I can’t choose, they are all so funny, I had to laugh out loud! Thanks Jim, you’re the best!
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All! Shall! Have! Penguin!
I have spake.
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We aim to please.
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June 20.
Let’s twist again, like we did last summer. Although if, like me, that did your back in and it hasn’t been quite right since, let us not and let us sit on the sofa with some refreshment, and stroke our penguins (not a euphemism) (maybe).
Twists in Bond, though - which was more effective for you?
- Elektra King is the villain
- Gustav Graves is Colonel Moon
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Both patently useless as ‘twists’. To this day I prefer to see Graves as the secret lover of Moon from their university days who just lost his marbles over his death and overcompensated by ‘becoming’ his one true love.
And every amateur sleuth from C. Auguste Dupin and Miss Marple onwards would immediately point to Elektra as the most likely culprit. Even the Rosenheim-Cops would cuff her before Ms Stockl could announce the dead body. Elektra only feels more ‘effective’ - after a fashion - for being Bond’s love interest (after a very broad definition of ‘love’ and ‘interest’).
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Twists without the surprise, both, maybe we need another word for that, um… unraveling… faint surprise (two words, unsurprisingly)…
Okay, let‘s go with twist*.
- meaning it was a real twist but then we chickened out or the actor was overdirected / not directed
Elektra could have worked very well - but in my mind Marceau from the beginning had that pissy, mysterious, malicious je ne sais quois which revealed everything.
Casting someone like Carey Mulligan would have helped, someone who can play innocent, a bit klutzy, naive and (seemingly) needing a protector.
Graves, well, the gene therapy is so out of this world that I was indeed surprised that they would go there, so… twist*.
But Bond so far has never been good at twists, unfortunately. Even the open narrative of Grant being a killer would have invited a great surprise if he had been revealed in the train scene.
I was astonished, however, back then when I saw DAF for the first time, not knowing anything revealing about the film, that Blofeld(s) would sit in the Whyte House. Then again, that kind of twist keeps on surprising many even today.
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Scoreless tie, neither works. But I voted for Elektra anyway as I think at least the writers’ hearts were in the right place (Bond “girl” revealed as Bond villain is a clever twist, in theory) even if the execution was botched. In contrast the Moon/Graves concept is stupid and impossible, even by Bond standards. And from a storytelling POV it’s self-defeating to change actors mid-film and expect the character to build any sense of “presence” or menace. Frankly Moon made so little of an impression on me, when the “reveal” came I had trouble remembering who it is we’re supposed to be so amazed Graves started as.
There is also something disturbingly xenophobic in the premise of “handsome and charming millionaire knight revealed as conniving Commie Asian spy.” As in “Good Lord, if we cant tell who’s really white, no one is safe!”
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Agreed with all above. Bond films don’t really do twists - even Billy Magnussen’s character in NTTD is so obviously shady it’s hardly worth the effort. The only time a “twist” has been anywhere close to working is Mathis in CR and even that’s not really a twist as Bond is wrong!
As for Brozza - I’d go with Elektra, as in “Wow, we’re really going to make the girl the villain!” As opposed to having a read a script that has Bond restarting his heart, the fakest of beards, lines like “Keep up your tip up” and an invisible car - when you read directions such as “Graves is in fact the Korean guy that you kill at the start” - the only reaction he could have had would have been “Sure - none of this s*&t surprises me any more…”
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June 21.
C’mon Baby
Let’s do the twist
Take me by my little hand*
And go like this
*that might not be my hand. Give it a twist anyway, though.
Having unleashed that earworm to keep you awake for three nights, my dancing days are now done and I shall retreat to a place of “some” wine.
Better twist?
- Quantum isn’t after oil, it’s after water
- Oh! No! It’s Killifer!
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voters
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Kilifer belongs to that C-Moriarty club of villains Bond could and should just shoot at first sight for sheer obnoxiousness. One can practically smell his rotten-apple after shave.
That Quantum is after water is perhaps not a big ‘twist’ as any analyst from the services (and surely every economist from the financial sector) would have pointed to that potential even in 2008. Today they’d all point you to rare earths. I’m not sure though whether the original intention hadn’t been to link it to the hydrogen hotel (or whether audiences made that connection themselves in their confusion over QOS’s plot).
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Water „rights to buy“ was a welcome dose of realism which, back then and maybe even today, only those who read newspapers (those rare commodities) could appreciate.
