“Our Bond is Better” seems to be the recurring claim of the Daniel Craig era. “What were you expecting, an exploding pen?” Well, yes, actually — but even if I wasn’t, these films don’t ever deliver on their claims of being better. The gritty introspection that is the hallmark of modern Bond actually isn’t built up or built on in any meaningful way, so we are left with… nothing. Nothing but sadness, emptiness, and a hollow, pointless rage.
Alas, we are the problem, because we both still paid money to see these films.
(Transcript is included in the blog post.)
TRANSCRIPT
Gravelly-Voiced Villain 1: WE WERE BORN… READY
Gravelly-Voiced Villain 2: I WAS BORN TO BE READY
Chris: (sigh) Skyfall
(together): ♫ Skyfaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall
Chris: The bit, much like your hatred of the underutilised asteroid base–
Rao Dao Zao: (sigh)
Chris: In Skyfall, the bit where they get on the boat, and they sail towards this big, abandoned, barren nuclear fallout island. And you see it and you’re like, “Henchman, baddy lair!”
Rao Dao Zao: It is an amazing location. It’s got the cold war aesthetic, so it’s harking back to the classic Bond, it’s an island, it’s totally outwith any government jurisdiction, it’s alone, it’s perfect, it’s isolated, it’s pure, it’s empty, it’s clean.
Chris: It’s built up narratively.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah. It’s a great location, an absolutely fantastic location for anything, let alone a Bond film.
Chris: Again, I don’t think, much like the aforementioned asteroid crater base, it’s on camera for more than fifteen to twenty minutes, probably fifteen minutes. And… fuck that. Like, who thinks, “we’ll write in this amazing location and not make it…” Like, that is not gonna be our third act.
Rao Dao Zao: You do wonder if the producers are just like, “I want a holiday somewhere nice, let’s set something somewhere nice for five minutes so we can have a few scenes there, a few weeks chillin’ out in the sun”.
Chris: Because it’s built up to be this amazing thing. She, the girl that he’s with–
Rao Dao Zao: It’s his lair! It’s his fucking lair!
Chris: Yeah! And she builds it up that way, you know, “he wanted the island so he took it”, and you get this big backstory about this island, that is actually, in the end, completely inconsequential to anything. It never gets destroyed, nothing happens. All that happens, well here’s what happens–
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah, walk the audience through the pain.
Chris: You know what happens, Robbie? Disappointment. (laughter) That’s what happens.
Rao Dao Zao: (trumpet noise)
Chris: Yep. So Bond has met up with this girl, she knows the big bad, and the girl’s like, “come with me to the magical amazing island.” And — it is! You’re looking at it as soon as– there’s a shot, a big wide shot from the boat, and you’re like “holy shit–”
Rao Dao Zao: “This is it.”
Chris: “This is his base? Holy fuck! Wow, I wanna be there. This is gonna get good!” So, already, your anticipation is building from what this location, not even getting into it, what it can deliver.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah.
Chris: They go into it and you get these great establishing shots of all the derelict buildings, everything’s collapsed around, as you say, the cold war aesthetic. She’s given the backstory to him, you know, he implied there was some nuclear fallout that didn’t exist so everyone would abandon it, everyone that ran the island.
Rao Dao Zao: Hacking, basically.
Chris: And establish that this is his cybernetic home base, and he’s got that, you know… The Silva character’s introduced and he’s got that great speech about rats and the weird kinda gay overtones scene for some reason as well. It’s all about cyber-hacking, it’s all coming out of this one, central location, it’s his home lair, this great, amazing, you know… This is it. Effort, put in… but for why? So, I’m watching this film, taking all this into account, and I’m thinking, well, he wouldn’t put this much effort into something unless you were going somewhere with it. This is… Silva’s big base of operations, right?
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah.
Chris: You would think that his guard service would be slightly larger than the four blokes that have been involved in the scene we’ve just watched.
Rao Dao Zao: So he’s got a huge island base, so if he needs a huge island base it’s because he has a huge island operation, you know — it’s that kind of inconsistency that’s, again, another foundational problem.
Chris: Later on in the movie, there’s an army that go and shoot up Skyfall.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah, all over London.
