Where did THAT come from?

How would any of you react to a double-taking parrot in Skyfall?

right idea, wrong pussy wrote:

After having just rewatched TSWLM, I'd say another weird thing is how Gogol announces Sergei Barsov's death to XXX. He could have just said, "Sergei was on a mission in Berngarten, Austria and was killed by a British agent." That would have given enough clues to raise Anya's suspicions of Bond later when he produces his lighter, and it wouldn't have delved into exactly why Barsov was trying to kill Bond (which is pretty immaterial anyway - it's an excuse for Bond to ski off a cliff! :face: ).

But instead, we get something pretty nearly like this:

Anya: How did he die?

Gogol: We haven't all the details yet but it seems he'd become involved in a British Secret Service operation.

To which my response is, :suspect: :suspect: :suspect: ??? Is Gogol trying to conceal the fact that he ordered Barsov to assasinate Bond (and nearby helped cause Barsov's death)? Was Barsov a rogue agent ("freelance hit team")? The only other alternative I can think of is completely bizarre. M hired Barsov to shoot blanks at Bond to test his training and fitness. Bond aced the training perfectly, but unfortunately, not knowing that Barsov was only shooting blanks, Bond killed Barsov. The training was a success though - Bond wasn't sent back to Shrublands.

Wow, you are getting really carried away here. :) Anyway, but what was going on on that mountain? Bond is sleeping with the enemy (Log Cabin Girl) She rats him out when he leaves, and then Barsov's hit squad attacks, but what was going on up there? What was Bond doing? Why were the Russians trying to kill him, or was it just one big lame set-up so that Bond could be introduced with eye-candy, and then ski off a mountain?

Is anyone able to explain the sequence in QoS, in which Bond hands Greene's guard a business card, which activates a tracking device(?) when dumbass Elvis dials the number. What is this the nature of this tracking device and how does Bond track with it? :scratch:

Mrs Aural Sects wrote:

How would any of you react to a double-taking parrot in Skyfall?

To quote the CR pre-credit sequence, 'Not well'.

Strangest scene from the Bond series?

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER.

tiffanywint wrote:

Is anyone able to explain the sequence in QoS, in which Bond hands Greene's guard a business card, which activates a tracking device(?) when dumbass Elvis dials the number. What is this the nature of this tracking device and how does Bond track with it? :scratch:

Bond gives the guard a business card with a number for Universal Exports on it. Elvis calls the number to see if it's legit, to hear who answers, whatever. The supercomputer at MI6 does what Boris Grishenko's Spike technology did: it siezed his signal, immediately traced it back to the phone and accessed the GPS chip. Now Bond can follow Elvis' movements via comsat with his own handy-dandy Sony product.

And as for Sergei Borzov, Gogol was hardly going to admit, "He was killed attempting to assassinate a British agent." Better to let Anya think Sergei was a poor, innocent bystander gunned down mercilessly by a bloodthirsty enforcer of the decadent western military-industrial complex. That way (as Christopher Wood explains in an unfilmed aside in his novelization) Anya will be well placed and motivated to assassinate Bond should the occasion arise. :study:

And yes, the Russian attack was an excuse for Bond to ski off a cliff.

It's not really a "where the hell did that come from?" moment, but watching TWINE again, I realise that it's only half a film - the second half.

Before the events of the film, there is a whole lot going on that is only mentioned in passing and never fully explained: Elektra King is kidnapped, but later escapes. 009 goes after Renard and tries to kill him, but is killed himself. Robert King acquires a report from the Russian Atomic Energy Commission which he believes to have details of Elektra's kidnapping (but which clearly doesn't). Bond is sent to retrieve the ransom money.

Ideally, the film should have shown all of this (and maybe even more). It would have created more mystery surrounding Elektra, and her miraculous escape would have given Bond a reason to question her innocence. It would have given Renard more of a presence within the film, furthering the mystery of who is responsible. And it would have given Bond a valid conflict with M, questioning her getting involved in the King's affairs.

They needed the runtime for this instead:

Feel like watching TWINE now...:)

Louis Armstrong wrote:

They needed the runtime for this instead

That could have been worked into the opening scenes. Renard has kidnapped Elektra, and Bond has been sent to rescue her because MI6 believe a Russian oil oligarch paid Renard to kidnap her so that he could leverage Robert King and his oil pipeline, disrupting the West's supply of oil. The rescue goes badly, and Bond ends up zip-lining away from an explosion. Cue title sequence.

I know how they could have fixed TWINE: Throw the script in the waste bin.

The script does have its high points. I think the plot to irradiate Istanbul is actually quite clever. It's simply let down by indecisiveness as to who its villain is, the way the plot comes to a screeching halt for action sequences, and a general ham-fistedness with characters like Christmas Jones. But I don't think it is beyond saving, the way DIE ANOTHER DAY's script is.

Denise Richards should've flashed her tits.

Christmas Jones was the least of TWINE's problems. The only problem I ever had with her was the ending because it felt unnatural much like the ending of AVTAK. For the most part all she ever does throughout the flick is aide Bond and provide exposition (though Richards' delivery of "instant [pause] catastrophic [pause] meltdown" was probably the worst acting I have ever seen).

