"You just don't get it, do you? We have a budget for a two hour movie..."
Posted on 12/07/2012 7:49:02 AM PST by SeekAndFind
“When you have to shoot, shoot don’t talk.”
Something like this...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq3zjTmVLbM
“Dunno who writes those scripts or why they write them that way”
Because realistic spy stories are probably boring as heck. There are dramatic needs that have to be met entirely apart from what would be the smart thing to do. They create new villains for every movie, give them all their little quirks and hire some actor who wants to show off. If they don’t get to put him and the old characters in scenes together the audience will notice and rebel. It is an unspoken expectation.
“Which is why Han shot first”
But only after they talked.
The primary reason for the monologue is the viewers like to find out what’s going on. In an RPG situation after the PCs kill the bad guy the players can always ask the game master to explain the diabolical scheme they just foiled, TV and movie viewers don’t get that option. There’s a big belief in Hollywood that viewers don’t like to be confused, a lot of your better writers (JMS, David Chase, Vince Gilligan) have achieved the success they have with the mantra “the viewers are smarter than that” and tend to explain very little trusting the audience will figure it out. But the faceless nameless guys that produce the majority of the content still worship the rule of 3 and full explanations... and make some of the most profitable franchises in entertainment history, so maybe they’re right.
“How many times should Bond have died because the Villains never shot him when they could?”
LOL. Your remark reminds me of watching old WWII era “Batman” propaganda flicks while in college nearly 50 (!!!) years ago. Batman was fighting some truly evil “Jap” steriotype. When the heroine was captured she looked at the villian in horror and said, “You’re a Jap!” Anyway, the Evil Jap managed to capture Batman repeatedly and, before Batman inevitably escaped, would spend no end of time rubbing his hands together, gloating about the horrible, slow death he was going to inflict on Batman. This got so bad the audience started rooting for the Evil Jap. Every time Batman was captured, we’d chant, “Shoot him, just shoot him!”
You are right. Any “realistic” spy story is going to be boring as heck, esp. if nothing blows up. Footwork, guesses and deductions made from otherwise innocent documents, etc. Spying is boring, esp. when it is done right!
Kinda like my job - I never complain about boring, because “exciting” means that something has seriously hit the fan!
Yup. This is why you find the followng exchange in an Austin Powers film (probably not an exact quote):
Dr. Evil: Why do my plans to kill Austin Powers keep failing?
Scott: Because you always make things too complicated and you’re a big dope.
Also:
Dr. Evil: I’m going to travel back in time to steal Austin Powers’s mojo!
Scott: Why don’t you just go back in time and shoot him while he’s on the crapper?
It was pretty funny then. Now? Not so much.
[The World is Not Enough] On screen, that scene was confusing, as I recall. Valentin Zukovsky (Robbie Coltrane) used the last shot from his gun as he died to hit Bond's leg restraint. Somehow Bond was suddenly then able to use his hands and release himself.
A properly conducted espionage infiltration would be much more boring than that - he gets the info - wires it in on a secure connection - the troops come in and shut it all down and arrest everyone - INCLUDING the infiltrating agent - so they STILL don't know who ‘ratted them out’.
Heck, even Scaramanga, who did intend to shoot Bond, and who supposedly never missed, couldn’t get the job done. What kind of great assassin “plays with his food”, so to speak?
All I know is that “Skyfall” better have a better premise than the horrible “Quantum of Solace.” In the latter flick the bad guy’s goal was to raise the water rates in Bolivia. Ho-hum!
They explained in the movie that they were going “off the grid” because the villain had hacked the governments’ computers, or whatever. Fine. But if you’re gonna whisk M away to safety by yourself, why not fly to Kookamunga, or something? Why go to a place that’s directly connected to you, so that anyone might guess you’d possibly hide out there? Oh right, it was a setup.
Why lie in wait for an ambush where there’s nothing but a few shotguns and open space, except for the secret Catholic escape hatch? It seemed to me all the villain had to do is torch the house, which he did. There is no such thing as convection in movies, though, so Bond et al escape without horribly disfiguring third degree burns. Why didn’t they toss in a few concussion bombs in addition to the incendiaries? An unconscious Bond and M on the floor of a burning house surely would die of smoke inhalation.
Who cares, anyway, as Bond failed and M died because of his stupid brilliant hunting lodge last stand strategy. This article is right,; Bond is an idiot. He’s lucky the villains are intermittently retarded.
“the bad guy’s goal was to raise the water rates in Bolivia. Ho-hum.”
You not being an environut hurts the viewing experience. Their literature and documentaries are filled with dire warnings about the coming “water wars,” when Climate Change dries up the seas, or whatever, and evil corporations corner the market after “peak water,” they will bilk thirst fir unearned profit. The masses will suffer, blah, blah, blah. You must realize they already hate water bottle companies, for some reason. Something to do with landfills and artificial demand, or something.
It is a more frightening scenario than other fantasies of the doom litany, I’ll grant them. Thirst is among the most desperate emotions. Not that it isn’t idiotic, or the movie underwhelming. That has to be the boringest Bind villain ever. The Casino Royale guy was a dud, too, but at least he cried blood.
The Ruskie gangster ally shot one of his hands loose with his cane-gun.
SnakeDoc
Craig’s Bond is a direct response to Jack Bauer and Jason Bourne.
Bond was the cream-of-the-crop for a long time. The ultimate tough-guy spy. Then Bauer and Bourne came along and made him look like a cocktail-swilling nancy. There wasn’t a person alive that didn’t think Bourne could whip his ass hand-to-hand, or Bauer couldn’t get Bond to talk inside 2-minutes.
Craig was brought in to give Bond his balls back ... darker, tougher, faster, smarter. Not Moore’s wisecracking fancy-pants, or Brosnan’s slightly-tougher prettyboy, or even Connery’s smooth-talking toughguy. Rougher around the edges than any previous incarnation.
SnakeDoc
O.K., I'll write a Bond story. It was a dark and rainy night when Bond met the villain. The villain shot Bond dead on sight. End of story.
How does that work for a story?
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