But they clearly do believe in it. Bond, more than any other franchise, is prepped to drop things when they arn’t working and start over, but Eon actually chose to continue. No Time To Die is acting as a direct sequel in a way no other Bond movie has, especially they could easily have just started on Bond 7, but NTTD continues on with both Spectre’s Female lead and main villain, picking up where Spectre left off and is dramatising a piece of back story from Spectre.
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Yes, I guess you’re right. Perhaps it would be better to say that Eon know how to improve on things, or know to take what works and drop what doesn’t. I’d have done the same. There’s no need for them to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Madelaine is a good situation to explore. Perhaps Blofeld will be presented as just an arch-enemy in NOTD, with no family connections mentioned.
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First thought that occurred to me was an effort to keep Craig happy.
“What’s my motivation?”
“He bullied you when you were a kid and he’s still bullying you now.”
To be fair to it though, the narrative need for the sibling angle is kinda there in that the theme hugely informs the narrative telling.
It gives them more tools in teasing Blofeld’s foreboding mystery figure. The wonderfully ‘haunted’ nuance of the funeral scene wouldn’t have been quite as powerful without the personal theme planted in the pria b/w photo discovery in London. This nuance then ripples through the SPECTRE meeting.
The sibling angle definitely isn’t a narrative necessity. The ominous foreboding of this mystery leader would’ve held plenty of thrills. But thanks to that b/w photo set up the team are able to imbue the subsequent search with a haunting, ethereal quality realised perfectly by Deakins and Newman that lifts these scene above their class.
All in all I find this makes it worth suffering the half baked mess it all turns into in the Vauxhall bridge/Westminster bridge finale. This major narrative point and it’s themes were more or less resolved in the African lair. That should’ve been fleshed out with a substantial climax and the movie ended there. Retreading the sibling reveal and rivalry in London stretched it to the point of tedium.
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Yes, I can see this: well said.
I guess that, without the shadowy unseen presence build up that Blofeld benefitted from in the original run, the introduction of Bloferhauser would have been nothing more than a fan service name that would have mattered little to the younger audience. For my taste, I could have done without the family connection, but that doesn’t make it a mistake. To be fair, when the first rumours/leaks started emerging, I was filled with dread, so the end result was a pleasant surprise. Still so much to love in this film: the arrival at the crater with all its Dr No echoes being a particular favourite.
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Like any actor has ever done that!
I definitely havn’t asked that exact question as an actor and, as a writer, apologised to a director for assuring she WILL get asked that because I intentionally left a character ambiguous in the script in regards to why they do what they do…
I have contemplated making D&d character sheets for every character in a script just ‘cause I know that question is on the way.
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Part of Spectre’s issues, in my opinion, is a direct result of Skyfall’s success. Spectre was originally slated to release in November 2014, but EON delayed it to wait for Mendes to be available having directed one of the most critically and the most commercially successful film in the franchise. Therefore Mendes was given free reign over Spectre and, as you noted, wanted a more personal angle. However, P&W had to be brought back for emergency rewrites when it was clear the story wasn’t working. The film needed more polish, but was grossly overbudget and there wasn’t money nor time to do a major overhaul. The Sony hack put the film into a bad light long before release. It was clear that many of the crew (especially Craig) were unhappy with the final product. However, what’s nice is to see EON owning what they did and building on it as opposed to trying to retcon it out of existence (looking at you Disney/Lucasfilm).
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Mendes said no
Eon accepted
Sony wanted Skyfall 2 So Made Eon wait (Ignoring the perfect storm Skyfall arrived in)
Mendes came back
Sony didn’t know what film they wanted to pay
Demanded rewrites long after writers contract lapsed and had moved to next project
Craig broke leg needing more rewrites
Sony still didn’t know what film they wanted to pay, but wanted more rewrites
Made a film whose biggest crime is “it’s not Skyfall” (you’re in lockdown - pull up Spectre reviews. Get a bottle of whisky. Do a shot every time you read that quote)
I agree, they made the film they wanted to make, didn’t listen to arm chair critics on twitter.
Bad Robot are in two minds about whether TROS does that. Some (writer, director, directors flat mate/lucky charm) say it doesn’t, then there’s the editors on that podcast, Bad Robot regulars, who went well past loyalty to the company and into brown nosing and say TLJ purposefully retconned TFA
Abram’s wanted zombie Palpatine in Force Awakens, but was told no, which is why Snoke is sooooo much like Palpatine, so I imagine he was glad Johnson killed Snoke.
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I thought The Last Jedi was mediocre, but I also think Johnson was trying to be self-consciously “brave” and showy. This also caused a lot of preening among its fans too.
The laboured continuity in SP doesn’t ring true for me either. For one thing, I don’t see how that ring could’ve been passed between so many people.
Another “mistake”: As much as I love OP, I wish they had made Orlov’s scheme easier to understand. The thing which most people trip on is the scene in which he destroys the egg and Khan winces. That needed attention, I think.
I love The Living Daylights too, but that one has a similarly convoluted plot.
To think that critics ridiculed Bond films for having only simplistic plots…
Personally, I think The Last Jedi is easily the strongest of the 3 films and the one that dared to bring something new to the franchise instead of relying on nostalgia and embarrassing fan service.
I always took the ring to actually be a flash drive of sorts that contained data, not that it was specifically passed to many different people.
You could say that about most Bond plots (that they are overly convoluted). I do agree that The Living Daylights’s plot is very confusing and to this day I still don’t fully understand what Koskov’s plan was or how he and Whitaker fit together.
