Daniel Craig Promises 'Skyfall' Won't Be An Emo Bond Flick

Previously when the Bond films chose to get serious they didn't lumber themselves with poe faced pretention, nor did they resent their own history or display embarrassment for films and stories gone by. Sweeping right back to the original novels the franchise took subject matter that was often self consciously dour and introspective and rewrote it in an unashamedly entertaining manner. Fleming and Bond were unique, the films grasped that and carried it, Hollywood tried and failed to copy it, Harry and Cubby knew that even when being and derivative Bonds heart needed to retain its individuality, I really don't see the same understanding or commitment by the current production team.

There's a nice line in Jurassic Park that applies here about wielding a power that wasn't earned, about lacking the necessary humility a true understanding would bring. It's that that changes the nature and complexion of what is offered from Brosnan forward. The only real positive may be that having gone the reboot path and explored a new beginning they have in some way defused some of their own egos and become more relaxed as to the legacy they carry.

Quote :

There's a nice line in Jurassic Park that applies here about wielding a power that wasn't earned, about lacking the necessary humility a true understanding would bring.

Very prescient comment. "Like a kid who's found his dad's gun" just about sums up Miccoli.

Sharky wrote:

Quote :

There's a nice line in Jurassic Park that applies here about wielding a power that wasn't earned, about lacking the necessary humility a true understanding would bring.

Very prescient comment. "Like a kid who's found his dad's gun" just about sums up Miccoli.

That cuts to the quick. And it would just explain Miccoli's insecurity which is manifest in their apparent need to be taken seriously by the mandarins of Hollywood.

lachesis wrote:

Previously when the Bond films chose to get serious they didn't lumber themselves with poe faced pretention, nor did they resent their own history or display embarrassment for films and stories gone by. Sweeping right back to the original novels the franchise took subject matter that was often self consciously dour and introspective and rewrote it in an unashamedly entertaining manner. Fleming and Bond were unique, the films grasped that and carried it, Hollywood tried and failed to copy it, Harry and Cubby knew that even when being and derivative Bonds heart needed to retain its individuality, I really don't see the same understanding or commitment by the current production team.

There's a nice line in Jurassic Park that applies here about wielding a power that wasn't earned, about lacking the necessary humility a true understanding would bring. It's that that changes the nature and complexion of what is offered from Brosnan forward. The only real positive may be that having gone the reboot path and explored a new beginning they have in some way defused some of their own egos and become more relaxed as to the legacy they carry.

I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done, and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you, you've patented it, and packaged it, you've slapped it on a plastic lunchbox....

Re-reading that Jurassic Park quote makes me think we might be a little too harsh on Barbara. Agreed that she didn't attain what she has other than through the blind luck of being Cubby's daughter, and I agree that she's stood on the shoulders of geniuses to get what she has (but who hasn't benefited from the work and help of their parents?), but I do think she's taken responsibility for the series, for good or bad. It was her call to hire Craig and if CR had been a flop like I had predicted it would be, she would've been the one thrown under the bus. I do believe, without reservation, that she harbors a resentment for the movies that came before that not even she is conscious of or willing to admit, but instead has used the series from Goldeneye onwards as a vehicle to advance a feminist cause, albeit ever so slightly at times, and cleverly disguised, as pop-culture entertainment. As someone mentioned in another thread, we haven't had a true bimbo character or naive, innocent civilian lead actress, really, since TLD.

Pam was a gun-toting, CIA operative/pilot.
Natalya, though a civilian, was a quirky, smart computer programmer.
Wai Lin was Bond's opposite number in the Chinese Secret Service.
Christmas, though dreadfully acted by Denise Richards, was a nuclear scientist.
Jinx was an NSA operative.
Vesper is sort of the wild-card in the deck, though she and M are both in the prime position of pushing Bond around and pulling the purse strings on the operation.
Camille is, or was, Bolivian Secret Service.

Although, in all honesty, if you look back at all the lead Bond Girls, they've mostly been tough and resourceful, even if they had sexually suggestive names. Obviously a lot of the tittle came from the secondary Bond Girls, with names like Chew-Me, Plenty O'Toole, and the sexually explicit Log Cabin Girl. I think the mystique of them being nothing but bimbos has always been a myth and overreaction. Yes, we've had a Dink and a Mary Goodnight, but we've also had a fully trained NASA astronaut (Goodhead), a successful business woman (Octopussy), a successful pilot (Pussy Galore)...even Honey Ryder had street smarts.

