Redo Quantum of Solace

The finale has some good things going for it, but mostly I agree with your comment. The line about the fuel cells sounding unstable has got to be the laziest convenience in Bond lair history. It’s broadcasting to the audience ‘this place is going to explode’.

My opinion of the Gregory Beem character is similiar to that of Elvis in the same film - he’s so bad and terrible, he’s good. There is no way that either of these characters were meant to be taken seriously, either by Forster/ Haggis/Purvis & Wade or by us, the viewer.
That mustache, man.

Well said, dtuba. The character of Gregory Beam was exaggerated perhaps also because they tried (and surprisingly succeeded!) to show some basic mechanisms of international politics. One of the things I really like about Quantum of Solace.

Only thing I’d change - make Mitchell at the start of the film Villiers (Tobias Menzies) from Casino Royale, really play into the idea that they have people everywhere. Also ignored ignorant morons who didn’t understand the title and left the organisation nameless.

I’ve been saying this for a while as well. M’s tenseness a couple scenes later would have made so much more sense, and it would have done a great job at driving home to the audience exactly how far-reaching the organization was. Also, it would have paved the way quite nicely for Tanner’s appearance-- making him essentially Villiers’ replacement.

I definitely like that idea. I also wish they would’ve continued the Quantum storyline for one more movie. Instead of Spectre, have Bond finally track down the head of Quantum and defeat them. Feeling confident that he defeated the big terror organization he settles in to life as an agent waiting for the next mission. In Craig’s final movie, he’s sent on a new seemingly standalone mission…only to find that Quantum was only a smaller part of a larger organization - Spectre - or we see Spectre rise from the ashes of Quantum and we have a new organization to battle with a new Bond.

This would have tied the Craig era together better and made QOS seem less like an outlier and more like a part of the storyline.

There’s a lot of issues I have with Quantum Of Solace but unveiling Quantum as this big, bad, evil organization and then just totally dropping it for the next two movies is really bad. Almost unforgivable. The ideas about Quantum being a smaller part of a bigger SPECTRE organization or even saying in SPECTRE that Blofeld had re-named Quantum as SPECTRE would make so much more sense. Or as was previously said, leave the organization nameless–at least for one film. Have Bond learn it the next time around. Keep it even more mysterious and sinister than it already was.

Of course, when the filmmakers came up with Quantum, at the time they didn’t have the rights to Blofeld and SPECTRE (or at least weren’t confident enough legally to attempt to use them). Little did they know that they would officially and fully get the rights to both within six years. But dropping the Quantum organization entirely leaves a gaping hole.

Obviously, the Blofeld foster brother thing was complete idiocy and should never have come anywhere near the production. That’s bad TV writing. It would have been far better to have dropped that idea completely and just have him and Bond cross each others’ paths on their various missions and become arch-nemeses as they were in the novels. As Blofeld said, Bond messed with his world by interfering in the Casino Royale business, so he destroyed 007’s regarding Vesper with similar scenarios happening on each succeeding encounter.

To be honest, QoS has aged pretty well due to the circumstances the movie itself faced. I for one wouldn’t change it. Maybe less shaky cam but that would be it. It’s held up decently and It’s good to see the film getting more respect.

I actually tried to address that. My take is that Quantum was crippled after the Tiera Project and Bond created an opening for Blofeld to take over

First post!
Watched QoS last night and it’s right up there with Casino Royale as Daniel Craig’s best.

Looks amazing (albeit with a little shaky cam) and has probably my favourite car chase in any Bond film.

Payoff of the water plot isn’t great, but it’s nowhere near as silly as Silva’s plot in Skyfall and give me a hotel bursting into flames over Home Alone any day

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I haven’t watched this one in awhile, but I still feel its vastly underrated. The terrible theme song notwithstanding, it has a fantastic soundtrack with the Tosca scene as its highlight. I also love the music during the hotel fight. Also, it shows how Bond and M come to trust each other and had some pretty good action to boot. However, it was deeply hurt by the writer’s strike. The script definitely needed polish. I still to this day think an extra 15-20 minutes of run time would’ve greatly helped it and it did perpetuated the trend of the under used Bond girl that the Craig era is so fond of (Caterina Murino, Gemma Arterton, Berenice Marlowe, and Monica Belucci).

