Quantum of Solace in Review

It has most of the same problems as TWINE but combined with the production problems of TND... not good

I still rate it higher than TWINE, though.

Yup, I enjoy QOS, but I admit it has points where things don't gel (Bond somehow knowing Camile was going to get raped on that boat, rescues her, then abandons her. WUUUT?). And I'm with Lazenby on the breathers, it needed a few breaks in between to really let things flow. As much as I admire Forster's attempt at making the film with the pace of a bullet he doesn't do it well here.

QOS isn't that far down below for me, I'd put it somewhere in the middle. Worst Bond Ever title goes to the soap opera TWINE.

This more applies to the way the whole Daniel Craig phenomena is treated in general (certainly on MI6 and CBn, at least), but I found this on youtube and found it bizarrely prescient given the context:

You have a poor perception of what real is. Also, I don't watch movies, most especially Bond movies (unless it is an informative drama or trying to make a point) for realism. That's one of the many reasons Quantum of Solace was garbage.

Seriously, the very idea of Bond is ludicrous, even yet you guys are judging movies based on realism? Not just the many outstanding merits and qualities of coherent craftsmanship that makes a great movie, all of which QOS lacked?

I thought it was a bland load of tedium. As a fan of Casino Royale, they took something quite striking, dynamic and forceful and turned it into a load of soporific crap with the impact of a wet noodle and the verve and dynamism of a lump of chewed cardboard.
Bond looks like a man desperately trying to dig a hole in the surface of a pond. He's trying his best but he simply has nothing to work with. Dominic Greene was a short, bug-eyed creep who could be beaten senseless by my grandmother. With the exception of maybe Camille, everyone else looks like someone brought a bunch of animatronic mannequins to a vague, shambling semblance of life. In CR,
Bond was a human wrecking ball of energy, force and dynamism. By contrast, In QoS, Bond is a hapless, wide-eyed victim, being shunted gently about like the world's dullest Bourne wannabe.

And don't even get me started on the CGI.

This is an abortion of a thing, a towering monument to self-satisfied mediocrity and sheep-like dull-wittedness. That some gormless beancounter with an abacus for a soul decided to slap 007 onto this gutless load of old toss bespeaks nothing so much as the reduction of creativity to a pipe from anus to gullet, endlessly and mindlessly recycling the same material, only a little more like shit each time.

This is the sort of thing that cinemas in an existentialist hell would show. In short, I didn't like it.

Come better next time. Yawn.

Vesper wrote:

This more applies to the way the whole Daniel Craig phenomena is treated in general (certainly on MI6 and CBn, at least), but I found this on youtube and found it bizarrely prescient given the context:

I think you missed out a link there.

Mrs Aural Sects wrote:

[QoS} is an abortion of a thing, a towering monument to self-satisfied mediocrity and sheep-like dull-wittedness ... the reduction of creativity to a pipe from anus to gullet, endlessly and mindlessly recycling the same material, only a little more like shit each time.

That should have been on the poster.

Salomé wrote:

It featured M as a surrogate mom who followed Bond around the world to wipe his nose and tell him to wash his hands before dinner.

I was just thinking the other day how lame it was for M to follow Bond to Russia. I thought that while watching QoS in the theatre, too. I suppose it's good for there to be someone with Bond who he can reflect his thoughts off (for the sake of the audience). Perhaps Mathis could've gone to Russia with him? Whose idea was it for M to go, anyway - M's or Bond's? Can't see Bond asking anyone but one of his mates to do that for him. And if it was M's idea, well... that's terrible.

M sort of took the 'bad' out of that scene's badass. Or maybe she took the 'ass' out of its badass. Either way, she made the scene either bad or ass.

I really liked the ending, I thought it worked well regardless of M's presence on the last bit.

Ha, odd. I can't get past how the ending's ripped right out of The Bourne Supremacy

It's obviously inspired by it but it works well as its own I think. Besides the setting and somber mood I don't see them being exactly the same like most say. Bourne was making a confession while Bond was there to make an arrest (a rarity for the series!).

If there's one thing I am peeved concerning the ending then it's the whole subplot of Bond searching for Yousef not being focused on much. Before the ending it's only brought up at least twice and once we're near the end it's like "oh yeah, Bond was looking for this guy". Despite that I still thing the ending itself is well handled. I'm glad QOS scrapped the original ending as this one works much better IMO.

Vesper wrote:

Ha, odd. I can't get past how the ending's ripped right out of The Bourne Supremacy

Definite similarities, enough for me to notice.

Makeshift Python wrote:

Besides the setting and somber mood I don't see them being exactly the same like most say. Bourne was making a confession while Bond was there to make an arrest

There's definitely a big similarity IMO in that both scenes have Bond/Bourne easing a woman's pain by sitting her down and telling her the truth. The arrest seems to be something performed by MI6 after Bond has left the apartment.

Makeshift Python wrote:

If there's one thing I am peeved concerning the ending then it's the whole subplot of Bond searching for Yousef not being focused on much. Before the ending it's only brought up at least twice and once we're near the end it's like "oh yeah, Bond was looking for this guy".

Yep, it feels like something of an afterthought given how little mention was made of it after the start of the film.

