When You Aim For The Stars And Really Miss

[TheRedChamber]

I suspect that's precisely why there's so much talk of casting a Black actor in the role.

Bond is fun, but as you suggest, it's a very regressive type of fun. Society has changed hugely since he was created, and while the franchise has adapted where it can - attitudes to women, etc. etc. - at the heart of it you have a guy whose job is to kill people in the service of Her Majesty Queen El–

–oh fuck, it's not any more, now his job is to kill people in the service of King Charles. Bloody hell, that's going to take some processing. Sorry, where was I?

I think a lot of people who enjoy the Bond movies believe that government-sponsored extrajudicial assassination is generally a bad thing, and that the kind of people who take that job are not good people, and that the government Bond works for is more likely to be forming public-private partnerships with evil billionaires than taking them down. That kind of thought can occasionally get in the way of one's enjoyment. But you can't change those aspects of Bond without utterly unmaking him. So giving him a Black buddy, or a female M, or making him Black himself is a way for viewers who care about that kind of thing to feel more comfortable with enjoying the franchise.

(And you don't even have to actually cast a Black James Bond! You just have to encourage people to talk about the possibility that it might someday happen!)

Maybe the right question there is not "what if Black James Bond?" but "what if it's possible to tell an interesting story about somebody who's not James Bond?"

All Cops Are Bad (Yes Even Columbo)?

There are certainly regressive elements to Bond. I'm not going to defend him sexing the lesbianism out of Pussy Galore in the books, for example, or him joining forces with the Taliban against the rogue (just ex-)Soviet general.

But I'd argue that, for the most part, Bond isn't so much regressive as it is purely simple. Thinking about actual governments while watching a Bond movie is a bit like thinking about the obesity crisis while watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Essentially it's one man with gun stops world ending plan while driving fast cars, drinking expensive liquor and (ahem) dating beautiful women. Sure he has a licence to kill, but, like Coolio, he hasn't ever whacked a man who didn't deserve it. And by and large the mission he's sent on aren't 'assassinate this guy', but more 'something fishy is happening inside that hollowed out volcano, pop over and have a shuftie.'.

(And if all governments are inherently evil, why does having a woman working for them make them better. I am confused...)

But we're now 60 years into the franchise and I'm older than I was and the elements and tropes of story-telling have changed. There have always been good shows and bad shows and the shows which were good fifty years ago don't necessarily end up as the good shows when made by a completely different team of writer/producers with completely different aims and styles of writing.

I'd like to get a time machine and go back to my ten year old self. The first thing I'd say is "Battlestar Galactica is now a better epic sci-fi fantasy than Star Wars."

And then, when that's sunk in, I'll hit me with "My Little Pony is now a better epic fantasy than Star Wars. No, I'm serious."

Increasingly I'm finding that the new generation of writers are using a whole bunch of tropes that aren't my tropes. Some of them are great innovations and some of them I don't care for. Some of them are things that could be called 'woke' if you're the sort of person who likes calling things 'woke'.

I can't remember which book it is, but I remember Ian Flemming spelling out pretty explicitly the heart of the character. Bond has just or is about to talk to Moneypenny and he reflect that one day he'll probably marry her (or someone like her). He's already saved the world several times over, so MI6 will find him a cushy desk job. He'll have to curtail the drinking and the womanizing and definately the narrowly avoiding death in exotic locations. And all of that has a certain appeal, but maybe after the next mission he takes on.

On that basis, Bond is basically a juvenille fantasy - avoiding life and growing up - at least a purpetual twenties before one settles down. So No Time To Die hitting you with the whole 'Hey Bond, see the family you could have had if you hadn't been to busy being a hero' before hitting him with a missile strike is a little too much on the nose. I go to the cinema to escape into fantasy bubble not have my bubble popped. I don't know, is the aim to have me leave the cinema thinking 'whew, I'm glad I got married and had kids, and didn't die in a massive explosion alone and unloved'.

But we're adding depth to the character obviously.

Going back to the extract, Flemming also spells it out that Bond can afford to go on another mission because he has no-one. He's an orphan and he's not married. Moneypenny is the only one who will shed a tear at his funeral before going off to marry a stock-broker five minutes later. On that basis, if there's danger to be faced, maybe its better that he face it than someone who has something to lose.

The writers of Skyfall obviously didn't read this bit and decided the you could make Bond better by making him Batman.

And Batman's great, he really is, but the key story beat about Batman is that the brutal murder of his parents left him with a pathological obsession about fighting crime. Giving Bond basically the same experience (and have 8 year old him cowering in a cupboard) doesn't really do anything for the character but warp him into another character. Bond fights villans not because he's tramatized but because it's fun.

