Quantum of Solace

Nebulon needs to get something off his mighty chest before he gets to the actual movie. Piracy. It would be a brave cinema lackey that would search Nebulon, he or she may well find themselves on the end of a death ray it they ever tried it. But never the less, I have it on good authority that thanks to a release date in the US which is two weeks after general release in the UK, that all cinemas are on maximum piracy watch. Everyone going to watch this movie is having their bags searched for recording equipment. There is even a recorded plea by Daniel Craig before the film starts asking viewers to not record the movie.

Nebulon wonders just how realistic their expectations are. Your planet is primitive, but even so, you can’t ignore the fact that you’re living in a society where any kind of broadcast media can be digitised and distributed for free via the internet. What kind of hope do these people have that this film won’t be available over bit torrent inside a few weeks?

As Daniel Craig says, ‘piracy’ costs jobs in the film industry. That’s probably true, but only in the same way that television cost jobs in the film industry, does that make TV a bad thing? The truth is that the movie industry has evolved and developed over the years to fit the market place, whether that was the studio system or era of the blockbuster.

Piracy will cost the film industry money in the form of lost revenue from DVD sales, but so what? It’s never going to completely destroy the film industry, people will always want to go to the cinema, or look at adverts while they download a movie. Nebulon believes that film makers will just have to reign in their budgets and start making smaller films. There are plenty of good movies out there which have been made for a fraction of the cost of QoS. The fact that the era of the blockbusters is coming to an end does not mean the end of film, maybe just the end of the $40 million budget and dare Nebulon say it, the end of the $10 million pay check for the stars. Nebulon can hear the hearts of millions break at the thought. Rant mode off.

Now, the movie. Nebulon was a big fan of Casino Royal, even though it kind of lost it towards the end. The new, nastier Bond was great and had a real sense of the kinetic in the action sequences. The ending wasn’t satisfying but that was forgiven in the hope of redemption in the follow up movie.

QoS picks up right where the last one left off but the tone is different. When they hired Marc Forster to direct, the were trying to bring some of the drama cred he had brought to movies like Stranger than Fiction and Finding Neverland. The result is something which attempts to mix the subtleties of those films with hardcore Bourne style action. Action scenes are often mixed with other footage, such as horse races or the opera which means that the final result is quite tame compared to it’s more brutal predecessor. Bond is not a franchise which needs to be over thought.

Casino worked because it was big, ballsy and people got hurt, this attempt to alter that formula left Nebulon feeling a little unfulfilled. There’s not a chance that people won’t go to see this movie, and in a way it’s good to see that they are trying to shake up the franchise, but the bond franchise has already been re-imagined, it would be nice for them to stick with the casino milieu for a few movies longer before shaking things up yet again.

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