Can we please stop praising Daniel Craig's Bond films? (Part II)

 

Ok, so Quantum of Solace was a sequel to Casino Royale so maybe it was all right that Craig spent it in mourning of a Bond girl, though seriously I really miss the days when they were just disposable eye candy who existed for one film and one film only.  This is where Bond's journey to becoming a hard, remorseless killer in service of Her Majesty is completed.  We'll be back to Bond saving the world while surrounded with eye candy he doesn't give one flying damn about now that his Not Very Interesting Origin Story is over.  Right?

Nope.

In Skyfall we get Bond left for dead in the pre-credits sequence, and it turns out that he's fallen off the grid and is basically retired for the second time in three films.  Jesus, we get it- this guy doesn't really want to be a spy.  Fine, go get Clive Owen.  But then the MI6 HQ is attacked and he comes back and now he's got a strong relationship with M for some reason even though he's still been a 00 for about fifteen minutes and has been on exactly three missions, two of which he ended by quitting.  Anyway, the "plot" leads Bond to the villain who gets him to fall for one of the most overused cliche's of the last thirty years- the Bad Guy Who Gets Captured On Purpose So He Can Carry Out His Real Plan cliche.  And what are the ridiculously high stakes- is Silva going to crash the world economy or start World War III?  Nope.  He just wants to kill M because M left him to die after a mission went bad.  Again with the Deep Personal Connection crap.  And it's only going to get worse in later films.

We get a ridiculously convoluted master plan which would be completely inoperable if any one of ten thousand things went slightly differently and then we get a freaking Home Alone Ripoff showdown at the Bond family estate in Scotland and there are, again, pretty much no stakes to speak of.  And M dies anyway.  Which means that Bond actually fails his mission and the bad guy triumphs.  Well that's original, anyway. 

Skyfall was highly praised for the same reason Casino Royale was highly praised- because it was much, much better than it's predecessor.  And both times, that was a very low bar to overcome.  But it was still dumb, pointless trash that left us wondering if Craig's Bond was ever going to get an interesting mission. 

Then we get Spectre.  This is interesting because the Brocolli family spent thirty years trying to get the rights to use the NAME of the super-cool Third Power agency introduced in the very first Bond film and which became synonymous with the series during the Connery era.  So what to the Brocollis do with this precious property?  They trash the hell out of it, even ruining the second-best villain of the series, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. 

Remember him?  The guy with the Cat?  The coldblooded mastermind who plotted World Domination?  He's butchered in this film.  I mean, Charles Gray's depiction ALMOST destroyed the character in Diamonds are Forever, but he's RUINED here because the producers simply can't stop trying to make everything Deep and Personal.

See, it turns out that Blofeld is....Bond's stepbrother.  Who hates Bond because....Blofeld's dad adopted him and maybe loved him more than his own flesh and blood.  That's why Blofeld built the largest, richest, most dangerous criminal enterprise on the planet.  Because of hurt feels.  

And Mr. White, the underused Should Have Been villain of Casino Royale?  Turns out he's got a hot daughter, and she's the Bond girl in this flick.  When she didn't die at the end, I thought "oh no....Vesper 2.0...." but then I thought "I'm just being cynical.  They aren't going to make us see Bond in love again, right?  RIGHT?"

Jeeeeesh.   The end of this sad enterprise is on its way. 

Can we please stop praising Daniel Craig's Bond films? (Part I)

 

I mean, seriously now.  Daniel Craig was a huge jump in quality from Pierce Brosnan, who was a huge drop in quality from the criminally underappreciated Timothy Dalton, but that's a very low bar.  In his 15-year tenure as 007 Craig's films have been slavishly praised - and all very profitable- but looking back at those years and those films, I can't help but comment that they are essentially a decade and a half of spinning wheels, wasted time, and really a whole lot of Nothing that did little more than shred the Bond mythology and leave us really not caring so much if we ever see the iconic superspy on the big screen ever again. 

Before I break down why each film is an overrated mess, I'll toss a grenade at the Broccoli family, which made a horrible hash of the series with their inability to keep the franchise going with any regularity as if they are allergic to making money- in fifteen years, they manage to push out five films.  Back in the 60s and 70s Bond fans could look forward to seeing their hero on the screen every other summer, pretty much like clockwork.  But the Broccolis acted as if making Bond films wasn't their bread and butter, it was the horrible job they had to go do every once in a while when compelled to.  They didn't treat the franchise with respect, and they sure didn't treat the loyal fans with respect.  And yeah, I know the last film was delayed by COVID- but that doesn't explain the yawning gap of SIX YEARS between it and Spectre.  Keeping to schedule, No Time To Die should have hit the theaters in 2017, 2018 at the latest.  They just f--ked it up.

