I’ll be watching a James Bond film this evening. The first recommendation will be what I watch.
(No Daniel Craig films)
Watch Casino Riyale anyway and realize how ridiculous that exclusion is.
But if not Russia is definitely the way to go. If time for another, OHMSS.
you know whats really wrong with Attack of the Clones? those damn Christians, or as they call them, “Sith”, taking any chance they get to jump on the bandwagon of war and screw everything up. if it wasn’t for religion, the galaxy would be a much better place smh
I know this is just a trolling post, but if there’s any religious analogy, clearly the only thing that makes sense is Jedi = Christians or, more specifically, Jedi = Knights Templar and Clone Wars = Crusades. I actually wish that analogy was expanded upon a bit more, could have been cool. The OT (SW specifically) paints the Jedi more in this way (“damn fool idealistic crusade”). Would have been cool if there was actually some sort of ideological underpinning to the Jedi being in the Clone Wars and would have been even cooler if it ended up factoring into their downfall.
I think it’s very different when you’re on the outside looking in.
Just thinking about the ongoings at my school this past year there are really only a couple incidents that factor into free speech discussions. One involves basically some petty squabbling over Israel/Palestine (something I definitely do not want to get into) and there was some dubious actions happening on both sides. Some students were asked to leave a place and stuff but I’d argue that ultimately it was a minor free speech violation. The other thing that happened was there was some neo-Nazi propaganda placed around campus that was removed but that’s hate speech so A okay.
The biggest piece of free speech violation actually involved a prospective professor about a year ago who ended up not teaching (? I think) because of some tweets that some thought were racist but definitely were not. Of course, the irony here is that the most vocal people wanting this person to not work at my school were actually people online who did not even go to my school and were not even college aged.
The idea that universities are commie playgrounds and PC-loving, free speech squashing tyrants is basically a myth. In my experience the PC attitudes come from students and the university administrations aren’t even really listening.
As for class oppression, some things are taught because they are true.
Now I’m actually offended! (but not really?)
But really, yeah the PC “I’m offended!” attitude is taken too far by some (especially in the internet where everything is hyperbolized) but for the most part it’s people just treating others with respect where past generations have not. For our faults, I think millennials are mostly just working towards saying “can’t we all just get along?”
So yeah I actually am kind of annoyed when people bitch about millennials just because they want people to be nice to one another.
Also most universities are money-guzzling capitalist ventures.
As a millennial (and in the true spirit of millennialism) I am am offended.
Hate ranking without explanation but don’t want to explain now. Maybe later.
This is a constantly changing list. Here’s how I feel now.
Point 1: Filthy Millennials
Are you saying that being a millennial makes one filthy or that some millennials are filthy and worth bitching about?
I can’t stand most modern dramatic TV shows. My parents are going through Homeland and Bloodline right now, and it’s just so much graphic death and sex and shit. Then there are things like Sons of Anarchy and Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. Christ, it’s exhausting to watch. I just want to have fun and relax when I watch TV.
Some shows are indeed just plain dreadful because they think that makes them interesting, but other dark and depressing shows (like Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones) are actually legitimately great simply because there’s actually real plotting and characterization - basically, there’s actually a story there beyond “what’s the most dark and depressing shit that can happen in 45 minutes?” In fairness if you don’t watch all these shows might seem to be the same in this regard but some are on a different wavelength (read: contain real storytelling) with others just copy the tone soullessly (read: cheap imitation).
When you see the shitty lifeless stuff it can seem pretty exhausting, but the other stuff is quite compelling.
Ripley didn’t become a BAMF until Aliens.
It’s truly a wonderful thing that the most popular film franchise is headlined by more than just white dudes.
Completely agree Anchorhead. Great that all the young girls can finally find role models in films such as these. About fucking time.
There’s stuff in the Clone Wars that I like a lot but on the whole I don’t think Ashoka makes any sense and there are some weird and silly ways they messed with continuity.
How so? That’s an obscure observation regarding Akhsoka.
Ahsoka shouldn’t exist. She was contrived for the series, and then conveniently dispatched from the Jedi order, and she is never mentioned in ROTS.
Pretty much yeah.
Also I never much cared for the character. She often undermines Anakin (and other characters) and I don’t think the voice actress is all that good.
Sure but I think that is also part of his character. His seduction of Severine was insensitive sure, but was part of his mission, and I don’t remember it being portrayed as anything other than cold-hearted too. I wouldn’t say that’s misogynistic.
