Like most Bond movies, the potential here is fantastic, with amazing attention to detail and thrills from beginning to end. But like the majority of Bond movies, the further you get into the plot, the less interesting and feasible it becomes.
There really is no excuse for putting a film on pause after two hours to get some things done around the house, but this is what happened to me, deciding to watch the final showdown later. How did such an exciting premise become so predictable and stale all of a sudden? Unfortunately, it's the same feel good and over-simplified commercial Bond fodder we've been getting ever since I can remember.
Take a movie like JFK (1991) by Oliver Stone. It runs for a similar length of time and gets more and more complicated as the plot unravels, but Stone does a magnificent job of summarizing everything so that we don't get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information, nor get bored. In Bond 2021, the potentially confusing plot is massively dumbed down to excuse the rather tepid final twist, of going to a secret island to kill all the baddies and save the world. Yes, that's how simple NTTD really is.
It's well made enough to merit your emotional input, but without enough mental or intellectual payback to be memorable. The sacrifice that this movie makes is too sentimental, through the actual Bond retirement of Daniel Craig, who didn't need to be killed off so easily and cheesily. And the racial woke introduction of the new black 007 - who added little and did practically nothing - was equally Dutch Edam.
So much effort was put into this movie to fill the box office coffers, which I fell for like many others did, but it's not good enough to have aesthetically pleasing locations and sets, only to make a move that is ultimately empty and forgettable.
There really is no excuse for putting a film on pause after two hours to get some things done around the house, but this is what happened to me, deciding to watch the final showdown later. How did such an exciting premise become so predictable and stale all of a sudden? Unfortunately, it's the same feel good and over-simplified commercial Bond fodder we've been getting ever since I can remember.
Take a movie like JFK (1991) by Oliver Stone. It runs for a similar length of time and gets more and more complicated as the plot unravels, but Stone does a magnificent job of summarizing everything so that we don't get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information, nor get bored. In Bond 2021, the potentially confusing plot is massively dumbed down to excuse the rather tepid final twist, of going to a secret island to kill all the baddies and save the world. Yes, that's how simple NTTD really is.
It's well made enough to merit your emotional input, but without enough mental or intellectual payback to be memorable. The sacrifice that this movie makes is too sentimental, through the actual Bond retirement of Daniel Craig, who didn't need to be killed off so easily and cheesily. And the racial woke introduction of the new black 007 - who added little and did practically nothing - was equally Dutch Edam.
So much effort was put into this movie to fill the box office coffers, which I fell for like many others did, but it's not good enough to have aesthetically pleasing locations and sets, only to make a move that is ultimately empty and forgettable.