You know, M is absolutely right in Skyfall. Our world hasn't become more transparent, it's become more opaque. There are more lies and levels of misdirection in the world than there have ever been.
So why can't we seem to have any good spy movies? I'm not just talking about James Bond, and Bond is really only ever a shoddy parody of true spy films anyway. But it seems like films about espionage and secrecy should be having a moment. Yet the few I can think of are either small in scope or weren't very successful. And of course after Spectre the Bond franchise is a complete joke.
Jackson Hughes
Because if they aren't over the top spectacles they won't make any money. And now people expect spying to be "I hacked his phone and know exactly where they are."
Brayden Lopez
There are many reasons why spy movies are shit today and why the Bond Franchise has been driven into the muck. But you can figure that out simply by looking at what made earlier movies in this series so wonderful, and notice when those elements are removed or reversed in modern ones.
1) The music. This is a HUGE deal. The musical scores underpin everything in the older movies, signalling characters, atmospheres, and special moments you need to pay attention to emotionally. Modern scores today are surprisingly replaceable, generic, and usually dependent upon styles that became popular 1 year before production. Listen to the scores by John Barry...Moonraker is easily the best one, but all of his stuff is wonderful. Compare that with some of the music from Spectre or Skyfall, and you see the problem.
2) Bond as a physical character. This is a complex issue, but for the moment let's look at what he was in the past. An expert marksman, an athlete, someone who is intellectually more brilliant than his cohorts (especially regarding obscure knowledge), physically good looking, socially aware and a 'gentleman', capable of being gentle but no-nonsense at the drop of a hat. He could use any machine with a motor, driving with precision and reliability, and it was all believable, nothing too superhuman. As we've seen in the past 2 movies, Bond is a broken down physical specimen, flawed emotionally and intellectually, and erring physically.
3) Bond the lover. He was a lover of things, and he treated women as things. He enjoyed booze without getting too drunk to dispatch a criminal, he traded women like kids trade Baseball cards, and he took joy and pleasure in the moment rather than dwelling on the past or the future. He would seduce any woman, as long as she was beautiful or to his advantage in terms of gaining information about the enemy. He never showed guilt of any of these actions, incidentally.
TBC
Parker Butler
the problem is you can't show the bad guys now, unlike easily showing a commie or Russian during the cold war
Elijah Hill
cont. Bond today is wracked with guilt over every seduction, every death, every action. He's shown to be a malfunctioning alcoholic who sees romance as something serious and a source of hurt feelings for all involved. He thinks about the past, about the future, and he worries. He doesn't live in the moment anymore.
4) Innovation. The spy genre at the time was full of innovation, and part of the fun of watching these movies was to see what new gadget they could come up with next. Spies had to blend in and disappear, use inconspicuous items for surreptitious purposes, and actually take the time to observe events before acting on them. Unfortunately, for whatever reason the new productions have either run out of ideas or they've simply lost their creativity. Everything is painfully derivative, to a point where the bloody DB5 keeps on showing up in every damn movie, just to remind us who disbelieve that we are in fact watching a Bond movie. This is, as an example, why Tomorrow Never Dies is definitely a wonderful Bond movie by the standards of old; everything is knew, from the stealth boat to the updated BMW car with gadgets. But I digress. Modern technology has changed spying to a point where it can be done by machine from a long distance...the human spy is no longer necessary, which is perhaps the only real logical reason why this genre is dying. Nevertheless, the new movies address this to a point, but since they don't offer a solution to it, in my view it would have been better for them not to say anything at all and maintain the fantasy (the way that Kingsman did).
5) The bad guy. Here's perhaps the biggest problem with the modern Bonds. How many recent Bond movies have him chasing someone from his past or someone who is a rogue agent (or both)? To my mind, I can think of quite a number. You may have noticed this as well with many other western movies...the bad guy has to be an internal, he or she cannot be an external force. cont.
Andrew Clark
The real tragedy with people like you is that Jews are really protecting us from the real bad guy. They're being framed to take the fall when they're our first line of defense against the ones who shall remain nameless.
Austin Russell
Fuck off moredecai
Grayson Sanders
HA HA HA yeah they're real brave warriors against the lizard people, who we all know are pedos, hypocrites, and greedy shysters!
Wyatt Hall
cont. This is because of the international film market, of course; you cannot sell a movie to the Chinese if the main bad guy is Chinese. Also, the Chinese market seems to like movies about Americans or British being harassed by their own people. Rogue agents, members of government who are corrupt, etc. This restriction didn't exist before the early 2000s, which is why the earlier Bonds were also very free to go after anyone they wanted. Bad Germans, Bad French, Bad Greeks...bad anyone, and it didn't matter. The bad guy was not a blemish on the culture they came from; they were always recognised as simply a bad guy of a different flavour. This one plays the piano, this one loves fish. This one wants the ATAC and this one is working for SPECTRE. This was diversity, in its finest. Once again, this doesn't exist anymore now. Every bad guy has to have some personal tie to Bond to force a vendetta, where Bond must go it alone. Which of course brings me to my next point.
6) MI6 as a team. Bond is 007, which implies that there are at least 6 others. Quite often in the older series M would chastise Bond for breaking the rules, threatening him that if he didn't shape up, '008 can replace you'. The most interesting aspect to me about this is that it means that Bond isn't the only agent that exists, he's not the centre of the universe. He's a part of a much wider team, though we may not be able to see that team outside of Q-branch and Major Boothroyd. For some strange reason, the modern movies treat Bond as if he's the only 00 agent on the planet; he's the centre, he's the only one that can solve anything, and anything that happens to major players involves him in a direct way. He almost suffers from the Mary Sue problem that if he's not around, everyone is asking, 'where's James?'.