Chris: And their agents are in London hanging about.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: So, okay, right, these thoughts, I don’t know about, I’m watching this for the first time, I don’t know about that stuff yet, but I’m simply taking it on the basis of an area that large — the implication is that he is kinda like the head of this mini terrorist cell that are living from this island.
Rao Dao Zao: So, he’s the head of, like… Maybe… Quantum?
Chris: Right, but they obviously (mutter mutter)
Rao Dao Zao: Oh wait, oh no, sorry, he’s the head of another tentacle of SPECTRE. Yeaaaah!
Chris: The head of narrative mess.
Rao Dao Zao: Mmmm.
Chris: But that, just looking at the aesthetic of what you have, the backstory of the base, you kinda get this impression, so I’m now ramped up going, “this is gonna be great!” Because the only way this place can be taken out is surely by, either a massive fuckin’ missile strike or soldiers storming the fucking base!
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah, I guess now you mention that, there’s the whole nuking of the Skyfall manor — that should have happened to that island. There should have been, rather than Home Alone with Judy Dench, it should have been–
Chris: You’re now driving home with this. So, it’s the line, “You gonna take me back, all by yourself, all alone?” “Who says I’m alone?” Then–
Rao Dao Zao: ♫ doo-doo de-doooo, de-doo-doooooooaaahhhh…
Chris: You get the, helicopters fly overhead, and the theme song is ramping up, and you’re now thinking, this is gonna be like, British marines versus evil terrorist bad guys, big massive fucking shootout.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeaaaaah!
Chris: And then… Cut to wide shot, waaaawm.
Rao Dao Zao: (pop)
Chris: And it was just like, we can’t afford to show you this, so we’re gonna cut back to London.
Rao Dao Zao: (sigh)
Chris: And just, in the same way that your crater base just really, auuugh.
Rao Dao Zao: I guess at least the crater base has the dignity to blow up before we lose it. The island does not even blow up. Literally nothing happens to the island.
Chris: If you haven’t got the budget to do it justice–
Rao Dao Zao: Don’t do it.
Chris: Don’t build up this thing that is to be like, my god, it’s a terrorist island! This is the Jurassic Park of villainy! You can’t just go, like, with that bit of music as well, it’s that– escalation, it comes back to that point, the music, everything escalates.
Rao Dao Zao: We escalate to this beautiful, amazing location and then cut back to London again. Like, it’s not the finale.
Chris: And then it gets worse, because we almost de-escalate, ’cause what happens is we build up to this amazing island location, which lends itself towards the final battle, and then we go to London and then we de-escalate further because we go to Skyfall in Scotland.
Rao Dao Zao: The problem is that, yeah, London is where we want to save, so we start in London, and we get the epilogue in London, the final fight does not happen in London. London is what we’re fighting for, and Skyfall Manor is what we’re fighting for… Maybe, apparently.
Chris: I haven’t got an issue with the finale, or the epilogue’s a better term, happening in London, I don’t have an issue with that. I feel that–
Rao Dao Zao: It’s having the climax in London that’s the problem.
Chris: But you’re basically, yeah, the blow-off has to happen in the exotic location.
Rao Dao Zao: And to do that two films in a row is like, come on. It’s cheap and lazy.
Chris: It’s just the fuck you to the audience, we’re gonna build this thing up, we’re gonna tease you with it, but we’re not gonna give you the pay-off. Like, just don’t do it in the first place then. If your ending is gonna take place in an abandoned mansion in Scotland, you kinda have to escalate… Because, From Russia With Love is actually really good with this–
Rao Dao Zao: Well you have to keep it very low key I suppose, you’d have to have the whole film very low key, very sneaky and shadowy, then…
Chris: Right, From Russia With Love, that film, that is exactly what that film does, because its finale is very low key, it’s a very low key finale but the whole film is low key, and by doing it in such a way, the film really fucking works. The problem that you can’t do, is that you can’t have your cake and fucking eat it.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah.
Chris: You can’t say, “oh, it’s James Bond, therefore we must have this crazy island base or we must have this amazing asteroid fucking crater base” and then not deliver on it.
Rao Dao Zao: Put them all in the wrong places, yeah.
Chris: You need to, either you can have, but that needs to be your fuckin’ finish, it needs to be, that is where things end.
Rao Dao Zao: That is where we’re achieving– that is what we’re trying to strive towards to find the bad guys to stop them.
