Quantum of Solace: Bond’s Revenge
Updated
User reviews
22 reviews
Overall rating
8.9
Audio/Video Quality
9.2(17)
Audio Editing
9.5(13)
Visual Editing
8.9(16)
Narrative
8.6(14)
Enjoyment
8.2(22)
(Updated: September 12, 2012)
Enjoyment
9.0
Review by steelio2006 — June 21, 2011 @ 3:28 pm
*This rating was given before reviews were required*
*This rating was given before reviews were required*
S
(Updated: September 12, 2012)
Enjoyment
8.0
Review by Omaru1982 — June 7, 2011 @ 11:57 pm
*This rating was given before reviews were required*
*This rating was given before reviews were required*
O
(Updated: September 12, 2012)
Enjoyment
8.0
Review by DwightFry78 — May 30, 2011 @ 5:50 am
Quantum of Solace is a problematic movie: it arrived as a followup to one of the best Bond films and it resulted very inferior to that, it seemed a pretty superfluous story as the character is pretty much in the same situation at the end than at the beginning, he only did away with some quite unimportant intermediaries to get to avenge Vesper but no big kahuna, plus the filmmaking style (or lack thereof) is the dreaded shake cam. It seems like there are multiple ways to improve on the movie by fanediting, but not a clear one to completely fix it. And Last Survivor’s effort, while solid, is not completely what I would have done. So let’s see…
What I liked: the fact that we got a prologue to fit with Casino Royale and have Vesper present again. What I didn’t like as much: that it was that long. It suffered from a bit of Superman-II-The-Richard-Donner-Cut-itis by delivering way too much background info that we who have seen CR already know. I think starting the prologue with the building sinking and Vesper underwater would have been enough.
What I liked: the “new” theme song. Miles better than the original, and yes, indeed it has a Bond feel. What I didn’t like as much: moving the credits sequence until this late in the movie (16 minutes), when we had already forgotten about it. I would have put it right at the end of the recap (“Bond, James Bond”, kick the song in). A matter of taste, I guess.
What else did I like? I was REALLY impressed by the way you handled the bodyguard kill. By implying that Bond did indeed shoot him and not just threw him off the roof, the line “I tried my best not to” gets a whole new meaning, and a very cynically in-character one. The slowing-down of the action sequences worked quite well, given the circumstances. And I include the opera house and Camille vs. Medrano modified bits. Not what I’d expect to see in a Bond film, but neither did I expect Forster’s epileptic cam. Maybe Vesper was a bit (just a bit) overused in the opera house sequence, but I never care for the original’s faux-Coppola (or was it faux-Eisenstein?) parallel stuff. I was very glad to see the different fonts for the different cities go, it was just overkill (I would have used no caption for Port-Au-Prince, though – the dialogue inmediately preceeding it already establishes it) Also, thanks for removing that “You and I had a mutual friend” line by Bond to Carlos. What the heck was that?
What else did I not care for? Sorry but I’m with Havok regarding Greene’s fate. What’s made of that in the edit is pretty much anticlimactic. I much prefer the motor oil solution. And I would have toned down much of M’s dialogue, sometimes she overstates everything so the dumbest member of the audience gets it, and also she seems a bit too upset by Bond killing left and right. Well, who gave him the 00 to begin with? I definitely would have removed the reference to the hotel room guy in Russia in the epilogue being still alive. Bond softens himself a bit too much there, methinks.
Technical stuff is, like LS’ previous edit Smallville Destiny, very good. I’m in the PAL zone so I didn’t notice the speed-up, this is the way Bond always plays for me. The cuts are totally invisible.
Is this the edit I would have made? No. Is it a good one? Definitely. Will it replace the original for me? No. Will it be a worthy alternate take and companion to it? You bet.
Overall, 8/10.
Quantum of Solace is a problematic movie: it arrived as a followup to one of the best Bond films and it resulted very inferior to that, it seemed a pretty superfluous story as the character is pretty much in the same situation at the end than at the beginning, he only did away with some quite unimportant intermediaries to get to avenge Vesper but no big kahuna, plus the filmmaking style (or lack thereof) is the dreaded shake cam. It seems like there are multiple ways to improve on the movie by fanediting, but not a clear one to completely fix it. And Last Survivor’s effort, while solid, is not completely what I would have done. So let’s see…
What I liked: the fact that we got a prologue to fit with Casino Royale and have Vesper present again. What I didn’t like as much: that it was that long. It suffered from a bit of Superman-II-The-Richard-Donner-Cut-itis by delivering way too much background info that we who have seen CR already know. I think starting the prologue with the building sinking and Vesper underwater would have been enough.
