Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

Destroying two Bond movies for the price of one

By Matt Shea

The makers of James Bond ruined not only Quantum of Solace, but also the movie that came before it.

By on Saturday, December 6th, 2008 - 1,113 words.

The situation is very bad. Bond (Daniel Craig) is naked in the bowels of a rusting hulk, tied to a chair that someone has thoughtfully cut the seat from. Covered in cuts and bruises, sweating profusely, this is most certainly a low. Presiding over 007, heavy rope in hand, is Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelson). He paces back and forth with steady menace, intermittently swinging the coiled end of the rope viciously between Bond’s legs. Bond screams in pain; Le Chiffre grimaces: things are not brilliant.

Of course there’s a catch in that Le Chiffre — as far as Bond villains go — is a brilliantly-drawn bad guy: he’s as desperate as Bond, even more so. The irony of the situation is that it’s Bond who has Le Chiffre by the mountain oysters and the further the scene progresses, the more 007 realizes this. Bond mocks Le Chiffre, who’s pacing becomes more fevered and his questioning more impatient; he sweats with the exertion, driven to the point of being frantic. It’s an amazing scene, perhaps the pick of the movie.

And then it ends. Suddenly, from a side door a trench-coated assailant marches through a bulkhead and shoots Le Chiffre square in the forehead. Bond drifts into unconsciousness. The audience drifts into confusion. Did somebody misplace the sixth reel?

Thus 2006’s Casino Royale, the twenty-first Bond film, was cast adrift. Twenty-five minutes of the movie remained, but having been denied a cathartic resolution to the two hours that went before, the audience stopped caring. A grand final action set piece in Venice was still to come, but when you couldn’t fathom who it was doing what or why, it all seemed of little consequence.

Two years and 105 minutes later the end credits of Quantum of Solace are rolling and a certain sinking feeling is settling in. Quantum is an awful film. Poorly written, absurdly directed and edited to death, it’s the shortest Bond movie in history but somehow feels like the longest. Characters, supposedly the new focus of the franchise, are given short thrift here: Craig gets little opportunity to work his exceptional nuance this time around and the rest of the cast are wasted in undercooked parts, the excellent Jeffrey Wright in particular reduced to having his character Felix Leiter sit around looking as indignant about being in the film as the audience is about having to watch it.

Of course, bad Bond films aren’t rare -– there’s the clunky Diamonds Are Forever, the jaundiced View To A Kill, and the abysmal Die Another Day -– but what sets Quantum apart is the effect it had on its predecessor. Casino Royale is a film that was all but sacrificed for its successor.

Casino Royale, it should be pointed out, was still in many ways a fine piece of film-making. Efficiently directed by Martin Campbell, it was full of pulsating action and meaty characterizations. Bond himself was given a new lease on life by Daniel Craig and in Mads Mikkelson’s Le Chiffre, he was placed against an opponent worthy of 007’s king-killer instinct. Le Chiffre, as a financier to the world’s terrorists, was a figure that commanded both characters on the screen and the audience watching it. He was ruthless and powerful but also possessed real character flaws and, later, a desperation that not only made him all the more dangerous to 007, but all the more distinct from the maniacal villains who had come before.

Bond’s wrestle with Le Chiffre is the central struggle in Casino Royale and the scenes that take place in and around the poker game at the gaming house crackle with an intensity that even outstrips the audacious action scenes. It’s a conflict that escalates with the confrontation on the ship. As the scene was established you could sense the audience leaning forward in their seats, wondering how 007 was going to get himself out of this particular scrape. Of course, he doesn’t; somebody else does. The scene was destroyed and Le Chiffre’s character arc cut short, the writers flippantly wasting perhaps the best villain in the franchise’s history.

Essentially, Quantum of Solace started at that point, with the final twenty-five minutes of Casino Royale dedicated to setting up the following film. It was a move by the writers akin to taking 007’s PPK and kneecapping their own movie. Bond suddenly and implausibly falls in love with treasury official, Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), before she betrays him and he has a shoot-out with a bunch of villains we haven’t seen before.

****
Sequelism is often used in today’s film-making and while from the studio’s point of view it is hard to argue with the economics of such tactics, it doesn’t typically lend itself to quality celluloid. It’s no secret that the modern movie landscape is littered with bung sequels: The terrible line of Jaws films, the modern Star Wars series of the Matrix debacle. However, with each of those examples you can strip away the at best sub par later movies, pretending that they never happened.