I think Babs is simply trying to elevate an image that doesn't require elevation.

To make it less personal....

Eon, I do believe, craves critical respect, at least it has since Casino Royale, which for the most part was critically praised while being a box office success.

Some of the recent hires reflect this. The problem: some of those hires (Peter Morgan and Marc Forster come to mind) have said they question whether Bond still is viable as a character. You don't need to be a James Bond fanatic, and in a lot of ways a bit more of an objective eye is desirable. But based on their comments I've read, Morgan and Forster seemed to have a lot of doubts about Bond as a character.

You may not want to hire a big fan, but somebody who doesn't really believe in the concept isn't desirable either. But Morgan and Forster were supposed to provide prestige and so they collected Bond paychecks.

The quotes in question:

Morgan:

“I’m not sure it’s possible to do it … I do think the absence of social reality in the Bond film…if they fix that, or they get that of if they get that in a script, which I’m so hoping they will, where you can actually believe in him, that he isn’t just a person in a dinner jacket…he is a creature of the Cold War, Bond….I just personally struggle to believe a British secret agent is still saving the world."

see second embedded video here, starting about the 0:15 mark:

http://hmssweblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/peter-morgan-007-fans-hardly-knew-ye/


Forster:

Forster has a frisky social conscience, and the Bond franchise has an outrageously politically incorrect history. It’s not just the racist caricatures of Caribbeans in Dr. No or the obvious objectification of women and rampant xenophobia in, well, almost every Bond film. It’s also the specific political parallels—the way that Bond reminds Forster of Dick Cheney. ** “I question the role that these Secret Service agencies play today—is their role really to protect the country? Or the interest of a few?” **In Quantum, a secret syndicate takes MI6 entirely by surprise, revealing M to have intelligence as poor as Bush and Co.’s regarding 9/11.


Forster says agencies like Bond’s support “sites like Guantánamo, where torture is practiced, where there are no rules if the government considers you a threat.” His film heats up in Haiti “because the CIA created the changeover there, when companies wanted to jack up the minimum wage, and big American corporations didn’t like that” (a fact the film references). The action moves to South America because he saw “a documentary about water shortage in Bolivia.”

link:
http://nymag.com/movies/features/51819/

Napoleon Solo wrote:

Some of the recent hires reflect this. The problem: some of those hires (Peter Morgan and Marc Forster come to mind) have said they question whether Bond still is viable as a character. You don't need to be a James Bond fanatic, and in a lot of ways a bit more of an objective eye is desirable. But based on their comments I've read, Morgan and Forster seemed to have a lot of doubts about Bond as a character.

You may not want to hire a big fan, but somebody who doesn't really believe in the concept isn't desirable either. But Morgan and Forster were supposed to provide prestige and so they collected Bond paychecks.

The quotes in question:

Morgan:

“I’m not sure it’s possible to do it … I do think the absence of social reality in the Bond film…if they fix that, or they get that of if they get that in a script, which I’m so hoping they will, where you can actually believe in him, that he isn’t just a person in a dinner jacket…he is a creature of the Cold War, Bond….I just personally struggle to believe a British secret agent is still saving the world."

Forster says agencies like Bond’s support “sites like Guantánamo, where torture is practiced, where there are no rules if the government considers you a threat.” His film heats up in Haiti “because the CIA created the changeover there, when companies wanted to jack up the minimum wage, and big American corporations didn’t like that” (a fact the film references). The action moves to South America because he saw “a documentary about water shortage in Bolivia.”

link:
http://nymag.com/movies/features/51819/

Well, first of all, I think people at SONY are probably reading this forum. The criticism they've been responding to lately (that the film may be too "emo", that the series needs to lighten up and bring in some humor) seem to have been ripped straight from the posts made at B&B. Certainly they can't have been reading these kinds of comments over at CBn or MI6; I can't imagine Dear Leaders Page and Stewart allowing anyone to criticize the EON offerings or to remind people that the people in charge put James Bond in a wig, dress, pumps and lipstick just last year to celebrate the National Association of Gals "International Womyn's Day".

And I would suggest that the criticism must be getting to them. Why else respond to it? Maybe someone at SONY has gotten tired of the fans not being given anything constructive to talk about, but it seems like we've suddenly gotten a ton of interviews, official pictures and footage from the sets.

But to the main point....QOS is the result of Barbara living in a bubble and associating herself only with people who think like she does. Their political agenda was ever-so-slightly etched into the film, and when that didn't prove sufficient enough, Babs recruited Daniel Craig to do a full-on political ad featuring 007 as a woman.