Chris: And again, no issue with the epilogue, I’m not anti-London or anti-what-we-are, it’s a staple of the franchise.
Rao Dao Zao: Again, it’s what we’re fighting for, Britain is home.
Chris: ’cause that’s the core of the Bond franchise to a degree, it’s like, we are fighting for Britain
Generic Upper Class Politician: Britain.
Chris: Britain, Britain, the Empire, blah blah blah. Britain and the Empire, but it’s what you’re defending.
Rao Dao Zao: But we’re not fighting in Britain–
Chris: In it, in it, yeah.
Rao Dao Zao: We’re fighting for Britain.
Chris: Correct, it’s the external force that’s the threat. You don’t even want the attack to happen on home soil, because you want him to be so heroic that the reason why Britain is this kinda, in the Bond universe, this kinda perfect utopia. But this idea of what this represents is, peace, happiness and joy. It could not be true, but in that universe–
Rao Dao Zao: In the context, in the mythos, yeah. That is the ideal that we’re fighting for, if not the reality.
Chris: Correct, so therefore the external force that is trying to disrupt that idealism that you’re going out to fight and defend and blow it up at the source and then you come back home and go, “hey, everything’s still hunky-dory!” Which seemed to be the crux of it, yet… (clap, thigh slap?)
Rao Dao Zao: But now we go back and we have terrorist attacks in London and London’s grim and dark and blown-up and Daniel Craig’s all oooaaah he’s so introspective and mmmh, oaah. Well, as I say, my lack of enthusiasm to even see the recent Bond films, I’ve been like, what I grew up with as Brosnan Bond is totally– So the modern Bond films, they try and sell them as that, but then I’m like, well, but I know it’s not.
Chris: But you still have the hunger, a hunger for that.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah! I still want, as I say, my–
Chris: Idris Elba.
Rao Dao Zao: I want– God, fuck yes.
Chris: (laughter)
Rao Dao Zao: You know, same reason I want Godzilla films and stuff, I still want these crazy over-the-top blown-up, like Pacific Rim is an excellent excellent film, I want more of that.
Chris: Just, confidence. The big key word about the whole thing to me, it boils down to confidence.
Rao Dao Zao: Well, confidence and escalation–
Chris: Balls-out confidence with escalation, that is what Bond should be. To me, the franchise used to pride itself as being bigger and better than anything else in cinema, and the thing that strikes me with all the stuff is, it doesn’t take pride in that anymore.
Rao Dao Zao: No…
Chris: There’s no– it’s not taking every other franchise by the scruff of the neck and saying, “we are the king of this”.
Rao Dao Zao: I think the problem with the thing is, it’s trying to be too clever, or too elitist, it’s trying to be too high brow and it’s… not very good at that, and we don’t want that, and it seems like half the cast don’t want that either, but somebody at the top does, and they’ve said “this is what we’re gonna do” and it’s gonna be clever and high brow, and actually we’re like… “No, this is James fucking Bond, just give us explosions and crazy gadgets and crater bases and we’ll be fine with that. Don’t put all this bullshit on top of it.” It doesn’t work, it just doesn’t work! Or they’re not making it work, maybe it can work and they’re just not doing it.
Chris: I think it can work, I think that the way that they have approached doing it is fundamentally flawed. I think it hasn’t helped, the way that they’ve tried to do the, we’re being consistent but we’re not being consistent, that has not helped.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah, that’s really irritating.
Addendum: I suppose it’s that Bond used to aim for a different kind of cleverness. We want to unravel the mysterious and dastardly plot of the villain, we want to be surprised when a gadget with an obvious function is used in a novel but brilliant way — instead, we’re getting dumber and dumber narratives with that cerebral gap being awkwardly filled by “deep” character stuff instead. So this lack of confidence in the original direction has cost us the real cleverness we had, and the bodged implementation of the fashionable introspection cost us any depth that could have come of that. Whoever wins, we lose!
Chris: But I think that, the idea of taking what’s old and twisting it to make it new again, I think that’s good. But they haven’t done that — I mean, there’s a line in Skyfall where some guy says, like, “Sometimes the old ways are the best ways”.
