Dr No Future

[spoilers follow]

If Dr No was made today and kept the same plot, roughly speaking, and the same script, perhaps updated, would it succeed?

Should it succeed?

It would obviously fail because it's a not all that strong thriller. The plot is garbage, the action is rudimentary, the characters are either pisspoor or underdeveloped (what is Sylvia Trench even there for?) and it's sooooo slow. It would be worse than that Tinker Tailor with Gary Oldman and that was horrible.

You also couldn't have Henry Cavill tell a Jamaican to "fetch my shoes" unless the Jamaican told him to go fetch them his fucken self or it was some sort of radical commentary.

So I'm saying it's not that good of a film by today's standards. Obviously, it's a cultural icon but it's everything else that makes that, not the film itself.

Having said all that though, I would welcome a new Bond that reworked the franchise as spy thriller rather than action film, and aimed for more of the languid style of the early Bonds. With less racism obviously. And can we finally can the sexist nonsense?

Because look these guys don't just wander up and charm women. They are the guys women want to avoid. If there's a party, they ask "Is Bond coming?" before agreeing to go. It's a male fantasy that you can get women by being a huge cunt so long as you have a broad chest and a cheeky smile.

Women are worth nothing in Bond films. There are three women, I'd say, who amount to "strong". Two die. The third is converted from homosexuality through the means of rape. I have no idea what conclusions we are supposed to draw from any of that. Why did Fleming kill Tracy? It doesn't even feature as a motivator for Bond and he was a sociopath before it happened. Why is Vesper killed? It serves nothing.

Well, lots of things in Bond don't serve anything. They've always lazy collections of stereotypes and stunts, poorly scripted, poorly plotted and ultimately mostly just barely entertaining. In reveiwing all of them, I have rarely even liked the film, let alone thought it was a good movie, and very few would stand up next to the movies I actually do rate.

The same goes for Dr No. It's just a run of the mill 1960s thriller. Connery's charisma made it a hit. And there was an appetite for this nonsense then. I mean, there still is. People queue around the block to watch Marvel films and they're bollocks on the whole. If you care, this is C level. It's okay. You'd watch it on a slow Saturday night. But you could live without Bond. And now I will.

posted by Dr Zen @ 7:38 pm