It's distressing to see that Barbara has given over the series to people like Morgan and Forster, who either are embarrassed to be on a 007 film project, or clearly don't have the slightest clue how to move the series forward. At this point, if Forster and Morgan are any indication of the people that Babs has in mind of bringing to the series, they might be better off simply setting future films back in the early 50's, in the time period in which Fleming wrote them. At least then the writers could dispense with the aggravation of trying to bring Fleming's anti-hero into the 21st century, and instead let the character wallow in his own 'racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and sexism.' But I don't believe Barbara would do even that, because such a film might actually be a massive hit, and I can't see Barbara wanting to give any legitimacy to the character of Bond and the time period in which Fleming wrote him.

I guess at least Eons choices won't produce a Bond Film that eats the audience, although much like Jurassic Park making a success financially wouldn't have changed the longer term threat had the doors been allowed to open. In this case when is a Bond film not a Bond film, imo when it's indistinguishable from every other action movie out there and stripping out or being evidently ashamed of what makes Bond different or special is the real worry I have going forward.

I think a lot of what's been mentioned here is spot on. Babs is too concerned about critical approval, and both she and MGW were essentially handed the franchise without having to earn it (though Wilson was at least a highly competent screenwriter in the 1980s, Babs simply had some minor sinecure jobs at the tail end of Cubby's life). But this is part of a broader problem - MGW and Babs don't seem to realize that Bond is essentially a pulp character who should be starring in what are essentially very lavish and well-produced B movies. Cubby and Harry understood this, which is what made the franchise the unique and great success it's become. They both made B films themselves at places like Warwick Films, and they hired directors like Terence Young for whom B-movie action was bread and butter.

Furthermore, Cubby and Harry put together casts that never took over the picture. Look at FRWL, which probably has the best cast of any Bond film. All those great actors are either "washed out" actors at the end of their careers (Armendariz, Lotte Lenya), unknowns at the time (Shaw) or talented character actors like the fellow who played Kronsteen. Even the girls were chosen primarily for their looks. It's no surprise that the first oscar winner was only cast in a Bond film in 1985 (and Walken was not the first choice for the role. David Bowie was asked before him. Fortunately, Walken has a great self-effacing sense of humor for an oscar winner, and his performance as Zorin is fine).

Contrast how Cubby and Harry did things to the current set-up, where egotistical oscar winners like Halle Berry are allowed to get co-credit along with Bond, and where directors like Tamahori and Forster are chosen because Babs liked earlier "chamber piece" movies they'd directed like Once Were Warriors and Monsters Ball. However good or bad those movies are, they aren't Bond films, and directing them doesn't qualify one to direct Bond. This is why I'm worried about Skyfall. Why was Sam Mendes chosen? Because he did American Beauty? Because that's poor qualifications for Bond as well.

The list of bizarre or polarizing decisions by the producers is surely long in the post-Cubby era, but they definitely deserve credit for keeping the Bond series alive not just at the box office, but also in pop-culture. Were any Bond films as polarizing as CR and QOS both in praise and criticism? They're definitely not eveyone's cup of Bond, but they're keeping the movie-going public interested.

Now about the article, Craig & co. seem to be saying all the right things here, but I'm skeptical that the level of humour in Skyfall will be that different from CR. The news I like the best is the inclusion of elements like a potentially-psychotic femme fatale and that creepy Japanese island.

right idea, wrong pussy wrote:

It's no surprise that the first oscar winner was only cast in a Bond film in 1985 (and Walken was not the first choice for the role. David Bowie was asked before him. Fortunately, Walken has a great self-effacing sense of humor for an oscar winner, and his performance as Zorin is fine).

I believe Sting was also approached for the role, but I think the right person ended up playing the role. To me, Zorin is one of the unheralded geniuses of Bond villains, but I think because people felt Walken was just being himself that somehow the role gets overlooked and downplayed.

Quote :

Contrast how Cubby and Harry did things to the current set-up, where egotistical oscar winners like Halle Berry are allowed to get co-credit along with Bond, and where directors like Tamahori and Forster are chosen because Babs liked earlier "chamber piece" movies they'd directed like Once Were Warriors and Monsters Ball. However good or bad those movies are, they aren't Bond films, and directing them doesn't qualify one to direct Bond. This is why I'm worried about Skyfall. Why was Sam Mendes chosen? Because he did American Beauty? Because that's poor qualifications for Bond as well.