Not so with the transition from Casino Royale to Quantum of Solace. What takes place with these latest Bond films almost moves beyond sequelism and into serialization, with one film making no sense without the other to immediately call upon. The car chase scene at the start of Quantum of Solace would mean absolutely nothing to audience members who hadn’t caught the end of Casino Royale.

Making this serialization all the worse is that the questions created by the noodling tacked on to the end of Casino Royale are not answered in Quantum of Solace. It’s like watching a series of Deadwood, where from one episode to the next you keep waiting for something to happen and nothing ever does. Who’s the secret organization that Bond is now up against? Beats me. What are their aims? Couldn’t tell you. Perhaps these questions will get answered in the next Bond film, but I wouldn’t count on it. Instead Bond battles with a bad guy whom he barely comes face to face with. His superiors are concerned that he’s only motivated by revenge, but they needn’t worry seeing as Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric) seems to have no connection to Vesper whatsoever.

Perhaps it would be different if Quantum of Solace were a great film. But it’s not: It’s a spastic, rushed mess that makes little sense visually or story wise. This would perhaps be forgivable in isolation. But when a potentially great film such as Casino Royale is ruined by a sequel that answers none of the questions the first film was sacrificed for, the makers of Bond have done the inexplicable, managing to ruin two films for the price of one.

8 Comments

  1. Matt Kennard says:
    December 6, 2008 at 11:36

    Good article, I haven't seen the new film, but I can imagine you are right… Don't you think Bond is becoming more and more obsolete now as well as our society has become more civilized? It just looks increasingly antiquated misogynistic stuff…. ?

    Reply
  2. Matt Shea says:
    December 8, 2008 at 06:24

    Hey Matt – thanks for the comment. I don't really subscribe to the 'Bond is outdated' argument. It's true that the character has hardly changed over the years, but the way the other characters react to him certainly has. M, for example, actually refers to him as an antiquated misogynist but that becomes part of the fun – he plays by his own rules and in a western society that is seen to sometimes be hamstrung by its own political correctness I think people perhaps get a kick out of watching such a charming and 'devil may care' brute. The real problem has simply been the lazy movies that have been made recently; before Casino Royale, the last good Bond film was Goldeneye ten years before. It's just about getting the script right in the context of Bond's slightly left of centre take on reality, bringing on board a quality action director and then ticking off all the traditional elements that go into making a good Bond film, most importantly a compelling bad guy with a clear goal. People talk about there being a lack of gadgets in the latest film, but to me that is the least of its problems – besides, in the first films there were either no gadgets or the gadgets Bond did use were simply clever and practical takes on real spy paraphernalia and didn't detract from the character's natural resourcefulness.

    Reply
  3. mogmachine says:
    December 8, 2008 at 06:51

    Well said indeed Matt, ..below is an article i wrote for my site immediately after seeing the movie …i was more than a little agreived. Sorry if the article goes off on a technical thread at the end, it was more in context with where is was published.:

    Article taken from “00-No-Thank-You”, originally published on http://www.mogmachine.com on 4-11-2008

    Maybe it is just me (although my fellow cinema goers instantly discount this) but what the hell has happened to Mr.Bond lately?

    No, this is not another comparison of bond actors past and present, a comparison of accents, hairstyle and dashing deep blue eyes (they tell me Mr.Craig possesses a pair) ..this is in fact not a comparison whatsoever, because the only thing i can compare my recent viewing of the latest bond film to is, …the last ond film. Full stop.

    Every other bond film i have seen has been ridiculous, but it is a bond film, that is what we pay our money for, cars, gadgets, women and the kill time one liners, …but i challenge you ladies and gentlemen, for i have seen pretty much all of the bond films, and never once have i finished one and thought to myself “What the hell was that all about again?”

    There is absolutely no tangible plot in the film, even as i try to argue devils advocate to this statement in my head i feel like i am trying to remember parts of a film i saw weeks, months maybe years ago, …not last night.

    I remember scenes, i remember actors, but plot, ..thin, vague, non-existent, these are the only words that spring to mind.

    So how has this happened?, what has happened? Well i think before we continue we have to ask ourselves a couple of key questions here:

    What exactly was the bad guy trying to achieve with his world domination scheme in this movie?

