Extreme malice 
I found it very close to the book it was based on. In fact, knowing the scene where he is tortured on the chair, too close!
Carpet beater in the book! Ouch.
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the new 007 was introduced in No Time To Die…that’s already been established. In the film, she WAS 007 after Daniel Craig had retired from “service”. It wasn’t until Spectre killed off his best friend in the boat scene, that he returned to service to avenge.
By far and BY FAR, the best Bond movie yet. It was spectacular.
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I preferred Casino Royale to be honest.
Going over old ground here I suspect but the latest Star Wars trilogy whiffs a bit of an agenda.
Nothing against a female lead, but quite a few issues with the story writing and the character arc she was put on.
What arc? Started as an unstoppable Mary Sue and ended up an unstoppable Mary Sue usurping the Skywalker name. Hideous.
and what’s the problem with an imaginary story having an imaginary hero? Who are you pissed off about now?
Yeah - Casino Royal, then No Time To Die, then Skyfall. Even the ‘rubbish ones’ are alright. It’s a brilliant five film series. I’ll struggle to forgive them for dropping the awesome Radiohead song for bloody Sam Smith.
The problem with the new Star Wars films was that Rey had no hero’s journey. There is no failure to learn from, no defeat to bounce back from. As Klopptimist says, she starts of super powered, and stays at that level. She earns nothing.
@klopptimist would no doubt see that as an agenda. I see it as bad writing. But they started that trilogy with no idea for how it would go.
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What they did to Luke and Han. Criminal. But then white male heros, can’t have them anymore.
kudos on the Radiohead nod there
The introduction and storyline of Madeleine/Mathilde added a human twist element to the usual swashbuckling escapades of 007, as he had to come to terms with having a daughter and those implications. The truth about Madeleine’s involvement at Matera, the bombing of Vesper’s crypt by Spectre and how his own insecurities caused him to miss the first years of Mathilde’s life.
The writers of NTTD did an excellent job of wrapping up the storylines of Daniel Craig’s existence as 007. I loved it, my favorite Bond film.
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I also think it was bad writing, awful actually but made worse for the reasons you’ve described perfectly above. I think it’s fair to say that Rey was written that way deliberately on the whim of a certain one person. That person basically tore the heart out of everything that made the other, earlier movies / stories what they were. Huge shame.
Rogue 1 got pretty close though. The female lead working perfectly well there. Must watch it again while I remember.
Excellent film. KK however needs to walk into a lightsaber.
I actually think there is a really baneful effect from this though. There is a Netflix show, forget the name, but the trailer shows black actors as nobility and gentry in circa 1790 England, living in wealth, privilege and power. That is a wildly inaccurate depiction that obscures the reality of what being black meant in England for hundreds of years, creating a false vision of an equality that never existed. of course, if blacks had that equality then, they bear full responsibility for having squandered opportunity since. I am not sure more jobs for black actors is actually worth that.
If you mean Bridgerton, it is deliberately set in an alternate version of English History where racial segregation isn’t a thing. It’s certainly not meant to be seen as historically accurate.
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Rogue One is fantastic. Right up there with Empire and Star Wars.
The same casting choices produce the same misrepresentation elsewhere though - and how many viewers are familiar with the premise? I think there are dangers to backcasting the current relative equality of treatment, rewriting our histories as somehow more just.
To be fair, I’ve never really watched it. More the missus’ thing, but did look up from the book when the bottoms started going up and down.
I have not either, just seen the trailer. But there are multiple shows that do something similar. I have less of a problem with it the further back in time (or more fantastic, as Bridgerton would appear to be) it is, but it is just a little weird when covering the period that was the beginning of the Abolitionist movement.