So this week I’d finally look ahead to the future, and talk about something that I’m sure no one else, anywhere, ever, has yet talked about: the title of the new James Bond picture, Quantum of Solace. Or, it’s one of those things that it seems like everyone, just everyone has an opinion about, so I want to go ahead and record my view of the matter here at Culturology for posterity’s and history’s sake. My stance? Eh, it’s really not that bad. It seems like the discussion (as most discussions) breaks down into a simple set of pros and cons.
The pros:
1) It’s unique. I reckon that the title (and off the bat here, albeit parenthetically, I’d like to mention that the fact that it’s an actual title of an actual Ian Fleming story is pretty much completely unimportant) was picked as much for its sound as anything else. Kind of quasi-scientific but thoroughly open-ended. I suppose the expanded title would be something like A Discrete, Sub-Microscopic Amount of Solace. I’ve occasionally heard people complaining that the title doesn’t make any sense, but that really isn’t the case.
2) The notion of solace being right there in the title reminds the viewer that Daniel Craig’s James Bond is a different kind of Bond. Is a quantum of solace all the comfort and peace he’s going to get? Or how much he already has? Or how much he’s looking for? The Pierce Brosnan Bond movies came to be in the decadent mid-to-late ‘90s and, as such, were prone to the same kind of ridiculousness that ruined the Kilmer and Clooney Batman movies (though I generally think that Batman & Robin was so ridiculous that it’s worth keeping around, especially as Exhibit A in my on-going argument that the mid-to-late ‘90s was one of the most decadent and culturally destructive time-periods in American history), as awful titles like Tomorrow Never Dies, and The World is Not Enough demonstrate. Pierce Brosnan was a cardboard cut-out; Daniel Craig is not.
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