Mrs IP and I both really loved Casino Royale. It felt like a fresh, modern take on Bond – one that showed it could make a proper fight of it in an era of Bournes and similar. Quantum felt odd – like a massively extended epilogue. It meandered and didn’t stick in my mind. I couldn’t even tell you what it was about now. It’s probably at that point that the people behind Bond massively freaked out and reverted to type.
Skyfall, as regular forumites know, is a film I regard as a vicious insulting travesty of a production. I’ve never walked out of a film. I very nearly did with this one. Mrs IP and I were appalled by what we’d watched, and conversations from other movie-goers on the night were along similar lines. It’s vanishingly rare I ever write about film, but for this I
made an exception. I’ve no idea if Spectre continued the rampant awfulness at the heart of Skyfall or not, but the result is that I… just don’t care anymore.
To which people might, rightly, say why bother commenting then? But for me, this entire run represents a horribly missed opportunity to modernise a franchise and make it relevant. Instead, it’s turned into something that was little above a blacky satirised sketch. Still, given the production nightmares that these films have faced, perhaps Bond will rest for a while now, while someone can figure out how to unstick Purvis and Wade (seriously, what blackmail material do they have on Wilson and Broccoli?), and properly reimagine the series for the modern day. Or, you know, just revert to type again with Daniel Craig’s successor.
Finally, a
BBC article from earlier this year is just astonishing:
At the launch, producer Barbara Broccoli said Bond's attitudes to women would move with the times. "The Me Too movement has had a huge impact - rightfully, thankfully - on society, and these films should reflect that, as everything we do should," she said.
It shouldn’t take the Me Too movement for someone at Bond Films HQ to think: “You know, perhaps he shouldn’t basically rape a sex trafficking victim while she’s in the shower.” I can only hope whatever Waller-Bridge did had serious impact, and wasn’t just tidying up the edges.
