Cloverfield Balrog and Casino Royale

Here’s an awesome graphic that I hope is OK to post here, noting that it was shamelessly ripped off from Irony-Chan’s website. The blog is worth a look, because she’s currently working on a project to estimate the terminal velocity of a Balrog :D. She’s going all out, too. This drawing was a by-product of that pursuit:

Next item of business: Casino Royale [Spoiler Alert, not that anyone cares. It's James Bond!]. Despite its formulaic Bond-ness in so many areas, there were some interesting things about this installment:

1. The director bent over backwards to violate certain Bond clichés. For instance, our hero does not escape the villain’s elaborate imprisonment/torture/death through a clever plan or gadget. In fact, the torture is brutally straightforward and our hero doesn’t escape at all. In another instance, Bond asks for a vodka martini. When the bartender asks, “Shaken or stirred?”007 replies, “Do I look like I give a damn?”
2. In the beginning of the movie, you’ll find one of the best on-foot chases… EVAR. Seriously. The whole movie is worth that sequence.
3. This was a guys’ film, for sure. All kinds of guys. Especially the gay ones. There seemed to be a whole lot more beefcake than cheesecake. There were a few pretty women in scanty attire, but virtually no loving, lingering pans up/down their half-naked bodies. Daniel Craig, on the other hand, received the treatment every other scene. Also, the opening credits included exactly *zero* silhouetted naked ladies on trampolines or underwater. Wha….?
4. In keeping with classic Bond tradition,  sexuality/romance is advanced partially through female suffering (and partially through painfully predictable war-of-the-sexes banter). They go for both psychological and physical, here. It’s an improvement over past Bond flicks, but a largely superficial one. On the other hand, it’s Bond. I think he would cease to exist if women ceased to be sex objects.
5. This movie was a little nuts with the trendy image-dropping. Big VAIO notebook logos. Car emblems right in the screen. And an entire sequence was filmed in a Body Worlds exhibit. Whatever.
6. I’m sure it seems so original to the under-20 crowd, but the rest of us saw The Spy Who Loved Me, and we know exactly what’s coming when James has a *gasp* relationship, instead of the standard wham-bam-witty-quip at what should have been the end of the movie. It’s kind of painful to keep watching, after that.

Related posts

• Kenneth Branagh, your disappointments never end (0)
• Accidental Poetry & Hellboy 2 review (0)
• Oh. My. Goodness. (0)
• Not with a bang, but a whimper. (0)
• Knowledge from the Interwebs like Food after Famine (0)