Sequelism, Serialisation & the Destruction of Two Bond Films
December 18th 2008 04:15
2006’s Casino Royale was in many ways a fine piece of filmmaking. Efficiently directed, it was full of pulsating action and meaty characterisations. Bond himself was given a new lease on life by Daniel Craig and in Mads Mikkelson’s Le Chiffre, he was placed against an intimidating opponent worthy of 007’s king-killer instinct.
Of course, Casino Royale ended disappointingly. With twenty-five minutes to go Le Chiffre was bizarrely killed off and the film suddenly cast adrift. Characters arcs were cut; story arcs destroyed. Having been denied a cathartic resolution to the two hours that went before, the audience stopped caring. A grand final action set piece in Venice was still to come, but when you couldn’t fathom who was doing what or why, it all seemed of little consequence.
Essentially, Quantum of Solace, the twenty-second James Bond adventure, began as soon as Le Chiffre hit the floor, a bullet in his forehead, with the final act of Casino Royale dedicated to setting up the following movie.
It’s unfortunate then that Quantum is an awful film. Poorly written, absurdly directed and edited to death, it’s the shortest Bond movie in history but somehow feels like the longest. Characters, supposedly the new focus of the franchise, are given short thrift here: Craig gets little opportunity to work his exceptional nuance this time around and the rest of the cast are wasted in undercooked parts.
Sequelism, of course, has for years been used by Hollywood studios to generate higher profits from diminishing artistic returns and it’s no secret that the celluloid landscape is littered with bung follow-ups. There was the disappointing demise of the Rambo films in the 80s (admittedly corrected to a certain extent by the efficient latest instalment), the appalling later Jaws films and more recently the hopelessly bombastic Matrix sequels. With each of these examples, however, you can strip away the later films, effectively ignoring their existence.
Not so with the latest Bond films. What takes place here moves beyond sequelism and drifts dangerously into serialisation territory, with one film making no sense whatsoever without the other to immediately call upon. The car chase scene at the start of Quantum of Solace would mean absolutely nothing to audience members who hadn’t caught the end of Casino Royale. Making matters worse is the fact that most of the questions arising from the flawed final act of Casino Royale aren’t answered in Quantum of Solace. It’s like watching the second season of Deadwood where something is always about to happen, but nothing ever does.
So, while Quantum of Solace should certainly be chastised for being a poor 007 flick, that’s not its ultimate crime; after all, bad Bond films are not particularly rare. What sets Quantum apart is the effect it had on its predecessor. In this case, the crime of making a poor film is greatly overshadowed by the folly of destroying its predecessor, with Casino Royale having had the potential to be one of the greatest 007 flicks ever produced. Instead, it was sacrificed to make an autistic mess, Bond’s creators managing the strangest of feats: the destruction of two films for the price of one.
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