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Yeah I agree, my preference would be stand alone stories with a character arc running through them. I think audiences expect a certain level of continuity now, and I don’t want to go back to Bond himself feeling static and his adventures fairly interchangable, I’d like them to keep pushing him to new places psychologically. But I don’t think we need any more recurring villains or overarching plotlines or anything like that.
I believe Barbara has commented recently that they had a loose plan for Craig's Bond, but I don't remember where she said it and there's no way it's true. But I hope they've learned a bit from the past and will have more of a plan going forward.
Somehow the Mission Impossible movies seem to do one at a time with plenty of drama without having to go into step brothers and poorly established relationships.
A businessman baddie along the lines of Hugo Drax or Goldfinger would be very fitting today. Billionaires aren't always the most popular bunch among 'the youths', and indeed alot of people nowadays, so why not lean into that? It even ties into Fleming somewhat - a few of the villains from the novels are rather wealthy and Bond even has a moment where he's disgusted at himself for dining in such an opulent lobster restaurant with Mr. Du Pont in the GF novel. That suspicion of such extravagant wealth and greed is there in the source material, even if Bond indulges in his preferred foods, cars clothes, drinks etc.
Yes, I agree about continuity. Like I said there's plenty of explore with Bond's character - again, most of the films freely show the character killing people 'in cold blood' which Fleming's Bond was always conflicted about. Hell, even at the start of the GF novel he is seen drinking and fixating over killing someone in self defence, I'm sure such a scene could be recreated in a future film and expanded upon slightly.
Using these Bond traits along with others, such as the Bond women having a slight deformity, would be a surprise to the general audience and refresh the franchise without straying from Fleming. I still want to see May show up to hammer home the idea that Bond does not cook........................meals just show up.
The 'origin arc' had gone full circle by the end of Skyfall, and the last scene was fabulous, with the old M office, and Moneypenny Q characters back.
I honestly thought that ending was the springboard to great, fun, standalone traditional mission adventures, either with Craig or someone else.
Ah yes, a bit like Honey's broken nose in Dr. No. Absolutely, I'd just prefer if the writers went back to the source material (in this case the Fleming novels) and thought about what could be adapted in order to create a fresh take on a Bond film. Bond girls, villains, Bond as a character etc.
Actually, I'd like to see May too, however fantastical the idea of having a housekeeper for your Chelsea flat on a Civil Servant salary is nowadays...
Yes I also want to see May and to the lesser extent, Loelia.
And yes giving some flaws to Bond Girls would have been interesting, but I think it's time to leave it for the villains in a while, as critics often criticized those scarred, physically deformed villains being overused, but Bond girls? I think they should give at least a bit of a flaw.
The closest we have here was probably Lupe, her scars on the back due to Sanchez whipping her, but she's the second Bond Girl, not the main one.
Also in my mind would have been interesting if we have a Main villain who can physically fight Bond.
Someone who's prepared to get bloody in a fight and a villain who can defend himself without a need of a henchman.
Several Bond Villains was to me, wealthy and pampered, their henchmen are strong and tough, but when it comes to the Main Villains or they're bosses, they're not as tough as their henchmen.
I want a villain that does not rely too much on henchmen, a villain that is independent.
I want Bond and the Main Villain/boss somehow engaged in a hand to hand combat, martial arts or any fisticuffs in the final battle, Bond will be shocked for that, because he's not the stereotypical Bond Villain who only has a gun to save him, he has skills other than that. He still has henchmen but I want him, the main one to be physically tough and intellectually skilled too, yes for example that villain has plan A, if didn't work, then he has plan B.
I also want him to be great in strategy that no one and even Bond can capture him, because he was so very intelligent that he can escape and can fool or trick anyone.
This would take Bond a lot of time before he can capture him.
I want a villain to be somewhat astute, cunning and sharp witted.
* And It's just me but I also want a villain who is good looking, charismatic, sexy and can be Bond's equal in terms of looks or probably more handsome than Bond himself.
