Posted on 11/16/2008 11:45:01 PM PST by L.A.Justice
As countless villains have learned, there is just no stopping James Bond.
"Quantum of Solace," a tale of the secret agent's quest to avenge the death of the woman he loved, blasted out $70.4 million in ticket sales this weekend. It was the biggest opening for a Bond film ever and surpassed the high expectations set for the film.
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The 22nd James Bond movie apparently appealed to grown-ups, some of whom may have seen "Dr. No" when it first played in 1962. Weekend exit polls in the U.S. showed 58% of the audience was over 25 and 46% was female.
Women have "definitely responded to Craig as Bond," Dergarabedian said. "He's a Bond women like and men relate to. That paid off."
Going into the weekend, Sony was hoping to reach $50 million in ticket sales to beat the previous highest opening for a Bond film, 2002's "Die Another Day," which rang up $47 million in Pierce Brosnan's last appearance as the legendary spy.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I will see QUANTUM in the theater in a few weeks...
I don't think QUANTUM was a hit with kids in high school...
Next weekend, TWILIGHT will probably be number ONE...Thanks to the teenagers...
Comments?
Saw it last night, won’t spoil it, but I guess I’m getting too elderly to appreciate all the nonstop action. Craig is a good-looking Bond, and of course the ladies are gorgeous. My husband found it a bit confusing, but he often misses bits of dialogue here and there.
I saw Quantum of Solace over the weekend. I enjoyed it but was not wild about it. Definitely thought there was a tedious excess of personal combat, much of it shot too close so that it was hard to tell what was going on, who was hitting whom etc. Maybe the video game generation follows it a lot more easily, but I was bored and annoyed in a lot of the “action” scenes.
Still, I did enjoy the movie overall. I wouldn’t see it again but I was glad to see it once.
btw, there was no real “action” between Bond and his two female side-kicks, now what kind of Bond film is that? While they were lovely, Olga and “Fields”.... there was not much going on between them and 007. The “Bond girls” might as well have been guys..... oops, not trying to suggest THAT either.
It was more like BOURNE WHATEVER (Supremacy, Identity, etc.) than it was James Bond. Which is good if you like the former, not so much if you prefer the latter.
The best thing to happen to the Bond series was the huge success of the Bourne series.
The Bourne films made the Pierce Brosnan Bond films look like campy, cheap Ed Wood productions—basically the same way that the new Battlestar Galactica made the entire Star Trek franchise almost unwatchable by comparison. The Bourne series, with their more mature storytelling and more intense action sequences, raised the bar for the genre.
I like the Craig Bond. He’s violent and crazy, exactly what having a real-life “license to kill” would make anyone. Connery’s Bond had the same brutal style, but only part of the time.
I saw it this weekend...and loved it. Actually, I do agree with many of the criticisms of the movie (it wasn’t as good as Casino Royale, IMO), but they didn’t weigh it down for me...they were just minor quibbles.
While the Bourne influence was a little too strong in some parts (shaky cam action, quick cut fight scenes), I actually thought this felt more like a great Bond film. Jason Bourne never jumped out of a falling airplane and pulled out the parachute 10 feet above ground, then hit the ground almost full-force but didn’t have a single broken bone and in fact had the energy to walk across a barren desert with no water.
Jason Bourne also never crashed a giant eyeball opera and infiltrated an entire criminal organization undetected.
(Granted, he probably could if he wanted to, but I thought most of this movie was classic Bond stuff).
He was in mourning, you see. Devastated. Inconsolable. Depressed. Oh, wait -- that was La Cage. Never mind. ;)
No, he was supposedly missing Real Girlfriend -- you wouldn't want him to get over her too quickly or professionally, would you?
But he did leave a hint in the snow at the end of the film, so he'll be back in the old form next time. Older, wiser, sadder, perhaps, but still ready to rock someone's world into flaming, cascading shards of multi-gigabuck bad-guy Fantasyland.
Now they need to cast Matt Damon as one of the bad guys! (Just kidding.)
It was like Die Hard with a british accent. Not bad, but not Bond.
Haven’t seen it, but the NYer review said they turned Craig/Bond into Jason Bourne/Mat Damon. And Craig takes his shirt off a lot. Evidently they liked it, but I didn’t read the entire review.
Didn’t seem like it had Bond style at all. I was irritated they killed off Malthus. Doesn’t he come back in several of the other books? Been a long time since I read them.
The idea of a Environmental CEO-type as a villain appealed to me. (Al Gore as a Bond Villain would be perfect).
Daniel Craig is a good actor! So is Judy Dench. They just didn’t really have much to do.
I’m gonna go watch Layer Cake again.
I also loved the willingness to experiment, which was exceedingly risky for the producer since he broke several conventions that came very close to anathema (for instance, not having the normal start sequence at the beginning of the film but instead bringing it at the end), and obviously the song was crap! However, willingness to experiment makes it more likely for the series to stay relevant going forward, and it has been successful with the 2 Craig Bond movies when it comes to box office tallies. It can go wrong, at times horribly wrong when it comes to the opening song, but it is healthy in the long term.
There were some issues though, but I think overall it was not bad. It could have been MUCH BETTER, but I think coming off the tail-end of Casino Royale it did not at least crash and burn. Was it opaque as you said? Yes it was. Was it dull? Maybe not dull. Was in unspectacular? Definitely! It could have been better. However, I did not leave feeling that I had thrown away my money, and with all the hype it had garnered it did quite well just not going down in a flaming pile. There was a whole lot of experimentation, some of it probably not prudent, and there were some departures from some old Bond traditions (some small others large), but to be honest with you it was better than any Brosnan Bond movie (and I did like GoldenEye), it was better than the Dalton series (apart from the Living Daylights, and the sad thing about Dalton is that he is the closest Bond to the novels), and better than a good number of the Moore Bond. Craig is actually quite close to the Lazenby/Connery model, but with fewer gadgets.
As for gadgets, I think the next one will re-introduce Q into the franchise, but with 'simpler' gadgets than lasers in space and Lotus'that can dive and AMC Hornets that can fly.
Anyways, it could have been better. However, it could also have been FAR worse. I'd give it an overall GPA of 3.0
Agreed. Sad if Bond becomes just-another-action-flick. It was soooooo much more.
They need to go back to their roots.
It was a good movie although the director seems to be overly fascinated with that shaky vision camera technique. Bring Dramamine, and popcorn!
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