CASINO ROYALE Pre-release Discussion - Page 4

Invisible car. Attacking robots with lasers. A deadly super ray from space. Mr Kill. A car dogfight on a frozen lake. Paragliding on super waves. He's sleeping with a girl named Frost in an ice palace.

I don't know how one could not love Die another Day.

Don't forget about the car doing flips!

And the henchman has oh-so-scary diamonds in his face!

And Bond is edgy again, smoking a cigar and all that other bad boy stuff.

Bond To Zao: You know I've missed your sparkling personality.

Well at least the beginning in North Korea with the hovercrafts was cool, except at the end when Bond says "Saved by the bell." How could one not mention the catfight between Frost and Jinx which ends in her saying "Read this bitch.", and they were going to make a spinoff movie about her?

The dialogues are pure b-movie gold:

Patient: What the hell do you want? I don't need a goddamn wheelchair.
James Bond: No?
[punches him]
James Bond: You do now.

If this doesn't sound Seagal to you, I don't know what.

DAD wasn't shitty because it was about spacelazers and ice palaces and robotic suits of armour. It was shitty because they approached the material ALL WRONG, the dialogue sucked, the acting sucked, the tone sucked, etc.

And CR might be "rough" and "tough", but that doesn't neccessarily mean that it will be any good. I'm kinda looking forward to it and have an open mind, but much of it sounds bone-headedly stupid so far.

And LTK seems to be ridiculously popular in these here parts, which is surprising. I'm not sure you can even call yourself a "James Bond" fan if that's your favourite. Mock DAD's wheelchair line all you like, but LTK is the definition of cheap, nasty Steven Seagal territory. It also completely misses the point of Fleming's novels, so it can't even be defended on the grounds that it goes "back to the source material".

DAD was a failure because they went right from a very interesting premise (Bond succedding in his mission but still being captured and tortured for 18 months) to being more over the top rediclious than Rodger Moore could have ever hoped to be. A martini, a shave and crusing around Havana smoking Cubans apparently cure 18 months of intense North Korena torture with out so much as Bond showing any residual effects...yeah...ok.

Had they had Bond being daringly rescued by another MI6 agent, and fighiting to return to "00" status and still dealing with the torture reprocussions could have been fantastic. Say he stumbles onto anomolies in Graves' persona while he's riding a desk and follows it up on his own...working for MI6..but not working for MI6.

Also everything involving Madonna was garbage, the title song ranks up there with Lulu's TMWTGG as the worst.

I agree mostly, except that Bond should never do deskwork. Both License to Kill and DAD promise exciting situations in which Bond is on the outs with MI6, but neither film follows through to have MI6 hunt him down.

Actually, it grew on me after a while. And I like Golden Gun. Diamonds are Forever and License to Kill are among those I care for the least.

Such as?

Since you fancy yourself such an expert of Fleming, and the very definition of what Bond fan should or shouldn't be, please detail exactly how LICENCE TO KILL "misses the point" of the novels, especially considering that it was the first of the films not to be adapted (even loosely) from one of them.

Another Bond right after Casino Royale would be great, but rushing it doesn't sound good. They tried to get a Friday The 13th film started sometime in february or march this year, so it could be in theaters by October 13th, but I heard that one's been stalled until a later date, aside from the Saw movies which are made in only a few months, and on a low budget, this rushing to a follow up wouldn't bode well for the British spy. 007 in 2007 is pretty corny anyway.

Back to back Bond films? Sounds cool to me. They've done it before with Connery and Moore, so its not unprecedented.

As for how feasible it is, I don't see why it would be such a problem. They started shooting this one in January, and it debuts in November. They could in theory start shooting the next one in January too, for another November release. The only question is pre-production, the time pressures of which could be alleviated by just keeping the team they have in place right now.

I think Craigh think that sucks, as I'm sure he fancies a chance to do a couple non-Bond films in between a la Brosnan, but I'm guessing one of the elements of his contract is being wherever they say, when they say, to shoot a Bond movie. So, tough luck.

