Lacking a Dress Down Friday topic as we are and, having had all day to mull it over, I have to ask is this the worst film title in the history of the world ever? Someone please hire some movie brand consultants so they can explain just how bad the title for the new James Bond movie is.
Yes, I know there was ‘Octopussy’, but this strikes me as worse. You can’t go from ‘Casino Royale’ to ‘Quantum of Solace’ it sounds like the sequel to Stanislaw Lem’s ‘Solaris’.
Apparently the title is taken from one of a collection of short stories published by Ian Fleming in 1960, but that doesn’t make it right.
I’m sure it will (on the evidence of ‘Casio Royale’) be very good. Daniel Craig is already shaping up to be a very good Bond. Producer Michael Wilson is promising “twice as much action” for what is Bond 22, in which Bond goes looking for revenge.
Craig does a very good job of trying to explain the title. Apparently it has something to do with Bond entering a Buddhist monastery where there is much solace, as you would expect.
According to Craig: “Ian Fleming had written about relationships. When they go wrong, when there’s nothing left, when the spark has gone, when the fire’s gone out, there’s no quantum of solace. And at the end of the last movie, Bond had the love of his life taken away from him and he never got that quantum of solace.”
“So he’s looking for revenge, you know, to make himself happy with the world again. But the title also alludes to something else in the film,” he added.
Okay, so there’s no mention of Buddhists or monasteries just yet, but really there should be.
The good news is that with the naming of the latest Bond movie. George Lucas is no longer the worst in the world at coming up with film titles. The ‘Quantum of Solace’ makes the ‘Phantom Menace’ look like a work of genius. Okay, well not genius, but for a film about trade embargoes better than he has any right to expect.