fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5681 ]

[ SECRET POST #5681 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5681 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 20 secrets from Secret Submission Post #813.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

01. https://i.imgur.com/1yPtgK0.png

I've seen every movie up to Skyfall and then I lost my interest in them, which is a shame since I love the franchise since over two decades.
From all the movies I've seen the only one I didn't liked was QOS.
Skyfall is one of the best Bond movies and the one I've probably watched the most.

skyfall is legitimately great and a brilliant way to signal that Bond (the franchise, not the character) was back - sadly it very much turned out to be a peak

I'd swap No Time To Die with Never Say Never Again, dump NTtD in the non-canon pile and have done with it. It was shit. It wasn't just shit at being Bond, it was shit at being a movie period.

The first half of it was great, and great at being a Bond movie. The second half of it was fine as a movie but crap at being a Bond movie (and it was also too long overall)

I disagree (and I'll try not to repeat myself too much because I think we've already talked about this some).

For one thing, I think tons of the Craig era is still really quite good. Casino Royale was mostly good, Skyfall was good, the first half of No Time To Die was really good. That's a better ratio of hits to misses than Brosnan or Moore had. It's kinda hard to insist on really high quality standards for the Bond franchise given that the majority of Bond movies are very bad.

In regard to the fan theory stuff - I didn't like the choices they made in regard to giving Bond lore throughout the Craig movies and I didn't like the ending of NTTD. But I don't really think the fan theory had anything to do with it. Legitimizing the fan theory is not the reason that they did what they did in No Time To Die; I can't believe for a second that they care about fan theories. It was thematically in keeping with the whole thrust of the Craig era and the modern era of blockbusters, and I think that's why they did it.

I also don't think that the decision they made does legitimize the fan theory, because the Bond franchise already lacks internal consistency. It's not that different from "this never happened to the other guy", or the basic fact of how the setting of the series has changed over the course of years. And I don't think it crashes the franchise into a brick wall - they can easily just ignore the decision made and move on and it would be no problem. Like, they can just make a Bond movie with no explanations or lore and it'll be fine. No one will care.

The only Brosnan miss was that scene with the CGI tsunami, otherwise every scene of every Brosnan Bond rocked. It was exactly the sort of OTT stuff movie-Bond ought to be.

OTT is fine but the Brosnan movies were bad

Die Another Day is legitimately terrible, TWINE had some good ideas but the execution was bad and the plot was massively confused and dragged on and on (admittedly a fault it shares with some of the Craig movies, but the Craig movies have more style), and Tomorrow Never Dies is incredibly unoriginal and boring and not even really OTT

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(Anonymous) - 2022-07-26 23:12 (UTC) - Expand

i don't think they literally set out to legitimise the fan theory... but that's kinda what they've ended up doing

the reason they did what they did in nttd is because craig wanted to get out and stay out

"thematically in keeping with the whole thrust of the Craig era and the modern era of blockbusters" is a perfect description of why the movies sucked ass; of course heroism (especially vaguely anti-heroic heroism) has to end in the way it did in nttd, because that's what movies do now - especially the movies the craig era chased after (i.e. nolan's batmans and the mcu)

IMO The influence of the modern era of blockbusters is why the movies have so much lore and continuity. All blockbusters nowadays have tons of lore and continuity, therefore, so do the Craig Bonds. I don't like this personally, it's kind of dumb, but the Bond movies always move with the times somewhat. Lore and continuity just comes with the territory.

The reason that NTTD is so melancholy and heavy and tragic is because the whole Craig series is trying to be realistic and down-to-earth and take Bond seriously as a real person. If you take Bond seriously, he's going to be tragic. It goes too far at the end of NTTD. But trying to be more realistic and down-to-earth isn't some new idea that they got from superhero movies, that's always been a part of the series, look at From Russia With Love and the Dalton movies.

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(Anonymous) - 2022-07-27 09:19 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2022-07-27 16:40 (UTC) - Expand

^ All of this.

The Craig era is the only watchable one. His Bond still enjoys women, but he actually treats them like equals. All the other bond eras are just so awful to women as to be unwatchable.

Yeah, there was a moment in his second movie when I went, This Bond is capable of being friends with a woman. And I appreciated that.

Yes! The Daniel Craig era finally brought me into being interested in James Bond.

I watched many previous versions of the character because someone I care about wanted me to see them. But it wasn’t until Daniel Craig that I actually cared.

