it or not, when I left the theater after seeing DAD, I thought that it was amongst the best in the franchise at that time as well. After seeing it a few times on DVD (which is why I will never review a Bond movie again solely based on the first few viewings), I saw just how awful it was. This was also the case with CR.

I think that you and Harmsway are both right about the LTK/Bond 22 comparison that I was making. Bond 22 almost assuredly will be a financial success, both in North America and worldwide. What I'm hoping for is that Marc Forster finally gets the franchise back on track, and I have confidence that he can accomplish this because he is, far and away, the best director to ever work on a James Bond film. But, as I said in an earlier post, a great director can only elevate mediocre material so much, and that's where my worry is. I wasn't too happy with the script that ultimately made its way to the screen with CR, and that was the product of a long polishing process. This script will not have that luxury because of the writers strike, and it's anybody's guess as to what kind of quality we're looking at with this script, and it if is a subpar script due to the fact that it most likely not get to be polished.

[coco1997]

tdalton, what was the last Bond film you were completely satisfied with?

[tdalton]

tdalton, what was the last Bond film you were completely satisfied with?

Either LTK or TLD. TLD is my favorite Bond film, but I was very much satisfied with LTK as well.

[coco1997]

Okay.

[Loomis]

(CASINO ROYALE) does feel very much like a Bond movie because it's obvious that they went out of their way to check off every one of the items that comprise the "Bond Formula".

Yeah, like:

- Moneypenny.

- Q.

- The gunbarrel at the beginning.

- A PTS that's pretty much exactly like all the others.

- A title song called "Casino Royale".

- A dark-haired actor as Bond.

- An anonymous-looking white guy as Leiter, giving a dreadful performance, who won't be back for the next film 'coz they'll just hire another anonymous-looking white guy who'll give a dreadful performance.

- The James Bond Theme played every two minutes.

And so on....

What I'm hoping for is that Marc Forster finally gets the franchise back on track, and I have confidence that he can accomplish this because he is, far and away, the best director to ever work on a James Bond film.

I find it strange that you write this, but - and please forgive me if I'm wrong - you've also stated on a number of recent occasions that you've no interest in seeing BOND 22.

Surely you went to see all the other Bonds, in the Brosnan era and maybe before, back in the days when there didn't seem even the remotest possibility that talent like Craig, Forster and Haggis would one day be attached to the series. The days when there was nothing even vaguely resembling the sense of artistic expectation that currently surrounds the franchise (which is at the moment every bit as respected as the BATMAN BEGINS and Bourne franchises). The days when "the new Bond movie" was nothing more nor less than, well, the new Bond movie - a couple of hours of silly fun and little more. But we went because we were and are:

A - Bond fans

and

B - regular people who enjoy watching fun movies, just like everyone else (which is why Bond is a global success).

Do you see what I'm trying to say? You may have been disappointed by CASINO ROYALE, but I don't see why you're writing off BOND 22. Let's say it turns out to be just a run-of-the-mill Bond film - I think that's unlikely, but just for the sake of discussion let's say that that's what it's going to be. Well, what's the problem? You were happy with run-of-the-mill Bond before (insofar as you paid to see it at the cinema), so isn't it better than a kick in the teeth?

Still, what a dull site this would be if we all shared the same opinions.

[HH007]

Well said, Loomis, well said.

And to address something else tdalton said, you felt the first hour of CR was dull when you first saw it but you thought it was one of the best Bonds anyway? Well I can't quite see how that is possible. When I saw DAD for the first time, I was as unimpressed by it then as I am now. So if I was so bored by the first hour (I'll repeat, first hour) of a Bond film, I don't know how I could consider it one of the best, even if it was the first time I saw it.

[tdalton]

Well said, Loomis, well said.

And to address something else tdalton said, you felt the first hour of CR was dull when you first saw it but you thought it was one of the best Bonds anyway? Well I can't quite see how that is possible. When I saw DAD for the first time, I was as unimpressed by it then as I am now. So if I was so bored by the first hour (I'll repeat, first hour) of a Bond film, I don't know how I could consider it one of the best, even if it was the first time I saw it.

I considered it one of the best at the time because, for some reason, I was very much a fan of the second half of the film and because I thought that Daniel Craig was excellent in the role, and that all of that strongly outweighed the negatives of the first hour. With the second half of the film, it was very much like DAD for me in terms of my reception of it. After seeing DAD the first time, I thought that it was a pretty good movie because it was new (after seeing the other films so many times any new material is enjoyable simply because it is new), and this is what happened with the second half of CR.