It would also be more feasible if they plan to continue the storyline they have going on for CR. I mean, if they did such looney out of character things like letting the villain live or having the Bond girl return, you have less pre-production issues.

And I think 007 in 2007 is probably way too cute in the eyes of EON to pass up.

The pre-production issue is what I was thinking of as well Stew. If it get's too long, like the one for Casino Royale was this wouldn't work, but if they can get it quick that would be cool, I was thinking the same thing about the Connery/Moore flicks. Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and Thunderball were all released one after the other, and Moore had Live And Let Die, and The Man With The Golden Gun. So it can be done, let's just hope it's done well.

Interesting side-note to Live And Let Die, my dad met, and talked with the guy who played Baron Samedi.

Edit: After talking with my dad, he told me he was part of a committee at the school, while he was on this committee he also met Vincent Price one time, and Geoffrey Holder (Baron Samedi) went to to do a performance at his college, and that this was in the spring of 1973, and that he had just come from making the movie. My dad told me that he was really tall, about 7' feet, and that he told him that he had a son around his age.

You're so wrong, man. Licence to Kill is the gritty, down-to-earth Bond film. Take the scene where Bond tries to assassinate Sanchez using his camera gun and toothpaste plastique ("Watch the birdie, YOU BASTARD!") only to be attacked by a ninja. No fantasy shit for Dalton's Bond, no sir.

Well the ninja were part of a Hong Kong narcotics squad that wanted to take Sanchez down, and the plastique was hidden in a tube of toothpaste, as well as the detonator which looked like a pack of cigarettes, and the gun was made to look like a camera. Covert is the name of the game. Bond's not just going to stroll around with a rifle, and a bundle of plastique in his hands as well as a detonator, in the town that Sanchez owns no less.

I was referring to the whole black-and-white pre-credits, origin of the gun-barrel, Judi-Dench-travelling-back-in-time-to-be-Bond's-first-M, etc. Also, to keeping on crappy crew members, such as David Arnold and Lindy Hemming. Still, I reasoned just after I posted that, that it's OK for a 40 year-old franchise to experiment once every 40 years, so have sort of adjusted my expectations. And besides, if they fuck up, they can just go back to normal for Bond 22.



First, LTK is partly adapted from the books - moreso than AVTAK and TLD. Felix being fed to sharks, the fight in the fish warehouse, and Milton Krest are all taken from LIVE AND LET DIE and THE HILDEBRAND RARITY.

Fleming combined violent, exploitative pulp with sophistication and wordliness and imagination and humour. The best of the films do away with the sadism for the most part, but fill the void by adding more humour and even more imagination. Both incarnations, at their best, share one common virtue - a kind of easy elegance.

LTK is too pedestrian, dumb, shoddy and - worst of all - boring, to do justice to either the books or the films.

Feel free to like LTK, but I have to wonder if it would just be easier for you to be a Rambo fan than a Bond fan. Surely, preferring that one film out of 20 films and 14 books does not make one a fan of the Bond franchise. It just seems perverse.

Even if we accept all of your opinions on the Bond character and his execution, which I don't, you seem to ignore one impotant thing.

Most of the Bond films are not good.

Look, I love Bond, and usually find something to enjoy in all of them, but I can't pretend that they're all great by movie standards. And I'm a film fan first. "Licence to Kill" is better acted, better written, and more dramatically interesting than a majority of the Bond films.

If you're a fan of art films, then deride away. But singling out LTK as somehow a cinematic low point for Bond is just plain strange. It's a series bursting with cinematic low points, all of them far worse than anything you could point to in LTK.

I think black and white is great, especially if they're doing his origins which are, in a lot of ways, a flashback for most people. It looks great just in the preview, and shows a willingness to sort of experiment and tweak the mold, which is long overdue.

I think making the gun barrel a fluid part of the action sequence is actually pretty clever and again, long overdue. Dench isn't my first choice for the reboot either, but she's a terrific actress and does well in the role, even firther evidenced by the trailer. She's a plus, not a minus.