But trauma adds depth, so ladel it on.

The evolution of the Judi Dench M, I think is kind of interesting.

Austin Powers got the old M right with the character of Basil Exposition. Bernard Lee's M wasn't really a character - he'd call Bond in, brief him and then point him in the direction of the rest of the movie. By the Moore era, as it leaned into comedy more, he might also give him a dressing down for all the chaos he'd caused in the last action scene.

By the Brosnan era, the producers were wrestling with the fact that, as you point out, certain aspects of Bond were 'products of their time'. They'd tried to modernize a little bit with Dalton, but this hadn't been terribly popular so they'd gone back to basics. Bond would do all the stuff he traditionally did, but the movie would call him out on it. Who better to do this than a female M? And instead of hanging around pining about if he was coming back alive from the mission or not, Moneypenny would be the one (other) woman who saw through his charming bullshit.

Judi Dench is a class act. The script was fun and Bond, M and Moneypenny all had good zingers in this section which only lasted ten minutes before Bond got back to business as usual so it was all good.

But then, having gotten a great actress, they decided they needed a great character to match. They started to write more and more about how M felt about sending Bond into almost certain death. By Quantum of Solice they had them butt-heads, not only between acts, but during active missions with M actually turning up in the mission zones to dress him down. By Skyfall the plot largely revolved around M, the danger she was in, and her attempt to get Batman to face the trauma of seeing his parents murdered as a wee nipper.

By this point she'd basically become his mum and there was a very specific reason why Flemming decided Bond shouldn't have mum.

"Hi, yeah, just checking in...Havana...no, nice hotel [looks over at the corpse of the hitman who tried to strangle him five minutes earlier.] Going out tomorrow to look round some islands. No, just an inspection of some nuclear power site. No big deal. Yes, I'll wear suncream...No, I'm renting...An Aston Martin...Yes of course they have seatbelts here...No, the speed limit is the same...Moneypenny?...no, I'm not inviting her over for Christman...no, we're not a item...if you must know I'm dating someone else...Russian...works for the government...no it's not serious...[bomb goes off outside his hotel room]...no that was just fireworks."

And despite Bond having worked with multiple female secret agents from different governments over the decades, the modern producers decided it was essential that Moneypenny should be a field agent. And then she accidentally shot Bond, for some reason I couldn't quite fathom.

(Incidentally, if you are looking for the sweet spot of female representation in 007, I'd nominate Michelle Yeoh - cooperating with Bond but also giving the impression she was perfectly capable of soloing the mission if necessary)

Wait, how many words is this. Shit, I could actually have written a story instead. I think I lost the point of this all a while ago. If I recall correctly it's basically the idea that Bond still drives fast, drinks and has sex with beautiful women, but the modern movies want to go - no! no! all this is bad! See he's traumatized and alone and unhappy, so don't even dream of doing any of that stuff.

EDIT: So yeah, my hope is that if they rewrite Bond so that he's not a white elitist man, they might remember to actually let him have some fun which would be truer to the character than any of the backstory they've tried adding on recently.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Put it this way - if I wrote a story based on my own life, depending on the time-period the cast would be:

Period 1: Sixth-form - All white
Period 2: University - Jewish, Anglo-Indian, Malay + multiple white
Period 3: Job 1&2 - All white again plus (one/two) Anglo-Indians
Period 4: Job 3 - Jewish, Black British, Chinese, Japanese, half white/Singaporean Chinese, 1x White, Danish
Period 5: Job 4 - All Chinese

If I ask you which one I should write about and you immediately say 'not period 1!' without asking anything about what is going on in my life in each period, then you're prioritizing 'wokeness' over story-telling.
If my sixth-form buddy writes his story about period 1 and I write my own one about period 4 and I ask you which one should be made into a major motion picture. If the answer isn't 'whichever one is better' then you're prioritizing 'wokeness' over quality.
If I write my period 1 story and you try to persuade me to race-swap some of the characters then there's an element of 'wokeness' for 'wokeness' sake.
If I want to Harry Potterize the whole of my all-white schooling and you're saying 'if you don't skip ahead to university soon, I'm going to start giving you the side eye...

If I toss a normal coin, I'm equally likely to get heads or tails. It would be absurd to read anything into the fact that the coin happens to come up heads.