Overall like TND it's a very dry film with a hammy lead actor and some good ideas executed in the worst possible manner. Plus it really looks flat. I dunno why TND and TWINE had to fall for that 1990s desaturated look.

TOMORROW NEVER DIES is let down by the way Carver is a glorified henchman. General Chang is he real villain of the film, even though he is only seen once and mentioned twice thereafter.

It worked fine in Thunderball.

Yes, but Blofeld had an established presence in the film. It was quite clear that Largo was acting on behalf of SPECTRE and was one of their key members; he was, after all, Number 2.

The problem with Chang is that he isn't introduced until Carver is established as the villain of the film, and he is only treated as an afterthought. Aside from walking down a corridor and sending a handful of men to be beaten up by Michelle Yeoh, he doesn't really do anything.

A smarter way to do it would have been to establish that Carver and Chang were working together early in the film - just as THUNDERBALL showed that Largo was a member of SPECTRE. Then, when Chang is detained by the Chinese (or possibly by Bond and Wai Lin themselves), Carver decides to launch his missle on Beijing anyway, figuring that if he cannot have exclusive broadcast rights in China, he can at least get the first coverage of the missile strike on Beijing.

It's the same problem faced by THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH: Renard had no presence early in the film. His actions are present, but he himself is not. There was actually a scene where the Cigar Girl met him after Bond escaped Bilbao (where it becomes clear that he let Bond live for a higher purpose), but it was cut because EON felt it introduced him too soon and gave away too much - that Renard manipulated Bond into acting on his behalf - too early in the film. Ironically, keeping the scene would have actually gone a long way to building up to the twist that Elektra was the real villain. For one, it would have established Renard as an antagoinst within the film and kept the audience focused on him; and two, all of Renard's lines are delivered to the Cigar Girl, who has no reason to question who she is really working for, thereby misleading the audience.

Makeshift Python wrote:

Christmas Jones was the least of TWINE's problems. The only problem I ever had with her was the ending because it felt unnatural much like the ending of AVTAK. For the most part all she ever does throughout the flick is aide Bond and provide exposition (though Richards' delivery of "instant [pause] catastrophic [pause] meltdown" was probably the worst acting I have ever seen).

Overall like TND it's a very dry film with a hammy lead actor and some good ideas executed in the worst possible manner. Plus it really looks flat. I dunno why TND and TWINE had to fall for that 1990s desaturated look.

While I agree in general re TWINE which does have "some good ideas executed in the worst possible manner" (which, Fleming inspiration excepted, to me defines the scripts generally from here on out - I assume being the contribution of Purvis and Wade). Conversely I think TND has no real ideas of its own at all, at the very least TWINE has some sense of ambition.

In terms of worse acting moments I think Carole Bouquet's expressions of 'burning passion', Eva Green's delivery of 'banter' and pretty much every moment Brit Eckland's Goodnight appears on screen actually make Richards seem quite the thespian.

Makeshift Python wrote:

Richards' delivery of "instant [pause] catastrophic [pause] meltdown" was probably the worst acting I have ever seen..

"Except...except right beneath us is the...key geological lock that...that keeps the faults from moving at once!"

No contest.

As for Britt Eckland, at least she was cute, and filled a bikini nicely.

(BTW Grav: Zorin says "Right rudder - do it!")

Harmsway wrote:

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Anthony Burgess wrote a script that sounded fantastic, where SPECTRE was reduced to a few key operatives like Blofeld and Bunt, hidden away from a world that no longer feared them.

SPECTRE didn't feature in Burgess' draft. It was a new villain entirely, and his organization, I believe, was called CHAOS.

I have to assume Burgess had never viewed GET SMART. And yeah, I know the spelling is different, but if you called a new spy film A MAN CALLED BAHND it would give pause in a quite similar way.

Ahhh ... it had been niggling at me where I'd heard of a 'bad guys' organisation called CHAOS before since Harms made that post. Thanks for that.

I've always wondered about the scene in GoldenEye where Xenia confronts Bond in the sauna. First of all, why is she there in the first place, second of all, why should she risk being recognized as a member of Janus, and third of all, who was that random goon who Bond wacked with the pan? Where did he come from and who was he?

Goon: "I wants me a piece o' dat!"

Bond: "Piss off, she's mine!"

Whack!

Bond breaking into M's flat.

Honestly, why did this have to happen? M had the only computer in the world with that information?

Plus, there would have been no more James Bond after that moment. I imagine he'd be fired and never heard from again.

Control wrote:

Bond breaking into M's flat.

Honestly, why did this have to happen? M had the only computer in the world with that information?

Plus, there would have been no more James Bond after that moment. I imagine he'd be fired and never heard from again.

Oh, I hate that. I hate Bad Boy Bond. Like he's some teenager climbing into windows. And it's funny that he apparently can't get past video cameras, can't tail a man worth a crap, but can infilitrate the presumably secure home of the head of British Intelligence.

Wait.... Brown? Is that you?