    He was bad, we know that much, he must be, he had a crooked face, french accent and hung out with bolivians in speedboats, but his aims, his goals, …they manifested themselves through pretending to the west that he was looking for oil in the boliian desert and if he found it they could all share, ..which of course even form the very outset we knew not to be true, …..but it took most of the movie for us to find out what he was really up to …and i was expecting underground lairs of Moonraker proportions, …oh no, …he had, ..erm, …stored some water underground, ..and he wanted to, …erm, ..charge the bolivian government 60% more than they were paying to access it !!!!
    Is this not all of our major global and national utility companies, ..We call it a water bill, ..but apparently this was dastardly indeed.

    Did anyone see a Q provided gadget in this movie?

    Yes i figured out that John Cleese was never going to become a permanent fixture as a Q replacement, ..and yes, Q is no more, ..but did every single gadget have to die with it, i mean the closest i saw to his watch was the Omega advert just before the movie started, …other than that, no lasers, exploding inanimate objects, nothing, …except, ..oh yes, …one giant huge touch screen desktop computer !! ..they moved stuff around on it like it was, ..erm, ..like it was, ..a ,.erm, ..what is that futurist concept thing called where you can touch the screen, ..oh yes, .an iPhone.

    Actually, ..if you want to be impressed by a touch screen desktop, check out this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0ODskdEPnQ), don’t go and watch bond.

    So can we leave bond alone now, it’s just not worth it anymore, i will wait for the download (sorry i mean DVD) in future, unless someone goes the extra mile to realise that you still need a storyline to make a movie …in this country. Which is the final travisty of the matter, ..this film is one of the few massive guarenteed global blockbusters to come out of a UK studio, ..and that was the best we could do.

    Well i can’t really just leave it like that can i, so if you liked the whole 3d desktop bit, just have a look at what they could have got if they bought in Mr Gates instead of Q (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP5y7yp06n0).

    And finally, if that was a little too serious for you, here is the lighter side of the 3D desktop theme that this post seems to have accidently adopted (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY&feat…).

    Reply
  4. Matt Shea says:
    December 8, 2008 at 10:41

    Thanks Mog – nice write-up yourself. I was disappointed simply because they'd done such a good job at bringing the franchise back to life with Casino Royale only to blow it all with Quantum of Solace.

    Reply
  5. Cibbuano says:
    May 26, 2009 at 21:31

    I didn't like Casino Royale at all… to me, it was a hollow simulacrum of a Bond film. "We'll put him in a tux, and he'll play poker! This is classic Bond!"

    That poker game was ridiculous, insinuating that good poker is all about getting rare hands. That lunacy made me seethe, but the awful dialogue between Vesper and Bond made me want to fling fragile objects across the room.

    No, I'm fairly certain that I've run out of patience for Bond.

    Great write-up Matt!

    Reply
  6. Mattshea says:
    May 29, 2009 at 08:30

    Ha! Cib, thanks for reading. Not at all? I can't remember someone having that harsh a reaction to it.

    You're absolutely right, the purple dialogue between Bond and Vesper is for the most part pretty awful. The poker stuff really worked for me, however… but then that's coming from someone who's NEVER played the game, so perhaps I'm one of the blindfolded droves. Really, for me, this was great stuff until they threw it all away in the final act.

    Reply
  7. dregs says:
    May 31, 2009 at 15:24

    47 years, and 22 films later Bond's still a masochistic, misogynistic, trash can of pop escapism at its most pointless. The poster boy for narcissistic womanizers, and the trigger happy culture that relishes the barrel.

    If there was ever anything called good spy films it would have to be the Bourne triology.

    Reply
  8. Lavonna Holston says:
    September 3, 2010 at 11:03

    There is also obviously a lot to know about this. I think you produced some excellent points in Features also. Maintain working, very job!

    Reply

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Matt Shea

Matt commenced writing in 2003 when he helped develop a series of comedy sketches for screen. In subsequent years he has collaborated with various writers on a number of short film and television pilot scripts, some of which remain in development. Between 2006 and 2009, Matt also started working to develop a number of his own short film scripts. In late 2007 Matt began writing for Scene Magazine, contributing on the topics of both film and music, while through 2008 he also became a regular contributor for The Coolhunter and composed articles for both Passion of the Weiss and Way Cool Jnr. Matt now maintains his own film site at www.moviecritic.com.au and helps pay the rent by copywriting for The Man. If you'd like to hire Matt for his words you should contact him at the email address listed below. For payment he prefers magic beans.

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