McKee has got no fucking time for your movie!
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.
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December 5th, 2008 at 5:02 am
I do think you tend to over-analyze this just a tad.
In my opinion QoS, flawed as it is, is far better than you make it sound.
I had no trouble following the action except for a brief moment in Siena right after the sewer shootout. I loved the little characters moments such as Bond drinking a Vesper in the plane, his face when Mathis asks him to forgive her, etc. And Camille made for a worthy successor to Vesper, my only beef being that her introduction through the killer geologist is a bit of a WTF moment.
And my only major beef is the Sony product placement, which was handled in such a way that I, Robot looks good in comparison.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
VINTAGE 2004 SNEAKERS
Compared with Casino Royale, where you have a nice bit of verbal sparring between Vesper and Bond only to have a KA-CHING! moment pull you screaming out of the scene, the product placement in QoS didn’t bother me that much. Of course that’s because I was too distracted by all the other faults to even be in the scene to begin with.
There were occasional nice character moments in there, but they were mostly oblitterated by the movie’s fear that rape-goblins would set upon it if it went more than a minute without an explosion.
“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.”
I’d say that’s a pretty big assumption, Kaufman was taking the piss a fair bit in Adaptation. I’m not sure I buy your take completely, but I’d have to think about it some more.
…great, now I won’t get any more work done today. I’ll just end up thinking about Bond’s structure, act breaks and probably chart out Casino Royale. over the weekend.
Thanks a lot, you bastard.
PS: Body of Lies is at least five times better a spy movie than QoS. Still mediocre mind you, but at least Ridley Scott can shoot action scenes that look great and are comprehensible.
December 5th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Also, re: Olga. They make a big point about how Bond pretty much kills everything he touches. I think it’s pretty important to what they were going for that he have someone to pull out of the fire at the end, metaphorically as well as literally. He needs some redemption for his failure to save Vesper. And Mathis. And Fields.
December 6th, 2008 at 3:13 am
Body of Lies felt like a badly made Spy Game wannabe… Very disappointing indeed.
December 6th, 2008 at 6:53 am
Oh, you did not go there. Tony at his best can barely eke past Ridley at his worst, and Body of Lies is not that. The screenplay’s got its problems; there’s some mechanical quality to William Monahan’s writing that I can’t quite put my finger on that plagued Kingdom of Heaven to a degree as well (with the added drain of having the charisma deficient Orlando Bloom as the main character), but it’s got a director who knows what he’s doing, solid performances from Crowe and DiCaprio, and a really brilliant one from Mark Strong. It’s not bad by any means.
On writing nerdery: After thinking some more on it, I really don’t think that The Dark Knight is that unconventionally structured, it’s just woefully unbalanced. The dramatic question should be centered on Batman wanting Gotham to no longer need him. The act one out is the squealer getting nabbed in Hong Kong, which leads to the Joker getting hired, making the retirement very difficult indeed. The second act big tentpole is Rachel getting killed, while the act out is the Joker revealing that he turned Harvey, completely destroying his hope of retiring the mask. The third act should be dealing with Two-Face, coming to terms with the fact that Gotham’s symbol of hope is false, and deciding to sacrifice himself for the sake of Gotham to preserve the illusion.
The problem is that that the Joker completely dominates the proceedings, overstays his welcome with the superfluous prisoner’s dilemma, and shortchanges Two-Face.
On Casino Royale: the problem, I think, is that the the plot is completely focused on the Le Chiffre and the big poker game, but the story is Bond going from cold brute to being melted by Vesper and going out of the business, and then snapping back to “the job’s done and the bitch is dead”. And then there’s the coda with Mr White and oh god the thing’s just a mess at this point.
The fact that the first act takes up nearly an hour of a 144 movie is a bit of a problem as well.
On QoS, I really don’t know where to start, other than that I do think eliminating Olga won’t just remove a gorgeous woman, but also a fair amount of (potential) emotional development. I can’t help but believe that Bond will need a bit more than straight up vengeance if he’s going to find his Quantum of Solace. (Or whatever the fucking point of that title was.)
December 8th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Time for me to throw down in my own blog!
Firstly, I stand by everything I said - I think if you remove Olga’s character you lose a lot of the unnecessary cliches that weighed down the audience throughout the movie but also because the supposed purpose she serves was pretty ineffectually handled. He was about to kill her when just by chance he spots a way out… he was going to kill her and then himself, epic fail, Bond. It was just wrong. It still doesn’t necessarily develop his character in any meaningful way to go on the murderous rampage that I have him going on in my reworked QoS but at least the dramatic imperative is intact - at least, I think so.
And Sören, you took my comment on “Cox’s interpretation of McKee” the wrong way - I didn’t mention Kaufman, I meant how Cox portrayed the character in his acting as this foul-mouthed idealist who goes on tirades at the mere inclination of deviating from form.
However I would love to get into a discussion with you about Adaptation at some point, preferably over a beer or a wine, because it’s one of those types of conversations. It’s easily one of my top 5 movies.
Raph: I didn’t notice the product placement much to be honest, the bit on the plane was a bit odd but I didn’t even mind it because guess what, I have to fly on a plane and be served by hosts/hostesses. The rest of it was very standard for movies these days and nowhere near the level of product-eye-rape that happened in the shit-festooning I, Robot.
p.s. Tony <<<< Ridley
December 8th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Oh, and I pick up TDK on blu-ray tomorrow so I’ll review my thinking on it after my third viewing.
December 9th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
I just hate Sony a lot I guess
I didn’t notice other brands, but the in-your-face Sony branding of everything slightly electronic was too much.
On the other thing, I too stand by what I said. While I do agree that Ridley is generally far superior than Tony, between Spy Game and Body of Lies there’s no contest. Redford and Pitt have a chemistry that goes way beyond Crowe and DiCaprio’s. They also had a much better plot at their disposal, and the result is a much better movie overall.
But well, that’s just my opinion
December 15th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
raph: Redford is the one really good thing about Spy Game, and I suppose it doesn’t have the some air of…profundity that Body of Lies has. Body of Lies ends up feeling a lot more important than it really is, while Spy game is throwaway fluff all the way through. I just can’t stand Tony Scott’s stylistic excesses. All those sepia-coloured flashbacks, black and white freeze frames, time-lapse photography and overblown soundtrack drive me to distraction. It pisses me off all the more since he’s shown at least basic competency (ie True Romance) when he doesn’t feel the need to shout I AM A DIRECTOR, WATCH ME DIRECT! to the world.
(I don’t particularly agree that Spy Game has a good story either, Redford is basically what sells you on what amounts to two hours of very little substance.)
Chris: Fair enough on on Olga’s character not working as written, but I’d rather see her fixed than removed for a straight-up revenge yarn. Or at least pull some Bourne Supremacy-ish revesal with regards to motivation somewhere along the line. (Obviously the exact *same* change in motivation would make absolutely no sense, but twist the knife in audience expectation in a way that does some interesting character development. Take “It’d be a pretty cold bastard who didn’t want revenge for the woman he loves” and make him *exactly* that cold a bastard, for instance.)