Ok, here we go- each Craig film and it's contribution to murdering one of the most profitable franchises of all time-

1.  Casino Royale.  The reaction to this one irritates me more than any other.  Yeah, it's fine.  Craig is a good Bond- he does the physical action well- as good as Lazenby- and is believable as a newly-minted 00 still learning the ropes.  But if you remove every scene where someone is looking or using a cellphone, this film is barely an hour long.  I swear, four minutes never go by in which someone doesn't consult their little phone for a text or to answer or make a call.  It's like I'm watching a High School cafeteria during lunch.  Also, Eva Green is boring as hell.  Also, Eva Green is a treasury department official who needs to be constantly updated by another guy how much money is in the pot, because I guess treasury department officials aren't good at math if they are also girls.  Also, that I don't care about Bond's relationship with Vesper is really, really bad news because even though she dies at the end of this film, she's present in the next four as well, because the Broccolis made the awful awful awful decision to make Craig's Bond live in a world where Continuity is Everything instead of doing the traditional reset we had no problem with for 40 years.  Don't care about Bond's personal angst?  Too damn bad, because you are going to be fed it for the next fifteen years.  

2.  Quantum of Solace- after suffering through the absolute worst theme song in the history of the franchise (yes, even worse than Madonna's for Die Another Day) we get a confusing mess of action sequences with jump scares, quick cuts, and blurred motion I can't believe we are supposed to be capable of deciphering without multiple viewings (and NOBODY is watching this twice.)  We also get the cliche'd - to - death girl who wants to kill the bad guy because he killed her family when she was a little girl bit.  We get a boring villain and a boring plot with very very low stakes (sigh; what happened to world domination?  I want my hollowed-out volcanoes and World War III, instead I get "control of the water supply in a South American country OMIGOD I AM ON THE EDGE OF MY SEAT?")  And of course, we get references to Vesper.  To remind us that this is a sequel.  Don't know about you, but I stop caring about the Bond girl as soon as the credits roll.  I don't need to see her again or hear her referenced in the next film.  Too bad for me, because....

(To be Continued.)

Domino's pizza- you get what you pay for. Even more so this weekend.

 

Isn't Domino's pretty much the cheapest pizza option out there already?

Seems to me that fifty percent off garbage is still paying good money for garbage.  The idea that anyone would "freak out" and rush to Domino's to get a box of fat-infused sugar and carbs because it's just as cheap as it tastes, well...at least they could populate this commercial with fast food and big box store employees and not people who look like they've got plenty of money even if they have zero taste to go along with it.

This Applebee's/Top Gun crossover commercial is almost 40 years too late

 

I haven't seen the new Top Gun: Maverick film, but from what I hear, it's pretty good.  Which means it's far and away better than the original, which was really slow-paced when not in the air and which featured some of the dullest dialogue of any film of the 1980s, which is really saying something.

If we wanted to make a logical connection between two overrated, by-the-numbers American icons- the original Top Gun film, and Applebee's- that needed to be done back in the mid-80s.  This is just really stupid, especially as it's suggested that Tom Cruise's character disrupts life in this small town- and especially in this oddly placed (is that a cliff?) Applebee's restaurant on a regular basis.  May I ask why?

Never mind.  Don't care.  

Domino's multi-course suicide pact.

 

"At Dominos, you don't have to end your assault on your arteries with just pizza!  You can get MORE bread in the shape of little cannonballs which is also empty calories!  Plus there's pasta made of MORE empty carbs!  And because there's not enough sugar in that sauce, here's a bag of sweet chemicals that taste kind of like chocolate to top it all off with!"

Well, the price is right, anyway.  Amazing how much rat poison you can buy for $6.99.  What a great country. 

Back to "normal" in Tampa....

 

For the first time in three years, I'll be traveling to score Advanced Placement essays (I'll give you two guesses why the scoring was done entirely on line in 2020 and 2021.)  So this is where I'll be until June 8.  I'm bringing my laptop with me and I might update this blog during my stay, but I probably won't (based on the stats, very few people would notice either way.)  So enjoy this little travelogue about the place I'll be or skim the archives till I get back.  Bye for now!

TCM's annual gaudy "salute" to the troops

 

When Turner Classic Movies released this promo for their Memorial Day lineup of programming in 2007, the youngest World War II veterans were entering their Eighties and the youngest Korean War vets were entering their mid-70s.  The youngest Vietnam War vets were entering their fifties, not that Vietnam War vets have ever mattered to Turner Classic Movies when it comes to "honoring sacrifice." 

Fifteen years later, it's another Memorial Day Weekend and like clockwork we are being inundated with one World War II According to Hollywood film after another, because there's apparently no other way to show appreciation for our veterans than to remind the very few who are left that the United States used to fight honorable wars against real threats to humanity and that the 100 percent white American army saved the world from those threats without blinking an eye when called upon to do so because Back Then People Respected Authority and Loved the Flag and God.  

I've always wondered why any veteran of any war would want to be reminded every single year of what was almost certainly the Worst Years of their Lives, or why reminding people of those wars they once read about in textbooks is seen as such a vital mission by networks like TCM.  If I had seen combat in any war I think it's something I'd rather forget, not have shoved in my face by well-meaning networks or politicians or car dealerships.  Of course, the youngest World War II veteran (practically the entire TCM lineup this weekend is World War II-themed films) is in his mid-90s, so chances are that very, very few of them will be watching TCM this weekend anyway.  Here's hoping they are spending time with their great-grandchildren and eating big cheeseburgers at a picnic table instead.  They've earned it.