Rao Dao Zao: Here’s the old way versus the new, like Bond is painted as the “old” Bond, and he’s all punching people and guns and stuff, and then there’s the new world is like hacking and technology and then… You know, MI6 gets hacked, you’ve got the whole, okay, Bond is now the oldschool guy so he can come in, he’s the only one who can save the day because he’s the only one who remembers how to do this shit the old fashioned way… And yet, then we go to the low-tech bunker, but it’s actually still high-tech and the guy gets put in the glass box with magnetic locks that disengage when the power goes off, and then the sewers disengage when the power goes off and he escapes and there’s all these things that are, like– the whole premise of the film seemed to be that we were going for the anti-technological way.
Chris: Yes.
Rao Dao Zao: That was seen to be the conceit that they were going for, then they sort of… No.
Chris: Yeah, it’s like, you can’t in one breath be saying that Bond’s way is the right way, when the threat clearly isn’t coming from that area.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah, and then climax would obviously be that neither is the right or wrong way, it would be a combination of both Bond and technology. Well, that’s the thing, you get the bro-ness between Q and Bond at the end of the film when they’re like, “okay, actually, we both, together–”
(together): “We need each other.”
Rao Dao Zao: And that would have been the nicer climax, but they never, they seemed to sort of forget about the fact that– the low-tech bunker was actually full of high-tech anyway, what’s the point.
Chris: We can consider how we’d do things differently, but I think that, certainly, looking at Skyfall, the narrative that would have made more sense could have been, prior to Bond going out on the mission, for him– I know I’ve said this before, it really irked me, in two lines they’re best mates. And to have the idea that he goes out on the mission– One thing I think, first of all, the idea that Q is also advocating a back-to-basics technology route, while later on in the film clearly not doing that.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah.
Chris: Again, narrative consistency, you can’t have the guy being a state-of-the-art hacker while also being like, “here’s a gun and a radio”. The scene, as it stands, is convoluted, because they start off and they have an immediate– Bond’s opinion is, “you’re too young for this shit, what the fuck do you know about anything?”
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah.
Chris: Q tries to defend that, in quite a rationalised, logical way, but there’s a conflict there, instantly — great! Because–
Rao Dao Zao: Q’s like, “he’s an old guy who’s too trigger-happy”, Bond’s like “who’s this young kid with no experience”.
Chris: Believe it or not, that’s something that you don’t want to throw away in a couple of lines, which is exactly what they do! They basically go like, “blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah”. And all I know for certain is, there’s some line to do with pyjamas, there’s a moment where there’s a line exchanged and for an inexplicable, no logical reason, grin grin grin, we’re best buds now.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah.
Chris: And I’m like, you’ve just thrown out–
Rao Dao Zao: You could have used that for the rest of the film. And then, yeah, have that moment at the end of the film where they realise they need each other and then say, okay, actually we are– or, if not mates, then grudging respect for each other.
Chris: So you kinda have this thing where you come back to the technology that’s utilised, I think you have to maintain the fact that if you’re having Q–
Rao Dao Zao: Smart blood.
Chris: Right. You can’t have, in one movie, here’s your shitty radio and your crappy gun, but I’m gonna give you nanotechnology in the next film.
Rao Dao Zao: Smart blood.
Chris: I think that, what I would do, is have– The cliché with Q is that Q always gives Bond–
Rao Dao Zao: Just the right thing.
Chris: Just the right thing. I think what would be cooler is that–
Rao Dao Zao: He’s basically omniscient.
Chris: You have Q as the brains, but Bond as the innovation. Imagine at Casino Royale, you win the car in the card game of poker, right? So he wins the Aston Martin DB5. I would like to have seen a scene that, either in Quantum of Solace or Skyfall, where he wheels in– it’s the first time we meet Q, as he wheels this vehicle in to Q’s…
Rao Dao Zao: Workshop.
Chris: Q’s workshop, that’s the terminology, there we go.
Rao Dao Zao: (snort laugh)
Chris: Gets out of the car, looks around, we have this great establishing shot of the workshop, which is never really granted in any movie, this epic, establishing scene, where you see the technology, the guns, the weaponry on the wall, all displayed. So I think that Bond’s interpretation of Q instantaneously has to be, “this is a complete geek, but holy shit, look what this guy can do”. Now, for narrative purposes, in our movie, the DB5 is an Aston Martin DB5 won in a card game, no gadgets, nothing in it, it’s just that car. Bond, looking round the room, can sorta see stuff that could be adapted to be– weapons that could be adapted to be used in a vehicle. And I like the idea that Bond is given a mission brief, and based on the mission brief, he tells Q what technology he requires.