Arnold's score for "Tomorrow Never Dies" was fantastic, and TWINE was very good as well. I thought "Die Another Day" sucked, but he was vocally agravated by the Madonna song, refused to incorporate it, and obviously probably didn't give it his all. I have to problem with him coming back, as I think he will be motivated with Campbell and the new approach.

The costume designer? Are you serious? What the hell was wrong with the costumes? Did she abandon you at the prom or something? The costumes have been fine, and if you're going to bitch about lackluster crew members, how about Purvis and Wade the screenwriters.

Since they've incorporated the gun barrel opening into the pre-credits sequence, I take it that they'll more than likely be doing this from now on, and that's a good thing. If they continue, I can't wait to see how they incorporate it into the next film's pre-credits sequence.

It's something to wonder what would happen if Richard Maibaum would still be around, would he still be writing the Bond movies? In the later ones he had help from Michael G. Wilson. I wonder why he stopped writing them, and we got Purvis and Wade for these last few. At least Maibaum delivered one final great Bond film in Licence To Kill.

No thank you. Bond could get away with yearly films in the 60s because it was fresh and miles ahead of other action fare. Today there are flashy action blockbusters released all the time, so in the interest of making Bond films a real event they should be spaced out every 2 or 3 years, as they have been since the 70s. No assembly line stuff please.

Double agent alert! Someone contact M.

There's no such thing as bad Bond movies, only lesser degrees of greatness. I think LTK is one of the weaker entries in the Bond catalog, but still far better than the average action film.

I'd actually have to say most Bond films ARE good. Compared to most cookie-cutter action movies, they're a hive of creativity and good-natured fun. Even the much-hated MOONRAKER is fun and often hilarious and has a great villain and has some nice scenery and music.

I was a Bond whore, for lack of a better term, as a kid. Watching many of them recently, I was surprised by how much actual fun they still are. Only THUNDERBALL and LTK I find to be pretty dreary, and at least THUNDERBALL has some nice dialogue, moments, etc.

And LTK does have good points - the truck chase rocks all our collective shit, and Dalton makes an interesting, effective Bond. That's about it, though.

David Arnold's scores are all exactly the same. Seriously. And remaining on the techno bandwagon well into 2002 was unforgivable.

And yeah, my diss of Lindy Hemming is pretty pedantic, but illustrative of the general lack of inspiration of the latest Bond films. For example, she dressed Brosnan up in a bulky safari-suit style thing while he was in sunny Cuba, which was identical to what he was wearing 20 minutes ago while he was in Korea, etc. Also, she designed the asstastic Batsuit for Batman Begins.

I would have no problems with him being replaced, I just don't think he's a hindrance either. In reality though, after seeing what he did to the classic "Mission:Impossible" theme, I would die for them to land Michael Giacchino.

The costuming looks fine from the teaser, and I thought the Batsuit was great. It finally had movement, expression in the cowl, a fluid, billowing cape, it improved on a ton. Now Christian Bale showed up fat at the beginning of shooting, so hence in some shots it doesn't look so hot, but the suit itself was great.

This lady also did the costuming for "Goldeneye" which was great, so I think Campbell will steer this ship back on course.

In The World is Not Enough the Bond theme was reworked in a manner similar to Mission Impossible.

Yeah, I have the score, its quite good at times. But it is also filled with a lot of noise, which Arnold's scores have a habit of becoming at times. TWINE still had that classic feel to it, even with the doses of techno. I actually preferred Eric Serra's legitimately radical reworkings on "Goldeneye", though a lot of purists hated it. Arnold will do, but I have no problem with them thinking outside the box for some future installments.

I count only three concepts and two crew members that trouble you here.

1) The B&W Opening: It's a fairly bold move, one which could be very cool, or could have no impact, or could backfire. Considering that this is a reboot, I think it's a stylistic choice that could actually work. And if the first color seen in the film is the red blood of the "debut" gun barrel, I think that could be a great way to re-kick things off. Which leads us to...

2) Origin of the Gun Barrel: What exactly is your problem with this? Is it that it takes place in a public restroom that worries you so? And what if it's just a one-off, to be later replaced by a more traditional Bond-in-a-tux-walking-through-a-white-void gun barrel? Is this really worth getting that upset about?

