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Prince Myshkin posted:He also watches her die then immediately makes an effortless escape, which implies he could have done so sooner and saved her life but chose not to. I believe its his armed back-up arrives with helicopters and such, not him doing things so its just poor timing they didn't arrive sooner. I really liked the ending sequence of Skyfall and the skyscraper shootout out but beyond that the film just felt like it was something where they had an idea of what they wanted to accomplish but just couldn't get it to work and shot that script anyway.
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Dec 7, 2019 16:53
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Groovelord Neato posted:Will never ever understand why they thought it was a good idea to have Bond be Blofeld's adopted brother and all the evil plans were to get back at Bond. The current direction of Bond, which is weird because its going on 20 years now despite only being 4, soon to be 5, films is that Bond has to have personal stakes every time seemingly only because it worked in Casino Royale. It was clumsy in Skyfall and just stupid in Spectre and it seems they're doubling down on it for the latest one and can someone seriously take the reins away from people who having turned making Bond films into something that takes more time than a new GTA game.
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Dec 9, 2019 16:05
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Im not even really arguing against personal stakes, but each film is building its own, disconnected personal stake requiring spending a bunch of time getting Bond up to speed to inevitably kill it off has obviously been a lot to ask as they also need to juggle a plot arc and lots of project infighting. Basically in a better managed scenario after Casino Royal they would have hunkered down and used Quantum of Solace as a way to lay the groundwork with Bond having lots of allies and friends and trust and then slowly strip away piece by piece over the subsequent films so you have personal stakes that Bond comes into the film already invested in and we know what hes like when he has his full emotional support so his fall arc works. The concept for this is even in the bloody title. Also probably you know have planned out the arc at all.
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Dec 10, 2019 02:38
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I may not like Billie Eilish music but she probably isnt capable of producing what Sam Smith thinks is acceptable music so it seems like a good move.
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Jan 15, 2020 06:36
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Oh its actually a good song for a Bond movie. Now for the film to fail to deliver on the song
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Feb 14, 2020 01:50
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The Human Crouton posted:Maybe the first hour is Q examining James and we learn that 50% of Skyfall and all of Spectre and QoS was a hallucination caused by Bond getting thratched in the balls too hard. It opens with a recap of the three films and then Bond looking at draft copies of his post retirement novels before dejectedly muttering to himself "How did Marcinko do this?".
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Mar 7, 2020 17:06
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Quantum of Solace is just tremendously awful while for me Die Another Day is just mediocre, a filler bond movie. It also doesn't help for me that Craig films feel like they dont want to be seen as stupid but then have dead women covered in oil named Strawberry Fields. Brosnan films all feel increasingly stupid linearly, but Craigs kind of undulate, and personally undulation is more irritating than consistently bad ideas
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May 14, 2020 03:21
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Quantum of Solace feels is a movie where its not that nothing happens so much as I cant see it happen so it feels like nothing. Spectre is very confident I want to see how stupid it can get in great detail. QoS might be the least satisfying implementation of the greek elements motif I can recall in a film where its somehow all at once glaringly obvious, undercooked, and pointless.
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May 15, 2020 17:45
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The scuba fight is just slow because an underwater fight by definition is slow and the scene is shot for quick action rather than some other form of tension that plays into the slowness. Still competently shot and clearly visible whats happening unlike whatever in the hell happens in any given action sequence in QoS except possibly the plane one which is just kind of boring.
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May 17, 2020 13:28
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Skyfall was not very good but definitely better than Quantum of Solace so I'd say the craig run was kind of a descending Sin wave maybe I dunno look they're all outside of Casino flawed to outright bad films and Im so friggan glad they need to get a new actor and reboot this series, again
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Jun 28, 2022 01:55
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Been watching a bunch of these I had never seen before, and, uh, wow Thunderball made a billion dollars. Oof. Diamonds are Forever is 50% a really good movie and 50% an absolute dreck and by the end I was just so glad Blofield was dead forever until the Craig-tinuum. Tiffany Case just sucks out loud. I also feel like I missed a scene because I still have no idea how Bond knew where she was going after the failed attempt to catch her with the Jewels.