As for OP, I believe Orlov’s plan is that he wants the Soviet Union to invade and take over western Europe. He plans to detonate a nuclear bomb on an American air force base, making it look like an accident to trigger disarmament talks. While the NATO powers are busy doing this, their borders would be undefended allowing the Russians to blitzkrieg their way across western Europe. He teems with Octopussy under the guise of jewelry smuggling to have a way of smuggling the bomb into West Germany. The jewelry is then switched with the bomb before leaving East Germany. Orlov destroys the fake egg because it is what caught MI6 onto their operation. Little does he know he actually destroys the real egg which is why Khan winces.
Now having written all of that, yes that story is very confusing and could have probably been explained better.
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This series has immediately fatal chemical weaponry transported in easily broken glass and transported to space by shuttles launched from the middle of the jungle. The Russian and American governments keep loosing rockets to a bigger rocket that eats other rockets and is residing in a Japanese fishing village, yet is never noticed. It starts with a tank painted to look like a dragon that people apparently believe and people going missing every time they visit an island and it never catches attention of anyone
And you find more than one person holding a ring implausible…
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Shaking hands at sinister meetings in Italian mansions in the wee small hours… pre social distancing of course!
And also this! 
Oh I understand OP, but only after some effort 
Thank you for explaining it, anyway, and I’ll return the favour in a moment when I do my best to detail TLD, though I am not ashamed to say I needed to read up on it before it was clear to me.
I’ve seen people say different things about the egg: some believe it’s a fake, but a good copy, and that’s why Khan winces. Thing is, it’s only when Orlov smashes the egg that they discover the chip. The scene is probably more trouble than it’s worth.
I also wonder why Orlov and Khan didn’t take out the jewellery when they put the bomb in, as it’s all going to be destroyed (they think) in the blast. They could’ve made a nice little earner there.
TLD: As is the way with these things, the overall plan only becomes clear (or, in this film’s case, a muddy grey), at the end. Basically, Koskov wanted to make lots of money. He had his government pay American arms-dealer Brad Whittaker for arms. Together, though, they spent the deposit on diamonds, which they then use to buy opium, which they intend to sell and make enough profit to buy the weapons that they should have bought in the first place, only they get to keep the millions of pounds in profit. Unfortunately for Koskov, Pushkin finds out about this embezzlement. Instead of simply killing Pushkin himself, Kokov feigns defection to the British and persuades them to kill Pushkin. That’s why Bond pretends to do it later on. It’s also why Koskov got Kara to pretend to assassinate him in case he defects, as he wanted the defection to look dangerous and therefore convince the British that it was real. Amusingly, from the Russians’ point of view, he simply disappeared for a fortnight, and they next see him when Bond hands him over at the end. As I say, it’s convoluted, and I don’t blame you for not quite getting it. If I’m wrong, anyone, please correct me.
(A friend of a friend tried this very scheme, though presumably not inspired by LTD, with student fees. He invested the money in the hope of keeping the profits and then spending the original sum on uni, which is what it was for originally. Unfortunately, for him, the nit, his investment went south and he lost it all. Now he owes it.)
As for The Last Jedi, I was most disappointed (though I’m no SW fan, just a viewer), by Luke not getting his big comeback moment at the end, which I hoped would involve him dueling Kylo. I think, when you start the film with a hermit who has rejected heroism, it should end with that hero finally marshaling himself and going off to help others again.
And the Spectre ring…well, the Craig era takes things more seriously, so that bit really stood out. Be funny to see someone intercepting Silva’s body upon its return to London and stealing the ring
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Handshake. Sciara interacted with all these people at Spectre meetings, where he was wearing his membership ring and shook their hands.
Also; Craig’s films arn’t any more serious than they were. Casino Royale’s plot actually makes less sense than Die Another Day’s - no matter how good a player you are, your last hand in poker is pure chance, and yet we’re to believe both Mi6 and the CIA, independently, thought it was a great idea.
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Forgive me, but what about the handshake? I’ve only seen the first once, so can’t recall the relevance.
I agree with you about how unrealistic it is - just look at Skyfall, any scene, in fact.
The reason their dna was on it was because Sciara was wearing it at any Spectre meetings, where he’d shake their hands, causing their oil from their hands to rub on it (why you wear disposable gloves when handling fragile paintings and antiques) Given the ring was only worn when meeting working as a Spectre operative, only people who were involved with Spectre would’ve had DNA on the ring.
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I’m never afraid on these boards to hammer what I think deserves it (SP!!!), and also to make desperate and lonely attempts to defend what everyone else hammers (TWINE!!!)
EON have, from the early days, created the behemoth and benchmark of a franchise that all others aspire to. But with that success comes that fact “mistakes” are almost unavoidable. When you’re the big boy on the block, you almost have to be all things to all people, and so at that moment “mistakes” become unavoidable - one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
DAD is a great example - tonal shifts almost impossible to pull off. I can’t blame the attempt to combine FRWL-type thriller with YOLT-spectacle, other than it’s a massive ask that with hindsight can only end in failure.
With the exception of the films that hue close to the source material, from '65 on that would pretty much be OHMSS and CR, the franchise has on each release, tried to give all factions something - whether it be OTT spectacle, gritty espionage moments, and family viewing laughs. I’d offer that when they don’t pull it off, it’s only because it’s a mistake within each release to try to be all things to all. But to be fair to EON, nearly 60 years of success doesn’t give them a lot of room to not be.
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Ah great, thanks.
Well, that’s sort of clears it up. It basically boils down to a get rich-er quick scheme. But one that is needlessly complicated.
Not to mention, the ridiculous unlikelihood of a single hand resulting in a flush, 2 full houses, and a straight flush.
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