It’s Timmy time

 

© Warner Bros. Pictures / Legendary Pictures

 

Denis Villeneuve’s Dune Part Two, sequel to his 2021 sci-fi blockbuster and an adaptation of the second half of Frank Herbert’s epic 1965 novel Dune, has been on release for a few weeks now.  Though we’ve been busy recently moving apartment, my partner and I found time to watch it yesterday afternoon in our new neighbourhood’s cinema.

 

The film’s opening 20 minutes weren’t a happy experience for us.  Villeneuve immediately plunged us into the action, with Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet), his mother Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), and their Fremen escorts Chani (Zendaya) and Stilgar (Javier Bardem) pinned down on the surface of the desert planet Arrakis by a squad of heavily-armed, black-clad goons from the villainous House of Harkonnen.  The tension mounted as the two parties, hunting each other, snuck across the planet’s scorched landscapes of sand and rock…  The soundtrack was unnervingly silent…  And from right behind us came an incessant cacophony of rustling paper, crackling wrappers, slurpy masticating and greedy chomping.  We were attending a 1.30 pm screening of Dune 2 and the couple sitting behind us had decided to guzzle a takeaway lunch while watching the film.  I wished a giant Arrakis sandworm would surface directly under their seats and guzzle them.

 

Finally, the couple managed to finish their meal, their unwelcome sound effects abated and we were able to focus fully on Villeneuve’s movie.  So, what did I think of it?  Before I give my verdict, here’s a warning.  In the entry ahead, there will be spoilers galore for Dune 2.

 

Well, to be honest, I didn’t enjoy it as much as its predecessor.  Mind you, I expected that three years ago as I walked out of Dune 1.  As I wrote at the time: “One thing I suspect makes this version of Dune so good is that, in telling only the book’s first half, it’s a story of tragedy.  And tragedy, as any student of Shakespeare will confirm, is one of the most powerful forms of narrative.  I suspect Villeneuve will find it harder to make the next instalment of Dune, dealing with how Paul marshals his forces and finally restores order on Arrakis, as gripping.  For me, at least, downbeat endings last longer in the imagination than happy ones.”

 

To be fair to Villeneuve and his co-writer John Spaihts, the ending they come up with here is less happy than the one I remember in Herbert’s novel, which I read as a teenager.  But the plot, wherein Paul Atreides joins forces with the Fremen, Arrakis’s Bedouin-like natives, and they take on the scumbag Harkonnens, still feels emotionally less complex than that of the original film.

 

© New English Library

 

The first film saw Paul’s honourable, though imperialistic father Duke Leto (Oscar Isaac), head of the House of Atreides, get tricked into taking stewardship of Arrakis.  There, the House is destroyed by the brutal and grudgeful Harkonnens, with the connivance of the galactic Emperor (the ever-whispery Christopher Walken) and the Bene Gesserit, a female sect with Jedi-like powers who’re secretly manipulating events.  Paul and Jessica are among the few survivors and the Fremen reluctantly take them under their wing.

 

I had some problems with Dune 2’s pacing.  Much of the film takes place in the Arrakis desert, where Paul and his mum are gradually initiated into the ways of the natives.  Some Fremen are particularly interested in Paul because he seems to fulfil a long-held prophecy about a messiah who’ll come from another world and not only lead them to freedom but make their sandy world green again.  While I respect Villeneuve’s efforts at ‘world-building’ here, I feel this section goes on too long.  He ladles on the Fremen’s rituals and lore, especially things involving hallucinogenic substances like the spice – the prized commodity, necessary for enabling space travel in the Dune universe, which makes Arrakis such a big political deal in the first place – and the Water of Life, a blue fluid extracted from baby sandworms, the planet’s main non-human lifeform.  Though as any Scotsman will tell you, the Water of Life is actually whisky.

 

Also, the scenes where Paul argues with the Messiah-believing faction of the Freeman (headed by Bardem) that he isn’t really the Messiah put me in mind of the 1979 movie Monty Python’s Life of Brian.  While Chalamet tried to convince them that he wasn’t the Chosen One, I kept expecting to hear Terry Jones call out in his raspy old-lady voice: “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy!”

