Liveblogging Quantum of Solace

[seriousfic]

Bond is kinda a shitty spy in this. He goes through a whole boat chase action scene to rescue Bond girl Camille (who is spray-tanned to the point of blackface. Seriously, she looks fucking orange), then when she’s knocked unconscious, instead of waiting for her to wake up and asking her one word about this conspiracy he’s stumbled upon, of which she obviously knows *something*, he just dumps her with some random and walks off to call M.

No wonder the British weren’t the ones to kill bin Laden.

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Irony alert: The movie/franchise kinda wants to have it both ways, castigating American foreign policy for “cozying up to anyone” then turning a blind eye to Bond’s amoral acts, in fact looking upon them as cool and edgy. You can’t really call out the CIA, then in Skyfall laud Bond for being a ruthless sonuvabitch who lets people get assassinated and jokes about dead women.

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Bond needs to get into an opera, but luckily he just happens to find a tuxedo that’s exactly tailored to his ridiculously muscular body. I think tuxes in the world of James Bond work like swords in the Highlander universe—whenever you need one, it just appears out of thin air.

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As you might’ve suspected, people who talk in the theater are all working for an evil organization dedicated to tyranny and despotism.

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Director: Look, do I *have to* make a movie where James Bond punches people and shoots guns? I want to make a movie about opera and horse racing!

Somebody: No, James Bond has to punch people and shoot things! That’s the whole point!

Director: Alright, I’m just going to make those scenes about horse racing and opera, with some subliminal flashes of Daniel Craig aiming a gun for those plebians who insist on violence in their James Bond movies. Ha ha, Marc Forster, you’ve done it again!

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You can kinda tell that this was not written by actual writers (as the filmmakers themselves attest).

"What happens now?"

"Bond is sad!"

"And now?"

"An action sequence!"

"And now?"

"Bond is sad!"

"And now?"

"An action sequence!"

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Bond: Look, airline lady, in a minute you’re going to get a call from a government agency asking where I’m headed. Would you mind lying to them for me, since I’m so cute?

Airline Lady: Certainly. It’s not like you could be a terrorist or something. Why would a terrorist be interested in an airplane?

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Fun fact: Villain Dominic Greene was not giving a freakish physical deformity, as the filmmaker’s way of showing that modern evil often hides in plain sight. He was also given no distinguishing characteristics, interesting personality traits, or hints of charisma, as the filmmaker’s way of showing that evil is often very boring.

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Renting a plane to investigate the villain’s plot, Bond correctly predicts that the airline owner will sell them out to the baddies, leading to “chase scene with airplanes” being checked off the list. Here’s an idea, superspy: Knock him out, tie him up, and then don’t worry about the villains catching onto you. It’s far less ruthless than taking your dead friend’s cash and throwing his body into a dumpster, which you did five seconds ago.

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Camille: So then after I watched my mother and sister get raped and murdered, I was scarred for life in a fire the villain set.

Bond: Is it just me, or is this pretty dark for a film series that has previously included a pigeon doing a double-take?

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Bond: So, any reason you’re the Bond Girl and not Gemma Arterton, who is better in every particular way than you? I think she’s even a more believable Bolivian than you.

Camille: Oh, you see, I want revenge just like you want revenge! It’s thematic!

Bond: So there’s a parallel between us? Some contrast or comparison that deepens my own journey?

Camille: I want revenge… and you want revenge too!

Bond: Yes, but that’s not really a metaphor or anything. That’s just two people with something in common.

Camille: You want revenge… and I want revenge!

Bond: Yes, but see, that completely falls apart, since my lesson in the movie is supposed to be that getting revenge is selfish and wrong, but then you getting your revenge is treated as all fine and dandy.

Camille: We both want revenge… and I want revenge!

Bond: Yeah, if there’s one thing modern action movies need more of, it’s people out for revenge. Hell, why don’t we throw in that that stupid henchman with the Beatles haircut killed Mathis’s dog? Three people wanting revenge would be extra-special thematic!

Camille: Revenge want I… and revenge want you!

Bond: *sigh* Just be sure you don’t sleep with me, there has to be somethingmemorable about you.

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Bond: That bastard Greene, he’s creating a drought that’s causing millions of innocent people to… wait, did we establish that there’s a drought in this country?

Camille: Nope!

*sudden scenes of poor Bolivians suffering from being thirsty*

Bond: Greene will pay for this!

Camille: Think we should tell them that there’s literally a lake of drinking water within walking distance?

Bond: Meh… fuck ‘em.

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Greene is whaling on Bond with a metal pipe. Suddenly, he stops to use the pipe to break open a fire ax container and grab that. Bond, of course, uses the opening to beat him up, save the world, et al. How counter-intuitive it has to be to stop beating someone so you can grab something else to beat them with.

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Okay, I’ll give props, the exploding hotel set is pretty cool. Shame its only use is justifying it taking more than five seconds for Bond to take out a villain who’s about as butch as a Degrassi marathon.

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Here’s what I would do differently.

-Make Camille an antagonist. Not a villain, just someone on the other side as Bond. She’s out for revenge against whathisface, but Bond needs the bastard alive for information on Vesper’s fake boyfriend (who is ultimately responsible for her death). Loads of dramatic irony in Bond being against Camille’s revenge so he can get his own revenge; she’d function as sort of a dark mirror or foil to Bond instead of some tacky rape-revenge thing. In the end, he’d probably be forced to kill her; yes, it’d be dark, but an earned darkness, not something gratuitous or sleazy like General Medrano’s entire character.

-Make Fields more of a foil. Here’s a great character for you. An agent assigned to keep a leash on Bond while he’s determined to slip it. Lots of great headbutting as he slips past her and she gets back on his tail; some of the classic romanticism and banter we expect from Bond. Not just her being snippy with him for thirty seconds before losing her panties over stationary. The flirting probably wouldn’t develop, seeing as they’re at loggerheads, but it’d be fun. In fact, you could even make her Moneypenny, promoted to M’s assistant after her success at dealing with the troublesome 007. That’d a better origin story than “oh, she used to be a badass special agent, but it turns out she doesn’t want to be for some reason?”

I forgot to mention that this revised Camille would be the physical threat to Bond that QoS is so desperately lacking (tell me, was anyone at all concerned that Dominic Greene’s flailing attempt at interpretive dance would so much as chip Bond’s nail?). Imagine the finale as a three-way battle between Camille, Bond, and the legions of anonymous Quantum henchmen out to defend Greene.

For the sake of argument, let’s further revise Camille into being less eye candy, more warrior woman. Say, replace the actress with Gina Carano or Zoe Bell. And if you like, swap out Gemma Arterton for Naomie Harris. A bit more interesting, don’t you think?

ETA: There's a pretty lengthy subplot about women who Bond beds going on to get killed, which is explicitly identified as an actual character trait of Bond's. Judi Dench pretty much looks out at the audience and says "Kinda fucked up how Bond, and by extension the Bond movies, see women as only toys to be fucked and avenged." All well and good as a deconstruction, but in the very next movie, Severine is only there to be fucked and avenged. If anything, Bond cares even less about her fate than he did about Fields's. So I guess that bit of self-flagellation on the franchise's part was just pandering bullshit then.