Ofcourse most of the action looks more modern because for example TND is more than twenty years old, but better?
The remote controled car scene in TND was way better, the HALO jump in illegal waters had much more sense than the one in M.I.6.
The escape of the main villain in LTK was as good as in M.I.6, maybe even better and more of a surprise.
But even recycling ideas of old M.I. movies with scene’s which were done better in the past:
again a woman who is head of an armsdealers organisation. In the first one we have the great Vanessa Redgrave, she was fantastic and very believable, but Vanessa Kirby as the White Widow, although very beautiful and hot looking, is ridiculous and unbelievable.
I thought the helicopter chase (Blue Thunder) was overlong and the ticking bomb scene already so often done that you know exactly how it is gonna end anyway.
The movie is fun to watch and I enjoyed it too, but “best action movie ever”? Come on!
Well, no it’s not the best action movie ever. Nothing released in at least the last 30 years would get that praise from me. But let’s go over those one by one:
The remote control car I’ll give you, since all Benji did was move the IMF car a few yards; there was no chase or stunts. But if we 're going to talk “overlong,” the scene in TND dragged on way too long. And Batman had one eight years before Bond (actually 30 if you count season 2 of Adam West’s show).
The HALO scene in TND may have “made more sense” plot-wise, but in terms of excitement it’s no contest; “Fallout” takes it by a mile.
The SCUBA prisoner grab stands out as the most blatant swipe, for sure. LTK does have the advantage of surprise, but I do think Fallout’s take is better filmed, and certainly faster paced.
I enjoyed Fallout for what it is, and I like the Bonds as well (obviously). All these films borrow (steal) from each other all the time and the Bonds wrote the book on self-cannibalization. I was going to say that at 53, I’m still too young to have seen the era of wholly original Bonds, but then I remember the copter chase in FRWL, a blatant swipe from North By Northwest. Swiping the best bits from earlier films is a tradition as old as the form itself.
I was wondering how long it would take before there was some MI: Fallout backlash. I stand by my Bond homage opinion as many other spy movies (Kingsman, Bourne) don’t have such obvious Bond references as Fallout. And yes, it’s not original. But it’s amped up and often better. I think in the writer’s room when they were pitching ideas like a HALO jump, someone probably mentioned it was done in TND. But then they countered, okay, how do we make it better?
Nice “Blue Thunder” call out, by the way, jamesb007bd. Picked up that movie on Blu-Ray recently too.
Well, we could compare it to SP, which had a helicopter stunt (similar to FYEO), a car chase (like every action film since the Keystone Kops, but duller than 90% of them), a fight on a train (take your pick) against a much larger henchman opponent (take your pick), a plane chasing a car (Last Crusade, among others) that’s a variation on “Bond uses unconventional but convenient vehicle to chase villains who have kidnapped girl” (GE), Bond escapes villain’s lair with machine gun (take your pick) and so on. All done before, and all (with the possible exception of the helicopter stunt) done better.
I’m having a hard time thinking of an action scene in SP that didn’t “borrow” from elsewhere, but the difference for me is “Fallout” tries hard to take the familiar and make it bigger, faster and more exciting. This is, frankly, something I miss from the days of “classic Bond” – the spirit of, “yes, we’re doing stuff you’ve seen before, but this time, we’re doing it bigger, faster and louder!” That spirit of one-upmanship was a big part of the fun for me in the old days, and if I can’t get it from Bond, I’ll take it where I find it.
I wonder, however, whether one disappointing film these days is regarded more harshly than in previous eras.
I remember being disappointed after watching AVTAK without thinking „well, that‘s it now for Bond“. I just happily went to see TLD two years later and felt great about Bond again.
Maybe that‘s what makes SP appear so much worse - it lingers in my memory instead of having been quietly shoved aside by the next great Bond two years later.
I hope BOND 25 will be fantastic. If not… that could dent the idea of a Bond film unfavorably.
