That’s quite easy: you simply mark the parts you want to quote (see attached screenshot) and below the marked text a “quote” option appears. Click that and the quote appears in the editor screen. Mark your next quote and that too is put in the editor, separated from the other quote.
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Not really. Filmmakers often like to re-use favorite musical motifs. Think of John Ford and his fondness for the “Ann Rutledge Theme,” which Paramount had to pay Twentieth-Century Fox for, in order to be able to use it in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE.
I never thought of his performance this way. Thank you.
Can you expand on this? Serious query: what makes SF “better made” than SP?
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For starters, Skyfall’s cinematography is better, heck, it’s the best of the series. I also think the screenplay is better, no doubt aided by the lack of the stupid foster brother angle SPECTRE is saddled with. The land vehicle chase (Skyfall’s motorcycles vs SPECTRE’s cars through Rome) is better executed and more thrilling. I also think the PTS of Skyfall is better executed than SPECTRE’s despite the neatly done one-shot take gimmick.
The Bond girl is better (Naomie Harris’ Eve Moneypenny, yes she’s the Bond girl in Skyfall, vs Lea Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann). Craig has much better chemistry with Harris in all their scenes together than he does with Seydoux. And I think Sam Mendes’ direction is better in Skyfall.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–I think Mendes made all the right decisions (or at least better decisions) in Skyfall than he did in SPECTRE. For instance, the aforementioned cinematography choices and, I believe, it was his decision to make Blofeld a foster brother for Bond in SPECTRE to cite two examples. Also, the music is better–and more original–in Skyfall than SPECTRE, which again is partially down to Mendes’ decision to re-use Skyfall music. And while I really like the bits that were re-used in SPECTRE, I would have preferred Mendes and Thomas Newman to have created something new as it helps make SPECTRE sound aurally as Skyfall-lite. The only musical things (cues I think might be the correct term) that should be re-used over multiple Bond films are the James Bond Theme and the 007 theme (which we are WAAAAAAY overdue to hear again, by the way. But with Amazon taking over things creatively, I’m sure we’ll never hear it again. 
)
And yet despite having said all that, I still prefer SPECTRE, in large part because Craig’s Bond is the most “traditional” Bond of his tenure and, as a result, he seems to be enjoying himself more than in the rest of the series and, likewise, I’m enjoying myself more watching the film as well. Also, I’m not as thrilled about Javier Bardem’s Raoul Silva character as most seem to be although I have less issue with his escape plan than most people seem to who love the film. Go figure.
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There actually is only a reworked version of what I will call the „chase theme“ which uses the motif originated in „Skyfall“, and I suspect this was due to the lack of time and the usual pratice of using previous music on the temp track.
I consider the use of that theme to be an equivalent to Barry‘s re-use of the alternative „007“ theme.
Apart from that Newman delivers a fantastic score for SPECTRE, at least equal to his work for SKYFALL.
As for „better“, it seems difficult to prove. Both films are absolutely well-crafted. Deakins is a master, no argument. But van Hoytema is, too, and he was asked to do something different, for a very different story.
I could not decide which is better. One can love both.
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Your rewatch is fascinating @secretagentfan. I had the opposite reaction when I first saw Spectre, I thought “wow this tops Skyfall” to mind at the time and multiple viewings have not changed this it is a quintessential James Bond film. It captures a time and a mood of that time perfectly. For that to happen all these various strands of life have to come together.
Goldfinger, Thunderball, OHMSS, DAF, Moonraker and Spectre.
All of which lock in a feeling, a style of filmmaking, a leading performance that could only work in 68/9, in 71, 2014/5.
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Good to see you’re enjoying SPECTRE a lot more these days. I’ve always liked it, and the whole Craig era for that matter, despite acknowledging some of the shortfalls.
Skyfall laid the groundwork for a more traditional experience and SPECTRE ran with it. I was pleasantly surprised to see Blofeld’s crater base and the polite game the villain and the hero engage in, just like Dr. No. The train fight might not make complete sense but you can’t deny it’s classic Bond. The last segment falls flat, but it’s not enough for me to dislike the whole.
