The only downer for me so far is that Jesper Christensen won’t be returning to reprise his role as Mr White for part three. Apparently he gets bumped off by Bond in Quantum but Marc Forster decided to cut that scene. I think this is a shame as he was a pretty scary character, not only did he put a cap in Le Chiffre but he vanished at the beginning of Quantum and didn’t even bother to get up and leave in the opera scene which made him pretty intriuguing all round. I would think that Forster cut his death for a reason, but since his “supposed” outburst at the Berlin Film Festival he probably wouldn’t be allowed to take part even if he wanted to. Despite of course the fact he explained how his words got blown all out of proportion (likely, I’d say). Apparently we may see his death on a future Quantum director’s cut DVD, who knows.

For more info and speculation check out the pretty cool blog and fan-made posters here.

- I can hear your zombie-like groans from here. To be honest though, unless Bram himself managed to claw his way out of the grave, it was always unlikely that he’d be the one writing it.

The question remains, why should anyone want to write a sequel? Who could hope to top or even equal such a classic? The odds are stacked against that happening even if it is good. I certainly have my reservations, but I’m going to see what happens. Perhaps a genuinely great idea struck Dacre and he felt he simply had to write it.

The book that springs to mind when I think about this is the disappointing Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks who wrote the book in the style of the original James Bond author, Ian Fleming. I couldn’t help feeling underwhelmed by the story and particularly the monkey-handed (yes, you heard) antagonist whose motivation seemed no more fleshed out than that of Stormbreaker’s lead villain Darrius Sayle.

According to Wikipedia “Ian Holt and Alexander Galant have completed the screenplay based on the official sequel novel.”

Let’s hope it doesn’t suck (haha).

Now here’s a man who played Dracula:

…and also the devil, it seems:

Quantum of Solace

Went to see this on Saturday and I was pleasantly surprised considering all the bad press it’s getting. I was entertained, which is the whole point now isn’t it? It does annoy me that critics have been so hard on it, because people do listen. They quote. It’s rare that a film does well with the general public when the critics have got their teeth in. If you want a job destroying creativity, why not become a demolition man? anyway, enough of that!

For the reasons which I’ll highlight in a moment it’s not on par with Casino Royale, but to me it felt like a fitting sequel.

QoS wasn’t all action. It had four or so action pieces, but enough dialogue and exposition so as not to be overbearing. What it lacks is the long poker game halfway through, but even this was in dispersed with action pieces (the machete fight on the stairs, Bond’s heart failure). There’s not a lot of build-up to action sequences in QoS either, e.g. foreboding in the form of Gettler (the one-eyed man)’s early appearance in the Venice portion of CR, but this reflects the nature of the beast. Bond is frantic and his insides are cut to pieces, he’s killing for the sake of killing to try and make himself feel better, but at the end of the day Vesper did it to herself so is it likely he’ll ever find comfort in this method? We see a rawer, shorter, bloodier Bond film here, but it does pack a punch.

QoS isn’t pitch black, but it is rather shady. Se7en is dark, this film just shows Bond running on adrenaline and hate, and by the end of the film I get the impression that some of this had been quenched, and Bond had found his quantum of solace, though we may have to wait until next time to understand precisely how he has obtained this. I could certainly see nods to Bourne, but it isn’t a Bourne rip-off.

I think QoS would have benefitted from being half an hour longer and I remember there being bad press about a scene involving horses (polo) a year or two ago as they filmed – was this sequence cut completely? I’d also like to know a bit more about Quantum (the organisation, SMERSH in the books), but that’ll have to wait until the next sequel. I like that the films follow on now.

I’m not going to go on about the action or the story so as not to spoil it all, but do go and see it with an open mind. You may just enjoy it! I’m already looking forward to the sequel.

if Casino Royale was a 9, in my opinion this would be a 6 or a 7.

Some particularly cool bits (without spoiling things)

the car bit
hitting some guy with a bike
the plane bit
taking photos
oil
axe-fighting
the other oil bit
the minority report-esque computer stuff
the dam thing (whatever the orangey building in the desert was)
all the place names having unique typography

…oh and considering Dominic Greene didn’t have the obligatory disfigurement he was all right (and at times, quite scary). Yelped like a girl in places though. I reckon if they do everything a bit more by-the-numbers with a few new bits next time people’ll love Bond all over again. Pick a safer opening song (although I rather like Another Way to Die) and reintroduce Q branch (I suppose) and all that malarky. It must be a bugger trying to please people when you have 20+ films and a legion of hard-to-please fans to satisfy. I certainly wouldn’t want that job!

Here’s the link to the full song. I’m not sure how long it’ll be up, so click now (unless you like James Bond, then apparently, don’t)!