 

© HandMade Films / Python (Monty) Pictures

 

Conversely, towards the end, things feel rushed.  As Paul and the Fremen escalate their attacks on the Harkonnens, who’ve taken over Arrakis and are trying to supervise its spice production, and the planet slips out of control, the Emperor and his daughter (Florence Pugh) are compelled to make an intervention.  They head for Arrakis…  And after their spaceship lands at the Harkonnens’ base, Paul and the forces of the Fremen simply turn up, unobserved and unannounced.  Until then, we’ve been led to believe that they’re confined to the inhospitable, storm-ridden south of the planet, outside the Harkonnens’ control.  How they arrive so quickly and easily, with legions of troops, a cavalry of sandworms and an arsenal of missiles, in the Harkonnens’ backyard is a mystery.  It’s as if the planet of Arrakis has suddenly shrunk to being the size of the Isle of Wight.

 

Meanwhile, certain sub-plots from Herbert’s book don’t quite enrich the movie in the way they could have – or are cut altogether.  The return of Paul’s faithful warrior-mentor Gurney Halleck (Josh Brolin) happens abruptly.  He just pops up out of nowhere and I’d have liked to know how he survived the massacre in the previous film, especially as we last saw him about to engage the Harkonnens in desperate battle.  Gurney brings with him an unexpected revelation about some ‘House Atomics’, nuclear missiles belonging to the Atreides that Duke Leto quietly stashed away on Arrakis.  These become a handy bargaining chip for Paul when he points them at the all-important spice fields and are a deus ex machina if ever there was one.  I can’t recall if these were in the book – if they were, I assume they were introduced less jarringly.

 

I do recall the book having an interesting twist whereby Gurney believes Jessica is the one who betrayed the Atreides to the Harkonnens.  But there’s zero interaction between the two of them in Dune 2.  Rebecca Ferguson, incidentally, deserves praise for her portrayal of Jessica, who grows into a sinister, if not chilling figure as she exerts more and more influence over the Fremen.  Gurney would be right to distrust her.

 

Elsewhere, I was perplexed by the absence of Thufir Harat (Stephen McKinley Henderson in Dune 1).  Thufir is a mentat, beings in the Dune universe who do the work of computers.  Employed by Paul’s late father, he has a reasonable supporting role in the first film and it’s noticeable that he’s not around in Dune 2.  In the novel, the Harkonnens enslave him after their bloody takeover, but then he secretly tries to undermine his new bosses whilst working in their headquarters.  In Dune 2, his presence might have solved the problem of how Paul moves his forces to the proximity of the Harkonnens and the Emperor without anyone noticing – Thufir could have deactivated the monitoring systems.  Anyway, the film leaves us to surmise that Thufir perished during the slaughter of the Atreides, though Villeneuve thanks McKinley Henderson in the credits, presumably for accepting the dropping of his character with good grace.

 

Ironically, in the first adaptation of Dune, the 1984 movie directed by David Lynch, which tried to shoehorn the entire novel into two hours and 17 minutes of running time and was derided for leaving so much out, Thufir is shown surviving the Atreides’ massacre and becoming the Harkonnens’ slave.  In that version, he was played by Freddie Jones, father of Toby Jones, with big, spidery eyebrows.

 

All that said, I did enjoy Dune 2.  The film was generally impressive and there were moments where I went, “Wow!”  Following on from Arrival (2016) and Blade Runner 2049 (2017), it’s good to see Villeneuve again treat a science- fiction story with high seriousness.  And I like how, for all that the male characters hog the screen and flaunt their testosterone, it’s implied that the female characters, as portrayed by Ferguson, Charlotte Rampling, Florence Pugh and Lea Seydoux, are the ones really running the show.

 

© Warner Bros. Pictures / Legendary Pictures

 

Also great is Villeneuve’s depiction of the Harkonnens.  The scenes set on their home planet truly capture their fascistic, creepy, sado-masochistic awfulness, resembling black-and-white footage of rallies in Nazi Germany but populated by the bald-headed Cenobites from Clive Barker’s Hellraiser franchise.  Even their fireworks look dark and perverted.  And as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, the psychopathic nephew of arch-villain Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) who’s drafted in to quell the Fremen’s resistance and restore order on Arrakis, Austin Butler gives possibly the best performance in the film.  (In the old David Lynch movie, Feyd-Rautha was the character played by the reggae-loving Geordie, Sting.)