If I toss a coin one hundred times, and it happens to come up heads every single time, it would be absurd to keep on thinking that this is a normal coin. Even though one can look at any given toss of the coin, and quite reasonably remark that it's perfectly plausible for it to have come up heads on that occasion, and just as plausible for it to come up heads the next time as well, the overall pattern is implausible. In fact, even if it were only ninety times out of a hundred, or seven hundred times out of a thousand, it would be extremely far-fetched.

If we look at any one story with a whitebread cast, the author (...producer, director, ...) will probably have a very good argument for why they chose to tell that particular story and why it got funded, for reasons that have nothing to do with racism. It would be absurd to assume from this one incident that racism is why this particular story was made.

But when the coin keeps coming up heads, perhaps not every time but often enough to show a distinct preference for heads over tails, something is going on.

Well, I don't think romances about Black people in Jane Austen's time are far fetched. Riley is writing what she wants to write and presumably has done her research.
Talking about dukes, well presumably adding marquess, earls, viscounts and barons into the mix will swell the numbers somewhat (but these are aspirational matches so why not play Top Trumps with them, hell, go for the Prince!).

Already married (to his cousin, natch), and a notoriously awful husband not to be wished upon any romance heroine :-(

Dukes seem to be the sweet spot for that era. Any higher on the social ladder and it's hard to set up a marriage without changing the course of history, but one can slip in an extra duke here and there without readers yelling "that person didn't exist!"

 

[Bramblethorn]

All Cops Are Bad (Yes Even Columbo)?

I haven't watched a lot of Columbo. (Nothing against it, I really enjoyed the two? episodes I saw of it, I just don't watch a lot of TV in general.) So in place of an opinion of my own, let me offer this: https://press.invincible.ink/story-pile-are-columbos-a-bastards/

Until we drifted out of contact, I had a social-media friend who was a published author with a series about a specialist police team, and I remember talking to him about the same dilemma that's explored in that story. He was writing a series where the police were the heroes, while witnessing a world where it was becoming more and more clear that the police were... let us say, not as good people as the ones in his books. He ended up wrestling with that question of whether his stories were saying "cops are great!" - something he no longer believed - or "here's what I wish the police were". I'm not sure where he ended up with that, if he ever did. I don't think there's a tidy answer to that question.

There are certainly regressive elements to Bond. I'm not going to defend him sexing the lesbianism out of Pussy Galore in the books, for example, or him joining forces with the Taliban against the rogue (just ex-)Soviet general.

But I'd argue that, for the most part, Bond isn't so much regressive as it is purely simple. Thinking about actual governments while watching a Bond movie is a bit like thinking about the obesity crisis while watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Essentially it's one man with gun stops world ending plan while driving fast cars, drinking expensive liquor and (ahem) dating beautiful women. Sure he has a licence to kill, but, like Coolio, he hasn't ever whacked a man who didn't deserve it.

Mmm, I dunno about that. That sounds like the sort of thing people tell themselves so they can sleep at night.

Take Goldeneye, for instance:

• 15 Unnamed Russian Soldiers - Shot by James Bond.
• Unnamed Russian Soldier - Shot by James Bond.
• Unnamed Russian Pilot - Thrown under a motorcycle by James Bond.
• 12 Unnamed Russian Soldiers - Shot by James Bond.
• Two Unnamed Russian Engineers - Blown up by James Bond while he was in a tank.
• Unnamed Russian Pilot - Shot by James Bond.
• Two Unnamed Russian Soldiers - Shot by James Bond.
• 11 Unnamed Russian Soldiers - Blown up by James Bond.
• Five Unnamed Russian Male Technicians - Blown up by James Bond.
• Unnamed Russian Female Technician - Blown up by James Bond.
• Unnamed Russian Soldier - Blown up by James Bond.

Or Die Another Day:

• Eight Unnamed North Korean Soldiers - Blown up by James Bond.
• Two Unnamed North Korean Soldiers - Shot by James Bond.
• Two Unnamed North Korean Soldiers - Crashed into a door that James Bond shot.
• Unnamed North Korean Soldier - Killed when James Bond caused his hovercraft to crash.
• Unnamed North Korean Soldier - Shot by James Bond.
• Two Unnamed North Korean Soldiers - Blown up by James Bond.
• Unnamed North Korean Soldier - Shot by James Bond.

Were they all bad people, willingly participating in Evil Schemes, who deserved to die? Or could some of them maybe have been luckless conscripts who were only working Volcano Lair duty because it was better than a North Korean labour camp, or ordinary folk who'd been deceived by their governments' propaganda? I don't think we know, and Bond presumably didn't. I don't think I need to point you at the relevant Austin Powers bit.