Unless I’m forgetting something, she’s already got him on the boat to Silva’s hideout when he sneaks into her shower to have sex. The fact that he’s assuming that of course she’ll have sex with him is made all the worse by the fact that one of the only things he (and we) know about her is that she used to be a sex slave - basically it feels like he’s abusing her.
Then there’s the matter of “waste of good scotch” which puzzles me every time I watch the film. I want to believe that he’s just saying that as a front, but there’s not much in the film to support that interpretation (why did he wait until after she was killed to attack Silva and his men anyway?).
DominicCobb said:
And I’d say there’s nothing inherently wrong with masculinity but there definitely can be things very wrong with it (things often unfortunately exemplified in Bond films).You’ll have to go into more detail with this one. I’m sure that one example will be the very outdated and antiquated portrayal of his seduction of Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, but I’m not sure what else you could be pointing out here.
Pussy Galore was not the only one who was “seduced” in a way that might today be considered something harsher (read: RAPE).
Connery’s Bond (and others to a lesser extent - even Craig has the unfortunate portrayal of Severine in the otherwise excellent Skyfall) in general was fairly misogynistic. I could provide examples but honestly I don’t think this is much debated. There’s a reason M called Bond a dinosaur in GoldenEye.
I’m totally in agreement that it’s an interesting exploration of a character archetype to conduct, just that it just can’t be done on a specific character because by altering the character in order to conduct the experiment, you’ve altered the character past the point that you’re conducting the experiment on the original character.
Sure. I tend to define “original” character about more loosely (again, don’t have much respect for source material). It sort of depends on the character too. I’d say with a character like Bond it’s hard to really say your altering the character beyond his original characterization considering that was done in a book in the 50s and we’ve had so many various portrayals of him since. I’d argue putting the character in the 21st century or making him as funny as say Roger Moore are changes of roughly close to the same magnitude as changing his gender. But that’s just my opinion, of course.
I will say when I first considered the concept of a female Bond I was very much against it for these same reasons - thinking it’d change the character too much. But after much thinking, I’m not sure that’s entirely true (or, if it is, if it really matters as much as I thought it did).
I may also just be really taking this way overboard because it’s late and I’m punchy, haha
That’s fine. I’d suggest we fight each other but I’m team Iron Man too.
I would be butthurt if they made Bond a woman. I wouldn’t see it and I would refuse to watch another one until they returned to “James Bond”.
Fair enough. I think it’d be silly not to watch it on principle alone but I get wanting to stick with tradition.
I don’t necessarily have a problem with a black Bond; I actually think Idris Elba would do a great job with the role, although I think any new Bond should start at an earlier age.
In complete agreement.
The argument is just against the changing of a character for no reason other than identity politics.
This is needlessly dismissive. It’s not just identity politics for the sake of the buzz phrase. The Bond films have always been subtextually talking about masculinity and making a woman the center of that would shift that aspect in some potentially very interesting ways.
EDIT: I would definitely say that’s it’s not for the better to take Bond away from the ultimate male fantasy status that he has. There’s nothing wrong with masculinity.
Bond can never be taken away from the ultimate male fantasy status. That’s who he is (which is why keeping that status and making him a woman would be so interesting!). And I’d say there’s nothing inherently wrong with masculinity but there definitely can be things very wrong with it (things often unfortunately exemplified in Bond films).
However, I think specifically in the case of James Bond, because is such an icon and total embodiment of society’s ideas of masculinity that I think it would be very interesting to see this character in particular made into a woman. It would be so counter to what Bond is that it would be a truly interesting thing to see and have a conversation about.
I get where you’re coming from here, but my argument is that when you alter one of a character’s most defining traits, you automatically create a new character. So by the very act of switching Bond’s sex, you end up with a character that’s Bond-in-name-only. Kinda like Godzilla '98.
Sort of what I just said, but what’s so interesting about it is not altering his most defining (masculine) traits while changing the thing that most commonly associate with those traits (the male gender). I’m not advocating for a female Bond in name only. I’m advocating for more or less the same character who happens to be female (with of course the little bits and changes that come with that).
Besides, like you said, we can just look at Ghostbusters and know what the reaction would be, and they even have the benefit of being all-new characters. A larger franchise with the main focus on one character and his archetype would probably utterly self-destruct in a very ugly way with a change that polarizing.
I’m sure other established franchises (like Bond) are watching what’s going on with Ghostbusters right now and taking notes.
I look at this as simply an unfortunate truth of modern cinema. I’m not suggesting the next Bond film should have a female Bond. There’s no way that’d happen. I’m just thinking out loud about how cool that might actually be.