3) Future "M" in Past Bond: I agree with you completely on this one. As much as I love Judi Dench, if this film is truly a reboot, then everything about it should have been started from scratch, including all casting. I understand the need to keep some connection to the previous 20 films but this was a disappointing way to do it.

4) David Arnold: He's merely doing what most Bond composers have done -- create a traditional Bond score, sprinkled with current pop sensibilities. John Barry did the same thing. Perfect example: THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS. One of his best scores ever, yet has plenty of 80's dance beats effectively worked in. Arnold usually seems as inspired as his source material, so if CASINO ROYALE is mostly a reboot, then perhaps Arnold will follow suit with something mostly different.

5) Lindy Hemming: I really don't understand this one. What's so wrong with her costume design? I've heard tons of complaints about various aspects of the Bond films (many from myself) but I've never heard anyone bitch about the costumes. And based on the CASINO ROYALE trailer, I like the more basic, real world look of the characters in the film.

I was talking about the overall story, not "gags." LICENCE TO KILL is largely an original Bond story with no basis in the novels.

But again, you're not providing specific examples from the film itself. You're just bashing without backing any of it up. I'm not saying you can't do it, as based on your flimsy problems with CASINO ROYALE, I can already predict what some of your issues might be, but so far, you're not making a very compelling case against LICENCE TO KILL.

As I've said before, LICENCE TO KILL ranks about mid-way down my list of favorite Bond films, so I don't particularly love the film. I have some of my own problems with the film, believe me. But the shallow outright dismissals of the film and wholesale insults towards other Bond fans who don't agree with you do nothing to change my mind. If anything, they're making me appreciate the film even more. It's kind of the TEMPLE OF DOOM effect, I suppose.

That underlines my point; LTK isn't a bold departure, it's a film full of hedged bets. Why, in a supposedly grounded Bond film, does the Royal Hong Kong Police have ninjas on its payroll, a choice which does nothing but put one in mind of YOLT's army of ninjas? If the point of the film is that Bond is off the grid and improvising, why should he have access to Q gear at all?

It's this timid refusal to go afield of the formula that undercuts the whole film. For example, Bond villains have to have Master Plans, so Sanchez develops an improbable and narratively unnecessary process for smuggling cocaine in gasoline. It's lame because it carries no threat (Oh no! Bond has to stop the villain from...smuggling somewhat more cocaine than he was before!), and it hurts the credibility of the story.

I liked all the old Bond Films with Thuderball being the one that I had fell asleep half way through. It just spends alot of time in the water. I am going to have to say my all time favorite is Goldeneye followed by Tomorrow Never Dies.

As for this one, I saw the trailer and was real impressed. It looks awesome.

I seem to remember in the movie, that Bond didn't want any help, and Q found him. He was even surprised to see that Q had followed him. A noble gesture on Q's part to help out 007.

The whole cocaine mixed in with gasoline was actually a pretty smart idea on Sanchez' part, and it's not a master plan per se, he didn't just say "oh, James Bond is coming I need to develop some big master plan with my cocaine so I'll use the gasoline mixture idea." This was probably what he intended to do all along, and Bond just happened to get in the way. And it is a world threatening issue, just not to the degree of most of the other Bond villain.

The Japanese TWINE soundtrack has a cool rock song by Japanese band Luna Sea that played over the end credits.

Re: Judi Dench as M -- is it possible that maybe they're going with the concept (much discussed here and in other places) that James Bond is an identity and not an actual person? That would explain how this can be a reboot but still have Dench as M -- they're breaking in the new Bond and acknowledging the fact.

My main problem is that they're attempting to literalize some weird abstract intro scene. So, he shoots a guy, and then blood somehow comes down through the barrel? Or something? That's physically impossible, but I haven't seen any trailers yet, so maybe they don't go that far.

