MOVIE ANALYSIS: THE NEW "BOND" FRANCHISE
This is my college essay (yeah, I'm back in college) and after"Quantum of Solace", I found that this made for a good (I hope)
paper.
Enjoy.
THIRD ASSIGNMENT: THE “HOLLYWOODIFICATION” OF THE “JAMES BOND” MOVIE FRANCHISE
1070 MEDIA STUDIES
CSAPO SMITH
November 24th 2008
Phillip Seahorn
1.
Hollywood is an ever changing entity.
In the beginning of Hollywood, a set system of industry was
developed, and created hundreds of movies on a daily basis to
supply entertainment to Americans during the early part of the
century, and eventually to the world.
Hollywood made movies that reflected the world of the early
teens and twenties of the 20th century.
It created action, adventure, escapism, and adrenalin rushes to
help make the otherwise drab and depressing existence of most
folks at that time more tolerable.
Movies provided escape.
Now, jump ahead 100 years, and Hollywood is a living entity.
Even the word “Hollywood” is not only a noun, but it has become
synonymous with concrete descriptions of realities in today’s
world.
Hollywood is a place, time, location, and state of mind, totally
transcendent unto itself.
But recent events in film making have turned toward bringing
more “realism” to some of its properties, believing that people
want more of this “realism” in their choices of movies.
Such is the case of the recently released installment in the 40
year “James Bond” franchise.
The movie is called “Quantum of Solace”.
In recent years, certain properties of Hollywood, especially in
the treatment of comics and serials like the Bond franchise,
have come under scriptwriting revisions.
There is this need to make certain properties more realistic.
As we have studied in the past films and text of the class,
script writing is an essential part of the film making process.
But apparently in Hollywood, the discourse now is to take
fictionalized source material and create a new Hollywood format
in which to green light these movies.
They want the comic book hero and the spy to be more realistic,
to sell the “if this happened in the real world” scenario.
Hollywood has had a long tradition of “phases”.
First, it was the westerns of Tom Mix back in the turn of the
century.
When wars hit, Hollywood went thru the patriotic stage,
developing war movies and even using real life soldiers in the
films themselves, like Audrey Murphy.
As taught in our course, Hollywood would develop these ‘trends”
over the years, and make films accordingly.
Of course, the movie trends would reflect what would be going on
in Hollywood, and in turn, affect society as well.
Well, society has supposedly demanded more ‘realism” in fiction
based characters.
With the success of “The Dark Knight” as setting the “Batman”
character in a more “realistic” movie, this has generated huge
box office sales, and may garner a Oscar nod to the picture and
to Heath Ledger, the young actor who died recently.
He portrayed “The Joker”.
Now, this performance can be a microcosm of the realism trend
that exists in Hollywood right now.
This portrayal of “The Joker” (Ledger’s) was as frightening and
psychopathic as any sociopath ripped from the headlines today.
Now, there is a lot to be said of selling the notion of a real
person with green hair and face paint as convincingly realistic.
Yet Ledger’s performance makes you believe a man CAN dress like
this and scare the hell out of cops and evildoers.
So, the “Hollywoodification”, or the new “realistic” trend in
Hollywood has been applied to the “James Bond” franchise.
Like some Hollywood trends, this one doesn’t work at all on
this particular vehicle.
Hollywood has the amazing ability to take something that is not
broken, and not only break it, but genetically mutate it into
something completely different from the core source.
That has been done to the predecessor “new” Bond, and this
sequel to that movie.
4.
The text talks about the how powerful these trends and styles of
movies are in Hollywood.
Usually, it’s all about the dollars, especially if a trend
works.
But lately, Hollywood seems to be in a desperate attempt to stay
fresh and current, and almost seems to be backing away from
trends and styles of film making.
This may be from the success of independent films, or maybe the
genre of filmmaking that has existed for a hundred years may not
be relevant in today’s world.