NTTD is my favourite Craig performance though, and I think Craig’s most relaxed and confident persona was during the Cuba sequence. My love for that film is only increasing with the Amazon news. It feels so appropriate and epic, the last stand of the Brocolli 25.
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And it puts a new spin on it, too: at the end of the fight we see how exhausted and scared CraigBond is, he even tries to flee from Hinx. It is Madeleine shooting at Hinx which gives Bond a short and needed pause so he can prevail.
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Thanks you for responding. Much appreciated.
I agree that the cinematography is good, but SP’s visuals seems more of a part with the film’s aesthetic and narrative. They serve to film, rather than being beautiful in-and-of-themselves, which I find distracting in SF.
I will take you word about the music in the two films. I am a music illiterate, and unqualified to opine.
I also think that the filmic elements are arranged more harmoniously in SP. There are individual moments/effects/elements that I like in SF, but they never create a satisfying whole for me, e.g., on many occasions, I notice how beautiful Deakins’ cinematography is, which means for me that it is not in service of the narrative, but trumping it.
Again, thank you for this insight. Craig does seem to be owning the role, and having fun in doing so.
As with @Stbernard, a precious quality for me in a film is how it captures its moment of production. The films he lists (with the exception of TB–sorry, I just say “No” to Terence Young) have just the right amount of "moment capture " for me. As I have said before, DAF is a paradigmatic 1970s film–pink tie and all–and a great James Bond movie.
When Bond and Madeleine unite at fight’s end, it feels like an earned physical release for two people who have bonded (sorry), rather than a male conquest.
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NO TIME TO DIE
Before:
In 2017 things fell apart for my family. Things which I believed would be a constant source of trust and strength crumbled and would remain destroyed. Then my father-in-law fell into a waking coma and had to be on life support for half a year until he died. My wife and I held on as well as we could. Then in 2019 another potential terrible diagnosis hang over our own heads, and after months of doctors saying “worry” / “don’t worry” / “oh, do worry after all” we closed out the year with “it´s fine now”, and we really hoped that 2020 would be the year to lay back, recover and relax again. The trailer for NTTD made me look forward to sitting in a cinema again, enjoying the new Bond, with life maybe finally back to normal.
Yeah, well… 2020 began with my mother developing a mysterious illness after having caught a bad cold which landed her in the hospital. In February, one day after being discharged as healthy, she couldn’t get up from her bed again. I live about an hour drive away from her, so this quickly became also an organizational problem. We scrambled to get home care for her. And then the world was caught in the pandemic scare.
I made the trip to her once a week, seeing that she did not get worse but also not better. All the while fearing also for my own health, getting sick and giving it to my wife as well. Also, my line of business came to a complete standstill, and nobody knew whether I would get paid again.
Then my mother got sicker, was taken to a hospital again. The doctors didn’t quite know what to do. It was possible that she would not survive. But she did. She was discharged. Home care again. And then she would get sicker again. And back to the hopital. And so on. She was hospitalized five times in 2020. And then, in the fall of 2020 her condition stabilized enough that she could end home care but was assisted thoroughly by a long time care worker twice a week. All the while my wife and I miraculously stayed COVID-free (no vaccine in 2020 yet). (Of course, my father had gotten sick - cancer - during that time, too. He underwent treatment, it seemed to prolong his days.)
During that year and also during 2021 I (as many or most of you) watched that trailer for NTTD so many times, more than any Bond trailer before, clinging to the hope that once the film would be released all the bad stuff in the world would lie behind us. Even the title “No Time To Die” had to be a call for resilience, reminding us to hold on and get through this.
I also don´t know how many times I checked the iTunes page with the score (of which only the Gun Barrel had been released). And although the title song, released in February 2020, had already been an indicator that maybe this film would not offer tons of laughs I explained it away with “it´s Billie Eilish, it´s her schtick”.
