James Bond 25 - Speculation and Anticipation Thread*

I'll bet Cineworld is now regretting the purchase of Regal big time. Cineworld shares are now down 88.5% YTD - 52 week high of $232.40, currently $25.20!!! They were profitable prior to the Covid disaster.

CINE-GB: Cineworld Group PLC - Stock Price, Quote and News - CNBC

Acquisition by Cineworld
In November 2017, Regal began merger talks with the UK theater chain Cineworld. On December 5, it was officially announced that Cineworld would buy Regal for $3.6 billion, forming the world's second-largest cinema group.

 

I bet your right. Coming off 2019 with super tentpole movies plus a slew of other movies like Us, Shazan, Booksmart and so many other smaller movies that brought in a continuous income to theaters.

We often talk about whether a Movie was a success at the box office, meaning, was a movie financially successful vs. its production costs.

But, even movies like Alita (2018), which was on the fence financially, brought in over 400M in revenues to theaters.

In 2019 there was movie after movie that brought theaters continuous revenue streams.

2020 was pretty much of a wasteland. It was only saved initally by carry overs from 2019 even before the pandemic.

These things happen...

Years ago, Viacom discovered that they overpaid 1B when they bought Blockbuster Video. Then not long afterward, it went completely out of business!

What I did find amusing, was that theater chains raised money from investors in 2020.

This was baffling to me? How stupid do investors have to be, to be investing in movie theaters at this point of time?

I frankly can't see how any of the major chains are going to survive this?

I think the only theaters that even stand a chance are the small independents.

 

They are closing around here.

The best independent theater in NJ could not survive.
ShowRoom Cinemas closing theaters in Asbury Park and Bradley Beach

I visited the Asbury Park branch numerous times over the past few years. I and my friends who live in the Asbury Park area are very sad to see it go. This was an old school art house theater, showing films you couldn’t see within a 50 mile radius.

 

The NO TIME TO DIE trailer looks so damn good, too. Definitely a movie I would want to see in a nice theater.

 

Looks like it could have came out ten years ago.

 

From a very long Hollywood Reporter interview with "No time to die" director Cary Fukunaga

Bond Director Cary Fukunaga on Filming Daniel Craig’s ‘No Time to Die’ – The Hollywood Reporter

"Sean Connery's character a raper"

plus

Way to market a new Bond film...

 

No Time To Die ?
Just read the s&m, sex scenes have been cut out for a ..12A certificate.

More James Bland, than James Bond.

 

Has he actually seen the films? In every one of those scenes those women could easily say no or get away if they wanted to. There was a flirtatious energy to those characters and those women weren't exactly running for the hills when Bond made his advances. Sure, Bond has his sexist moments. That aspect has always been there, but those moments tend to be few and far between. He hasn't hit a woman since 1974 and has yet to actually force himself on anyone. Bond has never been a saint but he's not a monster either.

It's interviews like this that make me think they're going to permanently change or damage the character. The directors and producers are so afraid of the PC crowd that they'll sink the franchise in order to make some Twitter warriors happy. Good luck with all that.

 

Afraid of pc crowd”
Hope the films a flop.

 

On the flip side:

Daniel Craig addresses whether new James Bond should be a woman

Barbara Broccoli appears to agree:

No Time to Die: Barbara Broccoli & Michael G. Wilson on Bond's Future - Variety

 

Spot on. And damages, to various degrees, have been done since 2006

 

I don’t think it’ll amount to much, I suspect Bond will still get laid and he’ll just have stronger female characters around him. Frankly I don’t care if a film is more PC, it’s usually never noticeable anyway if it’s organically integrated into the tale.

Most of the negatively quoted comments are from the HR writer and not the director, whose most key quote seems to suggest you can’t change Bond that much but you can change those around him.

Will the film have a story that makes sense and has forward momentum, and will there be some fantastic action scenes and a hateful villain or two? That’s all I really care about.

 

I’ve never especially though this chapter in the overall Bond series was particularly PC, and the ruin of the Bond character of late has been due to tone and poor storylines. Linking the films is fine, but making them gloomy and serious and tied to Bond’s childhood is absurd. Casino Royale was a high point, a nice balance of casual humor and action and fine performances, and it’s a shame it wasn’t maintained.

 

https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/james-bond-daniel-craig-woman-next-newsupdate/

It would be cool if Craig went the Netflix and said: "you really should hire Jeffrey Wright or Naomie Harris to play Benoit Blanc in the Knives Out sequels" adding: "there should simply be better parts for women and actors of colour. Keep your money and hire somebody like them"

C'mon Dan, set a good example and produce a movie with great roles for women and actors of colour. It's so easy to please the PC army just with words. Invest your money instead!

 

As long as the women and actors of color are not US citizens--wasn't Knives Out a rather obvious commercial for immigrants, portraying all the spoiled white kids as morally reprehensible? It would help if anyone in Hollywood was capable of being subtle.

 

Yeah, but...isn't Jeffrey Wright american?

 

Yes, although his role in Boardwalk Empire as a "subversive" type certainly gives him some impressive earmarks.

 

ah, ok. Never seen "Boardwalk empire"

 

Casino Royale was definitely one of the best of the series. SKYFALL was also pretty good. QUANTUM OF SOLICE was meh. SPECTRE was a mess. I used to be more positive about it but I watched it again recently and....it's not good. The opening sequence was great but it was all down hill from there.

I'm looking forward to seeing the new one for sure.

 

I look at Casino and Quantum as one film…it elevates the latter and sort of diminishes the former, I suppose.

But I agree, Casino is the best of the lot.

 

Not only, but the one film where Bond actually labels a woman as "bit*h" is a Daniel Craig one

So much for the "mysoginist" Connery's Bond.

