solarbirdspazzkat
Spoiler-laden general reactions behind the cut!
But first some spoiler space for those of you who might click straight through to the post!
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First and foremost, let me get this out of my system: YOU FUCKING FUCKERS YOU FUCKING KILLED OFF JUDI DENCH HOW COULD YOU AUGH YOU FUCKERS! I shake my tiny fists of fangirly petulance!
… even though I must admit, the narrative arc did mostly make sense ending with that. But god-DAMN, now Voldemort is M. I’m not sure what I think about that. Well, aside from ‘Ralph, you’re awesome and all, but sorry, there is no way on this green earth that you’re going to be nearly as awesome an M as Dame Judi. NOT HAPPENING!’
But, to backtrack! I certainly quite liked the beginning, which was a huge bang right out of the gate. I spent the entire movie wondering who the hell the female agent working with Bond was–and I gotta admit, I was delighted to discover that turned out to be Moneypenny! She was quite fun, and I liked that she’s not a Caucasian, and I very much liked how Bond’s probably going to give her shit for shooting him for years to come. ;D Bond’s grim-faced existence in drinking and sex (two of the things he’s best at, after all) was good too–I liked the bar scene where he was chugging back the booze even with a scorpion on his wrist.
And I liked how it took the news of the terrorist attack on MI6 to snap him out of that exile. The scene where he met up with M again in her apartment was great, and a nice callback to when he’d done that before back in Casino Royale.
And as long as we’re on the topic of new additions to this round of the canon: Hot Young Q is certainly Hot and Young, isn’t he? SUCH A PUPPY. I have heard rumors that tumblr is a-squee with imagining this boy as Benedict Cumberbatch!Sherlock’s younger brother, and yeah, I can see that.
The movie did fall down, in our group’s general opinion, on having Q being stupid enough to plug a confiscated laptop straight into their network. Dara opines that this was intentional on the part of the writers–that just before that point, Q was being supremely arrogant and had to get a punch in the face to remind him to dial it back. While I accept that suggestion, I also agree that the way they went about this was just badly handled. Even if Q himself is supremely arrogant about his hacking abilities, I have a really hard time believing that he would have blindly ignored the possibility that the confiscated machine might be a risk to their network security. Paul pointed out quite correctly that hell, even at Microsoft, they have procedures in place for dealing with incoming foreign machines. Surely at MI6 they would have procedures a order of magnitude more hardcore. There should have been a better way in place for this to smack Q in the face.
I waffle back and forth about our villain du jour. One of the objections raised about him in our group was that was it really necessary to have him hitting on Bond? Haven’t we had enough of ragingly queer bad guys? On the other hand, I adored Bond’s comeback of “what makes you think this is my first time?” And without even looking at tumblr, I’m sure there are already acres of slash out there.
Also, we had objections raised about how, if our bad guy had a heavily armed helicopter at his disposal, why did he bother with sending in the first wave of henchmen after Bond and M? Why didn’t he go straight to the helicopter?
Aside from that I did find the character mostly compelling. I liked that he was a fucked-up former MI6 agent, an angle we’ve certainly seen before–i.e., back in Goldeneye–but I found the angle of “spent months being tortured, obsessively locked on revenge against M as his means of pulling out of it” believable. And for the most part I bought his psychology up until the very end, when, actually confronted with the clear oppportunity to take M out, he buckled instead and tried to get her to shoot them both. That, I didn’t quite buy.
Other thoughts–god-DAMN, this movie was pretty. The scenes in Shanghai and Macau were particularly gorgeous, and the fight scene with the assassin in the high-rise and Bond’s later walking into the gloriously lit-up casino stand out for me as the high points there.
I very much liked Bond’s ragged physical state being called out with the physical testing at MI6 eventually bothering the hell out of his shoulder, and the bit just after when he’s trying to take off his shirt, too. As someone who’s sustained quite a bit of (surgical, but nonetheless) damage, whose muscles tend to get quite cranky even if I happen to just twist the wrong way, I found those details very believable. And I liked that he did not in fact pass his physical and psychological testing and yet M reinstated him anyway.
And oh god, oh god, her death scene. I waffle a bit too about whether I bought her dying off like that–I certainly didn’t quite buy Kincaid helping her hobble across the moor and never noticing once that she was badly hurt. Bond not noticing I could buy, since he was otherwise occupied when he asked her about her status; she had the opportunity at that point to conceal her injury. But Kincaid was in physical contact with her. He didn’t notice her faltering? He didn’t notice the blood?
I’m also not sure I buy why, exactly, M felt it necessary to conceal her injury anyway. Yes, they were in a crisis situation, and I could understand her pridefully wishing to avoid hampering Bond from doing his job. But it doesn’t seem like a sensible decision to conceal her injury from Kincaid, especially once they finally made it into the chapel. I would have thought that the first thing she’d have done would be to admit she was in a bad way so that the man could apply some goddamn first aid and get her as stable as possible.
But even given all that… oh, her dying in Bond’s arms. Sniff. I liked that gruff little mutter of hers, “at least I got one thing right,” so much. And even though he didn’t actually do so (which was quite appropriate), that wrenching look on Daniel Craig’s face made it look like he was dangerously close to crying. That’s a hard look to pull off when you’ve got a face as rough-hewn as Craig’s!
And the ending! The handing off of the bulldog to Bond! The banter with Moneypenny! The entry into Voldemort!M’s new office–which, I might add, hearkened way, way back to Connery-era Bond flicks! Dara has put forth the theory now that Craig’s first three Bond flicks are a thematic trilogy of sorts, taking the rough Bond of Casino Royale and taking him through a progression to get him into a more Conneryesque state. I buy this theory, because the set choices and certainly Craig’s more dapper suits absolutely support it.
All in all–not without its flaws but I found it a worthy Bond film on the whole. Didn’t like it as much as I liked Casino Royale, but I definitely liked it better than Quantum of Solace. Though Dara and I may need to watch QoS again, just to see if the thematic trilogy idea holds up.