On the other hand, I don't mind big-name, established talent joining the series if the motives are pure. The problem with some of the talent that has been used the past few films is that it feels as if it is being used to right perceived wrongs that were committed before Barbara took full control, or to work through her guilt or shame at having inherited a billion-dollar franchise that earned its money off the chests of buxom-blondes or a western, imperialist-nation going around the world and saving it. The harder Babs tries to get directors and writers to come in and paint the series in shades of grey instead of pure black and white, the farther I feel she's getting away from Fleming's Bond, whom she insisted she was trying to get back to starting with CR.

I think the comment that Bond owes more to the pulps is spot-on. I also wonder whether Eon might be better off giving an opportunity to an up-and-coming director (say a television director who's ready to make the jump to feature films) rather than formerly critically acclaimed directors who haven't had a commercial success for a while (Sam Mendes, Michael Apted).

lachesis wrote:

I guess at least Eons choices won't produce a Bond Film that eats the audience...

A sexist, misogynist dinosaur?

Am I the only one getting flashbacks of a00gun's Bond vs. Velociraptors thread?

Napoleon Solo wrote:

Forster:

Forster has a frisky social conscience, and the Bond franchise has an outrageously politically incorrect history. It’s not just the racist caricatures of Caribbeans in Dr. No or the obvious objectification of women and rampant xenophobia in, well, almost every Bond film. It’s also the specific political parallels—the way that Bond reminds Forster of Dick Cheney. ** “I question the role that these Secret Service agencies play today—is their role really to protect the country? Or the interest of a few?” **In Quantum, a secret syndicate takes MI6 entirely by surprise, revealing M to have intelligence as poor as Bush and Co.’s regarding 9/11.


Forster says agencies like Bond’s support “sites like Guantánamo, where torture is practiced, where there are no rules if the government considers you a threat.” His film heats up in Haiti “because the CIA created the changeover there, when companies wanted to jack up the minimum wage, and big American corporations didn’t like that” (a fact the film references). The action moves to South America because he saw “a documentary about water shortage in Bolivia.”

link:
http://nymag.com/movies/features/51819/

Thanks for posting this stuff Solo. I knew QoS was a subversive Bond film the first time I saw it, and Forster has readily admitted as much, as we can see from the above passages from the NY MAG DOT COM, linked article. He was determined to pepper the film with his liberal politics, enthusiastically abetted by kindred spirit Haggis. This is the main reason that QoS is such a brutal Bond film. The two principle filmmmakers were determined to put their prissy liberal stamp all over it. The movie never had a chance. QoS is a Forster/Haggis tour de force. And Craig has a tolerance for their garbage too.
These guys don't like Bond. They resent Bond and it shows in their work. They are better than Bond.
This is what we are up against in the Babs Gone Wild era. Babs is enthralled by such pretentious Hollywood types. Forster may be a talented filmmaker but he had no business making a Bond film, because he hates Bond. DAD is a giant of a Bond film compared to QoS. At least Tamahori wasn't attempting to put the character on trial.
Everyone right now, please adjust your rankings. QoS belongs at the bottom of everyone's pile, in fact I'm not even sure it should qualify. It really should be disqualified and set aside as an aberation. An enemy infiltration of the franchise by the forces of political correctness. Babs and MGW should hang their heads in shame.
And as we hear from Morgan in the posted video, thank God he never got near SF.;another guy who doesn't like Bond, brandiishing an agenda to change him.
The franchise is in dangerous waters these days. I encourage everyone to follow-up on Solo's links.
Babs and MGW are letting the worst elements pollute the Bond pastiche.

I am sure that SF will work as a well produced espionage adventure film, but what further subversive agenda-driven damage will it do the franchise? I don't know, but there is reason to worry. Mendes, like Forster may be a fine film-craftsman, but he's probably out to fix Bond too. God, I hope he didn't read Forster's pithy life-changing story about the fish in the river. Vomit.

This entire thread has some very solid discussion of the sorry state of the current franchise.
We shoulld mail the whole thing to MGW, and see if it might knock some sense into him. Babs is beyond salvage I believe. I don't think she cares. If you watch the original SFpress conference, it looked like she wanted to get naked with Mendes right then and there.
She worships the ground these Holllywood gods walk on.

The Craig era is still Bond to me, just presented in a different way than before.

If they were daft enough to change Bond's gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or the fact that he's incorruptible, I'd consider myself done with it. But as long as these things don't happen, I'm happy.

