Why not just track in some old John Barry cues? At least there'll be some interest for the ears rather than the usual "hold on one simple chord, then shift to another simple chord" we get in most movies these days.
Ha! I wrote this in 2019 and got around to finally watching NTTD last night - and it turns out the best music in it is John Barry music from On Her Majesty's.
NTTD is, for me, the best Craig Bond since Casino Royale. It's better to think of Craig's tenure as a 5-movie miniseries reboot rather than tying it in to the earlier entries of the series. NTTD is a bit clumsy (especially with the vague Rami Malek villain character) and contains worn cliches (such as the sound of the film gets muffled when the main character suffers temporary deafness), but the Bond-Madeleine relationship is made properly meaningful (important for it to be so for the emotional finale to work) and there is plenty of that Bond glamorous atmosphere that makes these films live on in the mind.
The action is well-choreographed (there is one particularly thrilling and amusing stunt of Bond on a motorcycle scaling a high ramp of a wall to avoid a procession of people only to land smack in the middle of another procession!) A sequence in an MI6 lab is striking with its green-blue design and the scientists in their red uniforms. The Jamaica atmosphere with Bond and Felix is fun and lively. Ana de Armes shines in a fight sequence set in Santiago, Cuba. I could watch an entire movie starring her fresh, yet skilled CIA character. The aforementioned emotional finale is good, even though the nanobot stuff, which is the reason for the tragedy, seems a bit too "out there" even for a 007 movie. I liked M's verse-reading at the end. I want to find out if that's from an actual poem or was created for this film. It's a great statement on what it means to be truly alive.
A capable score from Zimmer, but it's the bits of Barry that really made me smile.
NTTD is, for me, the best Craig Bond since Casino Royale. It's better to think of Craig's tenure as a 5-movie miniseries reboot rather than tying it in to the earlier entries of the series. NTTD is a bit clumsy (especially with the vague Rami Malek villain character) and contains worn cliches (such as the sound of the film gets muffled when the main character suffers temporary deafness), but the Bond-Madeleine relationship is made properly meaningful (important for it to be so for the emotional finale to work) and there is plenty of that Bond glamorous atmosphere that makes these films live on in the mind.
The action is well-choreographed (there is one particularly thrilling and amusing stunt of Bond on a motorcycle scaling a high ramp of a wall to avoid a procession of people only to land smack in the middle of another procession!) A sequence in an MI6 lab is striking with its green-blue design and the scientists in their red uniforms. The Jamaica atmosphere with Bond and Felix is fun and lively. Ana de Armes shines in a fight sequence set in Santiago, Cuba. I could watch an entire movie starring her fresh, yet skilled CIA character. The aforementioned emotional finale is good, even though the nanobot stuff, which is the reason for the tragedy, seems a bit too "out there" even for a 007 movie. I liked M's verse-reading at the end. I want to find out if that's from an actual poem or was created for this film. It's a great statement on what it means to be truly alive.
A capable score from Zimmer, but it's the bits of Barry that really made me smile.
. I liked M's verse-reading at the end. I want to find out if that's from an actual poem or was created for this film. It's a great statement on what it means to be truly alive. .
NTTD is, for me, the best Craig Bond since Casino Royale. It's better to think of Craig's tenure as a 5-movie miniseries reboot rather than tying it in to the earlier entries of the series. NTTD is a bit clumsy (especially with the vague Rami Malek villain character) and contains worn cliches (such as the sound of the film gets muffled when the main character suffers temporary deafness), but the Bond-Madeleine relationship is made properly meaningful (important for it to be so for the emotional finale to work) and there is plenty of that Bond glamorous atmosphere that makes these films live on in the mind.
The action is well-choreographed (there is one particularly thrilling and amusing stunt of Bond on a motorcycle scaling a high ramp of a wall to avoid a procession of people only to land smack in the middle of another procession!) A sequence in an MI6 lab is striking with its green-blue design and the scientists in their red uniforms. The Jamaica atmosphere with Bond and Felix is fun and lively. Ana de Armes shines in a fight sequence set in Santiago, Cuba. I could watch an entire movie starring her fresh, yet skilled CIA character. The aforementioned emotional finale is good, even though the nanobot stuff, which is the reason for the tragedy, seems a bit too "out there" even for a 007 movie. I liked M's verse-reading at the end. I want to find out if that's from an actual poem or was created for this film. It's a great statement on what it means to be truly alive.
