Broccoli wrote:
That said, there was a lot of good. I am happy they revealed Mathis to be a good guy after all. That was one of my irritations with CR that made Mathis into a villain, when in the novels he was one of Bond's closest allies.
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Mathis was a turncoat villain in the film adaptation of
Casino Royale, but the writers of
Quantum of Solace ret-conned him back into a good guy to redeem him before his death.
You don't go from intentionally trying to cheat the British government out of $100 million+ to Le Chiffre and try to poison Bond and then turn around and become Bond's friend "just like that."
I don't buy it. That kind of sudden "change of heart" is more a product of lazy writing more than anything else.
Which is also the reason why the end of
Casino Royale set up Mr. White as being linked to a bigger conspiracy, where Craig's Bond needed answers, made the audience believe that Mr. White was going to be a larger presence in the sequel. However, all we got in
Quantum of Solace with the character of Mr. White was the writers using him as nothing more than a cipher to establish that he is one of thousands of faces among Quantum in the sequel than as an actual developed and fleshedout character. A product of lazy writing if I ever saw one.
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Although, he didn't bring anything to the story other than to die. Honestly, what did he do that Bond absolutely needed him for? The money to get to Bolivia or wherever? If Bond was resourceful enough to get to where Mathis was, he could get to wherever else he needed to go.
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This sounds more of a case of bringing back actor Giancarlo Giannini (Mathis) for the sequel due to contractual obligations more than anything else. The writers wanted to write a new story for the sequel, so they just offed Mathis so that his presence would not be a loose thread that needed to be tied up in further sequels down the road.
Mathis's story arc came to a logical conclusion in
Casino Royale. He didn't need to be brought back for
Quantum of Solace.
Starkers wrote:
I would agree that Greene's plan perhaps wasn't explained well enough, but people need to realise that in a few decades water will be worth more than oil to an awful lot of people. My assumption was that Quantum were going to 'discover' a huge cache of water and sell it to the beleaguered Bolivians (or whoever). Personally I liked it, Green had a more traditional film baddie plan than, say, Le Chiffre.
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In my opinion, the only realistic Bond villain plots were from
Licence to Kill (drugs),
The World Is Not Enough (oil), and
Casino Royale (money), where there was no elaborate lair or the villain's ultimate weapon in thwarting the western world. They were just greedy czars or tycoons that went straight after what they wanted without all of the fancy and contrived setups of most other "moustache twirling" Bond villains.
Greene's plan sounds contrived and leaving some audience members scratching their heads going "Huh? The villain set up
all of this for
that?
?" like Elliott Carver's ludicrous plan in "making tomorrow's news to make more money" in
Tomorrow Never Dies.