7) Contempt for Bond. A characterization aspect which is wonderful from the earlier movies is how everyone at MI6 seems to hold Bond in contempt. cont.
Jordan Morris
cont. M, Moneypenny, the aforementioned Major Boothroyd all recognise that Bond is not being serious with them, or at least, that he doesn't care too much because he knows that he's the best man for the job being given to him, and that he has skills that perhaps other agents don't have in such plentiful supply. With the new movies...I can't even describe it. Bond is serious...everyone around him is as dour as British weather....and there's no humanity in any of it, no levity. I'm not asking for Roger Moore style humour all the time...but there has to be sunlight in order to notice the shadows being produced, right?
If I were to speculate, I'd say that Bond has been changed to suit the producers, and the producers show their character traits in a far too transparent manner. They hate Bond...they absolutely hate him for what he represents, which in today's lingo is 'toxic masculinity'. They hate that women find him attractive, and that he uses that power over them. They hate that he is good at something without showing any effort...that is something that is only reserved for attractive women today. So what have they done? They've deconstructed all the elements that make him a man, and they've turned him into someone who is harmless, unattractive, pitiful, and weak. The feminist's daydream of the man they think they want but when confronted with it is abhorrent to them. When you combine that character with the writing standards of movies today that are below high school, you have a dramatic mess that no one wants to see.
Jacob White
Brilliant.
Carter Wright
Thanks user...I appreciate the genre, and I'm sad to see it as it is now. If a new one comes out, I doubt very much I'll go and see it.
Joshua Diaz
The only reason we have "more lies and levels of misdirection" now is because now is the first time since the creation of governments that the ordinary people were given a right to know what their rulers were up to.
Some dirty peasents in the 1400s didn't need to be lied to by their lord because a lords power in such times was absolute and they didn't need to explain themselves. The People werent lied to, because they just werent told anything at all.
Part of the reason why we dont have much spy films anymore is because spies are inherently a weapon used by governments and trust and approval of The Government is at an all-time low. The public consciousness is not interested in watching some handsome westerner muck about in other countries' business, blowing up the indigenous people's and portraying them as savages, terrorists etc.
That said, Atomic Blonde came out recently and it wasn't bad, sans the ending.
Carson Harris
That fucking gif How is it not everywhere?
Hunter Gutierrez
>Some dirty peasents in the 1400s didn't need to be lied to by their lord because a lords power in such times was absolute and they didn't need to explain themselves
Actually user, this is half-wrong. Take Medieval Europe, it was Christianity that rulers had to explain themselves to. Hence, all of the wars of religions that emerged when rulers stopped trying to explain themselves through an independent church. And before the Church, there were plenty of other eras where rulers had to justify themselves, albeit to the warrior aristocracy. Meaning, if you were a Greek warlord you had to convince the landowning citizens you were righteous, or if you were a bloodthirsty mongol you had to get the support of the clan if people were to follow you into battle. These people weren't necessarily 'rich or powerful' by a normal standard definition, but they were distinctly as middle-class as any suburban voter in an American election.
But you are absolutely right about the second point.
Camden Howard
The only actual good content Sup Forums has made in a while.
Adam Young
In my mind Spectre tried to get back at the roots of old Bond, in some ways. He's seductive, dashing, willing to crack jokes whenever necessary. The villains are diverse, and he is treated as replaceable.
It isn't the best of the Bond films, but it certainly imitated the older ones as opposed to sticking to the interpretation of the character seen in the other Craig-verse films.
Hudson Bailey
Idk user, apparently Mission Impossible V and the Jack Reacher movies were good, as were other recent spy themed action films
Justin Hall
The "spying" elements of those films still exist, though. It just looks different. It's not about James Bond killing KGB agents. It's about Snowden fucking over the NSA. Or Frank Underwood doing underhanded political deals.
You see fewer guys in fancy suits and more behind computer screens. In reality, that's how a lot of spying and getting information occurs these days anyway.
Jeremiah Jenkins
The world cant even name the jew thats why
Owen Diaz
Deserves a (You). >toxic masculinity I think they're going for opposite direction for Bond (psychologically and emotionally weak) but it's not about bringing balance. I'm personally not against showing that Bond is human as oppose to spy force-of-nature kind of thing but emotional undertones should be subtle and come from body language.
Logan Gonzalez
Now that I think of it, one of the biggest flaws I find with the superheros is what I hated about the old bond films. The character was so over the top that he was unrelatable. Dude didn't even react when his buddies were killed or nothin. At least the modern bond was humanized and felt the affects of his actions and had some actual competition to overcome.
Luke Stewart
absolutely beautiful user
In the mood for a good ole fashioned bond movie to fall asleep to, what should I throw on?
Chase Lewis
Goldfinger or From Russia With Love.
Connor Ortiz
Good posts. I think backdrop is also important, where a lot of older Bond movies took place in beautiful places you'd want to go to yourself, while more modern takes will be in middle eastern shitholes if they want to be truer to current problems (or at least end the movie there). A lot of the European mystique has fallen off with how much easier traveling yourself is now also.