Man, I needed this laugh so much. Thank you @HockeyMask.
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This is analysis I can get behind. When you have expertise that makes a difference.
I’ll tell you what did it for me. His treatment of Madeline and her little one, especially when he took her away from her mother, made me want to come through the screen and rip his head off. When you produce that kind of visceral reaction as an actor you get a green check from me. Me and Rami are good.
All that said, I take you in your field.
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Safin is very much like Silva in the way he is bonded to the main characters and can’t let his obsession with them go. M and Bond in Skyfall’s instance and Madeleine and Bond for NTTD. At his core, I think I see Safin as a lonely little boy looking for a companion on his deceased father’s island, resorting to stalking and kidnapping to satisfy a delusional need.
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In short, it’s a James Bond movie, so I’m glad I saw it and will watch it again some day. In long…
Like most or all of the Craig films (and to some extent all of the Bond films since 1989), this felt to me a little like two films crashing into each other, a fairly traditional Bond film mixed with an attempt at modernisation, deconstruction and/or reinvention of that very formula, and, on this particular occasion, a conclusion to the Craig film “arc” and specifically many of the plot points raised in Spectre. Sometimes, as in Skyfall, the elements all come together harmoniously into a holistically very satisfying, entertaining and “complete” film. For me, on this occasion at least, the more traditional elements were more entertaining, perhaps not surprising as I find Spectre to be among the very clunkiest of the entire oeuvre. I think the more dramatically substantive elements of the film were banking on an emotional connection to some of the secondary characters from the Craig era that I personally feel isn’t really there. As great as Jeffrey Wright has been in the role; Felix Leiter as Craig Bond’s “brother”? Not quite my impression from the characters’ fairly brief screentime together over a decade ago, nor their time together here. For all its flaws, Licence to Kill did a better job selling me on their, er, bond. At the end of Spectre I did not think the connection between Bond and Madeline was special enough to allow me to buy into their elopement; the needle perhaps moved a little for me by the close of this film, but not quite enough.
As someone who has not entirely been convinced by Rami Malek in the past, I was pleasantly surprised to find his character here to be effectively creepy, unique and memorable. Christoph Waltz’s schtick, on the other hand, wore thin for me some years ago, and between the writing and performance, his Hanninal-Lectre-Meets-Heath-Ledger-Joke-via-Silver-retread take on Blofeld does nothing for me, though I will say the scene with his moving cell is genuinely creepy and unnerving in a way I’m not sure a Bond movie has ever managed to be before.
I didn’t care for the film bringing We Have All the Time in the World out of the OHMSS mothballs, it seems to me like a cheap “stolen valour” shorthand for generating emotion. To be clear, I do not think its use here is disrespectful to Peter Hunt, John Barry, Louie Armstrong, Hal David or anyone else, and I’m aware that in our current “remix culture” that’s producing films like Ghostbusters: Afterlife, this is a pretty tame bit of recycling. And of course, part of the appeal of Bond is that it recycles and repackages its own past constantly. Still, it struck me personally as kind of cheap.
I’ll grant that the average ticket buyer will either likely not recall or simply not know what significance We Have All the Time in the World has in the Bond mythos, and it may strike them as fresh and effective in a way it does not to me, but it might strike them as a little more familiar that this is the second in three (and third of six and fourth of ten) Bond films to start with him outside of and eventually re-joining MI6. To me, this isn’t like Moonraker xeroxing the structure of Spy Who Loved Me (whatever the plus and minuses of that decision are, and yes I know it’s a xerox of a xerox (of YOLT) that was xeroxed yet again 18 years later for Tomorrow Never Dies!), this is more like if Moonraker had been about another villain trying to dominate the sea.
In the fallow years since Spectre, I seem to have become more comfortable with the realisation that the 1962-89 run of films will likely always be the core of my fandom, and that everything else, up to and including, sorry purists, the Fleming novels, are more of a side dish to me, some more to my taste than others. For me, even at their worst, there are so many elements of those films (the Barry scores, the Ken Adams and Syd Cain sets, the 20th Century “modernist” approach to escapism and relation with geopolitics) that are key to what I find so appealing about Bond, which quite simply cannot be, nor should be, revived. For many, the Craig movies are their main course (for others, perhaps the microwave meal that best mimics the taste of their Fleming main course); I hope this was a little more to their liking than it was mine, and it seems that for many it was, which is great. I was happy to sample this, much as I question some of the ingredients they chose, and I look forward to trying whatever they cook up next. And if I’m not too keen on that, it’s fine, I’ve got plenty in stock to keep me happy
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Very good article about NTTD and YOLT’s novel connections, addressing EON’s earlier missed opportunities, and how they resolved them.
Den of Geek: No Time to Die Is the Best You Only Live Twice Adaptation.
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The best adaptation of You Only Live Twice is the Daily Express comic strip. NTTD incorporates elements from the novel but I wouldn’t count it as a full-on adaptation.
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Having finally seen it via iTunes I won’t repeat what others have been saying for the last 2 months but I will say…
I never thought James Bond would die holding a bunny named Dou Dou.
Did NOT see that coming.
***1/2
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It has become my “ceterum censeo”:
Watch it (at least) twice. Watch it on he big screen (if possible).
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THIS…has made my day!!!
You can lie your way out of many things, but death will still come, asking for her due…
Adding insult to the injury that was the early demise of Mr. Zevon.
What really helped me accept the final ascent was when Craig says “It’s alright Q. It’s alright.” If Bond was okay with it, I could be too.
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Which is yet another echo of OHMSS:
"It’s alright, you see. We have all the time in the world "
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Just got done with a 2nd watch - I’m assuming Q’s cats are CG? Especially that first one he picks up by the door and it immediately scurries upstairs. Oh to have a big budget…
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I never had that thought. But it just gives me another excuse to watch No Time To Die again.
It makes a kind of sense that Q would keep CG cats.
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The fur was too expensive. So that makes sense.
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