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Nov 15, 2024 16:43
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Im jumping around these films now and going to The World is Not Enough next, the only Brosnan I haven't seen. AceOfFlames posted:At least DaF gave us Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd Yeah, Wint and Kidd are fantastic and help elevate the movie way above the terrible Spectre that looms over it. Their little asides help you forget things like the moon buggy chase or Willard Whyte Salami Surgeon posted:Yeah and I love 100% of it. I mean, you should thats the backstory.
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Nov 16, 2024 06:30
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So The World is Not Enough. So close to excellence and a few missteps results in mediocrity. Elektra is probably one of the better Bond villains in my opinion, has a great death, and her plot is satisfyingly petty. Theres just you know, all this screen time burnt on Renard whose gimmick is not just incredibly stupid, its distractingly stupid. He sucks out precious air time from the more interesting villain and her gimmick which could have played more into the ending. The ski chase also isn't great, and I hate to say it but just put bond on the drat skimobile and rip off Jedi and blast some goons in the woods. Otherwise decent enough set pieces in the film with some inventive stuff but it dips a lil too goofy on occasion and you can see the excess that would lead to Die Another Day really taking hold. Denise Richards, Im sorry, your voice socio-culturally does not convey what your character who has very very few lines needs to deliver. Its so obviously not gonna work I can't even blame her; Linda Lowry, John Brace, and Debbie McWilliams are the ones responsible here. DarkSol posted:I don’t think Blofield was confirmed dead until Bond kills him in the opening of FYEO. (A hilarious middle finger to Kevin McClorey.) Scaramanga, Drax and Zorin could have easily been replaced by Blofield though. Or rather they are all Blofield with the numbers filed off. Besides, the “War on Drugs” and the Soviet Union were considered bigger societal issues to semi-address via the Bond universe. The fear of some shadowy organization trying to take over the world just wasn’t in the public zeitgeist any more. I treat the FYEO as a bonus. Hes not the villain again, even if like you said those three are clearly him, and thats what matters to me and lets characters like Scaramanga bring something interesting to the table because they dont have to be him. Thats what Im getting at, how did everybody know to convene there except the CIA, including pool tossed floozies who they seemingly killed because dammit we need a dead girl.
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Nov 16, 2024 17:14
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View to a Kill is actually up next for me in my Bond watch and Im dreading old Roger Moore trying to stunt his way through this. gohuskies posted:They are great and a foundational part of the franchise. Bond movies should always comedy bits, that's a crucial part of what separates them from the Bournes, Missions:Impossible, and other franchises doing spy action these days. I think Bond has always been funny and a bit pithy, but The World is Not Enough has some bits where it goes a little extra. The bit where Valentin's factory collapses after he says he still has the walls is goofy, but to immediately follow it up with "my insurance will never believe this" is too much and wasting the superior joke to have it come second. I really think the films weakness Denise Richards casting aside, is if Renard had just been "a terrorist who has no qualms left now that he is slowly dying" and we let some of the jokes breathe just a bit more we'd be having real arguments for it being Brosnans best film. Probably gonna be favorite Bond kill quip ever with Elektra though.
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Nov 17, 2024 02:52
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GoldenEye also has the best mixture of combat encounters for Brosnan's Bond. He has multiple large group combat scenes with some "puzzle solving" elements, the tank chase flipping the usual formula around, a solid 1v1 melee and a gimmick 1v1 melee, some light stealthing. Its a good spread and none cross into the too goofy realm like Die Another Day does. Like I love TWINEs shootout down the nuclear missle silo hallway which has the same sort of traits that a good Bond group fight should have but then its followed up escaping the worlds slowest explosion sequence. The airborne ski chase just isn't cool and has the strange ski slashes a parachute bit. Edit: This is the teeny tiniest completely irrelevant continuity complaint but in TWINEs cavier factory sequence there is a part where Bond hides behind cover. He drops the pistol, presumably out of ammo. The next time we see him there is a brief couple second shot of him behind cover holding a Steyr TMP(?). When we cut back to him again and for the remainder of the sequence he uses the pistol again, no TMP Barudak fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Nov 17, 2024 |
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Nov 17, 2024 04:02
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Maybe they could have let him keep directing now that I have a reason both Brosnan and Craig got saddled with a first is best issue.
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Nov 17, 2024 04:14
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Dr. Kaufmann and Gupta are the highlights of Tomorrow Never Dies. I honestly would have loved if Gupta had gotten to live and shown up in subsequent films as a consultant to more villains. The action in Tomorrow Never Dies is on paper brilliant but in execution very poor. Its such a shame each sequence feels deflating as it happens.