Unfortunately, QOS was not appreciated either, due to the easy criticism of „but that editing!“
Only a few years later, a populace glued to social tok-videos, never raises the „editing“ question for all those energy depleting hours or better: decades of useless „information“.
Hey, you, cloud, I don’t like you either!
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And of course Thames Water. What that acquisition - by RWE no less - would lead to was a bone of content even back in 2000/2001. 
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Another scoreless tie for me. We barely meet Kilifer before he’s “revealed” as rotten, and what little we have seen of him we didnt like, so it hardly registers as a “shocking twist.”
Meanwhile the “we want water, not oil” bit just elicits a “who gives a crap?” from me. The stakes in QoS never seem significant.
Maybe a better pairing would be Kilifer vs Mitchell, another character we’re apparently supposed to be astonished is evil because we saw him standing next to a good guy briefly.
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Kilifer for me.
Quantum (we barely knew thee) do seem to be more inline with general malfeasance so Project “Whatever-it’s-called” was clearly just one of a number of things on their docket so really, no matter, no surprise.
I agree that Kilifer is not a surprise per se, but I’ll offer that he is a needed plot-device, and gives TD a chance to RADA-spit out some dialogue with
“You’ve earned, you keep it.”
Here’s a twist OHMYGOD Kilifer is actually Logan Ash’s uncle, the bastard!!!
(Yes, I went and looked up that character’s name today)
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What was Quantum’s thing called? Mainstrike is Zorin’s. I want to say Damocles but that’s In Like Flint, and anything ‘Affair’ is always Man From Uncle….
Really annoying this obsssion with 60s spy characters…..
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June 22.
Given the theory that we are all living out our lives in someone else’s fantasy, I’ve taken the puce pill and can expose the terrible truth.
We’re all in a very poor Elvis Presley film - Twist This, Honeyclam. Nobody has ever seen it, but that is because everybody is in it.
Apparently, the town of Honeyclam, Pennsylvania, is the last town in the US where the Twist is banned. Mysterious drifter and Twist specialist (Elvis Presley, do keep up) comes to town and immediately annoys the stuffy town council with his slick hips and supple endoskeletal gyrations.
Everything is affected by Twist mania, including the sudden imposition of twists into whatever is showing at Honeyclam’s movie “theater”, the Gaiety Cave. (It’s not the most watertight of plots). Unexpectedly for its patrons, this does improve some of the films on show, notably The Empire Strikes Back, where Darth Vader is not that lad’s dad, meaning we are thereafter spared much that is piffle.
The shattering denouement brings Elvis (character name Randy Clunge) to the Gaiety Cave during a James Bond double bill. (The historical accuracy of the film is variable). Shaking about like a lizard on a hotplate, his Twist-replete aura starts affecting the content on screen.
Which of these gets a twist that improves it?
- Kara is working for Koskov all along, so Bond has to throttle her with her own cello strings
- Heracles-infected Bond, out of his tiny mind, hunts down M, the root cause of this, and the film ends with them locked in deadly combat. And Dou-Dou blinks.
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I have to see Dou-Dou blinking!*
*And of course all the other films at the Gaiety Cave, TITANIC staying afloat long enough until all passengers are rescued; HIGH NOON’s sheriff living a peaceful life with his wife and kids in the next boreville town because they left by ten past ten; only THE MARATHON MAN turns out to be much less interesting as ten mile sprinter and DEEP THROAT sucks as a comparatively shallow affair.
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I can see Dalton’s face as he does it a reverse shot of his introduction shot… John Glen / Hitchcock finally !
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Kara would have been the better Elektra!
Can we switch her with Marceau, adding spice to the relationship with Dalton who gets really miffed when she wants to go back for her cello, then her favourite gloves, her comfy shoes and most glittery lip gloss - only to decide that she hates the cello after all and wants to start piano lessons. And she won‘t leave without the Steinway in her aunt‘s mansion, so would Bond please be so kind?
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Heracles-infected Bond v M, watching DC and Fiennes brutally destroy and chew scenery in best West End Shakesperian thespian fashion.
Also, I find it hard to give the nod to Kara Milosovy for anything. So as not to make things too jarring for an audience getting used to a new Bond, it seemed to be a safe bet to have a Bond girl as cretinous as some of the ones Sir Rog was stuck with (Stacey Sutton, Goodnight).
Accomplished cellist or not, Kara seems to be a complete dumb-dumb, so while it would an incredible twist, it would completely snap, not stretch, credulity.
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