#craigbondrewatch

[youturningintodust]

The scene with Mathis’ death was just so deeply gratuitous and unnecessary. I know that modern films have become grittier, but this reaches a point where the over-the-top grimdark reaches disgusting levels. The lack of respect for human life doesn’t make for an interesting plot twist. It becomes too much. It becomes cynical, lacking humanity, to show random violence like this, just for shock value’s sake. And that is boring.

[youturningintodust]

[youturningintodust]

QoS really laid on thick the whole “all ~foreigners~/ESL speakers with audible accents/non-Brits, non-USAmericans, etc are ~slimy~” xenophobia angle huh

[youturningintodust]

[youturningintodust]

Very much anticipating seeing Felix Leiter make a return as a main character in No Time to Die this year. I loved Jeffrey Wright in Westworld, and it’s good that they’e recognizing the talent that he has by bringing him back, and hopefully giving him enough screentime this time around to really shine. I hope that this leads to even more work for him.

[youturningintodust]

I remember this film as having been so much more emotionally moving, the first time around.

Maybe it’s because, this time, I find the acting choices during the film’s romantic scenes to be underwhelming on Craig’s part (which makes sense, because Bond was never meant to be a very emotional guy, even at his most heartfelt) — or sort of ruined and undercut by Vesper’s betrayal.

Or maybe it’s because I’m so much more cynical, now. Their love appeared real to a naïve, younger me. All of the one-liners that he feeds to Vesper come across as un-charming and hollow, knowing what an adult woman knows about cis men, the way that they will say anything to get into your pants.

The “little finger” line is the sheer camp of earlier Bond, but feels almost a little too cheesy for the modern update; and all of the times that he speaks with love feel false after hearing that, even if they’re meant to be acted by Craig as real and written to be a sincerely in-love Bond. Maybe I just don’t believe in the possibility of a man like Bond loving any woman, or in straight cis men’s love coming without the price of them having a baser goal. Bond’s armor always deflecting back to flirting irritated the part of me that wanted to be convinced more thoroughly in Bond’s love of Vesper; “If you’d just been born, wouldn’t you be naked?”, his taking her loving comments to a place of cheap sexuality really hit, because again, we’re reminded that even a Bond in love is a Bond who’s an old-school sexist.

I skipped the gratuitously lingering death scene, because I really don’t need to see Vesper painfully die for the umpteenth time, not when her character and Eva Green’s acting were why I began to watch in the first place.

Not sure I’ll take my rewatch to the later films in the series or not. Even knowing that Dench likely chose to be killed off in order to leave the series, watching M’s death be caused by the men surrounding her won’t be any more fun than this. At the time of watching both of these films, I excused these things as being relevant for the plot, but these days, the obvious sexism is getting to me. (Sexism on the level of the writers, not analyzing the characters’ motivations, or viewing them as people with choices. No offense, but on this site, I feel that’s a necessary distinction to make.)

Why is it that Obanno (a black man) and Vesper (a woman) were both shown as being gratuitously, slowly killed? Whereas the traitor agent in the opening, and then Le Chiffre, both white men, were killed in a more tasteful manner: a single shot to the head, a quick death, a short moment shown onscreen?

I’m just tired. Idk.

Even in simple films, entertainment, it’s got to be like this. Who is being “entertained”? Who is enjoying these details? Ugh.

I’d like to see a film made in this same genre where they can forego these choices, and be more tasteful.

[youturningintodust]

I, spirit.

foreshadowing to her death. in the same moment as her taking an image of a building similar to the one where she dies, and just before she sees the man she’s made the deal with.

[youturningintodust]

just before this moment, after he woke, vesper introduced more direct seduction. as a way of getting to him, at first, more than actual interest. immediately following the entry of her own name as the password for the funds, we see this moment of guilt when she understands that bond may actually love her, and not just have a physical attraction alone — knowing that she’s already in the process of double-crossing him, and yet beginning to fall for him, too.

(then, immediately following this, she cries, perhaps out of this betrayal — then hides it by a comment of love and addressing the trauma they’d just shared. he jokes, and she criticizes his armor, even while she wears it herself.)