There's nothing wrong with loving movies warts-an'-all but what it struck me is the superciality that stems from QOS supporters. Reading through both the good and the bad reviews, I realise most of these staunch supporters had convinced themselves of how good the film was even before seeing it. That way fandom is incredibly easy, especially if only recently started. I get the feeling what we're dealing with is no longer fans but "religious fanatics" who are uncapable of taking any criticism and certainly haven't got the brains to detect/admit flaws. I, too, used to feel that Eon produced films above other blockbusters, that their standards were higher, more sophisticated but QOS has been like a bucket of cold water. It's really shown me how unsophisticated the average Bond fan is. Isn't Bond supposed to be about sophistication?
I haven't heard anybody talking about QOS since it opened here. When CR came out, people who didn't know you were a fan talked about it, would watch it again and even women liked it as much as men. Back in the days after LTK, Good ole Cubby felt Bond needed a change or would eventually become a summer movie cliché. One every two years, just for the fans. I fear that, unless Eon see beyond the numbers and commit to an exceptional film for 23, this will be remembered as "the beginning of the end".
I'm sorry I'm harking this far back in this thread, but I couldn't leave this without a personal comment.
First of all, there are without a doubt people who will love anything Bond; and there may be some of them on this board. But this board isn't the whole world of Bond "likers"! You can't deduce anything from this small group, least of all some sort of religious behaviour towards the series, and impose it on every person liking or loving the film there is. It's unfair, and incorrect.
Take me for instance. I didn't look forward to the film very much, I didn't even have it on my radar until September or something. And even though the beginning is flawed, I love QoS. Completely.
What is sophistication? How do you define it?
Let's have a little look back at the 007 movies the audience was presented since the 80s.
When we put brackets around For Your Eyes Only, which was apparently produced because the sillyness of Roger Moore had clearly reached an unsurpassable peak in Moonraker, there were Octopussy and A View To A Kill, and both of them I wouldn't exactly call sophisticated.
There was a change in tone when The Living Daylights arrived, but once the filmmakers decided to give Bond an even harder edge in License To Kill, it bombed. You have to realise that in 1989, audiences had been pummeled for nearly 20 years with the idea of the "funny and cartoony Bond".
I am not sure the Brosnan films would have turned out the way they did, had Dalton been successful with LTK.
But since its concept didn't work, I am not surprised we got the Brosnan series of mass explosions. The Brosnan era was in many ways a cliche of the cliche the Moore era produced.
In effect, what you got over a period that lasted a good 25 years was a complete shift of expectations - even before Brosnan. The Brosnan era looked at the past, saw what made those films tick, and painted a constructed picture of it with more modern colours, until people didn't expect a Bond movie anymore, but an hommage to the past.
You see it in every aspect: "Look, here's the car", "look, here's the supervillain", "watch, here's the girl".
If you define sophisticated as James Bond walking around in fine garments, acting suave, always with a one-liner on the lips, then yes, in this sense, the Moore and Brosnan films were sophisticated.
James Bond films need to stop looking at what the past did and try to do it in the same way. *That* would be the true road to oblivion. That was the fatal flaw of the Brosnans and the late Moores; I'm surprised nobody seems to see that.
The Bond films are not about the girls, the jokes, the gadgets, the villains and their plans alone. James Bond films are about the same thing every memorable movie series is (very well realising the Bond series is unparalleled): reasonable story, well- told, charismatic and skillful lead and good direction. This is the fundament. This is what makes all other typical Bond elements tick, this is what keeps them fresh and makes them seem enjoyable and not a guilty pleasure.
Face it, the majority of the last films took their story as a necessary pain in the neck to dish out as many "Bond moments" as possible.
This is simply not the case with Quantum Of Solace, and I enjoy it to the extreme. I would even say that the story basis of CR and QoS is so strong that they were able to create a new kind of "Bond moment" so badass, cold-blooded, maybe even sadistic, that not even Connery or Dalton could have pulled them off.
Watch the final scene of CR or the Oil Fields scene in Quantum, and tell me you're not blessed to witness such downright chilling and dead-on Bond moments in your lifetime.
It has the style, the charme and the polished dialogues.
I'm not sure what you're driving at. On one hand you say Bond movies should be sophisticated, on the other hand you complain about the multi-layered story.
That is exactly what I was talking about, expectations. You've been conditioned over years and years to leave your brain at the door when watching a Bond movie, you've been trained that whatever twist that might occur, whatever subtext there may be, it will be presented on a silver platter, hence the ridiculous melodrama in the Brosnan outings.
And this development didn't leave me cold, either.
To be honest, when I heard QoS was about Bond avenging Vesper, I heard a faint echo of the pretentious Brosnan-drama-acting. And doesn't it speak enormously for the film's qualities and ability to detach itself from the past that the revenge aspect plays as subtle as it should, and doesn't get blown up?
I could see why someone who isn't nuts about James Bond forgets what CR was about in detail, but I cannot blame the movie when I forget about Bond and Vesper; that is too easy. And it may be another sign that we were trained to tune out as soon as a Bond movie is hitting a more complex note.
And frankly, the story of CR is in no way crucial to understanding the plot of QoS. It adds depth when you take CR into account, but it's a perfectly good plot on its own.
Daniel Craig's films mark the first earnest and permanent change in tone since Live And Let Die, and I couldn't be more grateful for that, after the series slowly turned into a marketing gimmick that gets dusted off every three years for the blockbuster- thirsty teenie's quick fix.