Well, the problem these days is that there’s such a long wait between Bonds – with so many other great, competing action films between – that the expectations for each entry are enormous. It’s inevitable some Bonds will be better than others, but in the old days, it didn’t matter so much; at worst, we only had to wait two years for another try, and even the least satisfying Bond was still tons more exciting than anything else around.
I wasn’t ready to write off Bond after AVTAK, but I was after DAD. That wasn’t all on that one film, but it capped off a long series of disappointments for me. I’m also not ready to write off Bond after SP, but I confess I’m not particularly interested in what’s next or all that eager for it to get here. I think the danger now is that general audiences – and especially younger viewers – will find other things to move on to if they have to wait for years for films that aren’t all that great.
On the other hand, you could argue the opposite: If you put enough distance between Bonds, then each new one is sort of an “event” in the GE sense: “Wow, you mean they’re still making those? Let’s go check it out!”
Incidentally, this is why I’m not so sure keeping Craig for one more is a good idea. Spacing these things out has lost anything like “momentum” for the series. It’s not like the 60s, where Connery’s Bond was a constant presence in pop culture. Craig started in the Bush administration and has only popped his head in every 3 to 4 years. It might generate more buzz to just recast.
If we’re looking solely at the actors and their impact on the audience I think it’s safe to say the larger public today lacks the hunger for one more film by Craig like there was immediately after Casino Royale. Craig got off to a shaky start, then his debut was a smashing success - and right after that it was a bit hit and miss critically while the box office soared.
But in his four films he’s been literally everywhere Bond usually didn’t go. And now, seen from the perspective of a casual moviegoer, it’s probably not so important any more what he does specifically in BOND 25. People know and largely like him in the role, everything else is just a bonus. I think expectations are for the most part on a welcome-back level, much like they used to be around For Your Eyes Only and after.
I didn’t say I liked Spectre better, because I didn’t, that was a huge dissapointment, but also Skyfall is not for me the fantastic Bond movie everyone is telling ( I thought it had a very bad screenplay and almost no great action pieces).
I like M.I.6 better and I realy enjoyed it, but… I don’t see this better-than-anything-what-was-made-before actionmovie in it either. I liked the previous movie much better. Ferguson was the revelation of that movie, but in this new one her part is ok, but nothing special anymore. Also the villain was very creepy and dangerous in the previous one, but now he was just average, not realy special.
The sheer number of declarations on an entirely subjective medium made my computer explode in the very annoying paradox.
Can i get this post bookmarked so i can just point to it everytime there is a declaration of a script is good/bad, the movie is the best/worst ever made, an actors performance is brilliant/awful.
Its art. Reactions to it are not fact. Presenting it as such is telling others how to feel. Dont do it.
You didnt like MI Fallout, or Mendes’ Bond films. Others did. Both versions are equally valid. Telling people they are wrong is not.
No apology necessary, the constant use of declarations on opinions is depressingly common around here at times (its why i said about bookmarking it) You at least have the justification that the differences between declarations and subjectives can be difficult to translate into secondary language.
TND didn’t invent them though; they’re a real thing. Other films are perfectly at liberty to show them; apparently there might have been one in Navy Seals, seven years before Bond.
I never for an instant bought that Pierce Brosnan was doing the HALO jump in TND. I was able to buy Cruise doing it because the director orchestrated the scene to make it shockingly clear that it really was Cruise and he really was doing the stunt himself. Then he added the electrical storm to the mix which amped everything up to a whole new level. To me there’s no comparison between the two.
TND’s HALO didn’t much impress me personally. As a layman I wouldn’t be able to tell whether it’s the real thing or a nifty stunt made to look like a HALO jump.
I suppose the difference is really in the execution: doing it for real and with the real star in a manner as authentic as you can get in a film production. It’s the extra mile Cruise is willing to go that makes this an interesting element, not so much the - dangerous! - stunt. Without that effort I suppose it would have just looked like any of a dozen Marvel CGI fests.