I'm a big fan of all those ideas! I did a thread a while ago about how Bond villains with scars and disfigurements were more common in the Craig era. Personally, I don't necessarily care about the SJW implications of this, but I pointed out at the time that Fleming's villains were normally just unusual looking and it was more common for the allies to have scars etc (Leiter, Bond himself, Strangways - the books came out only a few years after WW2 so men coming back with wounds like these was not as uncommon). Even Drax who had facial scars had more apparent traits such as his odd teeth, his almost parodical English mannerisms etc. And yes, a good looking, charismatic but ultimately sadistic villain along the lines of Largo from the TB book would be cool!
There are several threads if you look, but if you've already read the novels, you'll know what those scenes are anyway.
This is more what I meant. But I figured one of you would have put the encyclopedias in your heads to good use and mark it all down somewhere. I've only read the fictional "interview with James Bond" and a handful of Fleming.
A few threads on here will have them listed, but I'll give you a quick summary -
Moonraker - game of cards at Blades with Drax and M. Car chase, and a few other bits,
DAF - the majority of this novel has criminally never been used.
TSWLM - this has never been adapted either (under instructions from Fleming when he was alive). The main scenes worth adapting are the second 2 parts of the book, where Bond enters the story and rescues Viv Michel from 2 gangsters at a motel. The first part is just Viv Michel reflecting on her past. Would make a great PTS action sequence and a nice intro to the new Bond, and also introduces the Bond girl too.
(From) AVTAK - short story that has never been adapted.
YOLT - still some unused bits, mainly at the end where Bond kills Blofeld in his garden of death and then gets amnesia. It almost got used in NTTD but the producers didn't have the balls to see it through, and decided to introduce Safin, Bond's daughter and nanobots instead. Oh yes, and kill Bond off too in the process.
TMWTGG - criminally most of this novel has never been used, although loose attempts have been made in SF, LTK and TMWTGG. Lots of great scenes to be adapted in this book.
The link running through the 3 unused full novels is gangsters. The Spangled Mob in DAF, 2 nasty thugs in TSWLM, and Scaramanga, the world's most deadly hitman in TMWTGG who Bond goes undercover to find. All of these stories could easily be woven into one script.
All are Great ideas!
I'd like to see all of this.
Thank you for this! All great stuff.
M hiring Bond to assassinate someone for personal reasons as in the FYEO short story would also be interesting to see. Again, a good starting point for an original script.
TB has a lot I'd love to see going forward. A villain like Largo who is sadistic but strikingly good looking would be fresh and different. The opening of the novel is also particularly good at showing the impact of Bond's lifestyle, as well as the physical toll of his job on his body (Bond has had individual injuries in SF and TWINE, but we've never seen him with many scars on his body and things like unhealed injuries to his spine etc as it's explained he has in TB).
I'm sure if they wanted to they could adapt The Hildebrand Rarity into part of a future Bond film. Or indeed Quantum of Solace (they managed to incorporate similar dramatic/character elements of the Octopussy short story into the film so it's certainly doable). Could even stretch out 007 In New York and take the basic idea of Bond being on a mission to warn an MI6 employee that her boyfriend is an enemy agent or whatever. Not to mention everything about Bond's character that hasn't been explored that I mentioned before. There's plenty they can incorporate.
DR
And Al Pacino as Blofeld.
Yes!
The Reflections in a Double Bourbon chapter is one of my favourites of all the Fleming chapters. I'd say 'guilty' isn't quite what he was feeling, more like a weary acceptance of what his job entailed. I'm not sure how that chapter would translate on screen though, but if a talented director could somehow put those first few paragraphs even, on screen, we could indeed get closer to the true essence of Fleming's Bond.
I'd say there was some guilt in there, especially when Bond recalls seeing the body of the Mexican after he breaks his neck (he even has these odd reflections such as 'this man might have had a driver's license and was once alive' etc, so I always got the sense there was something there, albeit under the surface). Much of it is about Bond's weariness towards this aspect of his job though, absolutely, but it's an oddly complex chapter. Fleming's Bond seemed to relish the danger of his job and yet when it came to killing in cold blood he had this strange relationship with it. The film Bond in any incarnation just doesn't seem to have that same dislike towards it (the closest is Dalton, but it's not explored too specifically in his films). In GF he eventually tells himself to 'buck up' as it were, but with much effort and fixation on what he did. I mean, it shows he's human.
