Before I was married (let alone have children), I used to go to the movies a LOT. There was a group of us who looked for critically acclaimed films and paid attention to the movies nominated for various awards, then watched as many of them as possible.
Some might call it elitist; I simply have discerning taste. These days, however, I usually have to watch animated films picked by my children, or one of the ten rom-com films my wife loves.
As much as I love the cinematic experience, I often found problems within the movies I loved. Sometimes it was poor casting (I’m looking at you, Back to School’s Keith Gordon), or chronological impossibilities (something almost all the Star Wars/Star Trek/Marvel movies suffer from), but too often there was just something…off, which brings us to my favorite Bond film, Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale.
It’s gritty. It’s raw. It’s supposed to be a realistic, inexperienced James Bond…but there are some real problems with it.
When Bond is held captive on an abandoned boat, Le Chiffre tortures our hero by swinging a weighted rope at some ”low-hanging fruit”, and instead of suffering a ruptured testicle, vomiting and being debilitated for some time, our protagonist screams and offers a wise-crack or two while “suffering”, and for a movie that is sold as more “realistic” than earlier Bond films, this causes some issues.
Bond’s superhuman recovery is a problem through the entire series, so let me skip ahead to the biggest issue – the poker game, and specifically…the last hand.
I won’t bore you with the details, but others have analyzed it before. If Le Chiffre were the amazing poker player everyone promotes leading up to that final hand, he would not have gone all in on that hand.
And yet…it’s still my favorite Bond film.
The follow up should’ve been even better. A series of cargo ships have been relieved of their precious cargo. The crews have turned up safe, but billions of dollars in gems and gold were lost to thieves. Bond is forced to go undercover with a partner as marine biologists to track the last of the hijacked ships on which two undercover agents were murdered. Bond is new at his job, and he makes mistakes – this leads to his FBI partner Felix’s death, and Bond’s superiors are forced to come in and save his ass.
Oh, wait…that’s the plot for When Eight Bells Toll, the 1966 novel by Alistair MacLean. Casino Royale’s sequel Quantum of Solace was written from scratch by the team who wrote seven Bond films between 1999 and 2021, and don’t get me started – they try to cram a LOT into an hour and forty minutes with some success and some failures.
When I was a kid, my father gave me a collection of his books. Some were from his youth, such as the 1940s versions of The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift, but also a bunch of Alistair MacLean novels, and I soaked them up. The Secret Ways. Ice Station Zebra. Guns of Navarone. Caravan to Vaccares. Night Without End… and of course, When Eight Bells Toll.
I can’t tell you how often I read MacLean’s novels, but I can tell you the first book I ever purchased of my own was Seawitch, his 1977 novel. It wasn’t as good, but ten year-old me was never prouder.
In 1992 I left for Europe, and I took When Eight Bells Toll with me. On that trip I discovered Foucault’s Pendulum, and MacLean’s novel slowly lost its place in my bookshelf, but sixteen years later I found myself thinking back to it as I watched Quantum of Solace.
What’s a movie that you’d love, if it wasn’t for that ONE thing in the movie?
I’ll catch up with the conversation later, but Mrs. Thegue is calling. Something Borrowed is on the TV again, and it’s date night.
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I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a James Bond film, but I can relate to your lost ability to dig into some more challenging films. I got through five years of grad school in an isolated college town by having art film nights with friends. I love all kinds of movies, but there is something special about immersing yourself once in a while in a work that rewards patience, careful consideration, and an open mind. Once I got married (and especially once I moved to the DC area) I no longer have a social circle that provides such opportunities (for movies at least. My wife and I really enjoy art galleries and music performances together).
Thinking off the bat (tee hee), we recently rewatched Christopher Nolan’s Batman films, as well as the new installment with Robert Pattinson. All of them are in many respects well made, featuring great actors and some thoughtful considerations for plot and larger themes. But they are all too damn overstuffed with…stuff. The new one is 3 hours long and still overstuffed with people and plots! Such a commitment to the busyness model ultimately makes for some sloppiness in the storytelling. Less is more, people!