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Nov 17, 2024 04:20
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Hes also 82 now so its not like they can bring him back.
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Nov 17, 2024 05:00
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View to a Kill Im glad this is Roger Moore's last outing as Bond because the stunt choreography is barely hanging on in this film as is. It suffers from wasting Grace Jones in her role when we could have shlooped the Stacey Sutton character out of the film and not lost a dang thing. We spend way too much time on horse racing and Zorins overcomplicated backstory so we dont get enough of Zorin doing silicon valley murder pitches which is when the films excesses are working best for it. It grinds to a halt 3 separate times to hit you with an exposition blast about Zorin and never feels like anything naturally flows or we get to revel in the schlock its trying to sell. Just disjointed all around, and the final battle is on the wrong blimp how do you mess this up, its so dang obvious how it should have gone. Scarface came out in 1983 so theres also no excuse for how anemic and non creative the shootout/sad excuse for a fight at the Sutton mansion is. Barudak fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Nov 17, 2024 |
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Nov 17, 2024 14:37
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I never really liked Craig's Bond style of dour, quiet sociopathy. The fact I think Qauntum of Solace might be my least favorite Bond film and his second best outing Skyfall I thought was wasted thoughts turned to rubbish really tints my perception further. Spectre somehow pulled a one two punch of bringing back my least favorite part of old Bond films plots and then did it so incomprehensibly poorly that the worst excesses of Roger Moore and Brosnan's films seem staid and respectful.
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Nov 18, 2024 02:17
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If the song View to a Kill wasn't so drat good the score of View to a Kill would be terrible, what with its songs "View to a Kill (tension)" and "View to a Kill (romantic)" and "View to a Kill (battle)". Instead drat its good. I still can't stop laughing at "Zorin speaks 5 languages with no accent" and then its Christopher Walken not even really trying to cover up how he talks.
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Nov 18, 2024 13:44
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Just a Bond that seems to enjoy their job is probably enough to get me on board. No need for him to go to a casino and bet using FanDuel to keep it relevant and modern.
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Nov 18, 2024 14:07
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Im catching up on all the bond themes as I watch the movies I missed but top two slots are View to a Kill and Diamonds are Forever's to lose at the moment. Brosnan has the worst run, 4 movies of mediocre at best. When Im willing to argue that potentially Die Another Day which absolutely sucks is the best of his 4 we've a problem. I also am incredibly petty because its always bothered me the Bond songs seem to be written without ever telling the performer what the movie title means in context so you end up with lyrics and movies that don't align and yes that means Skyfall bothers me a ton even if it is far and away Craig's best song and probably top 5 for me.
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Nov 19, 2024 10:19
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Thunderball is actually the exact other song that came to mind. Like in the film its the name of the recovery operation for stolen nuclear weapons. In the song its Jame's Bond's awesomeness. In a vacuum, its the right call because the Thunderball song is great and Tom Jones is killing it, but it will always bug me.
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Nov 19, 2024 11:40
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Thanks to Forgotten Weapons Ive learned the line in Tomorrow Never Dies that left my family amused and puzzled was an intentional product placement. When Bond mentions a new Walther gun he asked Q for, he is holding a P99 which was at the time of filming not released. Turns out the new owner of Walther was a huge Bond film and wormed his way in through Brosnan to do a bit of pre-release product placement and get the gun into the film.
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Nov 20, 2024 17:46
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Just finished Living Daylights, which Ive never seen before and is now one of my favorites. Its a bit overplotted and Whitaker feels like a leftover from Moore, but Dalton is a great Bond and goddamit why couldn't he have been in View to a Kill. Definitely more than the sum of its part and the little twists on usual Bond fare are used to help establish this Bond's personality and focus. Some good zingers, lowkey gadgets yet bigger action set-pieces and critically not a single goddamn water based combat scene. Shame the song isn't half as good as View to a Kill cause they use it throughout the score again and it doesn't work. Excited to be disappointed by License to Kill
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Nov 22, 2024 13:53
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Koskov is like the platonic ideal of a Bond villain archetype for me. Nefariously plotting, using everyone, and ultimately getting roasted by his own overconfidence. I think what makes it work particularly here is Krabbe plays him as a guy genuinely seat of his pants terrified when unexpected things are happening unlike the godawful modern cliche gently caress you in particular Skyfall of the villain being such a mastermind he plotted his own plan failing. Necros is just whatever, filling the role of "tough thug" but lucks out to having his climactic fight be dangling out the back of a flying airplane. Lesser thugs in this and other fulms wish they had something that interesting and memorable to hang from before plummeting to their doom. Whitaker is just wasted and my headcannon is he is Wade, same guy and I do not care if that makes no sense its just so much funnier.
