I love a good piece of merchandise, but I ultimately I think the Bond mindset matter more. It’s something free you can hold on to, and escape into. That’s all I ever really had. The films and the books and the sense of excitement they created. I can buy a decent enough watch and channel Bond with a quip, or feel a certain ambience when I’m on holiday. That’s enough for me. With the cost of living these days it’s all a lot of people are going to have.
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I’d forgotten that. Does feel odd that they have never really overtly used his stuff, whatever its patchy merits.
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Miss Nagai in Everything or Nothing seemingly being an allusion to Q’ute is the closest I can think of.
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First Light did a good job with AI - bad information being made truthful so the computer is never wrong. What I like is that with technology the story is still about the humans who created it. At the moment there’s a push for data centres but that comes with a drain on electricity and water supply. Real world stuff that affects other areas rather than just the obvious. I think there’s scope to tackle the subject in a smart way without going too fantastical.
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Virtual villain – nothing new
Driverless car – has been Bensoneed before, and also it would be so Roger (he had that in a driverless submarine)
Scottish wine – I’d be up for that but it won’t happen: the Bezoes would have to establish that climate change exists, and the Dark Orange Master would allow that
Nanoapps – Nah… no use of smartphones means that you can’t advertise them. Nice try.
I’ll take the parcels. And certainly, Mr Bezos himself will make sure that we’ll get to see prominently placed “Royal Mail” logos when Bond has to make the dive into the hedge yet again
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Unless they can find a way to put a Samsung logo on them.
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I’m going with gadgets and hedges. With Q having lashed stuff into a hedge when he was done them, the series could “reboot” itself by going the other way and yet still pay “homage” to the original so we can be assured we’re still watching the series we know and love……
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September 5.
Albeit one of the more true-to-Fleming aspects, but he was a racist Edwardian school bully now long-dead and not really someone to emulate - physical disfigurement, whether already there or caused by Bond, seems to have been a lazy code for “villainous” throughout the Bond series, including the more recent films.
Time to stop doing this?
- Yes
- No
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voters
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No doubt about it, the spot-the-villain deformity has had its day. Actually, it may have been past its prime in Fleming’s day already and he noticeably dialled it back in the last few books. Blofeld morphed from a massive presence without sex-life to an aristocratic figure with syphilitic nose and finally a guy in shogun drag and beekeeper hat. Scaramanga’s deformity is not even obvious (if you don’t go to a sauna or a pool party with him).
Did the films even make a lot of it? Jaws is an obvious example, but otherwise? This bizarre goldie creature can hardly count, likewise Mr Kill. Gettler with his eyepatch and his cousin Primo with the cyber-eyeball - but they are all more in the region of the body modification than real disfigurement. Even Gettler cuts a dashing figure for an agent of Quantum, a cut above the countless, nameless goons Bond normally deals with.
In the end there’s only ever so much variation to the theme possible without stooping so low as to poke fun at disabled people. Who even remembers Stromberg’s webbing between his fingers? Le Chiffre’s blood weeping? And would it make a difference if these traits were not shown?
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I don’t have a problem with depicting these qualities. It’s part of the series DNA. Fleming describes Bond as having a “thin, three-inch (76 mm) vertical scar running down the right side of his cheek.” Is that a lazy code for villainous? It’s not really a case of a minor blemish on perfection. Bond is also described as having cold eyes, something cruel in the mouth, with something cold and ruthless about his energy. He’s attractive because of this sense of danger, qualities that could also apply to a villain.
Alec Trevelyan having facial scarring is relevant to his betrayal and relationship with Bond. Same with Zao, and that’s a legitimate approach to take. I do agree that it shouldn’t be overused and applied to every villain as a requirement. Characters like Elliot Carver or Dominic Greene don’t need anything like that. Their apparent normality and blending in is the whole point.
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For me, any physical deformation as shorthand for sadistic villain is just overdone silliness.
Then again, I would love to see a group of henchmen and henchwomen who have to undergo transformations for Mar-a-lago-face.
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This is a good point - but does the scarring really figure in the greater scheme of Trevelyan’s betrayal? He must have been somehow in league with the KGB before the mission for GOLDENEYE to make sense. It’s true, he felt Bond betrayed him by changing the timers - but before that Trevelyan betrayed the SIS. The scarring of his face could have happened in a many different ways. And ultimately it didn’t prevent him from building up Janus out of the KGB’s ruins.
Unless we want to believe Trevelyan’s scarred face was responsible for his subsequent betrayal exclusively, Harvey Dent-like. But I don’t think that’s a realistic interpretation.