And please don't quote the 'gender' and 'sexual orientation' bits and follow them with that still of Craig in a dress, for God's sake ... I am beyond bored of seeing that pic get dragged up (pun entirely intended).

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

right idea, wrong pussy wrote:

It's no surprise that the first oscar winner was only cast in a Bond film in 1985 (and Walken was not the first choice for the role. David Bowie was asked before him. Fortunately, Walken has a great self-effacing sense of humor for an oscar winner, and his performance as Zorin is fine).

I believe Sting was also approached for the role, but I think the right person ended up playing the role. To me, Zorin is one of the unheralded geniuses of Bond villains, but I think because people felt Walken was just being himself that somehow the role gets overlooked and downplayed.

Quote :

Contrast how Cubby and Harry did things to the current set-up, where egotistical oscar winners like Halle Berry are allowed to get co-credit along with Bond, and where directors like Tamahori and Forster are chosen because Babs liked earlier "chamber piece" movies they'd directed like Once Were Warriors and Monsters Ball. However good or bad those movies are, they aren't Bond films, and directing them doesn't qualify one to direct Bond. This is why I'm worried about Skyfall. Why was Sam Mendes chosen? Because he did American Beauty? Because that's poor qualifications for Bond as well.

On the other hand, I don't mind big-name, established talent joining the series if the motives are pure. The problem with some of the talent that has been used the past few films is that it feels as if it is being used to right perceived wrongs that were committed before Barbara took full control, or to work through her guilt or shame at having inherited a billion-dollar franchise that earned its money off the chests of buxom-blondes or a western, imperialist-nation going around the world and saving it. The harder Babs tries to get directors and writers to come in and paint the series in shades of grey instead of pure black and white, the farther I feel she's getting away from Fleming's Bond, whom she insisted she was trying to get back to starting with CR.

I agree with all the criticism about the politization of QOS, but I think the roots of the problem are there in CR already. When Bond shoots Dryden, we get a quick shot of a picture of Dryden and his family, as if to underline what a cold-hearted bastard Bond is. Later we learn that 9/11 was bankrolled by LeChiffre/Quantum, which is a grotesque statement. I don't expect the Bond movies to have Bond fighting Al Qaeda, but they at least always acknowledged that the Soviets were Bond's usual adversaries back in Cubby's time (even though Bond was usually fighting SPECTRE). Now apparently Islamic terrorism doesn't even exist, and terrorism is either done by white Europeans or by Joseph Kony clones (a trend that looks set to continue with Bardem's character and the London Underground). I can't imagine Fleming would approve. Bond isn't really right-wing - Fleming himself once said he imagined that Bond voted Labour - but he does confront evil where he finds it, be it Communist or otherwise. Sadly, we no longer seem to have any political ground for Fleming's Bond (a left-winger who is staunchly anti-Communist, anti-Islamicist, etc.) to stand on. There used to be such a political position - Clement Attlee and Harry Truman both inhabited it. But now it seems that Bond has to join the self-loathing post-60s left-wing to stay "relevant", at least in the Craig/Babs Bond world.

Napoleon Solo wrote:

I think the comment that Bond owes more to the pulps is spot-on. I also wonder whether Eon might be better off giving an opportunity to an up-and-coming director (say a television director who's ready to make the jump to feature films) rather than formerly critically acclaimed directors who haven't had a commercial success for a while (Sam Mendes, Michael Apted).

Yeah, I think a television director is exactly right, since television now is what B movies were fifty years ago. I will say that I personally love TWINE and what Apted did in that film, but I realize that's a minority position. Regardless, there was nothing in Apted's CV that indicated he could handle Bond - perhaps Babs liked Gorillas in the Mist? With the notable exception of Steven Spielberg (who is a well-known lover of pulp and would have made a great Bond director 30 years ago) established film directors have set aesthetic ideas they make their movies conform to. So you end up getting a Mark Forster film rather than a Bond film. I think that's what's happenings with Sam Mendes right now. He even brought along his in-house composer Thomas Newman, even though Newman's forte until now has been soft piano music. Mind you, it might all work, but there's no guarantee.

tiffanywint wrote:

This is what we are up against in the Babs Gone Wild era.

ROTLFMAO! Brilliant post. Could not agree more with everything that you said.

Quote :

We shoulld mail the whole thing to MGW, and see if it might knock some sense into him. Babs is beyond salvage I believe. I don't think she cares. If you watch the original SFpress conference, it looked like she wanted to get naked with Mendes right then and there.
She worships the ground these Holllywood gods walk on.