A capable score from Zimmer, but it's the bits of Barry that really made me smile.
I agree with all of this.
I disagree with all of this apart from Ana de Armes who was fantastic and looks like she had stumbled in from a different, better movie.
. I liked M's verse-reading at the end. I want to find out if that's from an actual poem or was created for this film. It's a great statement on what it means to be truly alive. .
It’s neither. It’s a quote from Jack London.
Thank you!
"The function of Man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
I'm the contrarian here but I think time will be kind to this one in the same way it has been towards On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It's a great, though certainly flawed, exploration of "the death of the male id." James Bond himself is one of the great fictional characters representing the male id writ large and this is maybe the only Bond movie interested in addressing that (but wait, so is OHMSS!). As a Bond fan, I also take great pleasure in seeing how angry the movie makes many other Bond fans. It's amusing when people make Fantasy a precious thing.
I'm the contrarian here but I think time will be kind to this one in the same way it has been towards On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It's a great, though certainly flawed, exploration of "the death of the male id." James Bond himself is one of the great fictional characters representing the male id writ large and this is maybe the only Bond movie interested in addressing that (but wait, so is OHMSS!). As a Bond fan, I also take great pleasure in seeing how angry the movie makes many other Bond fans. It's amusing when people make Fantasy a precious thing.
Great score too!
I agree with you about the score at least, I certainly enjoyed that aspect of this entry! Otherwise, the movie was an overlong, anguished slog for me, as was Spectre, and I just can't muster any enthusiasm to sit through either of them again.
I think most movies are too long, myself. This was a wallop in the cinemas (especially in Dolby Atmos) but at home I pull a two-parter. My biggest gripe on the movie is Malek's villain. He's undercooked though I think there was great promise there. Supposedly they did cut some sequences with him due to the nature of the Covid 19 pandemic and the character's pessimism towards humanity and its survival.
Supposedly they did cut some sequences with him due to the nature of the Covid 19 pandemic and the character's pessimism towards humanity and its survival.
I'm really curious about that.
The director said they didn't touch the film during the lengthy time it was postponed, and I tend to believe that.
There was a fan theory online that the "nanobots" subplot was re-edited into the film, using re-shot and redubbed material, post-COVID, and that the plot of the film originally revolved around an actual virus.
It's plausible enough, the actual plot seems kind of fuzzy between being a virus and "nanobots."
However, the making-of book, which was printed before the pandemic and sat in boxes in a warehouse for almost two years, and has a publication date printed in the front of March 2020, talks about the nanobots. There was even a fan conspiracy theory that they altered those books somehow, but that seems farfetched to me.
That said, the villain never really explains his reasoning for his evil master plan, which usually happens in a Bond film, so maybe they just cut those specific lines.
I actually don't mind the nanobots. I'm enough of a Michael Crichton and Metal Gear Solid fan to see the gleeful fantasy in magic mini machines destroying us. James Bond is pure fantasy too, so its formalist removal of reality is quite welcome by me. I think it is quite amusing to think the people who could find nanobots "silly" may also champion the plan of someone like Hugo Drax as any kind of "realism."
I would rate this score second only to the Casino Royale score by David Arnold for the first of the Daniel Craig Bond films. It blows the two tepid Thomas Newman efforts out of the water and is miles above the strangely static score to Quantam Of Solace for me. The Barry nods are cool and the blasting modern orchestral version of the bridge of the Monty Norman theme is ace. Even the song has grown on me due to the score interpolations it is given during the run time. I held off picking up a copy, despite quietly admiring it while watching the film, but it was £5.99 in HMV and I've thoroughly enjoyed listening to (most of) it these past few weeks.
I agree, the score is fantastic on the film, and works well on the CD too.
The song is amazing, one of the best in a long time, and the use of the main melody of the song as a love theme in the score really helps give the film emotional depth.
