'Quantum' picks up where 'Casino' left off
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By MELISSA OLSON
For the Herald
Monday, November 17, 2008 3:46 PM CST
I think I’m probably done being mad at “Casino Royale.”
When the “rebooted” Bond film first came out back in 2006, I was pretty annoyed — I even wrote a column about it when the film came out on DVD.
There were definitely some weaknesses in the film’s plotting. But my main complaint was that as much as James Bond himself can change over 50 years of screen time, and as much as “Casino Royale” updated him for a new generation, the women he gets involved with are still suffering the same old fate: death as an innocent (like Solange, the henchman’s wife) or death as a newly-revealed bad guy (like Eva Green’s wonderful Vesper Lynd).
It’s not just sexist and antiquated. It’s also kind of boring.
Since then, I’ve re-watched the film, and even thumbed through the novel, and I’ve come to appreciate many things about “Casino Royale.”
I like director Martin Campbell’s willingness to give Craig a few actual emotions to play, and the screenplay’s loyalty to Fleming’s original (though terribly flawed) novel, not to mention the wonderful action sequences. And every scene with Judy Dench’s “M” (the one female left standing in any modern Bond movie) is fun and razor-sharp.
But I haven’t changed my mind on this point: Bond’s women really do need to get the same kind of update that “Casino Royale” Campbell gave to his film’s hero. And Vesper Lynd’s 11th-hour reversal of character never did play right with me. (She was working for the bad guys all along? Huh? What was she supposed to be doing? Weren’t they kind of upset when she helped Bond kill two of them? And what on earth happened to her unseen “boyfriend?”)
After all the hype about “Casino Royale’s” improvements to the Bond franchise, I was disappointed with the result, and more than a little ready to give up on the tuxedoed spy.
Then something interesting happened. When studio bosses announced the inevitable new Bond movie, “Quantum of Solace,” they disclosed that it would function as a sequel to “Casino Royale,” with the story picking up only an hour after the events of the previous film. The new film, it seems, will follow Bond’s efforts to bring down the evil organization that was working with the bleeding-tears bad guy in “Casino Royale.”
Sequels are, of course, a huge part of Hollywood’s bread and butter, but James Bond doesn’t do sequels (tuxedos, martinis, and expensive transportation, yes, but not sequels). The Bond movies have always been more like installments — you can jump in anywhere, and watch in any order.
“Quantum” is also an anomaly in more ways than one, too: unlike most modern sequels, the film is picking up right where its predecessor left off, hardly skipping a beat. And unlike most Bond movies, the continuation of the “Casino Royale” story is happening completely without the involvement of original author Ian Fleming.
This, I admit, has gotten my attention. The last time we had sequels that immediately followed the timeline of the previous installment, it was the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, which in the end can be seen as a single really, really long movie. If these two Bond movies go the same way, and “Casino Royale” and “Quantum of Solace” can be considered one long film, half engineered by Ian Fleming and half by modern screenwriters, well….that, to me, is an experiment worth watching.
“Quantum” is, if not a complete do-over, at least a chance to finish a story that was a little bit lopsided and unsatisfying. As it turns out, any opinions on “Casino Royale” were only half-formed. It’s like seeing a movie in the theaters, and just as the credits are rolling and you get up to leave someone in the front row leaps up and shouts, “Wait! There’s more!”
I don’t think “Quantum of Solace” will repair my annoyance with “Bond girls” (oh, how I hate that term), since they can’t exactly bring Vesper or Solange back to life. But we may just get some answers about why the “Casino Royale” story unfolded the way it did, and if the two films really are a continuation, then “Quantum” will provide a second chance for the film’s female characters to actually survive to the end of the film.
And, of course, there are those pesky other problems with “Casino Royale” — as I wrote in my original column — it ended about four times too many, and the pacing comes to a dead halt at the poker game and remains scrambled until the end of the movie. But “Quantum” is a chance for the filmmakers to try to smooth out some of that roughness.
To be honest, I’m kind of relieved. I want to like the new James Bond movies, because in so many ways I do believe they’re an improvement, or at least a more modern take, on the franchise. I just hope “Quantum of Solace” turns out to be a Bond movie that even I can get behind.
A Chippewa Falls native, Melissa Olson graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in film. She works in Madison for the television program Discover Wisconsin. Visit her online at www.melissaolson.net.
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