That's the thing about using tyrants as the Big Bads: since they're pretty much defined by their fondness for forcing people to do things they didn't want to do, and by valuing their own lives above others', they're not being very good tyrants if they don't create a few ethical dilemmas for the good guys.

Whether Bond was justified in killing those soldiers and assorted henches, now, that's a different question. If it was necessary to save others, quite possibly yes, but that doesn't mean they deserved to die.

And by and large the mission he's sent on aren't 'assassinate this guy', but more 'something fishy is happening inside that hollowed out volcano, pop over and have a shuftie.'.

Well, those are the ones we get to hear about ;-)

Even there, though, when one makes a point of awarding a "license to kill" and gives the guy a gyrocopter bristling with rockets, it seems pretty plausible that somebody's going to get killed without benefit of trial.

(And if all governments are inherently evil, why does having a woman working for them make them better. I am confused...)

It doesn't. But it lets audiences focus on something that, superficially, feels like progress, and helps take their mind off the more uncomfortable aspects of the story.

I'd like to get a time machine and go back to my ten year old self. The first thing I'd say is "Battlestar Galactica is now a better epic sci-fi fantasy than Star Wars."

And then, when that's sunk in, I'll hit me with "My Little Pony is now a better epic fantasy than Star Wars. No, I'm serious."

Ah, I see we've reached the Star Wars point of the discussion! Also, you're 100% correct, at least about MLP, I haven't kept up with BSG.

(Incidentally, if you are looking for the sweet spot of female representation in 007, I'd nominate Michelle Yeoh - cooperating with Bond but also giving the impression she was perfectly capable of soloing the mission if necessary)

I didn't actually see that one, but I don't have any bad words to say about Michelle Yeoh.

EDIT: So yeah, my hope is that if they rewrite Bond so that he's not a white elitist man, they might remember to actually let him have some fun which would be truer to the character than any of the backstory they've tried adding on recently.

I get that, but I feel like maybe it'd just be easier to write a fun story about a spy who's not James Bond. It can be done! Jackie Chan was good silly fun in "The Tuxedo", and at least the first Kingsman was enjoyable. At some point I think franchises start to weigh themselves down. Sometimes it's best just to retreat to the volcano lair, blow everything up, and build something new in the ruins.

 

[TheRedChamber]

If I toss a normal coin, I'm equally likely to get heads or tails. It would be absurd to read anything into the fact that the coin happens to come up heads.

If I toss a coin one hundred times, and it happens to come up heads every single time, it would be absurd to keep on thinking that this is a normal coin. Even though one can look at any given toss of the coin, and quite reasonably remark that it's perfectly plausible for it to have come up heads on that occasion, and just as plausible for it to come up heads the next time as well, the overall pattern is implausible. In fact, even if it were only ninety times out of a hundred, or seven hundred times out of a thousand, it would be extremely far-fetched.

If we look at any one story with a whitebread cast, the author (...producer, director, ...) will probably have a very good argument for why they chose to tell that particular story and why it got funded, for reasons that have nothing to do with racism. It would be absurd to assume from this one incident that racism is why this particular story was made.

But when the coin keeps coming up heads, perhaps not every time but often enough to show a distinct preference for heads over tails, something is going on.

Well, yes, except in literature the coin is rarely well balanced. Spin the character wheel a few times and you'll soon find that beautiful blonde women with a mysterious past, butlers who commit murder and cops one day away from retirement roll around far more often than they are found in the natural world. To go back to our earlier example, if we accept 10,000 Black people in Britain around 1800 with a population of 10million then that's 0.1% of the population. Or a hell of a lot of dice rolls before their absence become suspicious. Relocate to, say, modern day London and you can draw conclusions much faster.

But while art often immiates life, it doesn't always spend a long time digging through statistics.

You could flip it the argument on it's head as well. Given the probabilties, if those 0.1% dice rolls keep coming up way more often then they should and people are writing books stuffed with unlikely but not impossible races such as the Black Viking, then its not unreasonable to suggest that some people have an agenda. An agenda that I'd be 100% behind owning.

You're going to end up scratching your head a lot for each time period and place to try and work out what the numbers actually should be, which is why I say it can be complicated.

To stress, in my own writing I've had situations where a) one or more of the character's ethnicities is fairly clearly established during it's initial conception b) where increasingly feels like it makes sense for a character to have a specific ethnicity as I develop the plot further and c) when I look at my ensemble cast as a whole it seems like there should be more diversity, and assigning a specific ethinicity to one or more placeholder characters seems right.

