In Which I Beg for Sweet Release From Breaking Dawn: Chapter 35 -- Deadline · 10:38am Jul 26th, 2018
It’s time for Bella to meet Jenks again, to pick up her papers. She drives back to Seattle, reminiscing that, since she didn’t know what she was doing, she had to go through the “obviously up to no good route” to know what to ask for. I guess Alice couldn’t have written “J. Jenks — forger” in her note because… Oh, look, a Baltimore oriole! Wow they’re orange.
She meets Jenks at a restaurant and we get more evidence of his underutilization:
“Have you known Jasper long?”
He sighed, looking uncomfortable. “I’ve been working with Mr. Jasper for more than twenty years, and my old partner knew him for fifteen years before that… He never changes.” J cringed delicately.
He’s the main person who lets the Cullens live in modern society. He knows something’s up with them. And yet he’s only in these two chapters.
Bella examines the papers; they seem good to her. She thanks Jenks and departs. When she gets home, most of the vampires are gone; the visitors are out hunting murdering humans (one of them’s trying animal blood, but we don’t hear about him besides this one mention), Edward’s taken Nessie to the cottage, and Bella suspects Jacob’s prowling around the cottage as well. Alone, Bella takes the opportunity to pack a backpack with the papers and a lot of money. Wondering if she can get Alice to meet up with them, she very deliberately and with a lot of focus writes RIO DE JANEIRO on a sheet of paper, hoping that Alice will see the message.
Finally, the only thing left is wait for the Volturi to arrive. On the day Alice predicted, everyone — vampires and werewolves both — gathers in the forest clearing where she said they’d meet the Volturi. Bella tells Nessie that she needs to leave her parents “when the time comes” and not to tell Jacob until she tells her to run. Nessie’s distraught but reluctantly accepts it. The scene manages to not be clingy and might’ve been touching if Bella wasn’t a terrible character and Nessie had any character. Everyone arrays themselves and prepares for the Volturi to finally get there.
Clinginess Meter: 60 x 6
Chapters Left: 4
The Volturi are almost here, and there are still four chapters to go. Great. Even assuming one’s the “wrap-up” chapter, that leaves three chapters of interacting with them. And if they’re anything like this chapter — which was twelve pages — that interacting won’t be much. Maybe if I’m lucky, there’ll be a giant vampire throwdown. Maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll get a pay increase to a seven-figure-a-year salary.
In honor of the underused J. Jenks and his talent for espionage, all of the trivia today is James Bond-related. (I know that’s a pretty strenuous link. Shut up.)
- Clint Eastwood was once offered the role of James Bond but declined, feeling Bond had to be British.
- Timothy Dalton turned down the role twice (once because he didn’t want to follow Sean Connery, once in the middle of the Moore era because he didn’t like the increasingly silly direction of the series) before getting cast in The Living Daylights.
- Sean Bean was considered for the part during the filming of GoldenEye. Although he lost out to Pierce Brosnan, he impressed the producers enough to give him another role (hence his casting as Trevelyan).
- Other once-potential Bond actors include Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson, Clive Owen, Henry Cavill, Mel Gibson, Sam Neill, George Clooney, Michael Caine, Burt Reynolds, and Adam West.
- The parkour assassin in the opening of Casino Royale was played by one of the founders of the art, Sébastien Foucan.
- For the motorcycle chase in Tomorrow Never Dies, Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh were each told that they’d be the one driving, hence their squabbling as they try to get on.
- The villain’s plot in Goldfinger was almost completely changed from that of the book due to its preposterousness. Just to start, the scheme in the book revolved around stealing all of Fort Knox’s gold, while the scheme in the movie is about rendering it unusable.
- At around the same time Octopussy was released, there was also an “unofficial” Bond movie, Never Say Never Again, that wasn’t produced by Eon Productions (which produced all the other Bond movies and continues to do so) but starred Sean Connery. It’s a remake of Thunderball due to copyright issues revolving around the novel and original movie script.
- Part of the reason Steven Spielberg created Indiana Jones was because he wanted to direct a Bond movie but was turned down twice.
- The tuxedo is such a part of the Bond look that Bond actors are forbidden to wear a full tux in films during their tenure as Bond.
- Quentin Tarantino expressed a desire to direct Casino Royale and has said that if he’d done it, it would have been a pre-Dr. No period piece.
- Sean Connery hated Bond so much — both in playing the character and the character himself — that he wanted Bond killed off so he’d never see him again.
I think Adam West's James Bond is one of those great mysteries. What could have been? What did we miss? They never realized they wouldn't have the chance. :C
Er, forbidden? Is that the right word there?
4907942
Well, "contractually obligated to not wear" is wordy and sounds more boring.
4907953
Right, but the way that factoid is phrased, says they cant wear a tux even while filming? Seems odd.
4907923
We can only dream it would have had the accidental self-awareness of Spectre and that episode of the Batman series where Batman runs for office with the plan of immediately resigning and letting Linseed resume the office he is clearly unfit to run.
"SPECTRE is a threat to democracy," says the unelected member of a murderous and anti-democratic organization (MI6) that has supported the regimes of actual, literal Nazis in their totalitarian murder-sprees (see: Greece) as well as toppled democracies that disagreed with them (see: Iran).
"The American electorate is too mature to be taken in by cheap vaudeville trickery. After all, if our national leaders were elected on the basis of tricky slogans, brass bands, and pretty girls, our country would be in a terrible mess, wouldn’t it?”," says the man who is literally running for office on his celebrity power, so he can then resign and let someone who is incapable of winning be in charge.