TLD is a pretty great score, but more dated than the rest of Barry's work, due entirely to those dance beats. GOLDFINGER and YOLT and MOONRAKER, three of the best, are ancient scores nowadays and hold up superbly, partly due to them not incorporating go-go or disco music. And David Arnold is no John Barry, not by a long shot. But then, very few are.

Basically every film post-OHMSS has had an overall story with absolutely nothing to do with the books. LTK actually incorprates a lot more than any post-1969 film this side of FYEO, and muffs it all.

I could bash it, but I'd be here all day. My problems with it include fundamental problems, and petty ones, and they all add up. Let's just say it's misguided from a conceptual level - the approach and tone are all wrong for a Bond film - and it's full of heaps of little bits of crap as well. John Glen was a pedestrian director at best, terrible at worst, and I'm not sure if it was their being forced to film in Mexico for tax reasons or whatever, but the whole thing is cheap and nasty. There's plenty of bad acting, tacky zooms, etc. The same can be said about all '80s Bond movies, but those were at least fun. There's no creativity in the whole damn thing outside the truck chase.

I'll admit my CR complaints are pretty flimsy so far, but I can only complain about what we know. Like I said, I'm open to the idea of it being good.

I should probably cut out the wholesale insults, but I just can't understand how someone can be a Bond movie fan AND a real LTK fan. It's not at all representative of the rest of the films. It's like being a Beatles fan but saying your favourite is Ringo: he sucks and doesn't represent the talent of the other three.

The idea of "James Bond" being a code-name to be filled is a nice one, kind of, but just doesn't work. It's been acknowledged by the Roger Moore Bond that he was married to Diana Rigg, and so on and so on. And plus, what are the odds that every agent they've assigned the "James Bond" code-name is a girl-chasing, smart-mouthed playboy?

Apparently, for OHMSS they were going to explain George Lazenby's casting by writing into the film the fact that Bond has had plastic surgery, but it was deemed "too patronizing" to audiences.

As opposed to Connery becoming "Japanese" via cosmetic surgery in You Only Live Twice.

Getting back on track, I am loving these new shots. Classy all around, and I love Eva Green's old school femme fatale look.

With Daniel Craig as the new Bond and looking at the recent pics. IMO--I think he will known as the dark horse of the Bond franchise in the years ahead. I would like for him to succeed and perhaps surprise the fans/followers.

He's definitely not in the traditional mold, which is great. I'm surprised and pleased that the producers didn't chicken out and dye his hair. But he looks classy and dangerous, a combo that's been missing for a while.

Dangerous perhaps, but I'm not quite sold on the classy part yet. In the second photo I would guess he's one of Blofeld's henchmen or something.

I like that. My point is, he wears the suit well, he looked pretty slick in the trailer, and while he's not wine-aficionado-Brosnan-classy, he does look like James Bond.

Does Bond wear sunglasses? I don't recall that happening often, if at all.

To me, he looks more like Supervillain's Thug #3 but he seemed ready for action in the trailer. I'll give him a fair shot.

Many times, sometimes even as gadgets (as in TWINE.)

Hmm.. My memory must be going.

"And what could the casual observer think of (Bond)?...Something cold and dangerous in that face...Tough looking customer...doesn't look the sort of chap one usually sees in Blades..."

-Ian Fleming, Moonraker

That trailer was definitely kickass. Whatever doubts I had doubt this film are slowly fading. The books seems to be fairly devoid of action for the most part but it looks like they've added some fairly intense action scenes to the film. It'll still be interesting to see how they handle the realtionship between Vespa and Bond.

New webite up...check it out...

http://www.jamesbond.com

Seeing the trailer for Casino Royale I find myself once again interested in a Bond film after years of feeling the subject has been played, dragged out, and beaten to death.

Craig has certainly shown his acting chops in Munich, Road to Perdition, & Layer Cake. I am eager to see if he is actually capable of giving Bond the much needed 21 century transfusion.

You don't happen to have a direct link past the opening page where you choose languages. I can't seem to get past it.

I thought I saw Connery wearing shades in one of his Jamaican adventures, but I could be imagining it. Craig's wearing shades in the trailer.