Then the film finally was released. And in the first review I read it already said what happened to Bond at the end.
I was devastated. Bond after all found the time to do this? What a sick joke. I wanted this film to offer me relief and fun. I needed this film to do that. I had put my hopes on this film to feel, well, unburdened again after all those years. No such luck.
I was too scared to go to the cinema yet (also couldn’t risk getting infected and give it to my wife or to my ailing mother), but thankfully a great guy from this forum helped me to watch it anyway. And from the start I couldn’t shake the feeling of sadness and doom hanging over every scene. When the ending finally came, I was numb. It was already late at night. I crawled into bed and fell asleep with the thought that Bond, my hero of my youth and teenage years, was also gone now. Sweet dreams.
I waited for the official streaming release and watched it again, then.
I liked it a bit more. But the ending still got me. And the whole film was tainted with that. I did not feel the need nor the wish to watch it again.
Instead, my resentment grew, it fell upon the whole Craig era, and I vented against it, again and again.
I never watched NTTD in the cinema, and it´s ironically the first Bond film I never saw on the big screen.
After:
I was looking forward to visiting NTTD for my re-watch sessions because after falling in love with the Craig era again and even having my best reaction yet to SPECTRE.
But then last Thursday happened. NTTD again took on another tinge of sadness. An additional meaning of “ending”.
And watching the film now, knowing this, I can’t help thinking that EON knew already back then that they would never do any other Bond film again. NTTD seems to be the one last hurrah, a vessel for putting everything in they still wanted to say about Bond, trying even the death of Bond ending, giving it all their best. Even the use of the OHMSS score bit and the Armstrong song does not seem to be just an allusion to the other tragic ending-Bond. It rather is a send-off to the whole series (which gets nods to most if not all previous films anyway).
I could even believe that the moment Craig was cast BB knew that this cycle would be the last one for EON. So instead of recreating the usual template EON specifically made films with Craig which did not go where the others went yet. “We just want to fill the gaps, and then we’re done.”
So how did I like it this time?
I loved it. Again, like re-watching SPECTRE, I had put away all my expectations (and hopes!) and just looked at what was there, not at what I wanted to be there.
And I must say, NTTD is just as thoroughly constructed as the other Craig films, with tight pacing, great dialogue, action and a narrative build-up of drama, with many scenes subtly foreshadowing what it will end with. Craig is phenomenal, leaning into all the anger and sadness and regret his Bond is allowed to feel, while also displaying the kind of suave and assured agent in the Cuba interlude 007 is known for.
Again I have to defend the claim against the “he is just going rogue in every film”-argument. Instead, he actually behaves much more professionally and dutifully than his superior(s). The Craig era is definitely a reaction to a world which has rightfully grown suspicious of the methods of their politicians and intelligence leaders. They are the ones who seem to have gone rogue, and the “little guy”, Bond, always has to risk everything to clean things up again. Only this time having to sacrifice his own life and happiness.
It´s interesting and fitting how slightly overcranked the colors of Linus Sandgren´s cinematography are, giving the proceedings a kind of hyperrealism, as if everything is about to implode. And Zimmer´s score lays on the drama, employing the Bond theme in so many ways that it underlines that everything here will lead to Bond´s own implosion.
For the first time, Blofeld in this film also worked for me - I love the very low key way he is taunting Bond with the most devastating truth.
I also love the idea that Blofeld brought on his own demise by killing off Safin’s family, and Safin using the devilish idea of using Bond to kill Blofeld and his Spectre family (what a creepy moment when they all crowd around Bond before dying of Heracles).
And yes, I think Safin is not a weak villain at all, but in his snake-like way extremely effective and also tragic in himself. It is so much more interesting to have someone like him be the end of Bond than an all-powerful giant.
As for the end of Bond itself…
Before Thursday, February 20th, 2025, I thought that I could still at least give myself the chance to consider that Bond could survive at the end of NTTD. Yes, all these explosions would kill anybody in real life. But Bond is larger than life.