 

Though Butler just about manages to steal the show, it is one of those films that’s helped immeasurably by its ensemble cast.  That includes Timothée Chalamet who, as Paul, has the hardest acting task – he could have ended up a dull goody two shoes or, as he agonises over whether or not he should proclaim himself the Messiah, a whiny pain in the neck.  But Chamalet avoids both pitfalls.

 

Lastly, watching Dune 2, I realised it featured no fewer than three James Bond villains – Walken (Max Zorin in 1986’s A View to a Kill), Bardem (Raoul Silva in 2012’s Skyfall) and Dave Bautista (Mr Hinx in 2016’s Spectre).  For good measure, you get a Bond lady too, Lea Seydoux who played Madeline Swann in Spectre and 2021’s No Time to Die.  Yes, I know.  It’s sad that I notice these things.

 

© Warner Bros. Pictures / Legendary Pictures

Stop getting Bond wrong! (Part 1)

 

© Eon Productions

 

When I’m browsing through a newspaper or magazine website, or a website devoted to popular culture, no headline is more likely to fill me with despair than the one ALL THE JAMES BOND FILMS RANKED FROM WORST TO BEST.  (Well, maybe except for the headline FLEETWOOD MAC TO RELEASE NEW ALBUM.)  That’s because such articles invariably get Bond wrong.  And that’s because they’re written by young, acne-pocked dipshits with zero life experience and less-than-zero knowledge of James Bond in either his cinematic or literary incarnations.  Or, worse, they’re written by someone from the older end of the Generation X demographic, i.e., they were a kid during the 1970s and believe Roger Moore was the best actor who ever lived.

 

Now that the latest Bond epic No Time to Die is being released – after a zillion Covid-19-inspired delays, which had me worried that by the time it finally was released poor Daniel Craig would be turning up at the Royal Premiere with a Zimmer frame, hearing aid and dentures – there’s been another rash of these hopelessly ill-informed articles, in the likes of the Independent and Den of Geek.

 

So, to sort out this confusion, misinformation and stupidity once and for all, here is my – and hence the correct – ranking of all the James Bond films from best to worst.  Don’t even think about arguing with me.

 

© Eon Productions

 

24: Die Another Day (2002)

Winning the unenviable title of Worst Bond Film Ever is Pierce Brosnan’s final outing as 007.  Because it was released in the 40th anniversary year of the franchise, the makers of Die Another Day packed it with homages to the previous 19 films, such as bikini-ed heroine Halle Berry rising out of the sea like Ursula Andress in Dr No (1962) or villain Toby Stephens swooping into central London with a Union Jack-emblazoned parachute à la Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).  But these homages, as well as seeming smug, highlight how inferior Die is in comparison.  And with the film’s stupid plot contrivances (an invisible car), its derivativeness (what, another killer satellite?), its Carry On-level, innuendo-ridden dialogue and Madonna’s horrible theme song, we’re talking greatly inferior.  What I hate most about it, though, is its use of Computer-Generated Imagery during the action sequences, an insult to the stuntmen in the old Bond films like Vic Armstrong, Terry Richards, Eddie Powell and Alf Joint, who did those stunts for real and made them so viscerally exciting.

 

23: Octopussy (1983)

I remember seriously not liking Octopussy when I saw it because it seemed desperate to cash in on the recent success of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and deposited Roger Moore in a version of India populated with palaces, turbaned swordsmen, fakirs and snake-charmers, which had only ever existed in the imaginations of Hollywood scriptwriters and looked ridiculously corny by 1983.  Having worked in India several times since then, I suspect I would hate it even more now.  The film’s one saving grace is the sub-plot taking place in its other main setting, Germany, which has Steven Berkoff as a deranged Soviet general wanting to knock NATO for six by engineering an ‘accident’ with a nuclear warhead.  Opposing, and in part thwarting, Berkoff’s insane plan is General Gogol (Walter Gotell), who appeared in half-a-dozen Bond films as 007’s respectful adversary and occasional ally in the KGB.  Indeed, I’d say Octopussy marks Gogol’s finest hour.

