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Taking Cox’s interpretation of McKee from Adaptation as sacrosanct, I’d like to think that he’d be pretty fucking pissed off with the number of movies violating the 3-act rule these days.

One of my favourite movies from the past few years was the Bond franchise reboot, Casino Royale, and I picked it up on Blu-Ray for my birthday a week ago. It was many things, a great reinvention of the Bond character as a hard-edged, ruthless assassin-type, it had a solid plot with one of my new loves involved (although the final poker hand could have been avoided) and great bursts of action amidst decent characterisation. It did however, keep going. I remember it reached the point where Bond had recuuperated and was lying on a beach with Vesper and I thought, this’ll be an unusual ending point for a Bond movie - but it wasn’t, it kept going and a fourth act sort of appeared out of nowhere. I enjoyed the movie overall but this structural flaw bothered me and having recently seen Quantum of Solace, I now understand why.

I’ll refer you to my analysis of The Dark Knight, where I suggested that perhaps Two Face’s ultimate reveal (not to mention, dispatching - which effectively provided a fourth act) should have carried over into the next Batman movie. Or perhaps it shouldn’t have featured at all and after the warehouse trick the Joker pulls, it neatly moves into Batman going nutso trying to get the Joker, gets him, kills him and has the cops after him as the movie closes.

The follow-up Bond movie pulls a similar deal with Vesper being vanquished and Bond’s motivation being to find and kill Mr White, and any others associated with his little consortium, and this is supposed to be the narrative drive for the movie. Pacing, characterisation and direction of the action scenes aside for the moment (and they provide much of the movie’s problems), there simply isn’t any resonance of Bond’s emotional state and this isn’t helped by any of the above. Characters drive the story and as long as you - as an audience - are engaged to your characters and their plight, it’ll tend to work. Hence as a result of this pruning of motivation, the narrative in QoS is entirely lacking and they fabricate a female lead as a parallel for Vesper, unfortunately weighing the movie down with cliché after leaden cliché.

The result is a breathless action film, terribly shot for much of the action, and entirely lacking in direction and character development. So in line with what I did for TDK, I’ll rework how CR should’ve ended and QoS should’ve started for the most effective narrative and character development - the following obviously contains spoilers:

Casino Royale
Act 1 ✓
Act 2 ✓

Act 3:
- Mostly the same til the end… ✓
- No ridiculous 4-way all-in poker showdown
Change: People who understand poker don’t slap themselves in the face, i.e. ME
- Le Chiffre kidnaps Bond and Vesper; tortures them; is slain by White ✓
- While Bond recuperates: Mathis is nabbed; Bond resigns; Vesper and he are in love ✓
- Ends with the one-shaded sunglasses dude watching Vesper and Bond from the shadows
Change: mystery!
Change: gets around the rather stupid time-elapse problem I noted in CR regarding the money exchange not being picked up on IMMEDIATELY and Bond’s quickly recovery from debilitating injury

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN

Wait… what? How could you… Bond can’t… But he’s…

Quantum of Solace

Pre-titles opener:
- Florence sequence as opener, mostly as is ✓
Change: M arrives in Florence not only to persaude Bond back but because the money never showed up, at the same time Vesper is kidnapped by Quantum

Titles
Change: hopefully not some terrible song and gay-ass title sequence, maybe incorporate the nice parallel of Vesper’s drowning to the drought in Bolivia…

Act 1:
- Bond murky, brooding, finds info on White ✓
- Nabbing Mr White, followed quickly by the car chase ✓
Change: heightens the tension of holding Mr White
- Extended interrogation
Change: M shown to be softer for a moment with Bond as the pain is raw and new, not a distant memory
Change: Bond shown to be more in the moment with his rage
- Roof chase etc as is ✓
- Bond brought home while they find out who the betrayer was
Change: Allows for emotional/character development of Bond
- Money laundering connection; off to Haiti; ✓
Change: M lets Bond go because she can only trust him at the moment

