007 Skyfal trailer out

[xer0s]

I think he's talking about Bond abandoning his usual "Vodka martini...shaken, not stirred."

Thank you.

[menkent]

who cares what he drinks? it's just an idiotic tag line at this point anyway. if someone asked who he was and he just said his name instead of saying "Bond. James Bond." it would hardly "fuck the legacy of the franchise."

edit: that said, Heineken is shit. would be nice to have him at least get decent beer... or something from the UK. or Guiness.

[seremtan]

"pint of Directors and some pork scratchings please"

yeah

[GONNAFISTYA]

"I'll have a Diet Coke."

[Transient]

This is not a Bond movie.

[xer0s]

"pint of Directors and some pork scratchings please"

yeah

[0psys]

I saw the trailer for this last week and immediately came to the conclusion that the new Bond movies aren't worth watching....like...at all.

The reason is simple: they aren't James Bond movies. Call it whatever you like, but there's nothing 007 about the franchise reboot. It deserves to either go away and die or just name it something else. If they weren't sold as James Bond movies I probably wouldn't despise them as much as I do due to roughly 30 years of expectations of what a James Bond movie is and who James Bond the character is.

Seriously...just rename it, break off all ties to the "Bond Brand" and people will probably enjoy it more.

I was having this same discussion the other day. The previous two movies with Craig would've been better if they'd have just been movies; forget the Bond element altogether and just make a film about a guy who shoots people and says cool shit.

Also, same goes for Batman. Batman Begins and Dark Knight would've been exactly equal or better if it had just been a guy who put on a balaclava because he didn't want to get recognised.

[Eraser]

who cares what he drinks? it's just an idiotic tag line at this point anyway. if someone asked who he was and he just said his name instead of saying "Bond. James Bond." it would hardly "fuck the legacy of the franchise."

They are character traits that are so ingrained in the Bond identity that just flicking them out and ignoring them is eroding that very identity. If you argue that it doesn't matter if Bond drinks a Heineken, then you find yourself on a slippery slope where you'll eventually be arguing that Bond not driving an Aston Martin is ok, that it is also ok for Bond not to use any gadgets, that it is ok for Q to be ignored and that M isn't called M anymore but some full woman's name because hey, these code names are actually pretty childish and that the attitude towards Bond girls should go away as well because it's so sexist.

I understand all the haters of the new Bond movies pretty well. They are OK movies in their genre, but they don't have that Bond feel to them. And that Bond feel is created by having him fight bad guys with huge underground or sub-aquatic or moon bases, by having gorgeous Bond girls who inevitably end up all alone with Bond on some remote deserted island, by Bond being a smooth talker and a womanizer, by having Bond using cool gadgets, by bond driving an Aston Martin and yes, by having Bond drink a shaken vodka-martini.

[menkent]

sure, but that character (if a series of product placements ever was a character) is fifty years old. if they simply recreated an early Connery movie it would come across like Austin Powers... and with such a famous parody out there now I don't think they had any choice but to modernize. ...and why risk doing something new when screwing with something old had a guaranteed profit margin?

[Eraser]

sure, but that character (if a series of product placements ever was a character) is fifty years old. if they simply recreated an early Connery movie it would come across like Austin Powers... and with such a famous parody out there now I don't think they had any choice but to modernize.

Certainly, but I believe it's possible to modernize while maintaining the spirit of James Bond. I think Christopher Nolan's Batman movies are a good example of this.

...and why risk doing something new when screwing with something old had a guaranteed profit margin?

Now you're playing devil's advocate. Yes, if I was a movie studio boss then I'd probably go for the route that earned me most money as well, but that doesn't mean anything that's good on an artistic level will come out of it.

[PrMink]

I caught 20 minutes of Die Another Day last night for the first time. The baddy resembled Arnold Schwarzeneggars 'Mr Freeze'. James Bond had an invisible car & every other line was a pun. If anyone thinks that shit is better than the Daniel Craig movies they need their head looking at. That isn't to say the new ones are good, just that the older ones are fucking awful.

[menkent]

^what that guy said.

[Eraser]

I caught 20 minutes of Die Another Day last night for the first time. The baddy resembled Arnold Schwarzeneggars 'Mr Freeze'. James Bond had an invisible car & every other line was a pun. If anyone thinks that shit is better than the Daniel Craig movies they need their head looking at. That isn't to say the new ones are good, just that the older ones are fucking awful.

Don't think anyone's saying the Daniel Craig movies are bad movies per se, just that they lack that James Bond DNA.
Also, the James Bond quality has been dropping well before Daniel Craig was introduced. Tomorrow Never Dies and Die Another Day weren't exactly the shining examples of good (Bond) movies at all.