{"id":9489,"date":"2014-12-08T09:51:45","date_gmt":"2014-12-08T17:51:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=9489"},"modified":"2019-12-23T16:15:03","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T00:15:03","slug":"a-better-bond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2014\/12\/08\/a-better-bond\/","title":{"rendered":"A Better Bond"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:2835,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/gp\\\/product\\\/B006U1J5ZY\\\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B006U1J5ZY&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=djwudicom-20&amp;linkId=WB22X2ONSAZ3Z336&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260305194651\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/gp\\\/product\\\/B006U1J5ZY\\\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.amazon.com\\\/gp\\\/product\\\/B006U1J5ZY\\\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 15:59:08&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-23 22:30:07&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 17:03:16&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 17:03:16&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:2836,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.mi6-hq.com\\\/sections\\\/articles\\\/interview-daniel-craig-interview-foreshadows-bond-24&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260112002045\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.mi6-hq.com\\\/sections\\\/articles\\\/interview-daniel-craig-interview-foreshadows-bond-24&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-05 19:00:12&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 15:59:10&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-23 22:30:06&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 17:03:14&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 17:03:14&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:2837,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/io9.com\\\/the-james-bond-movies-had-to-go-darker-because-mike-my-1667143453&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20151209114901\\\/http:\\\/\\\/io9.com:80\\\/the-james-bond-movies-had-to-go-darker-because-mike-my-1667143453&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-05 19:00:15&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-11 15:59:12&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-24 15:22:22&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 17:03:16&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-01 17:03:16&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Last Christmas, Prairie got me the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B006U1J5ZY\/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B006U1J5ZY&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=djwudicom-20&amp;linkId=WB22X2ONSAZ3Z336\">50th anniversary James Bond collection<\/a>, and over the year, we worked our way through the entire canon, all the way through <em>Skyfall<\/em>. On the whole, Bond movies are a lot of mindless fun (some more mindless than others, to be sure), but boy does the quality vary. At the end, we were glad that we undertook this project after <em>Skyfall<\/em> was released, because it ended up meaning we went out on a high note.<\/p>\n<p>We hadn&#8217;t been terribly impressed with the first two Daniel Craig films &#8212; <em>Casino Royale<\/em> took Bond too far to the modern, gritty style, and devolved into a nonsensical mess by the end; <em>Quantum of Solace<\/em>&#8230;well, I barely even remember what that one was even about &#8212; but we both felt that <em>Skyfall<\/em> was easily the best Bond film since <em>Goldfinger<\/em> (or, arguably, <em>The Thomas Crown Affair<\/em>). It was the first one in years that felt actually felt like a &#8220;real&#8221; Bond movie (that is, the Connery era) in the modern era: exciting action pieces, neat spy games, and an undercurrent of humor. Realistic without having to be ultra-violent or ultra-serious, and recognizing the inherent silliness of the spy genre without playing so far to that side that it devolves into farce (the Moore era).<\/p>\n<p>So finding this quote from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mi6-hq.com\/sections\/articles\/interview-daniel-craig-interview-foreshadows-bond-24\" title=\"MI6: Daniel Craig Foreshadows\">a two-year-old interview with Craig<\/a> impressed me. It sounds to me like he and the team behind Skyfall had some of the same thoughts&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  I think we set a good tone [in Skyfall], I think we set a real tone, but I am happy for fucking exploding volcano lairs. Obviously I am joking but what I love and what I really wanted to achieve with Skyfall was a level of fantasy, it&#8217;s one of the less violent ones, there&#8217;s less blood, and people aren&#8217;t dying in a horrible way, and it feels like much more of a family movie, and they should be family movies. I don&#8217;t want to go ludicrous and we&#8217;ve got to keep them in reality, but Christ almighty, the world&#8217;s fucking weird and there&#8217;s plenty we can start mining and taking out. If Blofeld turned up again, it wouldn&#8217;t be a bad thing.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Given the recent announcement that the next film is titled <em>SPECTRE<\/em>, this does sound promising indeed.<\/p>\n<p>(via <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/the-james-bond-movies-had-to-go-darker-because-mike-my-1667143453\" title=\"The James Bond Movies Had to Go Darker Because 'Mike Myers f\u2014ed us'\">iO9<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Skyfall was the first Bond film in years to hit the right balance between action and humor. Here&#8217;s hoping that the upcoming SPECTRE keeps that trend going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2037],"tags":[74,75,23,24,76,77],"class_list":["post-9489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tv-and-films","tag-74","tag-daniel-craig","tag-film","tag-james-bond","tag-skyfall","tag-spectre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}