I remember saying at the time that MGW looked tired, deflated and dispirited. Glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed it. Personally, I think MGW is too far gone as well, but for different reasons. I think he's probably ready to move on from Bond and go into retirement. Heck, he may only be hanging around just to try and keep Babs from indulging her worst instincts, so he's probably our ally in that respect.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

This is what we are up against in the Babs Gone Wild era.

ROTLFMAO! Brilliant post. Could not agree more with everything that you said.

Quote :

We shoulld mail the whole thing to MGW, and see if it might knock some sense into him. Babs is beyond salvage I believe. I don't think she cares. If you watch the original SFpress conference, it looked like she wanted to get naked with Mendes right then and there.
She worships the ground these Holllywood gods walk on.

I remember saying at the time that MGW looked tired, deflated and dispirited. Glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed it. Personally, I think MGW is too far gone as well, but for different reasons. I think he's probably ready to move on from Bond and go into retirement. Heck, he may only be hanging around just to try and keep Babs from indulging her worst instincts, so he's probably our ally in that respect.

I agree totally about being MGW being exhausted. I wouldn't be surprised if he's, sadly, not in good health. It's rather shocking to contrast how he looked circa 1999 when all those "Inside" documentaries were made for the special edition DVDs with how he's looked during the Craig years. In nine years, from 1999-2008 (during the production of QOS), the change is quite shocking.

MGW has been exhausted since Tomorrow Never Dies. At least, he's complained about how the exhaustion of making James Bond movies since then.

Napoleon Solo wrote:

MGW has been exhausted since Tomorrow Never Dies. At least, he's complained about how the exhaustion of making James Bond movies since then.

I don't think he much enjoys having to run the store, as it were. In interviews, he seems to relish talking about films from the Cubby days he helped to work on, as opposed to the ones he actually produced. He seems better suited tempermentally to being a supporting figure rather than a leader.

If anything, this is a good argument against hereditary anything (monarchy, business, etc.). There's no guarantee that the second or third generation will be as suited to their roles as the first generation was. It's why the "Five Good Emperors" of Rome were the only stretch of emperors to adopt their successor rather than let the closest relative take over.

I'm torn between wishing that EON simply went out of existence and someone else had a chance at filming Fleming's material and the sinking suspicion that the next production company might even be worse. :x Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories are all (or pretty much all) in the public domain, and so anyone can have a crack at adapting them. And yet, with the possible exception of Cumberbatch (who is burdened with the writing of those Dr. Who hacks) every production in the last twenty or so years since Jeremy Brett passed away has been terrible, either turning Holmes into an emo moron or trying to make him an action hero (as in those horrid RDJ films).

right idea, wrong pussy wrote:

Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories are all (or pretty much all) in the public domain, and so anyone can have a crack at adapting them. And yet, with the possible exception of Cumberbatch (who is burdened with the writing of those Dr. Who hacks) every production in the last twenty or so years since Jeremy Brett passed away has been terrible, either turning Holmes into an emo moron or trying to make him an action hero (as in those horrid RDJ films).

Indeed - increasingly today it seems all they really want is a 'headline name' on which to hang their own agenda, although I do have serious misgivings atm I certainly agree Eon are far from the worse offenders out there.

Hmm.

Of course, Ian Fleming himself started this emo-Bond stuff, didn't he?

OHMSS is a bit of a lark, but JB alls in love, chucks his lifestyle and job - and his wife gets shot!
YOLT sees Bond having a nervous breakdown, goes to Japan on a similar lark, and then goes crazy with revenge after Blowers.
TMTWGG begins with Bond shooting M, is restorted to sanity via mental treatment. Christ, had Fleming been able to do a second draft we might have had more emo - Bond reflecting on his treatment in Russia, his remorse at shooting M.

So the soppy stuff isn't just down to Craig and Barbs.

That's a good point, Schofield. I spose Fleming was a bit ahead of his time in more ways than one. And incidentally, Fleming's dilation on Bond's emotional landscape is one reason I think critics are foolish when they claim Bond is a blank page upon which we write our own fantasies. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

That's a good point, Schofield. .

Cheers, mate, but would you mind calling me "David"?

Schofield's my surname and I haven't really been called that since I left school, except by people who don't like me. :D

How about just DS? Time saving, wot.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

How about just DS? Time saving, wot.

Works for me.