(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.)

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

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

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.)

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.

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.