(Even then, it’s mostly Casino Royale that I enjoyed, but I can see the potential in some of the other movies.)

I'm very much being devil's advocate here, because Daniel Craig is the only Bond I'm interested in, and I DO agree that the way Bond treats women is dealt with better in (some of the) Craig era Bond films.

That being said, the Craig era bond films are far from paragons in this department. I mean, in Skyfall he chats up a woman who was sold into slavery as a child and who is at that moment not free. He knows this because she tells him. He then kills her...pimp? captor?...and basically the first things he does is goes and lets himself into her shower while she's bathing and they have sex. It's implied to be consensual, but WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN IN THIS CONTEXT FFS I COULD FLIP A TABLE. There's really no point in playing Fucked Up Olympics, but if we were going to, that bit would be in the running right alongside some of the No Means Yes shit from the early installments.

What's really been doing my head in lately is that Casino Royale and Quantum Of Solace were, IMO, the films that handled Bond's interactions with women the best (i.e. with the most nuance, sensitivity, and awareness), yet both of those scripts were written by a guy who has now been accused of rape by several women. *facepalm* Saying "this is why I have trust issues" feels too flippant under the circumstances, for for fuck's sake THIS IS WHY I HAVE TRUST ISSUES.

Oof, yeah. I’m the anon above who commented above you and that interaction with Sévérine seriously squicked me out in Skyfall. And then she’s basically disposed of by the narrative.

I haven’t been keeping up with the news about the script writers, but that’s awful to hear and incredibly undermining. “Trust issues” feel like the logical response.

i've commented on this a couple of times before (short version: i mostly agree and it's now inevitable that the next actor will get a 3-5 movie contract, a new reboot and a whole arc the franchise doesn't need), so i'll just leave it with moviebob's comment to the writers at the start of his spectre review:

"STOP OVERTHINKING JAMES BOND. JUST STOP IT."

This is perfect.

Which wacky fandom theory? I just recently watched the newest film and they introduced so much random shit that I'm not exactly sure which one you mean.

tbh, while I've never been a fan of Bond, Craig is definitely my least favourite interpretation. I was very neutral when his first movie came out, but after I began watching the films I found they never really captured the right aesthetic that I alway associated with Bond. Like I don't find him charismatic or charming at all, so idk, he never really worked for me.

Which wacky fandom theory?

007 and James Bond are just code names; each Bond actor is actually playing a different character.

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(Anonymous) - 2022-07-27 09:23 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2022-07-27 16:31 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2022-07-27 18:49 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2022-07-27 19:02 (UTC) - Expand

one thing that's not been brought up yet - it's a popular thought that james bond movies are only ever as good as their villains. and craig's villains have been an utter shitpile

i mean, for how much everyone goes on about how great casino royale was i can't remember a single thing about le chiffre's motivations; dominic greene was so dull they had to finish the movie with some other random guy instead; silva was at least slightly interesting even if he was basically the joker; oberhauser/blofeld was holy shit if you're reduced to stealing plot points from PARODIES of your movies then you need to seriously consider the possibility that you've lost your way (the brother thing is straight out of austin powers 3); and i only watched nttd six months ago and i've already forgotten everything about safin except for the mask and the poison garden and some backstory with madeleine (i had to google his name, that's how nondescript he was)

Silva at least had the advantage of Javier Bardem understanding the brief and camping it up for all he was worth.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2022-07-27 16:28 (UTC) - Expand

NTTD is my favourite Craig-era Bond 👀

Bond/007 as codenames isn't a 'fandom theory'.

*Of course* they're codenames. Just like M, Q and Moneypenny are and always have been throughout the entire series. They were always just more obvious about it with those 3.

I think because Craig wanted this to be his last Bond film, they just stopped bothering to try to hide it, unsuccessfully to varying degrees as the franchise went on, with NTTD.

But yeah, those of us who watched the films from the Connery era, already figured that out. It's amusing that it's now a 'fandom theory' though.

"bond as codename" is completely unsupported by canon (save for one dumb ad-lib by lazenby), ergo it only exists as fandom theory (moneypenny even less so)

m and q being positions that change hands is demonstrably not the same thing (or for that matter 007, which has always been james bond with the exception of two thirds of nttd; an exception that proves the rule, since the 007 designation was taken from bond and given back just as cheaply)