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The James Bond Thread: RIP Robbie Coltrane


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Some parts were good, others could have been done better. I guess the plane scene gave it the grand Bond element. The Opera House shootout could do without cuts to the performance. Felt a little pretentious. But the silent gun shots with the soundtrack was cool. And I did not like the beginning with Bond and the double agent swinging on ropes in a CGI house. The opening car chase was fun. Weird they crammed as many Bond action sequences as possible. Car chase, boat chase and plane chase.

Oh and I will never sleep at a hotel run on fuel cells.

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Personally I think QOS is bad. I am still in two minds about, whether not they should tie-up the Quantum thing in a future film (as opposed to, giving it up as a, 'bad job'). The only bits I liked were the opera scene and the end. Bond chucking Matthis into a garbage dump was uncharateristic and unforgivable of Bond. The band guy, Green, is not menacing in the slightest. The script, none existent. The theme song, dire. The gun-barrel sequence should have been at the start (same for SF mind). Only Craig emerges from QOS with his head held high. Third worst Bond after DAF and Die Aother Day. I will even take a Moore clunker like AVTAK over QOS.

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Part of me would like them to tie up the Quantum storyline, but at the same time the lukewarm reception to Quantum from both fans and critics makes me see them just abandoning it. As far as pace and structure goes, I imagine Skyfall will set the new formula just as Goldfinger did back in the sixties. That style of film could be just what is needed to give Quantum a proper send off. I still wish they would have just grown some balls and called it SPECTRE instead of doing a play on the film's title. Quantum is a terrible name.

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Quantum is a terrible name. Not like McClory is going to come back from the dead and sue them.

But I wouldn't call it one of the worse Bonds. I also did not like the part where Bond chucks Mathis in a dumpster. Who came up with that idea?

I finished watching Mission Impossible II. It had a lot of cheesy moments but honestly, as cheesy and unrealistic the action scenes were, John Woo injected much needed life in the series. The film was more fun and exciting than the first one and certainly The World is Not Enough which came out a year earlier. Tomorrow Never Dies had that John Woo and other filmmakers like him, firing two guns, martial arts, which were very popular at the time. It also helps that the film had quite an effective villain in Amrbose who is clearly Hunts equal and more cunning than say Alec or Renard. Both Hunt and Ambrose used each others weakness to get the better of the two.

You see this play out in Casino Royale and Skyfall when the villain uses his cunning to lure Bond into a trap. QoS you just have Greene get in bed with the CIA and have them take him out which they would have if it weren't for Felix.

Edited by Georgy Zhukov
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Quantum is a terrible name. Not like McClory is going to come back from the dead and sue them.

But I wouldn't call it one of the worse Bonds. I also did not like the part where Bond chucks Mathis in a dumpster. Who came up with that idea?

I finished watching Mission Impossible II. It had a lot of cheesy moments but honestly, as cheesy and unrealistic the action scenes were, John Woo injected much needed life in the series. The film was more fun and exciting than the first one and certainly The World is Not Enough which came out a year earlier. Tomorrow Never Dies had that John Woo and other filmmakers like him, firing two guns, martial arts, which were very popular at the time. It also helps that the film had quite an effective villain in Amrbose who is clearly Hunts equal and more cunning than say Alec or Renard. Both Hunt and Ambrose used each others weakness to get the better of the two.

You see this play out in Casino Royale and Skyfall when the villain uses his cunning to lure Bond into a trap. QoS you just have Greene get in bed with the CIA and have them take him out which they would have if it weren't for Felix.

More importantly, whose idea was it to kill Mathis in the first place? :tongue2:

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Forster directs the film like he is trying to make a pretentious art wankery yet he couldn't help but throw in some over the top cheesy action like some guilty pleasure. Imagine an art student who is given a gun for the first time and just went all out shooting from the hip and missing the target. That is Marc Forster.

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Indeed. He wanted to be different for the sake of being different, regardless of whether or not it actually fit the film. The gun barrel at the end, for example. Totally out of place but that's Forster for you. At least Mendes admitted he tried but hadn't filmed an establishing shot and thought the iris looked silly opening on Bond walking down the hallway.

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The gun barrel at the end looks like advertisement than anything else. It wouldn't look right with a fade in. I suppose shooting the skyline for Istanbul than cut to Bond entering the room would have been okay but Mendes did not think of that. It probably would have cost him a lot of time and millions just to add one more shot because it wouldn't be easy.

I was never really a fan of Mendes until Skyfall.

Also the gunbarrel for QoS looked weird.

Edited by Georgy Zhukov
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I agree. If he would have shot an establishing shot of Istanbul and then cut to Bond it probably would have worked fine, but since they never filmed a shot it would have cost a lot to go back there for one extra shot for the sake of making the gun barrel work.

The gun barrel design for Quantum sucked balls. That's MK12 for you. Skyfall's looks a little better, but they should just go back to the one used in the Brosnan era. That one looked great - just an updated version of the old Binder design. It's not even all that dated consider Kleinman designed it on computers in 1995.

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They should go back to the old gun barrel sequences when they used to actually stick a camera down the barrel of a gun. I think the last time it was done in the traditional way was Dalton's. Since Brosnan it has been digital. The Brosnan's were alright, but remember the CGI bullet on Die Another Day's gun-barrel? That was shocking. One of them (GE i think) used really electronic music which I didn't like.

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I agree. If he would have shot an establishing shot of Istanbul and then cut to Bond it probably would have worked fine, but since they never filmed a shot it would have cost a lot to go back there for one extra shot for the sake of making the gun barrel work.

The gun barrel design for Quantum sucked balls. That's MK12 for you. Skyfall's looks a little better, but they should just go back to the one used in the Brosnan era. That one looked great - just an updated version of the old Binder design. It's not even all that dated consider Kleinman designed it on computers in 1995.

I saw one fan video where they did a gunbarrel and it opened to the bodies of the the agents Bond stumbles onto. I am not as crazy about it as I thought I would be.
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Man I just had the best idea for the QoS gunbarrel. Use David Arnold's opening theme. Would have been great.

That's the opening motif to You Know My Name that kept popping up throughout CR/QOS, right?
It was the one that opens to the coastline before the car chase.

I enjoyed the opening car chases, machine guns fireing and what not. I don't understand why there had to be subtitles. It is common sense the police were going to chase after the speeding cars shooting at each other. Anyway it was a great sequence. Though the cut to the credits was awkward. I would have done it right after Bond shoots the guy while hanging on to a rope

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Man I just had the best idea for the QoS gunbarrel. Use David Arnold's opening theme. Would have been great.

That's the opening motif to You Know My Name that kept popping up throughout CR/QOS, right?

It was the one that opens to the coastline before the car chase.

I enjoyed the opening car chases, machine guns fireing and what not. I don't understand why there had to be subtitles. It is common sense the police were going to chase after the speeding cars shooting at each other. Anyway it was a great sequence. Though the cut to the credits was awkward. I would have done it right after Bond shoots the guy while hanging on to a rope

if that roof chase sequence had been slightly abridged, I'd agree. The car chase alone is so short, and not a great attention-grabber.
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I thought it was sudden to go to a title when Bond says "It's time to get out." I remember everyone in the theater just being confused. Also remember the shocks of throwing Mathis in a dumpster but that's another story.

You can tell who the fans were in the audience. Always loved that about this series.

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I really wish people could shut the fuck up about the "Bond is a codename" theory. It's a stupid theory that has more holes than a block of swiss cheese, and the only people touting it are those that don't know the films inside and out, or haven't even seen all the films/read all the books.

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