I have a really hard time remembering the plots to spy, intrigue, or superhero movies. They all seem ridiculously convoluted to me, and I quit paying attention after the first three explosions. That said, I still watch these movies if I enjoy the actors or characters. So, I have a favorite Bond (Daniel Craig) but not a favorite Bond movie. I don’t have a favorite Batman, but I have a favorite Batman villain (Heath Ledger as the Joker). While I wish I had enjoyed “The Dark Knight” as a whole, I got so tired of explosions that I could have dozed off in the theater if it had quieted down just a little. And the ending was preposterous.
I have watched all of the Marvel movies (except the Hulk solo effort) up through “End Game.” I enjoyed most of them, but the only ones that I remember well are the Captain America ones because he is my favorite superhero, as he is the only one who actually earned his superpowers (in the Marvel universe, anyway).
Of course, I am also not a big fan of rom-coms. Or most comedies. But arthouse or independent films, I am there. I also love a lot of classic films. I really love movies, just not the ones that everyone else seems to love.
The 2 immediate movies that come to mind that are really enjoyable…. aside from the female leads… are Batman and Working Girl.
Basinger as Vicky Vale annoys me to no end the entire movie, and instead of feeling all “you go girl” for Melanie Griffith’s character, I want to push her off the ferry so she can just GO, AWAY.
But as for glaring plot holes, I try not to get too caught up in them. MrDutch, on the other hand, is totally that science nerd who gets all exasperated and goes on how such and such situation is totally not possible (which is much more tolerable now that we watch nearly everything at home On Demand so I can pause the movie and go – how many times have I told you to TURN YOUR BRAIN OFF watching movies??!! Suspension of Disbelief, dude, lol) He’s like an audience watching a horror movie in Harlem, yelling at the screen. Or the MST3K guys.
So I’m sure he’d be willing to have that conversation with you, thegue!
Casino Royale though, oh I can talk about that alllll day. I grew up a Bond fan, but realized as I got older there was something missing from the Bond Experience for me, though I could never pinpoint what. So I was definitely intrigued with Casino Royale’s trailers, and I had no problem convincing MrDutch to come with me, since he was already an Eva Green fan before she was even cast. I have never been so enraptured in the opening 10 minutes or so of a movie, just absolute delight and giddiness watching the whole scene play out. I think I sat there with the biggest grin, so happy I may have been crying. This is what I’d wanted in Bond all my life. The puzzle had finally been solved – I NEEDED badass, act first-maybe ponder later James Bond in my life. C’mon, this Bond catches the dudes gun and just throws it back at him – at the top of a 100 foot crane!!!! That’s so AWESOME!!!
MrDutch looked over and asked if I was OK, and I was simply – they finally gave me the perfect Bond. Life is good.
Never focused on the poker hands being played, as MrDutch spent the whole time complaining about the horrible dress they put Eva in. 🙄 😁
Such a brilliant opening. Suddenly, Bond is HUMAN.
I’m also a huge fan of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but that might be more because of Diana Rigg as Mrs. Bond!
I was an avid cinema goer as well. At uni it was pretty much weekly and once I started working for a while my working week was Sunday to Wednesday so I’d often go to the cinema during the day on a Thursday or Friday when it was cheaper and there was hardly anyone in. Seemed strange going alone at first but once the film starts it doesn’t really matter if you’re alone. My wife has similar tastes and for the first 6 years of our relationship we would go most weeks. It was having a baby did for us. I’ve gone through the animated film years and although my daughter does still enjoy some terrible movies we’ve found plenty of entertaining family films too.
We’ve also been sharing our favourites from the 80s, 90s and 00s with her. Goonies was a big hit, Beetlejuice not so much. She’s mad about sharks so we let her watch Jaws 1 and 2 and she thought they were great.
As for that one thing in a movie. I finally got round to watching Bird Box at the weekend – as I said, I’m out of touch. I mostly enjoyed it but there was one element that had me screaming plot hole.
Spoiler Alert!!
So the safe haven is only accessible by boat which involves shooting some rapids. I’ve got two problems with this. Firstly, they’re told one person has to go without a blindfold to navigate the rapids but doing this means certain death for them as it means they’ll see the creatures and be impelled to kill themselves. Through the whole movie on seeing a creature everyone has pretty much committed suicide instantly and the creatures are everywhere. Which means your navigator isn’t going to be much help getting through those rapids and probably even imperil the others as they find a way to end themselves. So Sandra decides they’ll all do it blindfold. Good choice.
