Here's new contributor Kyle Turner to talk Bond, James Bond...
Bond hasn’t had much of a history the last fifty years or so, and by that I mean Bond the character. The Bond films, perhaps up until 2006’s Casino Royale, had been content with a more anthological and informal character illustration. But with the Nolanizatoin of the Bond franchise (aka the Daniel Craig era), we’ve been treated to a revisionist approach to James Bond: history, character, person. That appears to be continuing with the newest film SPECTRE, from Skyfall helmer Sam Mendes, which looks like another pretty, maybe interesting, maybe terrible chapter in 007’s origin story.
Let's break down the trailer yes no maybe so after the jump...
Yes 007 in Mexico City for Dia de las Muertos! Reminiscent, no doubt, of the pre-title sequence in New Orleans for Live and Let Die.
YES Mr. Craig donning a skeleton mask. The color grading and palette makes it look all dusty, but you still get a glint of Craig’s icy blue stare. I can jam.
Maybe I recall (seemingly tenured) screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade mentioning that the films would lighten up a bit and become more directly pastiches of Connery’s devil-may-care sardonicism. And “taking a long overdue holiday” certainly seems to be evidence of as much. The thing is, I’ve always been kind of abivalent about quips in this series.
Moneypenny: “So what’s going on James? They say you’re finished.”
Bond: “What do you think?”
Moneypenny: “I think you’re just getting started.”
No thank you.
Maybe This is more of a comment on Aston Martin the car dealer/maker, but they’ve been looking pretty much the same for the last decade and a half. The differences between this and the V12 Vanquish from Die Another Day seem to be marginal, at least design wise.
Yes I'm finally on board the Ben Whishaw train!
Bond: Can you do one more thing for me?
Q: What did you have in mind?
Bond: Make me disappear.
No. To be fair, this kind of arch dialogue will probably work better in context in the film and have a kind of fluidity tonally, but out of context it sounds kind of dumb.
Bond: Tell me where he is.
Rando Henchman: He’s everywhere!
No While Bond dialogue has never been subtle, come on.
YES Monica Belluci! Why hasn’t she been a Bond Woman before? The world may never know. But, yay!
No Belluci’s dialogue is kind of terrible!
Yes Lea Seydoux! I love Lea. You love Lea. Everyone loves Lea. Remember when she had a bit role in the last Mission: Impossible movie? And remember those Wes Anderson directed Prada commercials she was in? Good times.
Yes Bond driving a plane only to sort of crash it. Reminds me of when Natalia in GoldenEye asked him (then Brosnan), “What is it with you and moving vehicles?”
Seydoux: Why should I trust you?
Bond: Because right now, I’m your best chance of staying alive.
No. Did they literally choose the worst bits of writing from the film for the trailer?
YES The SPECTRE insignia appearing on the computer was rad. So, thusly, I hope the film continues this relatively interesting trend of repeatedly asking “Why do we need Bond in a post-9/11 world?”
YAAASSS If there’s one thing I can give credit to this trailer, it’s showing off the very pretty cinematography by Her and Let the Right One In cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema.
Maybe Christoph Waltz as the head of SPECTRE, aka Not Blofeld. I don’t think anyone believes he isn’t some prototype of Blofeld, if not that character exactly, though. My hope is that he’s not playing Hans Landa/Dr. Schultz again.
Seydoux: Is this really what you want? Living in the shadows. Hunting. Being hunted. Always alone.
Bond: I don’t stop to think about it.
Maybe: Some iteration of this question gets thrown around a lot throughout the series, and the answer is still the same, or similar. But what I like about the Craig era films is that though the question is asked explicitly, there’s a great deal more effort to continue prodding into Bond as a psychologically complex human being. There’s speculation, rather than just rote gunplay. Also, Seydoux sounds like she’s mimicking Eva Green here.
Yes Don’t think I didn’t notice a revamped version of the theme from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service!
Yes That framing! That lighting! That composition! I LOVE IT!
Waltz: It was me, James. The author of all your pain.
No. There’s a certain point where I will become terribly ambivalent about Craig’s films existing as one long origin story. So long as that darkness is elevated by some sort of investigation into, like, contemporary sociopolitical allegory or subtext (see: various manifestations of terrorism in Casino Royale, capitalism in Quantum of Solace [I know, I try to pretend it didn’t happen too], and terrorism again in Skyfall).
Yes, I’m in, but more because I’m a devoted James Bond fan than the fact that this looks any good, which it... does not. It looks like a very pretty James Bond thriller that’s hampered by dialogue loaded with pretense, but without necessarily the self-awareness that something like Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal has. I’ll still go because I’m genuinely curious as to how and why it’s doing a revisionist Bond history.
We always know that Bond will return. We just don’t know whether it’ll be worth it to see him, each time he comes around. What did you suspect this time?