Already married (to his cousin, natch), and a notoriously awful husband not to be wished upon any romance heroine :-(

Fair enough - I was thinking of the generic non-specific Prince of a vaguely defined time period - not George IV to be.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

I feel like maybe it'd just be easier to write a fun story about a spy who's not James Bond. It can be done! Jackie Chan was good silly fun in "The Tuxedo", and at least the first Kingsman was enjoyable. At some point I think franchises start to weigh themselves down. Sometimes it's best just to retreat to the volcano lair, blow everything up, and build something new in the ruins.

TBF The Mission Impossible series (originally a TV James Bond) has achieved being a fun version of the Bond series. The stunts are now as good, if not better, the fight choreography is awesome as are the action set-pieces, and unlike recent Bonds that have borrowed from Batman, those films borrow from sources that are a lot harder to spot (Ghost Protocol = Safety Last).

As for Michelle Yeoh, she’s ace. Loved her in EEAAO and was great seeing her really show her amazing dramatic/comedy/action chops in a film.

As for Bond’s real-life morality it is questionable. We have seen in the U.K. what it looks like when assassins run riot murdering people because they can and the authorities (maybe) turning the other cheek. In our world such realistic considerations are awful, but although Bond is authorised to kill he doesn’t do so because he can, he does so because he must, in fact in TLD (film) he purposely avoids killing a female sniper because she isn’t a professional.

As for the poor working soldiers conundrum (AKA Death Star Building Contractors from Clerks) the best version of solving this is in the Matrix where they acknowledge that they may have to kill people but those people can become agents, and even if they are not, they may give their lives to defend the awful system they are part of.

As for having a crap ending and missing the stars, I’d argue that the book Hannibal does just that…not that the film is much better.

Oh and finally I would argue that Columbo is less a police show than a show about class warfare. Columbo is a seemingly dumb, working-class stiff whereas the villains are all usually businessmen, academics and boorish snobs.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

Toodle-pip.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I haven't watched a lot of Columbo. (Nothing against it, I really enjoyed the two? episodes I saw of it, I just don't watch a lot of TV in general.) So in place of an opinion of my own, let me offer this: https://press.invincible.ink/story-pile-are-columbos-a-bastards/

Thanks for that. I was beginning to worry I was overanalyzing things, but I've got nothing on that guy...

Mmm, I dunno about that. That sounds like the sort of thing people tell themselves so they can sleep at night.

Take Goldeneye, for instance:

• 15 Unnamed Russian Soldiers - Shot by James Bond.
• Unnamed Russian Soldier - Shot by James Bond.
• Unnamed Russian Pilot - Thrown under a motorcycle by James Bond.
• 12 Unnamed Russian Soldiers - Shot by James Bond.
• Two Unnamed Russian Engineers - Blown up by James Bond while he was in a tank.
• Unnamed Russian Pilot - Shot by James Bond.
• Two Unnamed Russian Soldiers - Shot by James Bond.
• 11 Unnamed Russian Soldiers - Blown up by James Bond.
• Five Unnamed Russian Male Technicians - Blown up by James Bond.
• Unnamed Russian Female Technician - Blown up by James Bond.
• Unnamed Russian Soldier - Blown up by James Bond.

Or Die Another Day:

• Eight Unnamed North Korean Soldiers - Blown up by James Bond.
• Two Unnamed North Korean Soldiers - Shot by James Bond.
• Two Unnamed North Korean Soldiers - Crashed into a door that James Bond shot.
• Unnamed North Korean Soldier - Killed when James Bond caused his hovercraft to crash.
• Unnamed North Korean Soldier - Shot by James Bond.
• Two Unnamed North Korean Soldiers - Blown up by James Bond.
• Unnamed North Korean Soldier - Shot by James Bond.

Were they all bad people, willingly participating in Evil Schemes, who deserved to die? Or could some of them maybe have been luckless conscripts who were only working Volcano Lair duty because it was better than a North Korean labour camp, or ordinary folk who'd been deceived by their governments' propaganda? I don't think we know, and Bond presumably didn't. I don't think I need to point you at the relevant Austin Powers bit.

That's the thing about using tyrants as the Big Bads: since they're pretty much defined by their fondness for forcing people to do things they didn't want to do, and by valuing their own lives above others', they're not being very good tyrants if they don't create a few ethical dilemmas for the good guys.

Whether Bond was justified in killing those soldiers and assorted henches, now, that's a different question. If it was necessary to save others, quite possibly yes, but that doesn't mean they deserved to die.