 

22: Moonraker (1979)

Moonraker also attempted to cash in on a recent hit movie, in this case Star Wars (1977).  Thus, it has Roger Moore going into outer space in search of a stolen space shuttle.  It piles silliness upon silliness: not just the far-fetched science-fictional plot, but also sequences with gondolas turning into speedboats, speedboats turning into hovercraft, speedboats turning into hang gliders, steel-toothed villain Jaws (Richard Kiel) crashing through the top of a circus tent, Jaws finding a girlfriend, and so on.  Michael Lonsdale as the big villain Hugo Drax gives Moonraker some dignity it really doesn’t deserve.  Brace yourself for the inevitable “He’s attempting re-entry!” joke at the end.

 

© Eon Productions

 

21: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

Another entry in the series where the only thing going for it is the villain, the impeccable Christopher Lee as the super-hitman Francisco Scaramanga.  Elsewhere, Lulu warbles the cheesy, innuendo-slathered theme song (“He’s got a powerful weapon / He charges a million a shot!”), Britt Ekland is barely contained by her bikini, and redneck comedy-relief American policeman Sheriff Pepper (Clifton James), who was so annoying in the previous film Live and Let Die, makes an unwelcome reappearance even though the film’s set in East Asia.  Pepper just happens to be holidaying in Thailand with his wife when he bumps into Bond again.  (He refuses to have his picture taken with a local elephant, telling Mrs Pepper: “We’re Demy-crats, Maybelle!”  Surely not.)

 

20: Live and Let Die (1973)

And that brings me to Live and Let Die, in which Roger Moore makes his debut as Bond.  From all accounts Moore was a lovely bloke and he kept the franchise massively popular during the 1970s and 1980s, but his lightweight acting style meant the character was far removed from the one imagined by Ian Fleming in the original novels.  Even by 1973’s standards, Live and Let Die’s plot about a villainous organisation of black drug-smugglers, headed by Yaphet Kotto’s Mr Big, dallies worryingly with racism, although Moore’s presence actually defuses some of that.  His portrayal of Bond as a posh, silly-assed Englishman gives the bad guys some gravitas in comparison.  I suspect modern audiences might feel more uncomfortable with Bond’s pursuit / stalking of love interest Jane Seymour – Seymour was only 22 years at the time while Moore, already in his mid-forties, was old enough to be her dad.  The film’s spectacular speedboat chase anchors the film in most people’s memories, though it’s spoilt somewhat by the involvement of the aforementioned Sheriff Pepper.  The theme song by Paul McCartney’s Wings is, of course, great.

 

© Eon Productions

 

19: A View to a Kill (1985)

A View to a Kill, Roger Moore’s final film as Bond, is often ranked bottom in lists like this, but it at least has something most 1980s Bond movies lack – memorable villains, i.e., Christopher Walken’s Max Zorin and Grace Jones’s Mayday.  Also, Moore gets to form an agreeable double act, for a while, with Patrick Macnee and I like how General Gogol pops up at the end to give ‘Comrade Bond’ the Order of Lenin.  Still, the film contains much duff-ness.  Duran Duran do the theme song and one unkind critic once described Simon Le Bon’s vocal performance as ‘bellowing like a wounded elk.’

 

18: Quantum of Solace (2007)

Daniel Craig’s second appearance as James Bond, in which he comes up against a sinister, secret organisation called Quantum, was savaged by the critics.  When I watched the film, I remember thinking it didn’t seem as bad as everyone made out.  That said, I can hardly remember anything about it now.

 

17: The World is Not Enough (1999)

A frustrating film, The World is Not Enough has much going for it, including Sophie Marceau and Robert Carlyle as the baddies, Robbie Coltrane returning as ex-KGB man / lovable rogue Valentin Zukovsky, and a plot that anticipates Skyfall (2012) wherein Judie Dench’s M is threatened by a villain whose relationship with her is more complex than one of simple professional enmity.  And like Skyfall, it has scenes set in Scotland, the introduction of a new Q, and an explosion that rocks MI6’s London headquarters beside Vauxhall Bridge in London.  Plus, the theme song by Garbage is the best one in yonks.  But the quality stuff is cancelled out by some rubbish bits, including Denise Richards as Bond girl Christmas Jones – so-named, apparently, to allow Pierce Brosnan to crack a joke about ‘coming once a year’.  Particularly cringe-inducing is John Cleese’s debut as the replacement for Desmond Llewelyn’s Q, here making his 17th and final appearance in the franchise.  Not only does Cleese clown around to no comic effect whatever, but the scene where he’s introduced is also the one where Llewelyn bids farewell and Cleese’s slapstick robs the scene of its poignancy.