But this has most certainly destroyed a 40 year franchise when
the producers of the “Bond” films seemed to have “gone
Hollywood”.
The Broccolis had a formula that worked since the sixties.
Heavy on the sex and beautiful women, exotic women at that, as
well as exotic locales around the world.
And, of course, the completely off the hook villain, even more
over the top than any print villain could be.
Add in world threats, and you have the formula for successful
Bond movie.
But someone at the Bond studios felt that America was cashing in
on the “realistic” trend it was using to script and lens their
properties, so maybe that would make “Bond” better.
To add realism to Bond like the “yanks” do, why not make Bond
shorter and make him blonde!
Then, instead of the highly aristocratic and world wise traveler
of the world super spy, make him into, well, a thug.
Just a regular Joe who, instead of being a superspy, just beats
the living crap out of you.
Or kills you straight away.
How’s THAT for “license to kill”, huh?
The movie was horrible.
But one has to look at the politics of Hollywood and how this
affected the last two productions of this franchise.
It seems that the Hollywood “machine” has garnered enough steam
to reach across the Atlantic.
The text talks about the influences of Hollywood on the world
film making communities.
One only has to look at India’s “Bollywood” as a perfect
example.
These movies are essentially American movies, with American
production and even marketing, with Indian actors and
actresses.
6.
But with this movie “Quantum of Solace” this “Americanized”
version of James Bond is a disaster, with no semblance to the
core history of the character and the movie franchise itself.
As in the class, we know that Hollywood can affect society in
the way American movies are written and lensed.
However, with Hollywood in the form that it is today, this
affect may be very damaging to traditional cinema franchises,
like the “Bond” franchise.
This does make a testament of film styles and genres created by
Hollywood and what we read aboutin this class.
It is also interesting to see these Hollywood trends travel all
over the world, literally colonizing foreign movie industries,
and that is indeed the reality of today’s film world.
The St. Louis Film Festival highlights some of this influence,
and it is also interesting that the machine called Hollywood has
touched St. Louis this week with the appearance of Will Smith in
Creve Coeur, Mo.
With the recent slump in box office, Hollywood is sticking more
to its “genre’s”, especially the one’s that earn.
Scriptwriters are following the Hollywood genres today,
maintaing
traditions that date back one hundred years, as we have learned
in this course.
7.
One final thought is that this present Hollywood genre may be
fueled by the advancement of computer generated imagery (CGI).
With this technology, it is possible to make things like cartoon
characters and fantasy characters become more realistic, or give
the appearance of it.
This may have spurred the decision makers in Hollywood to go for
more realism, which means more special effects, which means
bigger budgets and more profits from things like toys.
In conclusion, “Quantum of Solace” could be used an a example of
the power of Hollywood influence on a foreign movie property, as
well as transforming the foreign vehicle into whatever genre is
popular at that time in Hollywood.
As we have learned in this course, these Hollywood trends are
powerful things on society in general.
However, this could also drastically change the core structure
of the properties, thus making them, if not as entertaining as
the original genre in which it was filmed, then making them
completely different from the source material.
The one deciding factor, though, is box office.
And, as of this writing, “Quantum of Solace” has done very good
box office, so the fate of this present incarnation of the Bond
franchise is written in stone for future movies.
8.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. “Quantum of Solace” http://www.007.com
2 http://www.classicmovies.org/articles/aa052100a.htm “World War 2 Movies”
3. http://blog.nola.com/mikescott/2008/11/goldfinger_boasts_two_of_the.html Rogues gallery: Ranking the top 10 James Bond baddies
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollywood “Bollywood” Wikepedia.org page
5. Video of Will Smith entering the Post Dispatch downtown for interview on his new movie and appearance in St. Louis http://videos.stltoday.com/p/video?id=2410150
6. Interview with Bond star on future of franchise http://commanderbond.net/article/5749
posted by PHILLIP SEAHORN @ 5:06 PM
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