Yeah, okay, GoldenEye is one of the few times where he's directly involved in espionage action against an enemy nation rather than some Spectre or Spectre like organization. (And Die Another Day as well I guess, but I could only bear to watch that once twenty years ago...)

Well, those are the ones we get to hear about ;-)

Even there, though, when one makes a point of awarding a "license to kill" and gives the guy a gyrocopter bristling with rockets, it seems pretty plausible that somebody's going to get killed without benefit of trial.

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best...

I get that, but I feel like maybe it'd just be easier to write a fun story about a spy who's not James Bond. It can be done! Jackie Chan was good silly fun in "The Tuxedo", and at least the first Kingsman was enjoyable. At some point I think franchises start to weigh themselves down. Sometimes it's best just to retreat to the volcano lair, blow everything up, and build something new in the ruins.

Well, Bond traditionally didn't specificially because he never accumulated any baggage. His wife did get killed once at the end of a film, but they conveniently forgot about that five minutes into the next one. Nominally I'm all for them making a fresh take on a spy who isn't Bond, though the face that I've seen all the Craig Bond films despite having clearly diminishing enjoyment of them, but have yet to get round to Kingsman speaks volumes.

 

[SimonDoom]

TBF The Mission Impossible series (originally a TV James Bond) has achieved being a fun version of the Bond series. The stunts are now as good, if not better, the fight choreography is awesome as are the action set-pieces, and unlike recent Bonds that have borrowed from Batman, those films borrow from sources that are a lot harder to spot (Ghost Protocol = Safety Last).

I completely agree. With the exception of Casino Royale, which probably is my favorite Bond movie, I've liked Tom Cruise's Mission: Impossible movies more than the Bond movies. They offer much of the same appeal, but they're more "fun" in tone and they don't have as long a list of cliches to check off -- i.e., the womanizing, the martini, the car, meeting with Q to go through the gadgets, etc. They feel fresher and more up to date.

I'm curious who will get picked to play the next Bond. It wouldn't surprise me if they cast a black Bond. I think that could work. I suspect they'll take it in some new directions.

 

[AlinaX]

I have conflicted feelings about Die Another Day. The sequence from the exchange at the bridge all the way to the fencing club and Madonna is all very nicely done. (Interesting aside: Toby Stephens voice-acted James Bond in at least one radio play.) But then that bloody invisible car, and a whole lot of suckingly-bad CGI action in a movie franchise built on the quality of its stunt work. Ugh. Which is a shame, because I love Pierce Brosnan as James Bond and his run ended on a sour note. (And of course I love Michelle Yeoh in Tomorrow Never Dies.)

With Daniel Craig, I would argue the biggest influence was Jason Bourne. The Bourne trio (Identity/Supremacy/Ultimatum) was so brilliantly done that the Bond films had to up the ante, going for gritty realism and dismissing the gadgetry and tongue-in-cheek humour. Which was fine, except for the plots and extended run times. Quantum of Solace with Olga Kurylenko is my favourite.

True Lies, of course, was a comedy-action take on Bond, and I love it - though it's spoiled a little now after learning that Eliza Dushku was sexually assaulted on set.

I would love to see a female James Bond. I would love to see other characters' momentary confusion about the fact that James is a woman. All those scenes where the bad guys completely underestimate Bond would suddenly make a lot more sense...

 

[Bramblethorn]

Well, Bond traditionally didn't specificially because he never accumulated any baggage. His wife did get killed once at the end of a film, but they conveniently forgot about that five minutes into the next one. Nominally I'm all for them making a fresh take on a spy who isn't Bond, though the face that I've seen all the Craig Bond films despite having clearly diminishing enjoyment of them, but have yet to get round to Kingsman speaks volumes.

Ah, I didn't mean in the sense of continuity/canon, more the weight of expectations and fandom. I can't say I've ever directed a long-running film franchise, but I get the impression it gets increasingly hard to find the right balance between keeping it fresh and appeasing fans who have very specific ideas about what the series owes them, and that thing of "the last one made two hundred gazillion dollars, so if this one only makes a hundred and fifty you've failed".

 

[gunhilltrain]

With his film 'The Deer Hunter' having won the Best Picture Oscar in 1978, up and coming director the late Michael Cimino set out on his next project, a grand epic Western named 'Heavens Gate' with the financial backing of United Artists.

It was meant to be one of the greatest movies of all time, but instead was an almighty mess, savaged by critics and audiences upon its 1980 release as boring, overly long, historically inaccurate and a waste of time and money. It certainly cost a lot of money, good money thrown after bad to create this megaton bomb. The original cut was recalled and scaled down, but still it received poor box office returns and reviews, plus the film received much negative press for the alleged poor treatment of animals on set.