Makeshift Python wrote:

Despite that I still thing the ending itself is well handled. I'm glad QOS scrapped the original ending as this one works much better IMO.

TBH, I think Bond 23 will determine whether or not I thought they went with the right ending in QOS. Though the Bourne ending comparison would be far less blatant had QOS ended with the killing of White instead. As it stands, both Supremacy and QOS end with Bourne/Bond sitting down a woman to tell her the truth before reminding his female "superior" that he's still right there. Hopefully Bond 23 can avoid such noticeable similarities and get on with being influenced via solely Bond himself or (gasp!) coming up with some new moves of their own.

I do like hearing Bond affirm that he's not gone rogue.

Words are cheap, actions are deep.

He doesn't operate any differently in QoS than in any other film. It's just that M gets on his case more than usual. :) Typically Bond ends up completing his assignment his own way, and M just lives in blissful ignorance. The real issue in QoS is that M and Bond aren't communicating well. I don't know why he just didn't get real with her somewhere earlier in the film, especially when she accuses him of killing a member of Special Branch. No big deal for M to hold Bond's approach to his assignment in contempt, that's fine, but for her to shut down his credit cards and all that nonsense... some communication issues there.

Louis Armstrong wrote:

The real issue in QoS is that M and Bond aren't communicating well. I don't know why he just didn't get real with her somewhere earlier in the film, especially when she accuses him of killing a member of Special Branch.

That part always bugged the hell out of me. She accuses him of killing that man by shooting him but he doesn't even try to deny it, he just goes along with it. WUUUT?! That's just a poor way of trying to have M convinced that he's a loose canon.

Logic is hardly the script's forte. It goes out the window the moment that bodyguard pulls the gun on M. That's what? Six minutes in?

Vesper wrote:

Logic is hardly the script's forte. It goes out the window the moment that bodyguard pulls the gun on M. That's what? Six minutes in?

I suppose someone will defend that moment by pointing out that Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards.

ambler wrote:

Vesper wrote:

Logic is hardly the script's forte. It goes out the window the moment that bodyguard pulls the gun on M. That's what? Six minutes in?

I suppose someone will defend that moment by pointing out that Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards.

Yeah, but not by a bodyguard who had been placed in her employ for a decade by some mysterious organisation of "corrupt" businessmen to operate only on the extremely unlikely event that one day she is ever in a room with one of their higher ups...

...or was she?

Vesper wrote:

ambler wrote:

Vesper wrote:

Logic is hardly the script's forte. It goes out the window the moment that bodyguard pulls the gun on M. That's what? Six minutes in?

I suppose someone will defend that moment by pointing out that Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards.

Yeah, but not by a bodyguard who had been placed in her employ for a decade by some mysterious organisation of "corrupt" businessmen to operate only on the extremely unlikely event that one day she is ever in a room with one of their higher ups...

...or was she?

Perhaps he just turned?

Turncoat Bodyguard-Ex-Machina? That's a new one

Shit happens.

Best tagline for QOS that never was.

Sharky wrote:

Shit happens.

Best tagline for QOS that never was.

QoS: Babs bans baps.

Best Daily Sport headline that never was.

Vesper wrote:

Quote :

That's not a half bad idea, considering they didn't do much with Bond being on his own. However, the opportunity for Bond to become reckless and screw up someone else's mission might be lost.

Not neccesarilly. Pam could still have her own agenda. So could Hong Kong narcotics.

As much as I enjoy Licence To Kill, one of the biggest problems of it (and QoS) is that it is fundamentally out of character for Bond to a) go rogue and b) place the personal ahead of duty.

Well, QoS has a whole lot more problems than just that. But that's for another thread.

So I didn't derail the Licence to Kill thread, I thought I'd better post this here.

But that's the thing, in QOS he didn't go rogue. Everybody thought he did. He was constantly in touch with M in an attempt to reassure her that he hadn't gone rogue. Quantum persisted in framing him, with the deaths of the Bolivian police, Mathis and the Special Branch agent all being blamed on OO7. It appears that Bond has gone rogue, but only to the characters within the film, and not to the audience.

He disobeyed a directive. Deliberately eluded his superiors. Travelled illegally to another country. Disobeyed another directive and got two agents killed in the process.

He doesn't contact M once between her telling him to come in and debrief and her showing up in his hotel room. Given the muddled pacing of the film and the shortness of the script, that doesn't seem like much, but it's about the entirety of the second act.

How is he not rogue?

Vesper wrote:

He disobeyed a directive. Deliberately eluded his superiors. Travelled illegally to another country. Disobeyed another directive and got two agents killed in the process.

He doesn't contact M once between her telling him to come in and debrief and her showing up in his hotel room. Given the muddled pacing of the film and the shortness of the script, that doesn't seem like much, but it's about the entirety of the second act.

How is he not rogue?

Bond makes many choices throughout the series though that don't meet with M's approval. He gets the solex stolen as well as the energy expert dead in TMWTGG, sleeps with Elektra in TWINE, saves Kara and avoids killing Pushkin without further investigation in TLD, etc, etc. That's called Bond's instincts. The difference with QOS and the rest, is that Quantum are framing him, so the reason for illegally travelling to another country is so he can prove his innocence by building up his case.