Films Recently Watched

the dave bautista portion was hilarious to me. can anyone tell me why most of the people of his race are so "buff" when they clearly do nothing else but just prepare for a war that never comes? literarly bautista is just walking around talking to a bald guy taking a mud bath, so i don't get when he gets time to work out.

ok so rami malek wanted revenge on mr. white who killed his family. instead he just killed mr. white's drunk wife and was going to kill his daughter (lea seydoux) but instead, in some "unexpected" moment of pity, not only spared her life but rescued her from drowning, perhaps because he saw himself as a child in her situation. Up to this point it is entirely believable. Because Mr. White has presumably been killed (I think in a previous bond film) Rami Malek instead somehow convinces a evil, disgruntled bio weapons scientist to make modifications to a bioweapon being covertly developed by MI6. We unfortunately never see this happen. We also never see that SPECTRE, an evil organization that Mr. White was part of, also wants this bioweapon (why? to kill bond?) and also somehow think that the evil scientist is on their side. First moment where the plot begins to not make sense. A better motivation would be to try and free Blofeld somehow so he can go back to being evil. This never comes up.

The bioweapon is stolen by SPECTRE and knowing that Bond was going to be spying on this SPECTRE party in Cuba, Blofeld plans to kill Bond and only Bond with this bioweapon at the party. *but* the macguffin scientist covertly changes the "profile" of the weapon so it targets all of the SPECTRE bosses instead, because he's secretly working for Rami Malek somehow. Mayhem ensues, and the SPECTRE henchmen think that Bond did it. At this point Rami Malek's plan is going swimmingly. To finally eliminate SPECTRE and exact his revenge he now has to kill Blofeld, who is being held in a hilarious prison in London. He has the bioweapon matched to Blofeld (how? The movie tells us you need some DNA or hair or something but they never have Blofeld's because he's locked up.. just a minor point) and he needs Lea Seydoux to transmit it to Blofeld because... she is the only person he speaks to because (I guess) he and she both know that her dad was in SPECTRE. Here is where I become very confused. Ms. Swann is a psychiatrist.. who used to work for doctors without borders or something (explained in the last film) Now somehow she works for Her Majesty's Government as a psychiatrist for... evil villains? The motivations to set up the scene where she gets the nanobot/bioweapon from Rami Malek make no sense. He's just a random guy off the street who needed psychiatric therapy from the NHS? And by sheer coincidence they paired him with her? ok... but then what is her motivation for helping him kill Blofeld? Just because she's afraid of him? I don't recall him threatening her with death or anything if she doesn't kill Blofeld. In fact he says that they have a strong bond (lol) because he saved her life. Maybe the bond (lol) between them meant she "owed" him this favor? 

She for some reason doesn't want to kill Blofeld... the most evil man ever, and chickens out. Bond kills him by accident but there are absolutely zero repercussions for this for the rest of the film. They needed a better reason to *not* kill Blofeld. Crummy writing. This is where things for be began to break down. She goes into hiding because she's worried that Rami Malek will kill her for not killing Blofeld? I guess she didn't see that Blofeld died because she ran away before it happened. Does Rami Malek know that Blofeld is dead? That was his goal right as stated in the beginning of the film right? So Bond goes to find her and tell her that everything is ok, turns out she has a daughter. The evil CIA agent is working for Rami Malek (this is not really explained at all) and is tracking Bond.. or Madeleine? Why? Why does anyone want Bond or Madeleine dead? Simply because the evildoers are assuming Bond will try and get the weapon back? And they don't want anyone to get in the way of them having the weapon? That makes a small amount of sense except for the fact that it's well established that Bond works for MI6 and that there is a giant roster of secret agents that can also try and get the weapon back, as well as the entire British military apparatus. Killing Bond and an NHS psychiatrist does not prevent this in any way. For this to work plot-wise Bond and Madeleine need to know some crucial intel or have a macguffin that singles them out especially. Clumsy. Then for no reason Rami Malek abducts Madeleine and her daughter (possibly as bait for bond??) and instantly flies them from Norway to the Kuril Islands via helicopter.

Now it's clumsily revealed he's mass producing this bioweapon to.... kill the entire world? Why does he want that? Who would want to kill the entire world. They show a graphic of the bioweapon spreading and bond says "this could kill millions." ok, yes. Generally that is bad, and we don't want that to happen. But there is simply no motivation for Rami Malek to do this other than vague Thanos-like posturing. (which was a very weak part of the script)  There is also no motivation to inflict psychological pain on Madeleine by taking her daughter. Why does he take her daughter? The film even realizes this is stupid because he eventually lets her go for no reason and she quite comically just skips away unharmed. Another extremely ham-fisted moment at the end was the evil scientist guy saying that the bioweapon can target races and "eliminate the entire west african diaspora" or something. Then Nomi decides to slay queen and kill him. Very stupid. I was actually very impressed that the film up until that point had made no mention of her gender or race, especially considering how much press this character got before the film was released. She was a cool secret agent and her gender and race were simply incidental to the story and didn't define her character in any way. But then phoebe waller-bridge ruined it.

Bond opens the blast doors to let the missiles destroy the bioweapon factory. But then Rami Malek, after having all his henchmen brutally killed (including the cyclops guy who was originally working for SPECTRE but then decides to be a henchman for the guy that killed all of SPECTRE??? fucking stupid) closes the blast doors to prevent the missiles from entering the factory and instead just killing him and bond on the outside. Then he ruins Bond's life for no reason and then pathetically dies. I looked up his character after the film and producer Barbara Broccoli described his as "one that really gets under Bond’s skin. He’s a nasty piece of work." ok cool. not sure why. There is no reason for him to hate Bond at all. This is the biggest issue with this film.

other than that, fun time at the movies!

There's the very obvious I'm-pregnant-and-you're-the-father setup/conspiracy with the audience in the beginning, where Bond is being paranoid about Madeleine being "a daughter of SPECTRE" - she says "I need to tell you something" and Bond cuts her off and doesn't let her speak, then later when Bond forces Madeleine on the train and the door closes, she grabs and scrunches her abdomen to make it painfully obvious she's with child.