More than 40 years later some people claim the film is brilliant, but the glaring reality is that not a single thing tried to make 'Heaven's Gate' profitable including an attempt to rework the entire movie into a TV mini-series worked and it was a total disaster.

I've seen the four-hour (I think) cut of Heaven's Gate. It's not quite as bad as some think, but a movie that long is not going to work in the American market. (I have heard of the mini-series idea.) The Deer Hunter was interesting in places but overrated. You can already see some of Cimino's weakness. (Filming the Pennsylvania hunting scenes in Washington State - snow-capped peaks in PA?, his obsession with dance numbers, the abbreviated and generally implausible Vietnam scenes.) He had visual flair (the compared filming to painting, I believe) but his story-telling skills were less impressive.

The "making of" documentary is well worth the hour or so it takes to watch it. He wasn't incompetent, per se, but he certainly was arrogant.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Oh and finally I would argue that Columbo is less a police show than a show about class warfare. Columbo is a seemingly dumb, working-class stiff whereas the villains are all usually businessmen, academics and boorish snobs.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

Toodle-pip.

Yes, Columbo was not intended as anything close to a realistic police show. Peter Falk was fun to watch at times, but the show suffered the same faults as other successful TV series. It quickly became very repetitive.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Until we drifted out of contact, I had a social-media friend who was a published author with a series about a specialist police team, and I remember talking to him about the same dilemma that's explored in that story. He was writing a series where the police were the heroes, while witnessing a world where it was becoming more and more clear that the police were... let us say, not as good people as the ones in his books. He ended up wrestling with that question of whether his stories were saying "cops are great!" - something he no longer believed - or "here's what I wish the police were". I'm not sure where he ended up with that, if he ever did. I don't think there's a tidy answer to that question.

Mmm, I dunno about that. That sounds like the sort of thing people tell themselves so they can sleep at night.

With cops, there's never one around when you need them, but they are often around when you don't need (or want) them. Even as an old white guy, I'm a bit on-guard when one approaches me for some reason. (Or during a traffic stop, when I used to drive.)

I've seen them overreact to trivial situations, and yet sometimes ignore the most blatant provocations. They are deliberately given a considerable amount of discretion about how to react. Yeah, they do have the impossible job of handling the social pressure cooker that is present-day America. Being a cop in Helsinki is not like being one in Chicago, and being one in Chicago is not like being one in Mexico City.

"Just want to talk to you. You're ex-wife's new husband was found shot to death in Toms River, NJ. You know anything about that?" Of course, that never happened, but you really don't have to talk to them much, with or without an arrest. People blab too much, especially when they are guilty. Let them make their own case; don't do it for them.

 

[SimonDoom]

Oh and finally I would argue that Columbo is less a police show than a show about class warfare. Columbo is a seemingly dumb, working-class stiff whereas the villains are all usually businessmen, academics and boorish snobs.

I enjoyed Columbo. I think of it as a retelling of Doestoevsky's Crime and Punishment, where Columbo is the detective Porphiry. But there's definitely that class element because almost all, if not all, of the villains are financially successful and done in by their arrogance.

 

[alohadave]

People blab too much, especially when they are guilty. Let them make their own case; don't do it for them.

Police procedurals would be about 5 minutes long if suspects said, "I want a lawyer."

Every time they confess after minimal interrogation.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Police procedurals would be about 5 minutes long if suspects said, "I want a lawyer."

Every time they confess after minimal interrogation.

I guess I was thinking of Cops, where guys (mostly they are men) will start saying the most amazing things even before they are arrested. The are various YouTube videos that show arrests too.

There is a two-hour video of school shooter Nikolas Cruz (2018) going on with a detective who has already read him his rights. Cruz agrees to talk anyway, although he's seems to be in some kind of shock (it's the evening of the shooting day). Later, he readily talks to two psychologists who then testify against him in court.

 

[alohadave]

I guess I was thinking of Cops, where guys (mostly they are men) will start saying the most amazing things even before they are arrested. The are various YouTube videos that show arrests too.

There is a two-hour video of school shooter Nikolas Cruz (2018) going on with a detective who has already read him his rights. Cruz agrees to talk anyway, although he's seems to be in some kind of shock (it's the evening of the shooting day). Later, he readily talks to two psychologists who then testify against him in court.

Oh yeah, it's especially true in real life.

