I just feels like something that's been done to death. Austin Powers has already pre-empted it as far as Bond is concerned. Everyone is worried about having to reclaim things from Austin Powers (such as Blofeld and his cat), and then we're just supposed to sit there and watch EON in turn rip off Austin Powers? Doesn't sit well with me at all, I'm afraid.
"Cliche" might not be the right word, although I'm sure that there have been plenty of forms of media that have examined that exact same storyline. "Cliche" is an attempt at being diplomatic with my opinion of the storyline that EON seems hellbent on pursuing. Perhaps "silly" or, with all due respect to the creative team, "stupid" would have been better, as the idea of having to watch Bond battle a childhood acquaintance (or friend, or adopted brother) after just having had him work out his mommy issues in Skyfall is just way too much.
I understand.
Personally, I would have preferred a simple mission for SPECTRE, without any personal stakes, apart from building up the animosity between Bond and Blofeld.
But there seems to be a desire to root everything in personal issues these days, not only when it comes down to Bond films. In every development meeting a writer is always given a mandate: make it more emotional, we need more heart, it has to be personal.
Which always means: we need to connect with the characters´ motives by making them as basic as possible. That´s why so many pictures always deal with the estranged lover or the estranged father, desperately trying to prove themselves in order to establish a classic family unit.
I´m not saying that these basic emotional ties are wrong, they actually do connect with the majority of audiences because they reflect the social norm.
It just becomes very clichéd and does not leave room for different, unusual and therefore more interesting ideas.
And you know what started this craving for "EMOTION"?
"Titanic". The basic love story at the core of that, as corny and simplistic and, um, unrealistic as ist was, made too many audiences shill out their bucks.
After that, every executive wanted that kind of dynamic in every picture.
And it trickled down into every genre.
Nowadays, even an action thriller - like a Bond film - is loaded up with emotional ties for the main character to the max. Everything must always be personal. Anything else, so the thinking goes, won´t have enough impact.
I don´t subscribe to that view, and it drains the fun out of many films which could have told much more straightforward stories.
But maybe audiences are beginning to get tired of it a bit. The biggest moneymaker of the year (so far) seems to be "JURASSIC WORLD". Sure, Howard´s character has ties to her nephews, but she hardly knows their names and has other things to do then proving to be a nice aunt after all, and Chris Pratt´s character, while interested sexually in her, is basically trying to survive. No exaggeration of the love story was needed.
"Terminator Genisys", apart from being misconceived in every way, suffers badly from making Schwarzenegger a surrogate father to Sarah Connor, and the love story with Reese tries to be VERY EMOTIONAL but falters early on and stops the narrative every time. Audiences were not amused.
I´m not saying that deep emotional bonds have no place in genre films, however. They can work wonders and add dimensions to the characters. But when they aren´t handled well they overpower everything else.
As you know, I love SKYFALL and Mendes´ work. So I´m giving him credit and hope that the Bond-Oberhauser-dynamic will be done with taste and intellect.
I´m not afraid of AUSTIN POWERS, however. At all. Those films were mainly joking about the Connery and Moore films, a bygone era. And they themselves have dropped off the public´s radar. Sure, some journalists will throw the name around sometimes, but I doubt that many of the key demographic audiences have even seen them or know who Mike Myers is. Since they probably haven´t seen a lot of the old Bond films, they will hardly think of AUSTIN POWERS when they watch Bond films of the Craig era.
And I can´t imagine Sam Mendes aiming that low.
). They fight each other, while Number Three (Ernst Stavro Blofeld) is waiting for his two adversaries to exhaust themselves and then strike (like the Siamese Fighting Fish in FRWL). Big reveal at the end of SPECTRE "Allow me to introduce myself: my name is Ernst. Stavro. Blofeld."
