Are people too sensitive when it comes to Bond hooking up with Severine?

I want to take this scene, put it front of Fukunaga and say what were you saying before about a scene in TB you misremembered?

CJB wrote:

While no brooding and whining is generally good, I thought it was jarring that the whole 14 months of captivity and torture aspect was forgotten in about five seconds. Theoretically, Bond being monstered in a North Korean gulag is one of the darker chapters of the whole series and yet it takes place in the same film which has invisible cars, bad CGI, and about 30 dick jokes.

There are a good seven or ten seconds after Bond chases the Chinese agents out of his hotel room where you can tell that the memories of the imprisonment are still weighing on him -- might be the last of the few Broz moments that I really like (outside of TAILOR OF PANAMA, which I still think is his best Bond performance.)

I suppose it is something to consider that if they had held off on the 'Bond captured and tortured' device till the Craig era, we might have gotten something equivalent to STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION's CHAIN OF COMMAND 2parter, where Picard is caught and spends a whole show being roughly interrogated by David Warner (who should definitely have been in a Bond movie, come to think of it ... maybe he would have made Whitaker into a UK arms dealer who actually possessed intriguing levels of intelligence and malevolence.) You could have spent a quarter to half the movie dealing with the torture and/or the torture and aftermath, and that might have peeled back some of the character in a way that was both interesting and appropriately Fleming-esque. (Then again, considering what we have gotten, they'd've probably found a way to blow it.)

I think I actually checked out of DAD during the swordfighting, because the fake-looking daylight courtyard just read like 60s TV to me, which felt inexcusable in a pricey 007 feature. So when things continue to deteriorate entertainment-wise, I didn't even raise an eyebrow (except for the parasailing, which maybe should have used a high-speed miniature figure a la BRAZIL's flying guy, comped with real water elements in foreground.)

trevanian wrote:

You could have spent a quarter to half the movie dealing with the torture and/or the torture and aftermath, and that might have peeled back some of the character in a way that was both interesting and appropriately Fleming-esque.

Yes and, for better or worse, depending on how gritty you like your Bond films, I'm sure Brosnan would've been onboard as one his biggest complaints seems to be that he was never allowed to delve into the darker, more complex character-driven stuff. It was all "here, have a machine gun and spray everything that moves and then straighten your tie or some shit, pretty boy."

trevanian wrote:

(Then again, considering what we have gotten, they'd've probably found a way to blow it.)

That too.

Imagine the PAINFACE intensity if it had been Brozzer in the CR torture scene.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Imagine the PAINFACE intensity if it had been Brozzer in the CR torture scene.  

"A little to the left," he says as he tries to nibble Le Chiffre's shoulder-blade.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Imagine the PAINFACE intensity if it had been Brozzer in the CR torture scene.  

"A little to the left," he says as he tries to nibble Le Chiffre's shoulder-blade.

Sarai wrote:

It's difficult to guess at for me how much of an impact the torture scenes were meant to have on the viewer and they did play it during the opening theme. I really felt it but wasn't sure how much others did by playing it that way.
I didn't feel it to be jarring but I can see others would. To me it just felt like what a character like Bond would do next and I'm not sure how they could really show a damaged psyche without changing the whole nature of Bond films. His next steps did involve more women, alcohol and a causal attitude towards death that he usually displays and that is very Bond. Are those things how he copes with it all or is he just that cold whether being tortured himself or killing another in cold blood as he did all the way back in Dr No?
most of what he does in life would mess normal people up forever but don't seem to with Bond
I never know if he is a bit psychopathic and unfeeling which would be good for that job and or how much of the pain is hidden
so in that sense it all works for me and is the same old 007...keeps you guessing, wondering at the man and his mind

Good post! And I think the Brosnan era does this more successfully than Craig's. A light shines on certain facets of the character, which teases us enough about the man behind the Walther. We don't need every single layer peeled back because our imagination can fill in the gaps. We don't need to be told everything. Not everything needs to be personal. Bond should be an enigma. He's a spy, after all, and can remain a bit of a mystery. That's why I love the brief flashes of history with Paris or how Zukovsky obtained his limp, or how Bond's parents died in a climbing accident, or if Bond "ever lost a loved one" without lamenting it, for example.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Imagine the PAINFACE intensity if it had been Brozzer in the CR torture scene.  

"A little to the left," he says as he tries to nibble Le Chiffre's shoulder-blade.

trevanian wrote:

There are a good seven or ten seconds after Bond chases the Chinese agents out of his hotel room where you can tell that the memories of the imprisonment are still weighing on him -- might be the last of the few Broz moments that I really like (outside of TAILOR OF PANAMA, which I still think is his best Bond performance.)

I mentioned this in another thread, but I think Brosnan keeps his imprisonment present throughout, from, as you say, the Hong Kong hotel room scene, to his moments with Zao in Cuba, to his chat with M underground-- even with his outside kiss with Frost. He's pissed but he sees the bigger picture and pushes it aside.

trevanian wrote:

You could have spent a quarter to half the movie dealing with the torture and/or the torture and aftermath, and that might have peeled back some of the character in a way that was both interesting and appropriately Fleming-esque. (Then again, considering what we have gotten, they'd've probably found a way to blow it.)

That could have been great. Again, I said elsewhere earlier that hitting the booze harder, some flashbacks and maybe showing Bond using Benzedrine could have given the Fleming purists something to enjoy, as well as more meat for Brosnan to chew on (which, as CJB says, he wanted). The film just needed focus (not to be gritty, necessarily. There's a difference) but sadly, Tamahori wanted to roll FRWL into MR.

That said, it's easier to forgive in a film like DAD because of its tone. It wants nothing more than to entertain and on a perverse level it does that. Had it asked us to take it as seriously as CR/QOS/SP, it would have been a whole lot worse. It