If they made a movie about Tombraider with a male Laura Croft I would imagine that that franchise’s fans would have an equally WTF reaction.
This is pretty much my point exactly. And they basically did make a male Lara Croft game, they just made it a new character and named him Nathan Drake. Just like Lara was kinda a female Indiana Jones (and with her reboot, the parallels are even moreso). Which is perfectly alright with me, nothing wrong with basing a character on an established character, but we can do better than just a gender swap.
Not arguing against this just saying that in the case of Bond specifically his gender and what that entails is central to the character so keeping those defining aspects while flipping the obvious crux of it on its head would be a very interesting thing (again, in this particular case - for example I see no reason for a female Indiana Jones).
But if you’re making a film where you’ve skewed the main character to the point where it’s no longer a “true James Bond film” what’s the point of making the character James Bond?
A character is a character because they have certain traits and motivations (and this includes things like gender and nationality and down to taste in breakfast foods), the same as I am my own person and you are yours. But once you start tweaking big tentpole character traits, the character ceases to be what they were, and you end up with a new character entirely. Ergo making James Bond a female means that the character is not James Bond anymore, and so you cheapen what could be a decent female-driven action spy film by trying to piggyback it onto the established Bond name. It’s like clickbait or some other questionable practise to drive traffic to your product.
This is a fair point and in most cases I’d agree there’s usually not much motivation behind changes like this (I will say though I am someone with very little regard for source material - when I look at a movie and its characters it’s all about THAT movie and THOSE characters, I don’t think what came before is all that relevant).
However, I think specifically in the case of James Bond, because he is such an icon and total embodiment of society’s ideas of masculinity that I think it would be very interesting to see this character in particular made into a woman. It would be so counter to what Bond is that it would be a truly interesting thing to see and have a conversation about. The reaction to the most male-oriented franchise being suddenly headlined by a woman would be a truly fascinating thing. It’s not about cheap gimmicks or anything like that. In this case, I genuinely think it’d make for a very interesting take on the Bond material (and something that would not be done quite as potently with a new female spy character divorced from the Bond ethos - although we should definitely have more original female super spies!).
Plus you lose the chance at cool crossovers in the future.
Honestly I’m getting kind of tired of crossovers. I’d rather Bond not be the nth franchise to try to be the MCU.
(for the record the new Ghostbusters movie is going to suck because it looks like a terrible film, and it would be just as bad if they kept the same movie and swapped the original cast in)
This is a 100% fair point and the obvious rebuttal to nu-Ghostbusters anti-criticism. I really don’t care about it that much but I will say let’s hold final judgements until it comes out.
Yeah I could probably make a list of SW stuff I like that doesn’t totally contradict each other, but then there’s also the matter of believability in the universe. Specifically I’m thinking of Rebels and The Clone Wars. There’s stuff in the Clone Wars that I like a lot but on the whole I don’t think Ashoka makes any sense and there are some weird and silly ways they messed with continuity. So I don’t think I could realistically fit that into a list of “what I think happened in a galaxy far, far, away,” which then becomes an issue because I really like Rebels and would love to fit that in but it still relies on some of the continuity of TCW. I know this all sounds pretty silly but that’s kind of my point. Coming up with a personal canon is a strange thing.
The concept of personal canon is such a weird and intangible thing to me. Do you guys really see all these things fit together when you consume these movies/TV shows/comics/etc.? Or is it just simply you compiling what bits of Star Wars content you like and think are worthy of existing (for lack of a better term)? Or is it picking the things you think make sense together and should be things that happened in this universe?
Going off the last one is a tricky one. So many of these things contradict each other or are so different in tone/characterization or what have you that it’s hard to put them all in the context of one another. For example, some of my absolute favorite Star Wars content is the original Marvel run of comics (and the Goodwin/Williamson strip), but I find a lot of that very hard to reconcile with the world established in the films. Similarly, as much as I loved the PT as a kid, I’ve spent about the last decade coming to terms with the fact that it just does not fit at all with the OT (fan edits are an effort to fix this, but can they ever really?).
Anyway, point is, hard for me to genuinely come up with a “personal canon” in the typical sense of the world (what I view as the ‘history of the Star Wars universe’). I could list the Star Wars stuff that I like but I don’t know, feel like that’s kind of boring?
May do it later anyway.
I will say I totally understand people with multiple canons. It’s definitely a different experience watching the original film as just a standalone feature in comparison to watching it in the larger context of the OT (on that note, I’ve tried numerous times to watch it in the context of the PT but it just doesn’t work).
