tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22974616.post4481708492433110019..comments2023-10-02T14:33:18.136+01:00Comments on The Very Fluffy Diary of Millennium Dome, Elephant: Day 5535: Show A Little ReSPECTREMillennium Domehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08430269096817934037noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22974616.post-12356840668213172612016-02-29T12:24:13.806+00:002016-02-29T12:24:13.806+00:00“So, I would have made one tiny, tiny change…”
I ...“So, I would have made one tiny, tiny change…”<br /><br />I like your change. Not least because it actually gives Madeleine some agency and something to *do* – and makes the Pale King’s claim that she was more talented than he was foreshadowing that even he didn’t realise [and Elementary made Irene Adler Moriarty? Dear God! One of my pet hates is the sexism in almost every bloody Sherlock adaptation ever making the heroic woman who can outthink Sherlock into the villain and think it’s clever. But that’s a rant I’ve made several times before].<br /><br />I’d make a bigger one.<br /><br />“Not that Lea Seydoux is bad, but you’ve got Monica bleedin’ Bellucci in the film (wasted in what amounts to an extended cameo).”<br /><br />Monica Bellucci is the most charismatic actor in the film, and she stole it for me in about ten minutes of screen time. So I’d make a change earlier in the film: Mr Sciarra was only Lucia’s enforcer – she was the SPECTRE member, and that’s why Blofeld put a hit on her the moment he was out of the way, to consolidate his hold in her moment of weakness. Bond having inadvertently destabilised her, it would appropriate if, thanks to Bond, she gets to go to the big table after all, and raise an ironic eyebrow in the direction of the shadow at the head of the table.<br /><br />Then Blofeld’s obsession with his ‘brother’ leads to their expensive base blowing up.<br /><br />So I’d have gone for a whole alternative last act, in which Sciarra and her regrouped allies in the organisation mount a hostile takeover – in tune with its private-sector ethos – on SPECTRE, or at least a no-confidence-with-extreme-prejudice-and-rocket-launchers against its managing director. Which means the *next* film could have meant Blofeld’s out for revenge on both her and Bond, but has lost his main powerbase, while for Bond, will Monica Bellucci be an ally or an enemy?<br />Alex Wilcockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03364653159038708678noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22974616.post-30811229135858919162016-02-29T12:23:53.288+00:002016-02-29T12:23:53.288+00:00I think I enjoyed SPECTRE at the cinema more than ...I think I enjoyed SPECTRE at the cinema more than you did, but part of that was that first time around the (as you quote me saying) film noir direction was continually fascinating: I kept asking myself of the director in all the doubling, mirroring, lines between people and occasional octopi – even one doubling as a chandelier! – ‘What did he mean by that?’ only for it turn out by the end to be ‘Not much, really’. You put your finger on it first by identifying the actual dead-that-live theme (which doesn’t have much to do with mirroring, but which was presumably suggested by “SPECTRE”) and then by pointing out that “What’s missing, ultimately, is the twist.” For all the stylistic hints, the goodies and the baddies are all the ones you expect. <br /><br />I got a lot of Captain America – The Winter Soldier from all this, but in that the baddies getting their tentacles into intelligence agencies was to *do* something. As you point out, it’s a bit of a fatal flaw in the villains’ plans that they’re just voyeurs (though that fits with Blofeld’s characterisation, you wouldn’t think it satisfying enough for the whole organisation). I’d have made C just a patsy, a moral void ideas man as Blofeld says, but disposable if things go wrong, and had their real inside man the new M; you came up with that for Skyfall, and it’s been so much more satisfying as a thought than what was delivered (the stopgap nobody cared about retiring to a resounding ‘meh’ while the ‘real’ M does the important stuff from beyond the grave). And the shoehorned revenge boasts that Blofeld “was the author of all your pain” wipes Skyfall’s much more interesting implication that Craig’s Bond had a long career – perhaps *all* the Bond films – between his first two films and his third, which retrospectively makes much of Skyfall incomprehensible. <br /><br />As you say, one of the biggest moments where they drop the ball is on the “Blofeld” name, which comes across as fan service they couldn’t decide what to do with. I love your “What, your mum was called Ernst Stavro?” The film’s called SPECTRE. The name was never going to be a surprise to anyone who recognised that that meant, nor mean anything to anyone who didn’t, so why not just embrace it? It’s all of a theme with the slight awkwardness about how to handle SPECTRE, having decided it’s more exciting than Quantum (and who could disagree), but not quite being able to admit it’s an acronym. The huge Italian conclave was stylish and sinister and did practically all it could to distance itself from the original modernistic metal meeting so comprehensively spoofed by Austin Powers… So I couldn’t help sniggering when their only woman was cast as a ringer for Frau Farbissena and it all came back. And they seemed almost embarrassed by having a secret base. Though I did like – though it doesn’t fit with your theme – the clever mirror of the meteorite being something *from* space that created a reverse caldera.<br />Alex Wilcockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03364653159038708678noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22974616.post-65418414664650484072016-02-29T12:13:22.850+00:002016-02-29T12:13:22.850+00:00Actually, Mr Nick, you remind me of a point I mean...Actually, Mr Nick, you remind me of a point I meant to add:<br /><br />The twist reveal of the Bond Girl being Blofeld actually appears in John Gardner's second Bond novel "For Special Services" (1982). You can tell she's a bad-un because she only has one breast – a typical Fleming "villain with physical deformity" trope. <br /><br />Clearly Gardner's work pre-empts the gender-swapped Moriarty but his estate is also rather more likely to sue. I'm sure the last thing Eon want to get into – having finally seen off the Kevin McClory "Thunderball" claim – is yet another copyright row over ownership of Spectre!<br />Millennium Domehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08430269096817934037noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22974616.post-89489170327988019192016-02-27T13:35:36.307+00:002016-02-27T13:35:36.307+00:00(Spoilers for the TV series Elementary)
I like yo...(Spoilers for the TV series Elementary)<br /><br />I like your alternative ending, but it does come from the same direction as Elementary's revelation that Irene Adler was Moriarty, so if it had ever occurred to them as a possibility (which I doubt) they would have been accused of plagiarism.Nickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17482365633543675966noreply@blogger.com