 

16: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

Diamonds are Forever features a beyond-caring Sean Connery, enticed back into 007’s shoes by a 1.25-million-pound paycheque after George Lazenby jumped ship, in a lazy film where the plot meanders nonsensically from one action set-piece to another and the visuals are packed with easy-on-the-eye spectacle and lavishness.  At least it’s pretty funny.  It depends on your tolerance level for sledgehammering 1970s political incorrectness whether or not you enjoy the banter between gay assassins Mr Kidd and Mr Wint.  (Sticking Connery into a coffin and feeding him into a crematorium furnace: “Heart-warming, Mr Kidd.”  “A glowing tribute, Mr Wint.”)  However, uber-Bond-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld is very amusingly played by Charles Gray.  While he’s wreaking havoc with a deadly laser beam mounted on a satellite, he sneers: “The satellite is now over Kansas.   Well, if we destroy Kansas, the world may not hear about it for years.”

 

© Eon Productions

 

15: For Your Eyes Only (1987)

For Your Eyes Only makes a noble attempt to bring the franchise down to earth again following the excesses of Moonraker.  Mostly, it works nicely as an action / adventure piece, although the villain Krystatos, played by the normally reliable Julian Glover, is a bit drab. More effective is the excellent Michael Gothard as the taciturn Belgian assassin Locque.  Alas, it runs out of puff towards the end.  After some exciting mountaineering stunts while Roger Moore and the good guys ascend to a mountaintop monastery / villains’ lair, the climactic battle is a damp squib.  Also, there’s an excruciating ‘comic’ final scene where Margaret Thatcher (played by impressionist Janet Brown) phones Bond to congratulate him on a job well done and ends up speaking instead to a randy parrot: “Give us a kiss!”  “Oh, Mr Bond…”

 

14: Goldeneye (1995)

Pierce Brosnan’s debut as Bond, after the franchise had endured a six-year hiatus, won a lot of praise.  I find it slightly unsatisfying, though.  It tries a bit too hard.  There’s a bit too much packed into it, a few too many twists and turns, as it tries to prove to audiences that a Bond movie can still be relevant and with-it in the 1990s.  Also, its good intentions are undone by the occasional piece of Roger Moore-style silliness and a cobwebbed plot-MacGuffin – yes, it’s another killer satellite threatening the world, or in this case, the City of London.  Sean Bean and Famke Janssen are cool as the main villains, though it’s a pity that Alan Cumming and Joe Don Baker are both allowed to act with their brakes off.

 

13: Spectre (2015)

Another Daniel Craig Bond that got a critical kicking, I think Spectre deserves a little more love.  The film brings back Ernst Stavro Blofeld, played here by Christoph Waltz as a Euro-trash scumbag who commits crimes against fashion by not wearing socks under his loafers.  Also back is Blofeld’s insidious criminal organisation SPECTRE.  (After decades of legal wrangling, the Bond producers had by 2015 won the right to use Blofeld and SPECTRE again in the franchise.)  However, Spectre’s Bond / Blofeld backstory earned hoots of derision.  Blofeld, it transpires, is the son of Hannes Oberhauser, the man who looked after the young James Bond after his parents were killed in a climbing accident.  Oberhauser much preferred little James to little Ernst, leaving his biological son with some serious personality issues.  Yes, it sounds contrived, but I didn’t have a big problem with this, since the adoptive father-figure of Hannes Oberhauser existed in the original, literary Bond universe created by Ian Fleming and Bond referred to him in the short story Octopussy, published in 1966.  The opening sequence in Mexico City, filmed by director Sam Mendes in one long, supposedly continuous take, is brilliant, but the film’s attempts to incorporate / retcon the previous Daniel Craig Bond films into its plot are clunky.  For example, we learn that the Quantum organisation in Quantum of Solace is only a subsidiary of SPECTRE.  Another negative is the comatose theme song performed by Sam Smith.

 

© Eon Productions

 

And my next blog-post will rank the remaining Bond movies from number twelve to number one.