I don't know, perhaps if they tied it in to the main plot in some way? Maybe after a particularly brutal fight/kill with a henchman Bond goes and drinks a few whiskeys by himself, perhaps is confronted about it by the Bond girl or someone and displays that same cavalier attitude towards killing as he does in his thoughts in the novel (think the line is 'his job was to be as cool about death as a surgeon' or something). Obviously he's not all that cool with it as he's getting drunk by himself, but still... might work well with a TMWTGG novel type plot where Bond is sent to kill someone or hesitates doing so at the end and is nearly killed by said villain. Would be an interesting route to go down especially if they're showing us a younger Bond in Bond 26.
I like that. Learn to kill the villain when you get the chance. Sort of a bookend to CR.
Kind of. The only pitfall I can see about developing a future Bond character arc around these ideas is you don't want to fall into the trap of him 'learning to kill in cold blood', as it's kind of a dodgy character arc anyway and Bond's distaste for 'murder' I feel is quite central to his character, at least in the novels. Again, such a trait would also keep Bond 7 more human.
Maybe if Bond 26 was about a younger Bond who was notably more cynical about his job (as he is very much so at the end of the CR novel), perhaps even unsure whether he wanted to continue working at MI6, these character traits could be explored more effectively. Obviously over the course of the film he realises it's his 'true calling' to be 007. I feel this is something we see more in the films/novels with an older Bond but it would be a nice subversion and something new if done with a younger incarnation of the character.
If they wanted to lean more overtly into the younger Bond angle it could be about a more arrogant Bond who, while an effective agent, makes mistakes and is rather idealistic about his profession. Over the course of the film (in which we see him reacting this way over killing someone in a particular way, having to make hard decisions etc.) he becomes a bit more hardened and world weary. I mean, this isn't new and we kind of got this already with CR, but it works. It is less interesting in a sense though.
On another note:
It looks like Netflix and the Russo Brothers have taken a look at our latest discussions here and have gone for both a "spy on the run"-story and a very, very, stylized, almost fashion-photoshoot "instagrammy" kind of look for The Gray Man:
Don't think that's what I want a Bond film to look like, but we'll have to see the film (and it's success) to judge the approach.
It'd be great to have some of the literary Bond's internal thoughts, voiced on screen. I think there was something about a "stinking Mexican", which would have to be massaged into more palatable terminology.
The opening chapter of Goldfinger would be a wonderful first act for a new Bond.
Also the end of QOS with Yusef. Or even Greene.
Haha, yes I think they'd adapt it in some way. It could certainly work as an introduction to the new Bond - we first see him on this assignment, killing this henchman in a similar way, and before reporting to M for the main mission we see him getting drunk alone. Perhaps his hand becomes red and swollen after landing the blow, as in the novel, and the Bond girl or whoever notices this and at some point they discuss Bond's profession.
There are a few lines from the chapter which could be worked into dialogue for such a scene.
"It had been kill or get killed. People were using their motor cars to kill with. They were carrying infectious diseases around, blowing microbes in people's faces, pumping out carbon dioxide in closed garages. How many people, for instance were involved in manufacturing H-Bombs [...] was there any person in the world who wasn't somehow, perhaps only statistically, involved in killing their neighbour?"
"If the Mexican was still alive, he was certainly dead before he hit the ground."
"It was part of his profession to kill people. He had never liked doing it and when he had to kill he did it as well as he knew how to and forgot about it [ ...] It was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. If it happened it happened. Regret was unprofessional - worse, it was death-watch beetle in the soul."
It's a very rich piece of writing and understanding the chapter provides plenty of material for a film. As I said Bond is rather cavalier about the whole thing even in his thoughts, but there's a lot going on under the surface: a bit of guilt towards the killing whether he wants to admit it or not, the fact that he's so jaded with these aspects of his job, the utter cynicism he displays towards the assignment itself. It'd be great to explore this more overtly. Aspects of this chapter have somewhat been peppered throughout the Bond films but I don't think we've seen quite this level of cynicism and self-reflectiveness from a cinematic Bond, even with Craig and Dalton.