Rao Dao Zao: Mmmm. “Can you make it do this?”
Chris: So rather than Q having the script, right, now you get it. So rather than having Bond, sorry, rather than having Q being this, having this kinda telepathic ability, this psychic ability to predict the future, and the scenario Bond’s in, ’cause Q’s never given the mission brief. So, whereas, I like the idea that, in my head it’s Tom Hardy for some reason in this scene, ’cause he’s such a cocky cunt he can carry this off, likeable in a sense too that he can make it work, gets out of the car and it’s almost like a bully dynamic, where he’s kinda like, Q’s the brains, they have a similar world clash, “I’m the guy that’s out there doing all the hard work–”
Rao Dao Zao: “But without my technology you’d be nothing.”
Chris: “You stuck behind the keyboard”, they have that clash. But Bond starts to look about and, you know, go, “heya, that’s a machine gun that looks kinda compact, could you put that in the car?” And I would do this, I think it would be such a cool callback to Goldfinger, where he starts rattling off these crazy ideas for the car. “Maybe a shield in the back, that would be kinda nifty wouldn’t it?” And Q keeps going, “Well, we could possibly do that, I dunno”, and the whole thing builds up to, “How about, I dunno, an ejector seat?” And Q just goes, “Ejector seat? You must be joking!” And he goes, “I never joke about my work”, and it’s a flip of the Goldfinger line, where the line originally was Q saying “… and there’s an ejector seat under here” and Connery’s like “You musht be joking.”
Sean Connery: Shurely shome mishtake.
Chris: And “007, I never joke about my work”, and just do it inverted. Again, you’re taking the old and just flipping it a little and it’s brand-fuckin’-new again and we’ve never seen it done like that before. I think that’s how you do it. You retain the concept that Q is the high-end technology nano-blood fucking guy versus the old-school dude, but the way you make it work is that Bond–
Rao Dao Zao: They need each other. Q is nothing without Bond implementing stuff.
Chris: They need each other, but Bond may also advocate more of the low-tech, ’cause Bond’s saying, “this stuff’s all well and good–”
Rao Dao Zao: “But just give me a bullet-proof shield.”
Chris: Yeah, “but when I’m in that scenario I don’t actually need smart blood, I need this“. Therefore, you take the best of both worlds, ’cause that was the thing about the Skyfall scene that didn’t work for me, was that Bond has to advocate the old-school, Q has to advocate the new-school, and the solution is the middle.
Rao Dao Zao: They meet in the middle.
Chris: And they didn’t do that. Because Q, in that scene went, “What were you expecting, an exploding pen?” and undermined the whole fucking thing.
Rao Dao Zao: And undermined everything and…
Chris: Fucked it. They fucked it. What I did there was explain how you don’t fuck it.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah.
Chris: Fuck it.
Rao Dao Zao: It’s true. (stuttering) Again, it’s that kind of sneering, “this Bond is better than the old Bond”.
Chris: This would not be happening now if he hadn’t said that line about the exploding pen, that was an affront to my childhood and I’m now defending it and saying “dude, it wasn’t that bad”.
Rao Dao Zao: It could have been a series of four mediocre Bond films and nobody would have cared, but because they’ve set themselves up as this kind of “better class” of Bond film, with their noses in the air, and it’s actually like, “stop it, just stop it, we were here to have some blowing up and some car chases and some gadgets and some fun shit”.
Chris: These are sci-fi camp, campy sci-fi–
Rao Dao Zao: Campy sci-fi, hammed up cheese-fests
Chris: They’re campy sci-fi airport novels.
Rao Dao Zao: Because sometimes, all you actually want is a cheesy airport novel.
Chris: That’s all you need.
Rao Dao Zao: Sometimes your brain just isn’t in the mood for that fuckin’ deep bullshit. Again though, even when I’m in the mood for introspection, I would not go to a rip-off of Bond for it. Because they’ve done it badly, they’ve done introspection without the narrative framework that supports that and it’s just like, well, if I want deep stuff I will find something that is actually deep and not something that’s… confused.
Chris: What was the message? ’cause any other Bond interpretation franchise movies, ever, you’d never find yourself asking “what was the point?” Because you shouldn’t do that with a Bond movie.