 

The problem with Quantum is it shows Purvis and Wade at their worst. I'd say half the film has the silliest plot holes, eg:

MI6 sends somebody not trained, a secretary that was just filing papers to take Bond back to London? No surprise Greene's henchmen kill her. And the "homage" to the Goldfinger scene was just ridiculous. How about inventing something original, instead?



So, Bonds captures Mr. White, presumably head of a mysterious criminal organization and takes him in a room in Siena with 3 people; one of them is the 70+ years old M that could've followed the same stuff at the MI6 headquarters?

Why M is travelling the world?

Good old Bernard Lee -with much less technology- didn't need to travel to know how the mission was going. In Casino and Quantum, they're showing all the crazy tech spy stuff - M even has tracking devices and state of the art spy computers in her bedroom- but for some reasons she has to travel and to be on location! A 70+ years old lady.

Quantum starts some minutes after the end of Casino Royale, so Bond and Leiter just met once, a few days before. Yet in Bolivia, Leiter acts as if he and Bond were longtime buddies, even not fulfilling his CIA agent duties and revealing Bond stuff that should've been secret. Why?

So, Mathis the traitor in Casino was innocent, in Quantum admits to have been tortured because of Bond's report and then Bond finds where he is and asks for his help. All the aforementioned stuff (Mathis imprisoned and tortured) seems to have been happened over a long time but, let's remember again, only a few days have passed, because Quantum starts a few minutes after Casino's ending.

And not only Mathis forgives Bond, but for no reason an old man that was just released from "torture" and should be physically weak, leaves a mansion given to him as an apology for thinking he was a traitor, to go to Bolivia and risk his life. And how many days did it take to give him that mansion? Mathis acts and talks as if he had been there for years.

After the airplane sequence and the walk in the desert, Bond comes back to the hotel where he was staying with Fields (the Gemma Arterton character) just to find..M and other agents that are there to stop his mission, take his gun, handcuff him and arrest him. In the elevator Bonds gets rid of all of them, then in the hotel is spotted by M as is walking away but M instantly changes her mind and tell other agents to let him go because Bond is an agent of her and she trusts him.

Seriously, I couldn't stop laughing. So, M travels to Bolivia to do..what? And after a couple minutes decides that Bond should proceed, do whatever he wants and go away undisturbed? It doesn't help that as Bonds gets out of the hotel, finds Camille in a WV Beetle and they just go. What a lucky day!

The members of the "secret organization" meet at the Opera and communicate via earbuds. Not a complicated meeting. They just have to say if the agree or not. Not much to discuss.

Silly.

It is much simpler for the meeting to take place in an isolated, or just closed to public building, like they did in "Spectre" or a public place with a secret large room, like they did in "Thunderball". Instead, for reasons unknown, the "unknown secret criminal organization" arrange a meeting at the Opera, the theater staff have to give a gift bag (with earbuds) to selected guests and while the Tosca is performed they just have to say if they agree or not. Ridiculous.

And Kurylenko is supposed to portray a Bolivian girl. Not to start an ethnicity discussion, but they picked a Russian girl and tanned her for the movie. I'm sure there were great Latina actresses that could've done the role equally well. But no, they picked this blu eyed Russian girl with the palest skin and darkened her. D'oh!

I could go on with the same boring Bond retired/licence revoked/Bond on board again stuff that has been plaguing the Craig years. Heck, he's resigning even in Casino Royale, before leaving for Venice with Vesper. Resigns from his 00 status, MI6 agent status via email, no less.

After one mission

 

It's obvious. She travelled to be at the interrogation in person because it was the key to breaking into the mission-critical organization that was behind so much terrorist activity and economic turmoil. In-person relationships with captured hostiles are critical. It's not something you can establish by teleconferecing. And I rather liked the nod to the past in QoS--I thought it was better than each of the other Craig 007 movies in some ways.

M also travelled to Bermuda to see the trail of bodies Bond had left behind in Casino Royale and personally oversees the subcutaneous tracker installed in his arm. So her traveling to Siena, which is very close to UK, is not the big deal you're making of it.

It's obvious: Leiter knows his own superior at CIA is corrupt and he therefore is sympathetic to Bond--giving him a heads-up that he's about to be murdered isn't really something reserved for longtime buddies; it's just a professional courtesy.

Mathis does seem rather "settled in" at his new residence--good point. But this was a grey area with regard to his being innocent or traitorous. He had crossed a line that perhaps he didn't mean to cross, and he needed to accept the consequences regardless of his intentions.

The M schoolmarm routine where she goes back and forth between chastizing and punishing Bond and trusting him completely is by far the most annoying thing about Dench's role, but it is by no means specific to QoS. It is equally annoying in CR and Skyfall.

M is impressed by Bond's might and determination and on top of that, what could she do at that point to stop him? He just took out her entire team. Being a woman, she relies more on intuition and emotion than a male M. Though as for that, the Fiennes character flip-flopped a lot, too, in Spectre.

There may have been more discussion if Bond didn't reveal he was listening in; he wanted to capture images of each of the participants in the meeting. Seriously, of all the things to criticize, this is rather pedantic. And I very much enjoyed the ostentatious setting and "bad taste" glitz of the opera. I thought the entire scene was incredibly well directed.

The character is half Russian. She's my favorite Bond girl, so I can't agree with your criticism here. There are plenty of Bolivians who look white and far less "ethnic" than Kurylenko.

Yes, I think CR is far more worthy of criticism than QoS. But together, I think both are the pinnacle of not just Criag's contributions but the entire Bond francise. I agree with many of your overarching criticisms, but I think on balance what they get right far outweighs what they get wrong.

 

Have you actually seen the films?

 

Yes, many times. Ms. Galore doesn't exactly scream and struggle constantly to get away, does she?