You could still start the next film with Bond, severely hurt, being picked up by a Japanese fisher boat. Then cut to a few years later. Where you have Bond, after having undergone facial reconstruction, return to M… and trying to kill him. - Cue the PTS. (Yay, one more return to Fleming!)
But now… no. CraigBond is dead. EONBond is dead.
“The past isn’t dead” (as the line was used in the trailer)?
No. “Letting go is hard.” (as the line was used in the film).
But that’s what we have to do.
Now look towards the future. It may be a bright one.
If not, let’s give ´em hell for that.
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NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN
Before:
In Germany, the much publicized “Battle of the Bonds” did not happen in 1983. The McClory-Connery Bond was released in January 1984, which meant that we got a new Bond film in 1983, 1984 and 1985. Great times!
And while I always preferred “Octopussy” to “Never say never again”, I remember going to the cinema in 1984 and loving it. C´mon, I was 14 1/2. And I enjoyed Connery, the fight at shrublands, Brandauer and Carrera. Also: back then, you could see a movie at the cinema, maybe twice, and then you had to rely on your memories until much later on it would be released as a VHS video to rent.
When the DVD age began I did re-watch NSNA and kind of liked it - but my love for it diminished. The film had some enjoyable moments (the fight at shrublands during which Bond clearly is outmatched and barely able to keep up until his urine sample does it; the old but always funny “from here”-joke, the motorcycle chase, and Fatima’s demise by pen). But the rest was… dare I say it… boring and uninvolving.
I did love Brandauer as Largo but actually only doing his typical Brandauer schtick, and Carrera completely overacting. And I loved the title song because it had that kind of Moore-era feel of “relax, everything is alright with the world”.
But from the guy who directed “The Empire Strikes Back” I had expected more. As one could read later on, Connery did, too.
I had not seen the film for at least 10 years now. And I was happy to see it as a palate-cleanser after the ending of NTTD. So… did my opinion on it change?
After:
No. I like the scenes I described. But that’s it.
It surely did not help the movie to be confined to being a “Thunderball”-remake, having no real chance at doing more with Bond. But would it have been able to do more?
It´s interesting to ponder whether this could happen to future Bond films, without EON´s involvement: just a collection of “hey, isn’t that what Bond is all about”-scenes, strung together with a flimsy narrative (and mostly uninteresting action sequences). At least the film has Connery (and his knowhow what to do with a Bond film). To think this movie would not even have that…
Ah, let’s rather not.
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re: NTTD:
I appreciate your revisits to the Craig entries and your amended takes on their merits. It’s frankly hard for me to imagine this era winning me over, but you’ve opened me up to at least the possibility.
The key, I think, lies in acknowledging that with the singular exception of CR, none of these films delivered what I wanted or needed at the time. I went in hoping for something I didn’t get (and I confess, eventually assuming I wouldn’t get it). Maybe now that some time has passed, I’ll feel differently on re-viewing them, and maybe it will help to just let go of what I want from a Bond film and watch these things as films, period. Or maybe it’ll help knowing from the get-go that they won’t deliver on expectations and thus abandoning those expectations to appreciate the films for whatever they actually are.
Either way, it’s not a priority for me to return to this stuff, but when I do, I’ll try to do it with an open mind. And maybe I’ll watch with my daughter, whose reaction to “classic” Bond has always been “meh.” Maybe NuBond will be more to her tastes.
re: NSNA:
It surely did not help the movie to be confined to being a “Thunderball”-remake, having no real chance at doing more with Bond. But would it have been able to do more?
Yes, alas TB was the one Bond story envisioned from the start as a major-scale barn burner of an epic, and whatever else it might have had going for it, NSNA does not seem to have had much of a budget. They could’ve adapted MR on a TV budget (with that “piddling little rocket”), but TB requires a larger canvas.