Rao Dao Zao: Because the point should be, “I’ve just saved the world from some horrible terrorist”.
Chris: And “fuck yeah, we all went home and got laid”.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah.
Chris: That’s the point. But Daniel Craig’s movies are so up in your fucking face about the fact that they’re more than that, but actually–
Rao Dao Zao: There’s actually less to them.
Chris: So, let’s say that Daniel Craig’s Bond gets up in your face about all the fucking introspective shit that it was all about, what did it actually fucking say? In four movies, what was achieved, narratively? What was the message? That’s what I’m trying to get at, was any of it going anywhere?
Rao Dao Zao: The message is that he’s a bit sad but now he’s Bond.
Chris: But is he Bond?
Rao Dao Zao: And then M was like, “here’s your next mission”. And Moneypenny was there, so…
Chris: (laughter) “I’m in this movie too!”
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah, he’s now Bond.
Chris: What was her character arc?
Rao Dao Zao: She shot him and then… he was fine.
Chris: The thing that annoys me is that I shouldn’t be looking at that, I shouldn’t be going into a Bond movie thinking– but because they’re trying to give the impression that I should be thinking… It’s making me engage with it in a way that’s going, “oh you’re that kind of movie”.
Rao Dao Zao: That’s counter to what I actually kinda want from it.
Chris: Whereas, I shouldn’t be going in, I should be going, “Aw, that’s Moneypenny!” and not thinking twice about it. But if you’re giving her, like–
Sean Connery: Yesh.
Chris: She’s in action sequences now, and she’s contributing something more to the plot, likewise with Q, this isn’t just “Here’s your gadgets, off you go”, there’s now more of a narrative function, so now I’m engaging with all these people in a way that I possibly–
Rao Dao Zao: But the script does not actually account for you engaging with them, yeah.
Chris: Basically, if you’re selling it as, “this is a Bond that requires thought”, but then when you actually think, there’s nothing to think about!
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah, it’s the illusion of thought, it’s not actually giving you depth, it’s the illusion of depth, it’s…
Chris: Is it basically appealing to quite dumb upper-middle-class people to give them the impression they’ve engaged their brain for a couple hours when they really haven’t? Is that what it really boils down to? It’s got the aesthetic of being intelligent, but actually… It’s not, and it’s just trying to give people that believe they are quite smart the illusion that they are quite smart… That’s pretty arrogant, but is that right?
Rao Dao Zao: … Probably yes, and I’m probably one of those people anyway. Bond may not be the channel to it, but I probably think I’m cleverer than I am, or… Certainly ripe to be picked by that market when they make a film that’s good enough.
Addendum: I’ve always tried to say that character depth and rollicking action are not mutually exclusive, just… not like this. No, please, not like this. My path to depth will be a rollicking hack ‘n’ slash action game with massive Planescape: Torment-style meandering dialogue trees between action sequences. Except having a deep and well-thought-out mythos isn’t fashionable; it’s not the right kind of deep cleverness, it’s bloody nerd cleverness so… Eurgh.
Chris: The kind of people that if you put them on the spot, “oh, but this is a very intelligent Bond movie!”, but you actually said to them, “but why is it intelligent?”, they couldn’t articulate why it was smart. It appeared to them–
Rao Dao Zao: Why is it smart, Chris? … Because smart blood.
Chris: Smart blood.
Rao Dao Zao: Smart blood.
Chris: If you can’t make your movie smart, inject some fuckin’ smart blood into it, literally. Nanotechnology out of nowhere, no establishing scene, no references to it, nano, we have nano smart blood, which no-one apart from Q uses.
Rao Dao Zao: Smart blood.
Chris: Smart blood.
Rao Dao Zao: Smart blood.
Chris: The bad guy never used smart blood.
Rao Dao Zao: He just wasn’t… smart enough.
Chris: (laughter) If I was the head of the Illuminati, I would have smart blood going all over the place.
Rao Dao Zao: He is, yeah, the most powerful, shadowy figure in the history of mankind–
Chris: But he doesn’t know about it.
Rao Dao Zao: He doesn’t have smart blood.
Chris: He doesn’t have smart blood, but this random guy in a garage in MI6 does.
Rao Dao Zao: Yeah.
Chris: Aaaaaaah god.
Rao Dao Zao 