What I liked: the “new” theme song. Miles better than the original, and yes, indeed it has a Bond feel. What I didn’t like as much: moving the credits sequence until this late in the movie (16 minutes), when we had already forgotten about it. I would have put it right at the end of the recap (“Bond, James Bond”, kick the song in). A matter of taste, I guess.
What else did I like? I was REALLY impressed by the way you handled the bodyguard kill. By implying that Bond did indeed shoot him and not just threw him off the roof, the line “I tried my best not to” gets a whole new meaning, and a very cynically in-character one. The slowing-down of the action sequences worked quite well, given the circumstances. And I include the opera house and Camille vs. Medrano modified bits. Not what I’d expect to see in a Bond film, but neither did I expect Forster’s epileptic cam. Maybe Vesper was a bit (just a bit) overused in the opera house sequence, but I never care for the original’s faux-Coppola (or was it faux-Eisenstein?) parallel stuff. I was very glad to see the different fonts for the different cities go, it was just overkill (I would have used no caption for Port-Au-Prince, though – the dialogue inmediately preceeding it already establishes it) Also, thanks for removing that “You and I had a mutual friend” line by Bond to Carlos. What the heck was that?
What else did I not care for? Sorry but I’m with Havok regarding Greene’s fate. What’s made of that in the edit is pretty much anticlimactic. I much prefer the motor oil solution. And I would have toned down much of M’s dialogue, sometimes she overstates everything so the dumbest member of the audience gets it, and also she seems a bit too upset by Bond killing left and right. Well, who gave him the 00 to begin with? I definitely would have removed the reference to the hotel room guy in Russia in the epilogue being still alive. Bond softens himself a bit too much there, methinks.
Technical stuff is, like LS’ previous edit Smallville Destiny, very good. I’m in the PAL zone so I didn’t notice the speed-up, this is the way Bond always plays for me. The cuts are totally invisible.
Is this the edit I would have made? No. Is it a good one? Definitely. Will it replace the original for me? No. Will it be a worthy alternate take and companion to it? You bet.
Overall, 8/10.
D
(Updated: September 12, 2012)
Overall rating
8.7
Audio/Video Quality
10.0
Visual Editing
7.0
Enjoyment
9.0
Review by havok1977 — May 27, 2011 @ 5:34 am
So I felt in the mood for some Bond tonight, and of my pending fanedit queue i decided to go with this release from LastSurvivor; whom I’ve gotten a bit acquainted with lately due to his feedback of my work in progress.
Bearing in mind that these are just my personal opinions with no other intent than expressing myself, lets dive right…
VIDEO quality: Very good. I could not notice any significant difference between this and most of the SD discs that I own.
I see that Aztek mentions an issue with different speeds which are not noticeable to me, PAL to NTSC conversion is something I have not personally dealt with and can not really make a proper assessment. In full disclosure I watch DVDs using an upscaling stand alone player which does some nice signal cleaning, which could be a mitigating factor.
With this present I still give video a 9/10
AUDIO quality: Again it is great, this being made off fairly recent and high profile/budget movies means that the audio sources should and are of prime quality. The editing is flawless with no noticeable issues even thou there are some significant replacement of dialogue lines at many spots in the edit. Much effort and patience goes into accomplishing this level of polish and so: 10/10
EDITING / ENJOYMENT : LastSurvivor took on a movie which I hoped someone would fix and I have to say that his labors yielded quite a good final product. Here are some points i would like to highlight:
- The whole reason for this movie to exist is Vesper and Bond’s truncated relationship, his subsequent grief and the way he deals with what happened. It is a good thing to bring this to the foreground, and I felt that the new pre-credits sequence does a great job at this (the use of B&W and color was quite effective here)
And yet I felt the hammer falling on my head too often hitting me with the same point during the rest of the edit than I think is good – specially the flashback at the Opera house, which in turned made the escape feel non existent.
- Still about the opening sequence, I felt some more of the actual car chase was missing, just a tad. And a small thing that should also be mentioned is that during one of Vesper’s voice overs she is actually in frame with her lips out of sync, and it just felt a bit off.
- Fine choice with the theme song, it fits very well; kudos to the person whom you mentioned suggested it. To be honest I walked in biased here because I have never cared for the pop singer behind it, expecting to hate it; guess it would have been one of those cases of better off not knowing
- A great job was made to tone down the speed of the many action sequences that are present in the original release by using a clever choice of music and a semi slow camera that makes things feel somehow more real, yet I felt that the last one did not need so much of this treatment and therefore did not have the impact i would have expected, and the small flashback for Camille in there felt out of place to me.