Between the shoddy effects on the “cruise missiles” and the Dick Tracy “flying trash can” and the “we rented this office building for the day” feel of the MI-6 scenes, and when added to the juvenile humor at Shrublands and the lack of the Bond theme or gunbarrel, the whole thing comes off as a bargain imitation of a 70s-80s Eon Bond. Yes, Connery is back and depending on your tastes yes, maybe Connery IS Bond, but for me it feels a lot like an attempt to do a Roger Moore Bond, only with a “Return of the Man from UNCLE” budget.
Having said all that, I enjoyed it well enough the first time around and walked out of the theater with a Connery-inspired swagger, which I confess I don’t think ever happened with Roger, much as I adored him.
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That is exactly what made me really love them now.
Perfectly stated!
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I will second @secretagentfan’s support for this approach.
For me, the chief reason I love both DAF and SP is that they hold together superbly as films/aesthetic creations. Yes, they are Bond films–just as GUYS AND DOLLS is a musical–but the internal structure and formal unity of all three movies provides the support that allows them to be the genre pieces they are.
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I think it’s likely CR worked for me because it was a mix of the old (Fleming’s basic plot) and the new (a Bond unrecognizable from his predecessors) whereas every entry after that was just “the new,” and not a “new” I much cared for. In retrospect I might’ve had more fun if they’d continued to adapt Fleming’s works with a modern twist. Next go around, I will attempt to go in with the attitude of “Who is this James Bond person?” and see where it gets me.
The hard part will doubtless come when Mendes shows up with those callbacks to past incarnations, like that damned car. That’s a big stumbling block for me: go your own way and I’ll give you lots of slack. Insist that your new take connects somehow with what used to be and I will start judging you against the older stuff…and that’s a losing proposition.
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Understood. As outlined in my recent response to @Skyfail, I would guess you fall more into the Bond Scholar category, and Mendes’ callbacks–which are for me lovely formal elements of mostly gossamer impact–bring up a matrix of connections that you prefer in alignment.
I would suggest that it is less that the callbacks insist on something, than you experience them as a demand because of your engagement with what is being called back to.
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That connection is just a meta nod - and it only works that way if you know what it is nodding to.
But if one doesn‘t allow for that, one can’t even allow the Bond theme within the score. Or a PTS. Or a title sequence with a song.
And if the new reminds one too much that one prefers the old one has to acknowledge that OHMSS also was the new at one point, same with the Moore era or Dalton‘s films.
The Craig era did things differently but also in the same way. Which is what every Bond film has ever done. Even comparing DN and TB one could have left with the impression that „it’s just not the same anymore, and now they even have to parade the car around again“.
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It has references to all eras which makes things even better. He may be a different incarnation to the 1962-2002 Bond, but when Craig runs through Safin’s lair and takes down that private army he’s representing the entire filmic history.
There’s power in the idea Bond doesn’t beat the clock this time, considering all the other films depict the opposite. Somehow that feels like a fitting way to go, and it would’ve been a real surprise to viewers ignorant of the twist. He accepts his fate and stands tall until the end. I think CR and SF are better but NTTD is in the same conversation. Craig went out with a good one.
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The Craig era did things differently but also in the same way. Which is what every Bond film has ever done. Even comparing DN and TB one could have left with the impression that „it’s just not the same anymore, and now they even have to parade the car around again“.
I agree in the old days any notions of continuity, linearity or cohesiveness were tenuous at best. We basically got the same movie remade 20 times: you could pick and choose what dots you wanted to connect and leave the others out. George, Roger and Tim were all married to Tracy, and probably Brozza, too. Or not. GE Bond didn’t catch on that of course the bad guy’s HQ would be under the lake because he wasn’t the same guy who lived through that same schtick in YOLT. Roger’s Bond had such a lousy short-term memory it didn’t even occur to him he was reliving in 1979 the same adventure he’d just had in 1977. We got a “soft reboot” every time, so it didn’t matter if it didn’t all fit together.