He stayed away from Bibi (the figure skater) in For Your Eyes Only. I always took the Skyfall line as a joke just to f#ck with Javier Bardem. A female Bond would most likely be the most poorly received film in history.
The mere fact of a female Bond would not make the film poorly received (that would all depend on its quality), it would only assure the loudest outcry of butthurt fanboys in history (which might be funny but would probably just be sad and annoying if the new Ghostbusters is anything to go off of).
Maybe I’m weird, but I feel like James Bond should just remain James Bond and people can make other characters that are what they want them to be.
I agree, to an extent.
It’s sort of a conundrum. Make Bond gay or female and he suddenly becomes a different character (unlike most I’d argue this typically isn’t the case with popular fictional characters, for instance I don’t think making Captain America would change a damn thing about him - his sexuality has never informed his characterization), because Bond’s uber “masculinity” is easily his most definitive trait. So since I enjoy Bond movies and want to keep watching more, I kind of have to agree that I’d prefer James to stay James (don’t know why he can’t be black though, no good argument against that).
I will say it might be a fun subversion and still somewhat believably in character for him to hook up with a guy, but yeah at that point we’re starting to stray from Bond as the ultimate male fantasy (though maybe for the better?). Bond as a woman though is a whole other thing. It’d be completely subversive and totally bad ass. The pinnacle of masculinity… a woman? I’d love to see that. And hence, the conundrum. I’d love to see a really outside the box Bond pic. I know everyone loves these movies because of the formula but COME ON. The best films are the ones that don’t follow that formula to a T, that do something a little different. Put simply, I’d LOVE to see what a female James Bond film would look like (done right, of course). I’d be a different thing, sure. Not a true James Bond film. But is that such a bad thing?
Will it ever happen? Probably not. Should it? I think probably yeah.
Still waiting for the first Bond Boy. JB is obviously an omnisexual horndog who swings every way. Wonder when they’ll have the guts to show it.
I don’t think they ever will. That would be incredibly out of character. Bond clearly has extremely high standards since he’s only ever with the most attractive women.
I’m wondering if it wasn’t sarcasm.
Yes and no.
In the simplest terms the typical Bond is an ultra heterosexual mysognistic dinosaur. You know, the ultimate in “masculinity.” So yeah the idea of Connery Bond fucking anyone but the hottest bimbos is sarcastic and completely ridiculous.
But I think if we’re being honest about how this character would be in real, modern life, it’s not quite that simple. Bond’ll fuck any woman with a pulse (it just so happens that it’s only the most attractive women who are cast in these films). The truth is, he’s a sex addict. Not to say that people who are open to more than just heterosexuality do so out of desperation from addiction, just to say that someone like Bond isn’t so exclusive. Bond (sexually) loves all (though of course emotionally loves none). I could totally see Craig Bond hook up with a dude in the next flick (don’t forget he implied he’s already done as much in Skyfall).
Far more likely than a female Bond, I think (though that would be interesting to see, Emily Blunt has my vote for the record).
Basically the only info regarding these reshoots of any import/interest is that Tony Gilroy is helping out, which is pretty awesome.
I find it funny how people give Skyfall credit for having the first homosexual Bond villain when the series had a lesbian villain in 1963.
She was attracted to Bond so she wasnt lesbian. She was bi.
No, she wasn’t.
So the Skyfall villain is the first HOMOsexual.
No, Diamonds Are Forever.
Still waiting for the first Bond Boy. JB is obviously an omnisexual horndog who swings every way. Wonder when they’ll have the guts to show it.
I still love A View to a Kill in a guilty pleasure sort of way.
Same but I understand why if it’s the only Bond film you’ve seen you’d have no interest in Bond.
I’ve seen View to a Kill and like 10 minutes of a few others.
Also the one where Bond plays a video game against the villain and whoever takes a hit gets and electric shock through the controls.
You’re doing it wrong. A View to a Kill sucks and Never Say Never Again is easily the worst (not to mention unofficial).
Dr. No is kind of silly and overrated (my opinion), but From Russia With Love has been my favorite Bond since I was a kid. Then I think it was partly because it was my introduction to the franchise, but now I appreciate it as a grounded spy flick (that still retains key elements of the Bond formula). It’s a no-nonsense lean and mean adventure thriller (almost Hitchcockian in a way - very North by Northwest). Plus it’s got two of the best villains ever (Grant and Klebb). If you don’t like it then, well, I feel sorry for you. Great fun.