Quantum of Solace. I saw it twice just to make sure it was as bad as I thought it was. It was. The Bourne flicks were decent enough, minus Greengrass’s shakeycam. But Bond preceeded Bourne, successfully, by decades. So, why is Forster’s Bond a Bourne clone? Even if it was unintentional, it should have come up in a meeting.

Forster: Okay, since my Bond is a grittier guy than anything Fleming ever envisioned, we’re gonna go at it sans gadgets again, relying more on Bond’s quick-wittedness, superior combat training and unflinching good looks.

Neil, Studio Lackey: But, Campbell did that last time, and we got tons of comparisons to the Jason Bourne films.

Forster: Right, last time. what a great film that was. Really. Anyway, so there’s gonna be this close quarters knife fight with multiple stabs in rapid succession…

Bob, Studio Lackey: There was one of those in Bourne Identity. A good one, if I recall.

Forster: Right, so we’re all on the same page here? Good. The chick in this one will seem meager at first. Capable, but second rate. Then later, see, she comes into her own and becomes kind of a partner to Bond.

Neil: But, Franka Potente…

Forster: Oh! And the villain is the wormy French guy from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly!

Bob: … Well, you got me there. (To Neil) At least Liman got Chris Cooper.

Forster: Okay, are you ready for this? There’s a scene where Bond’s got to lock a guy in a bathroom, so he closes the door, then rips the handle right off the door! Cause he’s strong!

Neil and Bob: …

et cetera.

Yes. Forster’s Bond has superhuman strength. That alone should’ve kept the flies away. Super Bond also has the ability to receive all cuts and bruises in a manner that actually supports his pretty. The only lasting decent bit in the flick is that Dench’s M continues to be pure awesome. Since she took the Mycroft mantle, Dame Dench has proven that a character built purely for exposition can be quite flavorful. And we really get to see M do things in this one. Other than the M standard of giving 007 a mission, then later try unsuccessfully to reel him in. That’s in Quantum, of course, but she also has some nice bits of running MI6 as a character like that would in her day-to-days. Those scenes were fun to watch. And I got a good laugh out of the fact that a high-powered secret society can place a man in MI6 and get him promoted to M’s personal bodyguard, just in case he’s present to act on a classic 007ism like “We have people everywhere. Don’t we?”

Wright was underused. The villains were shit. The movie sucked.

The baseline question I’ll be handling today is this: Can a hero of high adventure stories be humanized, as in, changed by story events?

When I think “high adventure, “ I generally think of characters like these:

Good guys. White hats, no matter the situation. High adventure, of course, covers more than that with anti-heroes and others, scoundrels and men with no names and whatnots. Whatever the guise, the high adventure guy tends to ride into the story, right a feature full of wrongs, then take a powder, satisfied that he had done good things. They are, from time to time, troubled fellows, but they always do the right thing, preserving the image of the hero.

Back in Forsterland, Spider Bond spends the story pretending to care about the mission and secretly making moves to get revenge for the death of Vesper, the skirt from the last flick. The new chick wants revenge, too. It seems that, when she was a little girl, a stock military General character killed her family and raped her house plants. Her part pretty much exists to give Bat Bond some perspective on his own situation and realize how withered is the fruit of the vengeance tree, or some crappy arthousey metaphor that Forster came up with early one morning while sipping Evian and nibbling alfalfa sprouts. Naturally, after Bondzarro gets info from and dispatches the bad guy, who, by the way, looks like a skeleton shrink wrapped in Tim Burton’s bedsheets, he moves on to Russia. Okay, here goes. At the end of Casino Royale we learned that Vesper was betrayed by a boyfriend who, as wikipedia tells me, since I don’t care to remember, snags well-to-do ladies, then pretends to be kidnapped so that the ladies will give up whatever he wants in exchange for his supposed freedom, then ditches the bitches, absconding with the booty. Now. The info that the wormy guy gave up apparantly leads Dr. Bond, Sorceror Supreme to this Yusef guy, Vesper’s betrayer and, *ahem* member of Quantum, the secret society that all the baddies in this franchise reboot apparently belong to. Iron Bond, having learned much in his tribulations, lets the guy live.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What the hell is that?!?

Sure, characters can, and should evolve, but what the fuck. It’s fucking James Bond. He pimps in, does his DangerMouse bit, shags some carpet, then beats it to the next martini bar. Or space ship escape pod, if it’s convenient. This cat doesn’t need that aspect to be cool, or to sell tickets, or change the world.

Watching Kevin Smith’s Threevening, I finally got some insight into why Superman Returns was so hated on by pretty much everyone except we valient few. They don’t like that it went to the emotional side of Supes rather heavy handidly. They don’t like that there’s no mano a mano with a supervillain. I liked all that, but that’s a rant for another day. The point here is that I, a regular-class fanboy dug that Singer went there with Superman. So, why am I cool with Superman showing emotion, but not Bondo the Conqueror? Because it was handled well. I can’t label Marc Forster a bad director. I didn’t see Finding Neverland, but heard good things. I liked Stranger than Fiction well enough. And I’m legitimately looking forward to seeing what he does with WWZ. But, Singer is a phenomenal director. He’s top shelf quality. Usual Suspects, X-Men, X2, Baywatch, Baywatch Nights, the list goes on. It apparantly takes a director of that calibre to properly break a high adventure character down into his component parts without losing the sterner stuff that holds it all together.

Why is revenge such a hated on motivation, anyway? All the crap about “It’s not worth it,” and “We’re better than that.” It’s for the birds. The gay ones. I’ve had an idea floating for a while now that centers around the concept that “vengeance is justice enacted by the passionate.”

If you saw Quantum of Solace, you paid too much for your ticket, even if it was free. But, also, you probably saw the Trek trailer. For a proper breakdown of that, read Steven’s review here.

I know you’ve all learned to set your watches by my regular postings, but keep your cool for the next few weeks, as I’ll be relocating myself to Austin. Stay the course, and I’ll be posting again by late December. Or possibly mid-June. Next year.