But it starts to fall apart with specific callbacks. The Aston Martin showed up in TND, but maybe it was just a car that Brosnan Bond liked the look of and bought at auction; it didn’t necessarily have to be THAT Aston Martin, so I let it pass. But then in DAD, he’s wandering around Q’s workshop and there’s the Acrostar, the poison-bladed shoes, the jetpack, the alligator, and I’m taken completely out of the film. No one ever asked me to accept that Roger-Bond battled Dr No or Red Grant, or that Dalton Bond took a joy ride with JW Pepper or had Jaws help him escape a space station, but now here’s Brozza saying, “Yep, that was all me, I was on all those missions. And look, I’m still in my early 40s!” It stuck in my craw.
CR went over so well with me because it said, “Let’s pretend no one’s ever adapted Fleming to the big screen. How would we do that if we were starting TODAY, with no past behind us?” It totally worked on that level and was a breath of fresh air. Then came that damned car in SF and all the questions it raised: was this the one issued for the Goldfinger mission and if so, how is that possible? Who would think it was a brilliant strategy to go “under cover” in 2000-something with a multi-million dollar vintage auto from 1964? Or was it his personal vehicle, in which case, why is it outfitted with lethal gadgets? But it must have been outfitted by Q-branch on the tax-payer’s dime because M knows what the enhancements are and how they work. It took me straight out of an otherwise serious-minded (to a fault) film by breaking the fourth wall and making a cheeky meta comment: “We know we’re in a Bond film, so we know what that button does.” Then we get, if anything, a worse instance, when Oberhauser reveals he’s “Ernst. Stavro. BLOFELD!” like that name has any meaning in that universe. It only means something because of the older movies, which never happened in this reality. It just bugs the crap out of me. But maybe it’s just me.
Anyway, I guess my point is that the Craig era worked for me when it charted its own course and built a new continuity for the 21st century. It did not work for me when it tried to link itself to what had gone before. I respect the guts it took to start fresh, but not so much the attempts to borrow glory.
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Great and true observation.
Meta is an acquired taste (no, I don’t mean that Meta). As a queer man, I love it, since it is not just an aesthetic device, but a tool I use(d) to survive in the world. Being able to claim and re-purpose aspects of the world, and thereby create space for myself and others like me, is crucial to my being able to flourish.
Where for you, meta approaches are
for me they are acts of re-fashioning/renovation.
Thank you so much for being open and eloquent about how the callbacks bother you. It has allowed me to understand meta better, and how it plays out in my own life. Much appreciated.
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The thing is that for me, “meta” is fun. It’s a cheeky, winking nod to the fact that things can and do exist on multiple levels of reality or awareness. It’s a way to say, “I know I’m in a Bond movie, and we all agree on what that means.” It’s Roger recognizing the James Bond theme when Vijay plays it on a snake charmer’s flute. It’s Q typing in the combination on his door and Roger adding two more notes to finish out “Nobody Does It Better.”
Or I guess there’s a more intellectual side to “meta” that frankly I’m too plebeian to recognize or appreciate, and maybe that’s what the Craig-era references are going for, because “fun” is out of place in those films. To me, “Look it’s THAT car. Remember that car? Wink-wink, nudge-nudge” is just as jarring and unwelcome as if they’d added a Tarzan yell when Craig('s double) swings down on that bridge cable in the NTTD PTS. Craig-Bond films are many things, but they’re not “fun” or “light.” At least not for me. On the other hand, they do sometimes work in the context of dreams, where things that don’t belong and cannot be nonetheless abound and are accepted at face value. Possibly the entire Craig era is just the result of a particularly potent martini or excessive meal and after it, Roger-Bond woke up in his shag-carpeted flat to say, “Well, that’s the last time I indulge in THAT!”
Having said all that, I freely admit I have officially passed into “geezer” territory based on the calendar, so at the end of the day this could all be chalked up to “Old Man Yells At Cloud” Syndrome.
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