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Nov 22, 2024 15:38
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Ok so I slept on it and then thought through a little more of The Living Daylights Score: The song thats woven into the score is not as good as View to a Kill, but its like 2/3rds as good and used for a tenser air a lot of the time which works in this one. The rest of the score is pretty solid but theres a few points, most specific moment I can think of is when Koskov and Necros mount the technical in Afghanistan, where the score just "kicks in" in a jarring fashion instead of feeling like a solid build to a musical cue. The closing song is god awful, sorry The Pretenders Villains: I love Koskov. Necros doesnt quite work, his song he listens to is middling and dropped as a gimmick after the first sequence. His disguises thing is neat, but as a gimmick goes he needed that for his final confrontation as well. He also has a single line of motivation about global revolution, but he comes across otherwise as a flunky. Him paired with just Koskov would have worked great, like a Laurel and Hardy routine where Koskov does a lot of fast talking to keep him on board and Necros being more clear headed but getting swindled into the dumb scheme. Which is part of why Whitaker doesn't work. Hes extraneous to the plot really and as he is immediately undermined by Pushkin, doesn't have a serious presence. He also feels too goofy for how relatively simple the rest of the plot is. He'd have been excellent to be introduced quickly in this film, exit, then used in the sequel as the main villain. But he's also Wade and none of you will ever convince me otherwise. Bond: This is what I want that Daniel Craig isn't delivering. Dalton and the script give Bond a focus without making him dour; he's a professional first but has vices galore that he (begrudgingly) puts aside when its business time. His voice tenor also nails pithy one liner without sounding goofy and his weakest parts in the film are when it asks him to do a little bit too much Roger Moore-ing. Action: I have a new simple paradigm, if your Bond film doesn't feature Bond wielding a fully automatic weapon you've probably made a mistake. This film understands Bond is at its best when the combat scenarios are varied and melee combat works best when there is an environmental hazard affecting both participants. The single best unnamed henchman in a Bond film is here, fighting for his life against Necros and gets a fight scene that in almost any other film would have gone to Bond. Its not perfect, the Airfield goes too long and theres no need for the follow-up bridge bombing. Whitaker is a damp squib of a final fight with a core concept that you can see but, that again, should have been in a follow-up film with more time left to give us the "Bond versus inhuman gadget man" Bond Girl: Not an embarrassment! The film gets a lil weird with her on the ferris wheel and the mujahideen part is bizarre, but she is as competent as an actual cellist could hope to be. All around solid, but also critical for showing Bond's charm as valuable in a way a lot of films (like Tomorrow Never Dies) fail to deliver on. Random Thought: That woman mentioned as an assassin who kills with strangulation is Xenia Onatop before weightloss and I do not care what you say. Barudak fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Nov 23, 2024 |
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Nov 23, 2024 04:17
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The only real caveat Id put to that is the issue with the Nighfire Game, variety within a type of combat encounter is what games excel at while movies want a variety of combat encounters. As you said though, an action scene is narrative, its not just bang bang all done now. It has to be engaging and have a purpose and sense of progression. Mentally Im categorizing Bond fights int 1 v 1 and Group categories with armed, unarmed, vehicle, terrain(lair), mounted, and gadget modifiers. One can transition to the other, elements can come and go, this is just sort of helping me separate them out. Of the misses from my recent viewing, View to a Kill lacks anything decent in the Group category and begrudgingly uses the terrain modifier. Diamonds are Forever has two vehicle encounters but both are unarmed with a group with Bond mounted resulting in diminishing returns. The better to me at least Bond films hit more of these variations in a single movie so Bond is just doing more stuff instead of feeling one trick.
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Nov 23, 2024 07:05
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Finished License to Kill. Absolutely dire. Apparently we've gone 3 Bonds in a row whose best film is their first. I can absolutely see why after making this turkey of a movie they had to sit down and reboot it again. Its this combination of uninvested and edgy with occasional dalliances into goofy beyond all reason. Nothing works because nothing is allowed to work.