- As it was surely planned, by consequence of the action sequence rearrangement the rest of the movie has a much better pace and the actual spying is properly showcased now. Very well done.
- There is a change in the final act that was honestly not to my liking: Greene’s fate. I understand that this is a matter of personal preference, but I have to say that I preferred the original version.
Because of these opinions, for me this is a 7/10.
DVD Authoring: efficient and right up my alley
Final score for me: 8.5/10. Original: 6.5/10
All in all I did quite enjoy the new take and the disc will have a place on my fanedits shelf
So I felt in the mood for some Bond tonight, and of my pending fanedit queue i decided to go with this release from LastSurvivor; whom I’ve gotten a bit acquainted with lately due to his feedback of my work in progress.
Bearing in mind that these are just my personal opinions with no other intent than expressing myself, lets dive right…
VIDEO quality: Very good. I could not notice any significant difference between this and most of the SD discs that I own.
I see that Aztek mentions an issue with different speeds which are not noticeable to me, PAL to NTSC conversion is something I have not personally dealt with and can not really make a proper assessment. In full disclosure I watch DVDs using an upscaling stand alone player which does some nice signal cleaning, which could be a mitigating factor.
With this present I still give video a 9/10
AUDIO quality: Again it is great, this being made off fairly recent and high profile/budget movies means that the audio sources should and are of prime quality. The editing is flawless with no noticeable issues even thou there are some significant replacement of dialogue lines at many spots in the edit. Much effort and patience goes into accomplishing this level of polish and so: 10/10
EDITING / ENJOYMENT : LastSurvivor took on a movie which I hoped someone would fix and I have to say that his labors yielded quite a good final product. Here are some points i would like to highlight:
- The whole reason for this movie to exist is Vesper and Bond’s truncated relationship, his subsequent grief and the way he deals with what happened. It is a good thing to bring this to the foreground, and I felt that the new pre-credits sequence does a great job at this (the use of B&W and color was quite effective here)
And yet I felt the hammer falling on my head too often hitting me with the same point during the rest of the edit than I think is good – specially the flashback at the Opera house, which in turned made the escape feel non existent.
- Still about the opening sequence, I felt some more of the actual car chase was missing, just a tad. And a small thing that should also be mentioned is that during one of Vesper’s voice overs she is actually in frame with her lips out of sync, and it just felt a bit off.
- Fine choice with the theme song, it fits very well; kudos to the person whom you mentioned suggested it. To be honest I walked in biased here because I have never cared for the pop singer behind it, expecting to hate it; guess it would have been one of those cases of better off not knowing
- A great job was made to tone down the speed of the many action sequences that are present in the original release by using a clever choice of music and a semi slow camera that makes things feel somehow more real, yet I felt that the last one did not need so much of this treatment and therefore did not have the impact i would have expected, and the small flashback for Camille in there felt out of place to me.
- As it was surely planned, by consequence of the action sequence rearrangement the rest of the movie has a much better pace and the actual spying is properly showcased now. Very well done.
- There is a change in the final act that was honestly not to my liking: Greene’s fate. I understand that this is a matter of personal preference, but I have to say that I preferred the original version.
Because of these opinions, for me this is a 7/10.
DVD Authoring: efficient and right up my alley
Final score for me: 8.5/10. Original: 6.5/10
All in all I did quite enjoy the new take and the disc will have a place on my fanedits shelf
H
(Updated: September 12, 2012)
Overall rating
8.3
Audio/Video Quality
9.0
Visual Editing
9.0
Enjoyment
7.0
Review by Aztek463 — May 26, 2011 @ 11:09 pm
I’ve been iffy on Quantum of Solace. I didn’t really care for it that much when it was released to theaters, although my opinion changed a bit on subsequent viewings. I actually did my own edit of this a few years ago, but I never released it. I was interested to see Last Survivor’s edit of this because, well, it sorta reminded me of mine. So without further ado, let’s see how it was, shall we?
VIDEO:
This is a nice looking edit. No combing, no pixelation, no digital artifacts. There was a slight quality drop from the commercial DVD, but that’s to be expected, and it wasn’t distracting save for when there were subtitles present (hard coded as part of the original picture. Yellow is an awful color). These were few and far in between, and not the editor’s fault in the slightest.
8/10
AUDIO:
No complaints here.