Maybe the better case for a relevant disfigurement is Silva’s prosthesis. We’ve already seen he’s out to destroy M and the SIS; we’re told it’s because of M’s betrayal of one of her former best agents and how Silva ended up with the Chinese. But seeing how this man was willing to end his own life to protect M and subsequently ended up with half an upper jaw (weirdly, considering the death pill was supposed to kill not maim him) adds another dimension to his motivation. Until the very end, he’s not able to outright kill M.
Here the disfigurement isn’t the trigger for his behaviour, but shows the dimension of his dedication. Somebody dealing with such a fate and coming out on top isn’t to be underestimated.
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Yes! Perfect!
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Then again, how much physical deformity is there left to come up with, without heading deep into comic-book territory (of course I’d offer TWINE and DAD as proof that we’ve already gone deep into there, what with bullets in the medulla and gene replacement therapy - the latter clearly racist in nature).
How about an invisible villain. Driving an invisible car. Now that really would be stretching Bond credibility…….
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I’m not sure how to vote on this one.
On the one hand, the scarred or deformed villain is a cornball cliche that should have gone out with handlebar mustaches, top hats and black cloaks. It’s no coincidence that the Austin Powers series seized on arguably the most over-the-top example, YOLT Blofeld, to parody all that is goofy about Bond.
On the other hand, it was just this sort of OTT theatricality that made me love the series. From impossible lairs in volcanoes, on the sea floor or in orbit, to an endless supply of buxom females ready to jump into bed at “hello,” to cars and boats somehow crammed full of more armaments than they could physically fit (like Bugs Bunny reaching behind his back to produce a giant mallet from the ether) to evil schemes that threatened no less than global annihilation on a bi-annual basis, there was always a bigger-than-life, comic book feel to classic Bond and leering, deformed evil masterminds fit right into that.
I think it’s a little like Batman. You can still have some fun watching him beat up on rank-and-file street thugs and gangsters, but not nearly as much fun as seeing him pitted against super-villains. Bond himself is larger than life, so he needs an opponent to match. If the alternative is a nondescript nebbish like Dominic Greene, I’ll take the flashy, overblown villainy of a mustache-twirling movie serial villain any day.
On the third hand, we did get a scarred Blofenhauser and Clearasil poster boy Safin, so just tossing in a rotten complexion is no guarantee of success.
Three hands and I still don’t know how to vote. I guess my take is, don’t be afraid to go big with a villain and see where it takes you, even if it’s back to the cliche of a freakish physiognomy. But also don’t look to the makeup team or the special effects department to solve all the problems of a poorly thought out and underwritten character.
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006 did already turn before the events of the PTS, but the facility mission was still his big moment of making it official. The scarring is the consequence of his choice. His original decision was based around his parents deaths, but then the personal grudge against Bond is added.
Bond thinks his old friend is dead, so of course he wants to finish the job in his honour. Alec even told him to do that. Bond acted out of loyalty, Alec did not. I think the scarring is essential to separate the two versions of his character. It’s also physical evidence this is the same guy from years ago.
Silva’a face is a representation of M’s abandonment. He has a better case than Alec because at that point he was a legitimate agent on a mission. It also goes with M’s portrayal in that film with how she wants Bond to abandon Ronson. I think deformities are part of the Bond cocktail and if people are uncomfortable with that there are still tactful ways of depicting things without going the one dimensional movie monster route.
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September 6.
I am troubled by the lyrics to ABBA’s Waterloo. Bouncy tune, but they really are very dark. Possibly Stockholm Syndrome, although that’s be appropriate, I s’pose.
That has no bearing on this vote; just thought I would let you know that ABBA are sinister; science fact. I tried to hold you back but you were stronger. How lovely.
Whilst on the subject of obviously factual science, in No Time to Die, when in Cuba Bond gets doused in Spectre-killing nanobot things. Surely Safin would know that? Surely M would know that? The story doesn’t have to wait until Belmarsh to get to the point that Bond is sufficiently contaminated to kill Blofeld, nor involve Madeleine Swann at all at that point nor thereafter. Bond is already Safin’s blunt instrument weapon. Have I misunderstood this as much as I have misunderstood the innocent intentions of ABBA?
- No
- Yes
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Safin didn’t know Bond was going to be there, he just got lucky he was. Madeline was his intended weapon.
M on the other hand…it only works if M didn’t know Bond got doused too or that Safin had Blodelds DNA so couldn’t have told the other mi6 members to keep him away.
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Hmm - wouldn’t lovely blond toothsome boy have told Safin that Bond was going to be there? He seems partly instrumental in getting Bond to go.
It probably matters very little.
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Not the party. Bond going to Belmarsh to see Blofeld.
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