Exactly, one of my all time favourites. The opening shot through the lake until the Aston shows up, with the music building up is unbeatable. And that bar scene with Felix is one of the less spoken highlights of the film. Well, we could have had more Gemma in it. Would’ve made it more sexier, which it wasn’t, not really.

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Oh I love it (Camille is easily one of the best bond girls) but it was a little bit rushed at points. The writers strike damaged it and it would have been better if Spectre could have been used from go.

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It’s one of the best Bond films. I would just get rid of the plane action scene and replace it with the plane running low on fuel and then ending up the same place where they discover the dam because it was an important scene especially when they talk about the loss of their loved one. It showed Bond human side unlike Diamonds are Forever we never saw Bond human side from the loss of his wife.

Also they should have had a 5 minute dialogue when Bond kidnaps Greene so he could talk about Quantum. The answers were left unresolved for the viewers.

The action scenes were too shaky they should have slowed it down.

Nothing beats the last scene sit down.

This film is a classic on its own.

I really would like to see the scene between Bond and Mr. White that was cut.

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true that. I LIKED Quantum but have to say the rushed editing process kept it from achieving true greatness

When it first came out I was a bit dismayed by Quantum. I didn’t dislike it, but such a thing was made in the build up about it being a direct continuation of CR that the change in editing and feel threw me off a bit. A point was made that “Bond was Bond” at the end of CR, but then for QoS they decided that, no, he still wasn’t “Bond” so no “Bond, James Bond”, no Bond theme, and let’s play with the gunbarrel again. All of this just made it feel a bit tacked on and rather than build on CR, it was trying to live off of CR’s success.

With that being said and with time and subsequent films since its release, I’ve become very fond of Quantum and wouldn’t change too much at all. I would absolutely put the gunbarrel at the start, and probably would get rid of the way too on the nose Goldfinger homage. I do still dislike the editing and would cut back on all the fast cuts. We do not need about three cuts of Bond putting a boat into gear.

I think there is a great idea for a villain in the film. A philanthropic environmentalist is a brilliant cover for a villain and I do wish it were leaned into a bit more. It’s an idea I’d love for them to revisit. I thought the stockpiling of water was a relevant and interesting scheme. It wasn’t a scheme as large as stealing nuclear submarines say, but we’ve seen Bond be sent on relatively smaller scale missions before and the scheme fitted with the more “realistic” tone they wanted to take.

As a previous poster mentioned, I am often drawn to watch the rest of the film from no matter what point it is when I see it playing. There is no other film in the series that I can do that with, if a Bond film is showing on TV and I turn on part way through, I can’t watch it from there, I can only watch them from the start. QoS is the single exception and I can enjoy it no matter from where.

I believe that Marc Forster said that he wanted the film to move like a bullet from a gun, and he really succeeded in that, and I appreciate it more now than I did in 2008. It really flies along, and I am actually a big fan of the shorter run time and it is one of the reasons the film has grown on me.
I really don’t like the current trend that blockbusters are pushing or surpassing 3 hours. Even streamed TV episodes have run times of close to or over 60 minutes. Modern entertainment is becoming a real time drain, and the extra run times very, very rarely add to the quality or enjoyment of a product. In fact, I feel it often detracts from it. I wasn’t surprised when I saw NTTD has a 2h 45m run time. Four of Craig’s five Bond films will be the four longest running in the series (and I’d say SF and Spectre run too long), so it’s great that he has one shorter one.
I really like that QoS is a Bond film that can be fit in almost whenever and I appreciate and respect how lean it is time wise when compared to modern blockbusters.

It’s also the only film that delivered on the big fuss that was made about the “rebooting” of the series. CR and QoS are the only films in the series where we see a young, rookie 00 Bond. Right after this we see an older, over the hill Bond and then a Bond ready to retire.

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I will always defend the movie, it’s a bit different from the rest, but it’s still very much a Bond film.

However, as I’ve said before on other threads, the editing is awful, to me - CR and Skyfall are much better in this respect.

I honestly think there’s a great film lying on the cutting room floor, and I feel sorry for the stuntmen in Siena who jumped over buses and clambered over rooves, only for the footage of their work to be chopped up…and it makes me dizzy watching it.

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