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Nov 24, 2024 00:28
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Tencent app has them all, except they only have them organized by their spanish names, are seemingly randomly missing like 4 of them, and they all have hardcoded Chinese+English subtitles. Dreadful experience really. License to Kill is funny because it so fully wastes its concept that that becomes a blur to me and what lingers in my mind is the badness of the action scenes I wanted to take my mind off of it. Why the hell are Hong Kong cops dressed as Ninjas? Theres so much standing in an open area aimlessly shooting. The most egregious is the final battle with Sanchez where it builds a fun battle scenario, fist fighting on a runaway truck, but the fight ends about 5 seconds after that is introduced. Im also totally bugged by missing an opportunity to have Bond get worn down over the final battle sequence but instead hes basically fine until the very end when it feels unearned now. Truman-Lodges is the most interesting Villain in this movie and he's a yuppie schmuck that exists so the audience can feel catharsis at an MBA gets gunned down, so a long running joke character outpaces everyone else who have nothing.
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Nov 25, 2024 03:11
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Salami Surgeon posted:Yeah. I mean I get that. But he's not wrong. It is part of why Sanchez ends up not working. His gimmick is supposed to be his insane loyalty to his people and here he goes, gunning down Silver Spoons because he's whiny. The other reason is he has nobody except Dario who is worth being loyal to, everybody else is in fact worth not being loyal to and he handles them appropriately so he comes across as not very interesting? Maybe its supposed to be a mirror of how he bribes Ed? Its missing some connective tissue to make it not just an idea, which is like the whole movie for me. Lobok posted:They should try watching it again. Maybe it won't be dire another day. Die Another Day is the next one Im watching. Im looking forward to it because all I remember is so many absolutely dogshit things but also an incredibly goddamn stupid twisted metal style car battle.
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Nov 26, 2024 14:37
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FoolyCharged posted:Speaking of MI6 being an office with more goin on than bonds latest hijinx: you know one bit of book bond that's never made the movies? Bond stuck at the office writing reports in between world endangering emergencies. Complete with him sneaking away from his duties to work on his nerd out hobby project of writing the super ultimate guide to hand to hand combat styles across the globe. Bond's adventures are actually just the AI he installed to write his reports hallucinations.
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Nov 28, 2024 01:57
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A Strange Aeon posted:As far as silly goes, there was a ~60 episode Eon-approved cartoon in the 90s called James Bond Junior, it had some goofy takes on some villains from the movies. Bond is his uncle which is horseshit given the title!!!
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Dec 7, 2024 06:55
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James Bond Junior is a code name and when the current Bond dies he replaces them.
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Dec 7, 2024 07:17
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I think everyone read that like 'nephew, suuuure...' HR frantically filing yet another pension adjustment document for a new Commander Bond "nephew". His parents being dead comes up a regular bit, its a discussion point in GoldenEye and one of the other ones I watched recently. Its like the dead wife, it only pops up if directly immediately relvant
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Dec 7, 2024 08:08
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Die Another Day is better than I remember. Its got some extreme dogshit in it, as its serving three different masters but its got some decent choreography and contains the critical "Bond doesn't understand whats happening" bit that License to Kill, which this film shares some thematic ties to, floundered at. Song is rancid though, just awful. Edit: Bond not knowing the scheme's motive or goal is a critical part of a good Bond plot to me
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Dec 8, 2024 13:36
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Its funny because that chase is one of the things I find really weak about Tomorrow Never Dies. Between how its shot and how long it is Im just bored half-way in and always surprised just how long it goes.
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Dec 9, 2024 17:29
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Quantum suffers from the 4 elements problem which is where for whatever reason a director decides they need to tie the narrative themeatically to the four elements and it pretty much always results in a sloppy bad movie.Ghost Leviathan posted:I still say they need to just be all gently caress it and end a movie with Bond fighting a Metal Gear. It's what they should have done with Whitaker.
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Dec 10, 2024 07:31
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SixFigureSandwich posted:One of the few things I remember from QoS is the villain at the end coming at Bond with an axe. Underrated action movie weapon, that View to a Kill has the villain wield an axe as well. Maybe villains shouldn't wield them or you get a bad movie.
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Dec 11, 2024 00:25
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