Secondly; they find safe haven and the big reveal is its a blind school so they’re not affected by the monsters. Why the hell is the blind school only accessible by river via white water rapids? Seems a bit of a design flaw. It was built in pre-monster apocalypse times and presumably it had road access otherwise that was a mad school commute. As the creatures are everywhere including the river why not just go by road? No one questions it. Maybe the apocalypse affects your reasoning.
That just reminded me – so when I first moved out on my own, I’d always be driving past my local movie theater on my way home from work at the same time every day, and it was always during matinee hours. So it became a weekly treat for me to just pull in at the theater on the way home and grab a movie. Usually on a Thursday afternoon, before the new stuff came out on Friday, so there might be 5 other people in the theater if that. It was great, and I had no qualms about going by myself – I preferred it that way.
This was when they re-released Star Wars in theaters for the 20th anniversary, I know I paid to see Star Wars 4 times, TESB twice and ROTJ twice. Even though I already owned the VHS boxsets (3 different versions by that point I think) and could talk along to the movies verbatim, I had to see it on the big screen again. And few people around to be disturbed by my running movie dialog and subsequently giggling like a dope when R2 would beep off at 3PO.
Those were definitely times when going to the movies was a lot of fun for me.
“Welcome to TNOCS, Mr. Bond!”
Well done, thegue.
I was a tweenager when Bond mania hit the US in the early sixties, mostly inspired by President JFK revealing his preferred reading was the Ian Fleming novels.
The problems you point out are in each of the movies and the late, great movie critic Roger Ebert called them the talking bad man theory in which the villain, instead of just killing our hero has a five minute dialogue involving all the reasons he (the villain) did the things he did, giving our hero enough time to find a weakness and reverse the roles or have the calvary arrive in the nick of time.
Spoiler alert but since its been fifty odd years since its release, I don’t think I’m giving away a lot.
Like your head scratcher with the card game in Casino Royale, his was with the Mafia meeting scene with Goldfinger at the racing farm he owned in Kentucky.
Goldfinger has built a elaborate construction of Fort Knox and the surrounding area and gleefully explains the plan he has hatched to contaminate all the gold in Fort Knox with radioactivity and bankrupt the US and make his horde of gold in Switzerland the only gold available.
One Mafia chieftain opts out (his fate will be felt with later)all the others are all in.
Goldfinger then proceeds to seal off the room, dons a gas mask and floods the room with deadly poison, killing all the Mafioso.
As much as Ebert loved the movie, he couldn’t figure out why someone would spent all that money to build the exhibit, explain the plan and then kill everyone who could appreciate it!
But the Bond films are not about logic, just enjoy the beautiful scenery, the gorgeous women Bond beds and sometimes weds, the heinous villains and most of all, the intricate devices Q comes up with to keep Bond alive!
You expect me to respond, DanceFever??!!
[Stifles urge to state the obvious reply to thegue]
But,
But,
It’s too perfect a layup…..
“No Mr. thegue, we expect you to Die!”
Thanks, Goldfinger!
Now you’ve me shaken and stirred!
I am annoyed right up the wall with any movie that attributes feats of hard work and clear thinking to magic and luck. The beauty of Texas Hold’em is that it demands a rigorous understanding of probability, with a dash of knowing human nature…but even the “human nature” element requires an understanding of game theory. Between Casino Royale and The Cincinnati Kid, a winning poker hand is just modern-day deus ex machina. Makes me feel cheated.
I’m at work and don’t have time to explain why Amadeus irritated me so much. (And don’t get me started on Forrest Gump…)
…which reminds me:
Have you seen Ex Machina? 2014 film; such a great film.
Thanks for reminding me! I think I saw a sequence and filed it in my “for later” memory bank…then forgot it. Will try!
Exactly – even if you’re going ot give him an over-the-top, unlikely victory, why have Bond win on a hand he _can’t lose_ with, rather than one that requires him to show some skill and nerve? (OK, he could have lost if someone had pocket Aces)
If Bond had won a pile of chips with an unsuited 2-7, that would have been the coolest of cool.
Strange Days is a brilliant and presceient film, and widely acknowleged as something of a lost classic, or at least a film worthy of a much wider audience than it got, but there’s a brutal and graphic r*pe scene at the center of the movie that just makes it pretty much un-rewatchable for me.