Don't talk to police

 

[MelissaBaby]

Police procedurals would be about 5 minutes long if suspects said, "I want a lawyer."

Every time they confess after minimal interrogation.

Being placed under arrest is a surreal experience in the true sense of the word. You suddenly find yourself in a world that looks just like the one you know, but somehow…isn’t. You feel disoriented, and want nothing more than a return to normalcy. And the only way you can think of to achieve that is to try to explain yourself to someone. If only they understood, if you can justify yourself, everything would be okay again…

 

[gunhilltrain]

I remember confusing Heaven's Gate with the Warren Beatty vehicle Heaven Can Wait as a kid and for many, may years assuming that movie was the giant flop.

I still haven't seen Heaven Can Wait. I must be a bit older than you, because I saw The Deer Hunter when I was about twenty-three. I even remember where I saw it; these cute little single-screen theaters couldn't survive. It's now a dollar-store of some kind.

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/7892

I even mentioned it in one of my stories set in 1977 I think.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Being placed under arrest is a surreal experience in the true sense of the word. You suddenly find yourself in a world that looks just like the one you know, but somehow…isn’t. You feel disoriented, and want nothing more than a return to normalcy. And the only way you can think of to achieve that is to try to explain yourself to someone. If only they understood, if you can justify yourself, everything would be okay again…

I'm sure it is, and most of us don't have the nerves to deal with it properly. It's especially hard because so many people are arrested at a relatively young age. I believe that cops know all of this very well, and use it to their advantage. It's one of the tools of their trade. But they are not your friends. Your lawyer, even if they are court-appointed (often not the best ones available) is the only one who can help you.

 

[gunhilltrain]

It's worth listening to one of these guys, even for an old dude like me! At least I've heard it; I hope I remember it if I ever need it.

 

[gunhilltrain]

In '77 I wasn't yet old enough to see those kinds of movies, and also we lived in the sticks and the nearest theater (yep, all single-screen, except the drive-in, which I think had at least 2) was a 30-minute drive, minimum, so going to the movies was a Big Deal. Never did see either of these films, but did watch The Deer Hunter in grad school with a bunch of cinema studies students, though most of that evening I was busy making a play for one of them. She was far more interesting to me at the time.

When my parents were watching movies in the 1940's, I wasn't even born yet. I guess my grandparents saw silent pictures, but I don't remember them mentioning that. As for my eight great-grandparents - I can't even name all of them - I don't think there were any movies at all in 1890. The Italian ones were still in Italy, anyway.

This thread is really starting to drift, and it's mostly my fault as usual.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

When my parents were watching movies in the 1940's, I wasn't even born yet. I guess my grandparents saw silent pictures, but I don't remember them mentioning that. As for my eight great-grandparents - I can't even name all of them - I don't think there were any movies at all in 1890. The Italian ones were still in Italy, anyway.

This thread is really starting to drift, and it's mostly my fault as usual.

Then I’ll get it back on track.

A book that aces the end is THE BOURNE IDENTITY as it really drags the reader through the mud and then provides a satisfying ending.

Something that does not ace the ending is after reaching for the stars is PET SEMATARY. The ending just feels like a mess and it seems like the story gets away from him.

Still way better than Lee Child’s worse book, NOWHERE TO RUN. After finishing that one I was reminded of a critique Blackadder gave.

"Yes. Well it started badly, it tailed off a little in the middle & the less said about the end the better! But apart from that, excellent!"

 

[gunhilltrain]

Then I’ll get it back on track.

A book that aces the end is THE BOURNE IDENTITY as it really drags the reader through the mud and then provides a satisfying ending.

Something that does not ace the ending is after reaching for the stars is PET SEMATARY. The ending just feels like a mess and it seems like the story gets away from him.

Still way better than Lee Child’s worse book, NOWHERE TO RUN. After finishing that one I was reminded of a critique Blackadder gave.

"Yes. Well it started badly, it tailed off a little in the middle & the less said about the end the better! But apart from that, excellent!"

Thanks! Interesting how we all have different cultural references. I know very little about Lee Childs or the Bourne books and movies. Stephen King: he's prolific, but he's kind of sloppy as a writer at times. Not exactly the modern version of Poe. But, he seems to be having a good time and he's making a ton of money, so good for him!

 

[AlinaX]

Then I’ll get it back on track.

A book that aces the end is THE BOURNE IDENTITY as it really drags the reader through the mud and then provides a satisfying ending.

Preferred the film, myself.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Preferred the film, myself.

I disliked the film as I felt the characterisation was so wishy-washy.

Did you read the book first or see the film first?