"Quickness" of Solace

[Broccoli]

While not a determination of quality of the movie, but many people find this interesting.

According to CommanderBond.net (reporting what other sites say), the run time for Quantum of Solace is 106 Minutes, making it the shortest Bond movie ever (which is interesting, as Casino Royale is the longest Bond movie).

While this surprises me, I am still psyched about the movie.

Thoughts?

 

[Skywalker]

As long as the movie's good, I don't care if it's under two hours. Casino Royale actually could have used a little trimming, especially at the end.

 

[nx1701g]

I wonder if the speed may have been studio interference? I remember reading around the time Casino Royale was released people complained about the length of the film.

 

[Broccoli]

^^ The director said early on that he was setting out to intentionally make the movie under two hours.

As long as the movie's good, I don't care if it's under two hours. Casino Royale actually could have used a little trimming, especially at the end.

Oh, I agree. Sometimes I hate it when a movie drags on for two and a half hours. My butt can get numb. It just seems jarring and surprising considering the length of CR, which QoS is a direct sequel of.

 

[I am not Spock]

I thought OHMSS was the longest Bond movie to date?

 

[nx1701g]

I thought OHMSS was the longest Bond movie to date?

Casino beat OHMSS by 4 minutes.

OHMSS: 140 min
Casino Royale: 144 min

 

[Trubinator]

I thought OHMSS was the longest Bond movie to date?

Casino beat OHMSS by 4 minutes.

OHMSS: 140 min
Casino Royale: 144 min

I think it'll at least be a C+/B- film. Not expecting more though.

 

[nx1701g]

^ Agreed.

It's odd: I love OHMSS and Casino Royale is pretty similar to it, yet I can't stand Casino Royale. I use it to cure insomnia.

 

[Broccoli]

^ Agreed.

It's odd: I love OHMSS and Casino Royale is pretty similar to it, yet I can't stand Casino Royale. I use it to cure insomnia.

Blasphemy!

 

[DarthPipes]

As long as it's good and doesn't shread plot/details from it's story like, say...X-Men 3, it doesn't matter to me.

 

[trevanian]

^ Agreed.

It's odd: I love OHMSS and Casino Royale is pretty similar to it, yet I can't stand Casino Royale. I use it to cure insomnia.

I don't love OHMSS, but I've gotten so I like it for more than just music and photography.

As for CR ... I don't think I'll ever see it all the way through in one sitting without having to fastforward the hell out of it. The one time I was able to almost enjoy it, I had to break it into two separate viewings.

It is kind of funny you bring these up, because these are the two movies where I don't think of the main character as being Bond at all, just a guy who happens to have the same name. The aged-looking brat in CR has less maturity than Bond would have at half his age, if he is anything like the Bond described in Pearson's wonderful pseudo-bio of the character.

 

[Nardpuncher]

wow...CR didn't feel that long to me. I've seen every Bond since The Spy Who Loved Me in the theater and as a kid some of them felt really long.
I also have no problem with a zippy new Bond. I find it a little silly when people are really happy that a movie is 3 hours. (like the petition to make Watchmen 3 hours and TDK)

 

[TedShatner10]

I'm not holding my breath on how well Quantum of Solace will measure up against Casino Royale, but then again I found Licence to Kill and Tomorrow Never Dies to be underrated Bond movies that were better than their predecessors that I never understood the love for (especially The Living Daylights that had really horrid and uninspired central villains; Orumov, Onnatopp, and Trevalyan were much more memorable).

I'd dislike the short running time if over excessive editing creates too many glaring plotholes, but a relatively short running but entertaining movie would be better than a overlong and horribly bloated one (see At World's End as a good recent example).

 

[Hermiod]

To be honest, there's at least twenty minutes I'd cut out of Casino Royale. Most of which involve Bond sitting around recouperating. I don't think anyone goes to see a Bond movie to watch Bond lying in a bed or sitting in a wheelchair doing nothing for twenty minutes.

 

[John Picard]

106 minutes? ACK! IMHO, one of the reasons CR was so great is because the full story could be told properly. Short movies always leave out too many details, making it feel forced and rushed. I prefer a movie to have a minimal running time of 2 hours.

 

[TedShatner10]

106 minutes? ACK! IMHO, one of the reasons CR was so great is because the full story could be told properly. Short movies always leave out too many details, making it feel forced and rushed. I prefer a movie to have a minimal running time of 2 hours.

I dislike storylines getting butchered by unnecessary editing, but what is worse is a limited plot being overstreached to a 200 minutes or something silly like that. Casino Royale was not egregiously overlong, but it had weird pacing issues towards the end as soon as Bond gets 'rescued' by Mr. White. And 106 minutes is not much shorter than two hours (120 minutes) anyway.

 

[Timby]

I prefer a movie to have a minimal running time of 2 hours.

This ... this, I do not understand. A movie should be the length needed to tell its story, no more and no less. A crime epic like HEAT needed all of its nearly three hours, but Ghostbusters was a taut 105 minutes, Casablanca is perfectly paced at 102 minutes, and WALL·E was, what, 90 minutes long?

My point is that there's no reason to have an artificial criterion for the length of a movie -- that's an idea as ridiculous as saying that a novel needs to be at least 350 pages long.

 

[TedShatner10]

^And Quantum of Solace is similar in length to Dr. No and Goldfinger.

 

[John Picard]

106 minutes? ACK! IMHO, one of the reasons CR was so great is because the full story could be told properly. Short movies always leave out too many details, making it feel forced and rushed. I prefer a movie to have a minimal running time of 2 hours.

I dislike storylines getting butchered by unnecessary editing, but what is worse is a limited plot being overstreached to a 200 minutes or something silly like that. Casino Royale was not egregiously overlong, but it had weird pacing issues towards the end as soon as Bond gets 'rescued' by Mr. White. And 106 minutes is not much shorter than two hours (120 minutes) anyway.

I agree that stretching a story is also bad, but to me, a short running time is akin to not getting my money's worth.

I prefer a movie to have a minimal running time of 2 hours.

This ... this, I do not understand. A movie should be the length needed to tell its story, no more and no less. A crime epic like HEAT needed all of its nearly three hours, but Ghostbusters was a taut 105 minutes, Casablanca is perfectly paced at 102 minutes, and WALL·E was, what, 90 minutes long?

My point is that there's no reason to have an artificial criterion for the length of a movie -- that's an idea as ridiculous as saying that a novel needs to be at least 350 pages long.

The two movies people seem to gripe about the most regarding running time are Transformers and Casino Royale. To me, they both had excellent running times and told the full story. X-Men 3 and Spiderman 3 were both woefully inadequate in the story telling department and should have been longer.

 

[Timby]

I agree that stretching a story is also bad, but to me, a short running time is akin to not getting my money's worth.

If a movie is short, but ridiculously entertaining (see my earlier example of WALL·E), have you not gotten your money's worth?

X-Men 3 and Spiderman 3 were both woefully inadequate in the story telling department and should have been longer.

The problems with those movies were not with their running times (at 139 minutes, Spider-Man 3 was longer than both of its predecessors) but rather with the quality of their scripts. To say that "longer movie = better movie" is an at-best spurious argument that has little to no foundation in logic -- see my earlier point about the length of books.

I mean, heck, Psycho is barely over an hour and a half long, and it's phenomenal. Same with Reservoir Dogs. There's no reason to say that in order to be good, a movie needs to have a length of X minutes. There's just as much room for The Godfather and Casino as there is for Cloverfield (84 minutes) and Good Night, and Good Luck (92 minutes).