Quick! Costume Change! Aaargh! Running out of clean tuxedos!

[rich_jacko]

Yes, sorry, it's another Casino Royale review, which gourou, bonedancer, grok_mctanys and I went to see on Monday night. But I'm only writing this because I wanted to ask, am I the only person who thinks this film was overrated?

Don't get me wrong. It was good; it just didn't live up to the hype. Daniel Craig makes a really good Bond, and I like that he occasionally gets beaten up and that we get to see the vulnerable and human side of him.

But I miss the theme tune and the massive set-pieces, and I think the film-makers did too. There were several one-on-one fights that threatened to get bigger but never quite managed it, and the theme music kept almost breaking out but not quite. Despite having fight scenes bolted on to all sides, the film never quite managed to disguise the fact that it was an action movie centered around - not a nuclear missile or a giant space laser - but a card game.

So whilst it was fun, it was also forgettable. Hardly the OMG-it's-the-best-Bond-flick-EVAH!!! that everyone seems to be making it out to be. I'm neither surprised nor bothered that a tap-dancing penguin has trounced it in the US.

The fight near the start is a classic example of the point I'm trying to make. All that leaping around a construction site (or "Parkour" as all the cool kids are calling it nowadays) was very well done and a highly entertaining action sequence. But it was nothing I haven't seen Jackie Chan, Jet Li or Tony Jaa do a dozen times before, and to hear people go on about it you'd think it was The Most Amazing Set Of Stunts Ever Seen On Screen In The History Of Anything Ever.

What do I know about these "franchise reboots" anyway? After all, I thought Batman Begins wasn't a patch on the two Tim Burton movies. So over to you guys...

[Poll #872783]

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_pinkdaisy_/]

can i submit an answer of good, not quite worth the hype, but still a lot better than the last few :)

[ju-bear.livejournal.com]

It was ok, a change from the others, but you are not only one who thinks it is over hyped. I wrote in my lj what I thought of the film too.

I do miss the theme tune credits in the beginning too.

Daniel Craig is a different sort of Bond, he certainly have the balls but I dunno, something is missing. Maybe the fact he is abit wet around the ears did irritate me a wee bit.

[grok-mctanys.livejournal.com]

I saw an interview with the guy who did the score. He said that he tried putting the Bond theme in more, but whenever it was on you just got this safe, secure, everything's-going-to-be-alright, Bond-will-come-out-of-it-with-not-a-hair-out-of-place vibe, which was distinctly what they /weren't/ aiming for. There was too much baggage with it for the way you were supposed to feel.

[rich-jacko.livejournal.com]

In that case why not do the Kill Bill trick where the music's going, you think the hero/heroine's invincible, then suddenly they get badly injured and the music instantly dies mid-beat? Great for shock value and after they'd done it once, I bet you wouldn't have that same cosy feeling the next time the theme played :o)

[grok-mctanys.livejournal.com]

/I/ don't know why - he didn't mention that.

Rough speculation though - it could be so that, in the final scene with Mr. White, when he's gone through the lot and basically now "become" 007 (instead of being "just" some dude fresh out of double-oh school who happens to be called James Bond), and /did/ get the full theme, you /do/ get the warm fuzzies and think "Teh w00t!"

[dave-chimaera.livejournal.com]

seems a reasonable supposition to me

[bonedancer.livejournal.com]

Some of what you considered to be negatives - lack of theme music, lack of big set-piece battle where the volcano lair/undersea base/space station gets attacked by ninjash/commandosh/schpashe marinesh - I considered to be positives. This was a good film in its own right, not merely a good Bond film. Usually, you have to make allowances for the genre (laser wristwatches, bikini-clad 19-year-old professors of nuclear physics, Roger Moore) but Casino Royale stands on its own.

Sure, you and I have seen Jackie Chan do this stuff before, but a lot of people won't have - and I for one don't object to the director taking the action in that direction. It's not a contest; if he can make it exciting - and I think he did - I'm not going to sit there unmoved just because I've seen a different film that did the same thing a bit better.

Same goes for the premise; no, a card game is not as inherently exciting as foiling a plot to cause World War III, but I found the poker sequences tense and enjoyable. Continually having to top the previous threat is a losing game in any case - once you've saved the entire world, where do you go from there?

Producing a Bond film that wasn't pre-emptively parodied to death by Austin Powers was really the only way they could go. I liked it, and I'm looking forward to what they do next.

[pharrap.livejournal.com]

Pah, I spent so long crafting my response you submitted the Austin Powers point before me!

[rich-jacko.livejournal.com]

Not my phrase! Hence the quote marks!
*protests innocence*
;o)

You have permission to hurt me if I ever use the word "Parkour" outside quote marks...

[jozafeen.livejournal.com]

I can't pick a best Bond! I thought Craig was brilliant, Connery is a classic and I love Moore for the cheese and gadgets :-)

[pharrap.livejournal.com]

The worst thing to happen to Bond in recent years wasn't the invisible car, or the inexorable ageing of Pierce Brosnan, or the wet-lipped Jonathan Price hammery as Eliot Carver.

It was the Austin Powers series.

They just couldn't do "frikkin laser beams" any more. It would've been silly - it's always been silly - but increasingly the audience becomes aware of it and they'd get laughed out of cinemas.

They were trapped between grittier action films and a funnier spoof and were, simply, tired.

I prefered the Burton Batmans too. But Batman Begins didn't reboot from Burton's Batman, it rebooted from Batman and Robin. And it was Burton who introduced the trend of having extra characters in each successive movie (just Batman and the Joker in Batman, Batman and Penguin and Catwoman [and Christopher Walken too] in Batman Returns, Batman and Robin and Riddler and Two Face in Batman Forever, Batman and Robin and Batgirl and Poison Ivy and Mr Freeze and Bane in Batman and Robin... the series *needed* a goddamn reboot.)

[rich-jacko.livejournal.com]

True, but Batman Begins is guilty as well of having two bad guys where only one was needed. The chance to do a creepy Scarecrow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarecrow_(comics)) storyline was wasted by having him make barely more than a cameo appearance.

[bonedancer.livejournal.com]

I didn't rate Batman Begins all that highly - I think it was mostly sheer relief that caused people to praise it to the skies - but the plot was that there was an obvious villain, then a twist where there was a secret villain controlling him. So they did need two bad guys.

Whether or not they should have "wasted" Scarecrow as the decoy villain is another argument entirely, but IIRC isn't he still alive at the end of the movie and ready to escape from Arkham at the drop of a wide-brimmed hat?

[rich-jacko.livejournal.com]

He is, but unless they do a major break with past form, they don't tend to bring baddies back for sequels.

I remember the main villain not being who you first thought he was, but I don't recall Scarecrow being billed as the "main baddie" at any point in the film. He always seemed to be just a henchman.

[thegreatgonzo.livejournal.com]

He is, but unless they do a major break with past form, they don't tend to bring baddies back for sequels.

What like Blofeld never reappearing in the Bond films?
It wouldn't be a huge leap for this Batman lot to bring people back like in those colourful paper thingies with the drawn stories.

[bonedancer.livejournal.com]

I was already discounting the female vote, on account of how your heads are so easily turned by a rubberised abdomen.

[bonedancer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Today Christian Bale, yesterday George Clooney, tomorrow some other dude.