Act 2:
- Bond finds geologist dead
Change: assassin geologists are a bit stupid sounding so let’s actually have him murdered by Greene’s henchman - to at least make the bowlcut spastic seem mildly intimidating
- Bond researches geologist’s work, attacked by a Greene goon
Change: action sequence keeps the pace up, goon gets away, Bond chases via bike or whatever, and after losing him - spots him approaching Greene and watches at a distance
Change: Oh, you’ve noticed Olga’s character is gone? Yes. She’s staying gone
- Intro to Greene as is; Bolivia deal set-up ✓
- Off to Austria; Bond follows; La Tosca ✓
Change: Bond recognises the British PM’s aide; makes him go underground on M given that Quantum’s reach seems far indeed - perhaps a seed is planted that M is in on it (how could she not know about her closest aide being one? being a comment)
- M kills his passports; Bond goes to Mathis ✓
Change: Bond is given chance to reflect on who to trust and how far
Change: M is unaware of Quantum infiltration to government and cannot see the manipulation happening at the high level
- Off to Bolivia; Strawberry Fields; Party with Greene ✓

Act 3
- Mathis & Fields killed ✓
Change: Bond shuts down emotionally and goes into full-on badass mode
- Bond returns for Greene, doesn’t find him but does waste three or four of his bodyguards
Change: Bond goes nuts, lets get dirty with the character and make him really brutal, kills useless bowl-cut bastard here when he can’t get info - Greene escapes via armed guard (CIA?)
- M cannot stop executive orders against Bond, goes dark (covert) ✓
- Meets with Leiter (extended) ✓
Change: Bring Leiter’s character out - is he conflicted, is he a game player, USA rah rah, or tired of the way they are operating? This was confusing in the film
Change: Drop the contrived CIA action squad scene
- M tracks Bond down alone just as he goes to board a plane he chartered
Change: rather than the contrived TAKE HIM DOWN, a personal moment between the chief and her charge, a character beat allowing for the understanding to develop and the reveal about Quantum’s infiltration - also her tracking him down reveals her resourcefulness
- Bond surveys land tract, spots weird structure, parachutes in, communicates finding to M, kicks off her calling in Leiter and CIA as back-up
Lets just get to the meat and potatoes of the plot shall we…
- Bond interrupts Greene’s meeting with Bolivian dictator in above-ground structure just after plot is laid out
Changes: Fuck the eco hotel bullshit, fuck the HIGHLY UNSTABLE hydrogen fuel cells, fuck all that noise and just have a good dirty fight…
- Bond wastes the corrupt chief for revenge on Mathis and gets in gunfights with guards/soldiers
- Greene escapes during the fracas
- Bolivian dictator gets away only to get caught by Leiter (and elaborate from there if he’s good or bad)
- Bond catches up to Greene in the desert
(same as before except harder-edged: shoots out his kneecaps, demands info on White, doesn’t get it, but gets the honeypot info, leaves him with the motor oil)
- Post-game wrap-up: much the same ✓

Of course, this would still only be close to as awesome as CR provided they can nab the same (or as good as) director for this one, as opposed to Monster’s Ball wankfest director whose idea of action scenes is to induce epilepsy. But you do see now, don’t you? Don’t remove the dramatic imperative! Keep the focus on what matters and don’t distance the audience or the characters from their motivations! I feel like The Dark Knight has left itself in a similar predicament having wrapped up so much in its fourth act that it leaves a hard starting point to launch from.

I waste far too much time thinking about this stuff.

A permanent one.

In case you missed my facebook update, which you’d be forgiven for missing if:

a) I’m not your friend on facebook

b) not for the fact that I change my update thrice daily

c) you don’t love using the word “thrice” in conversation unnecessarily like I do and on principle ignore everything I say

d) you’re far too important to be paying attention to an area on facebook most used for horrific puns or inane babble

e) you’re not MY friend on facebook (subtle difference)

The sum total of that being that you might’ve missed the little known fact that I am now a permanent resident of Australia. Yep, I’m a true blue, ocker-strine-spouting, shrimp-barbying, foster-swilling, pommie-hating, eskie-carrying, racially prejudiced Aussie! And proud!

Apart from that, this week I have mostly been drinking vast quantities of alcohol and making decent winnings on poker tables.

I’m not an American, I don’t understand the intricacies of U.S. politics, but I know what I’m feeling in my heart is a positive change - not just for one country, but for the entire world.

There’s been a cloud hanging over America for nearly a decade. To be an “American” was practically a dirty word in the international community and much of the world’s problems has been laid on its doorstep as of late… while I don’t believe in silver bullets slaying werewolves, to extend that to Obama taking his place in history as the first African-American president in a time of great economic turmoil, global unrest and with grave concerns on environmental fronts as well as every other damn thing; no one man can change the world.

However, with Obama at the helm of what could again be a world superpower, it’s time for the world to rally around the idea that change is possible and, if the effort is put into it, utterly achievable.

To the future. To Obama.

I’ll toast ya tonight, buddy.