10/10
EDITING:
Last Survivor did a great job on the editing. The opening was great…while the Licence to Kill gun barrel theme didn’t quite feel right at first, as the opening shots of the film played out, it was a better fit than I thought it would be. The “previously on James Bond…” opening was very well edited, and with the music he used, it was suspenseful as well.
The new title song was great as well, it definitely fit, and I liked the inclusion of the credit for it. Good job!
The opera shootout and the fight at the end were done very well as…well, I guess. There was more emotion in both of them, especially the final confrontation between Camille and Medrano/Bond and Greene. The pace was great, and it didn’t seem “out of place” when the scene slowed down, in both cases.
I did feel that the opening flashback to Casino Royale went on a bit too long, and it probably could have been trimmed down a bit. Also, some of the scenes that were slowed down (the blood on the gun barrel, the car chase) were slowed down *too* much, to the point the video was a bit jerky. Not the worst thing in the world, but just for future reference, be careful slowing stuff down.
9/10
DVD:
Simple, but effective. It was quite pleased to see a scene selection menu (with different music on each page!) Extras include a trailer and info on the edit. No complaints.
10/10
I do have on major complaint for this edit, and it’s a doozy. In some scenes, particularly the flashbacks to Casino Royale, a good chunk of the Haiti sequence, and a little bit at the end, the video seems like it’s going a bit fast. The audio is not out of sync, but it appears as if perhaps the original source for this edit was PAL and not properly converted to NTSC. It also reminded me of how some HDTVs are configured improperly on the showroom floor of electronics stores, and the demos being shown appear to move too fast. What the cause of this was, I’m not sure, but it was distracting at times. I tested the edit on a few different players, the same result each time.
Don’t get me wrong…I really enjoyed this edit. It’s pretty damn close to my preferred version of the film. However, the aforementioned video issues are a distraction and take away from the experience, and prevents me from giving it a higher score. Maybe Last Survivor could look into fixing this or figuring the issue out and release a corrected version?
TOTAL: 7/10
I’ve been iffy on Quantum of Solace. I didn’t really care for it that much when it was released to theaters, although my opinion changed a bit on subsequent viewings. I actually did my own edit of this a few years ago, but I never released it. I was interested to see Last Survivor’s edit of this because, well, it sorta reminded me of mine. So without further ado, let’s see how it was, shall we?
VIDEO:
This is a nice looking edit. No combing, no pixelation, no digital artifacts. There was a slight quality drop from the commercial DVD, but that’s to be expected, and it wasn’t distracting save for when there were subtitles present (hard coded as part of the original picture. Yellow is an awful color). These were few and far in between, and not the editor’s fault in the slightest.
8/10
AUDIO:
No complaints here.
10/10
EDITING:
Last Survivor did a great job on the editing. The opening was great…while the Licence to Kill gun barrel theme didn’t quite feel right at first, as the opening shots of the film played out, it was a better fit than I thought it would be. The “previously on James Bond…” opening was very well edited, and with the music he used, it was suspenseful as well.
The new title song was great as well, it definitely fit, and I liked the inclusion of the credit for it. Good job!
The opera shootout and the fight at the end were done very well as…well, I guess. There was more emotion in both of them, especially the final confrontation between Camille and Medrano/Bond and Greene. The pace was great, and it didn’t seem “out of place” when the scene slowed down, in both cases.
I did feel that the opening flashback to Casino Royale went on a bit too long, and it probably could have been trimmed down a bit. Also, some of the scenes that were slowed down (the blood on the gun barrel, the car chase) were slowed down *too* much, to the point the video was a bit jerky. Not the worst thing in the world, but just for future reference, be careful slowing stuff down.
9/10
DVD:
Simple, but effective. It was quite pleased to see a scene selection menu (with different music on each page!) Extras include a trailer and info on the edit. No complaints.
10/10
I do have on major complaint for this edit, and it’s a doozy. In some scenes, particularly the flashbacks to Casino Royale, a good chunk of the Haiti sequence, and a little bit at the end, the video seems like it’s going a bit fast. The audio is not out of sync, but it appears as if perhaps the original source for this edit was PAL and not properly converted to NTSC. It also reminded me of how some HDTVs are configured improperly on the showroom floor of electronics stores, and the demos being shown appear to move too fast. What the cause of this was, I’m not sure, but it was distracting at times. I tested the edit on a few different players, the same result each time.
Don’t get me wrong…I really enjoyed this edit. It’s pretty damn close to my preferred version of the film. However, the aforementioned video issues are a distraction and take away from the experience, and prevents me from giving it a higher score. Maybe Last Survivor could look into fixing this or figuring the issue out and release a corrected version?
TOTAL: 7/10
A