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I'm not sure I want more of that. "Knowing who to trust...", "Can I trust you?", "And I trust him." Yes, enough with the trust and the loyalty thingies already. Craig's tenure was clogged with building (CR), confirming (QOS) and relying on (SF) trust in Bond; while SP zoomed in on Bond and M trusting each other to move against the latest intelligence fab overtaking MI6. I've seen it, liked it, but now I want something else.
The 'trust issues' thing has been overused in the Craig era.
The closest we can have a plot like that was in SPECTRE with the Nine Eyes program.
Maybe in the next film, have Bond work in a team? I want to see him working with other 00 agents as a team, that would be interesting and unique, especially as we used to Bond working alone/being loner.
https://metro.co.uk/2015/10/29/mi6-would-never-hire-james-bond-because-hes-not-a-team-player-5468610/amp/
I want Argo to be the inspiration for the next Bond film.
The only thing that has been overdone is bad writing. 1 simple main plot line with elements and characters that should have had their own arch’s. Vesper and Camille had their own stories. Madeleine was simply a damsel in distress who got knocked up.
Only set ups, no explorations and no payoffs. I cannot believe people who get rich doing this for a living suck at it so badly.
There are exceptions. We’ve seen this in GE.
Some of them may die, of course.
A mixture of all the 00s on screen at once (like TB, as you mentioned) and the big army-type finales of the past? I'd be more than happy seeing something like this.
Yeah sounds cool! I’d rather have most other ones except for maybe Nomi to plucked one by one akin to an Agatha Christie whodunnit
Edit: Joke! 😅😂😆🤣 Just kidding. ✌️
I really loved that idea, it's unique and would be a great idea for Bond 26.
Credit where credit's due, I just springboarded off your idea! The only thing I would say is that I wouldn't want the team dynamic throughout the whole film.
[One of the minor criticism I level at the Craig era and SF in particular is that it never made a lot of sense to me that the Head of the Secret Intelligence Service - after all, responsible for 2,500 employees and a budget over 3 billion pounds - has direct operational oversight over one agents missions and seemingly only one agents missions even if he is the greatest agent there has ever been. But I've beaten that hobby horse to death on here, so I'm not going to go there again]
On the other hand, it is of course Ian Fleming's James Bond 007 and not Ian Fleming's 00 Section.
But them all getting assignments in the beginning and then maybe a couple coming in for the finale could certainly work.
Does anybody know why they don't do the big battles at the end anymore, btw?
They could easily have had an SBS troop or two back-up Bond and Nomi in the finale of NTTD. The international politics of it all don't make sense anyway, so why not? And going off of that, what would your opinion be if future writers introduced a small sub-section of 00 that is basically a commando team who can give support to 00s if needed. Not 00 agents themselves, but an even blunter instrument, if the need arises. Too far away from Fleming?
I really, REALLY miss the huge scale battles at the end. It would be a nice change.
Strangely, GE and TWINE hinted at bringing in the forces but one is just a sight gag and the other is Bond accidentally having the sub go down than up “oops!”
Personally I find them the least interesting action scenes. Lots of shots of random stuntmen on springboards as ‘grenades’ go off behind them :)
I think most of the ones we’ve got have aged very poorly, but I still like the concept. It’s just all about how they stage it. Problem with most of the old ones imo is there was never much of a sense of tension, particularly when they used the 007 theme, because it just felt like they’d already won and we were just waiting until the end. TSWLM is the only film to get it right I think, because they kept ramping it up and throwing obstacles in Bond’s way. Take that idea (Bond having to get to some doomsday control room while a big, frentic firefight takes place), replace the overacting stuntmen with something that feels a bit more modern and visceral and Saving Private Ryan-ey, and I think a setpiece like that could work.
I agree on this totally. I always get a bit bored by faceless allies killing faceless enemies, there's no stakes.
Nothing beats Bond on his own with just his wits
The necessity for such an 'epic battle' is, IMO at least, mostly dictated by the strength of the Bond/villain tension. SF didn't need a full-scale Lewis Gilbert type of assault because Bond and Silva were sufficiently established opponents to make their confrontation a raw, personal matter. So was Bond vs Alec, Bond vs Scaramanga, Bond vs the shadow that loomed large over Vesper, ...
When the villain is an organisation rather than one character (TB, YOLT), or when it involves a big military conflict (TLD), I like those battles too.
And the fantasy Bonds, like MR and TSWLM, virtually get away with anything IMO.
I've always regretted the fact that LALD didn't end on something bigger than what we got, given the size of Kananga's organisation. A film that didn't need to go so big at the end, IMO, is OP. But that is not to say that I really hate those endings.
Yeah I think that's the thing; it's hard to feel a connection- we're only really interested in Bond and his main ally anyway. Something like the climax to FYEO or (and I know lots of people don't like it but I think it's fine) TND work better for me as 'commando' climaxes.
I also think TND does it better plot-wise than NTTD. I like that NTTD ends with only Bond and Nomi, but there's actually no logical reason why it's only Bond and Nomi. They fly from an Air Force base halfway across the world to chase Safin, they have the full backing of MI6 and the military, and they know that Safin has a large operation - it should be a proper team of Special Forces attacking, not just two agents; and they had the time to get them there. They have time enough to get a battleship within firing distance! It doesn't really make any sense, and most other Bond films which end this way explain why Bond is on his own.
There is also a form of defference/old order which, again, contrasts with a modern cultural trend. It's very hard to fathom. How can Bond stay Bond but, also, attract new fans. I'm note sure it's possible.
My sons can watch Mission Impossible and completly be engaged in that "MI World" but, in contrast, they just fail to understand/engage in many of the Bond references. We talk about a reboot but we assume that core Bond features remain. I wonder if a far bigger "reboot" is required?
I agree; that's the appeal. And if I can invite the 'Fleming' fallacy into this discussion, I'd say the master himself led by example.
But I guess that in this modern day and age, teams who blow in and save the day are generally considered cool and more, uh, realistic? And if you make the team diverse enough, most audience members will find at least someone to look up to.
Except that... well, James Bond isn't a superhero, he's a superspy. And there's the abstraction of James Bond to look up to, regardless of your own sex, culture, age, ... The one thing that separates him from the F&F "family", the IMF or basically any character in the Marvel universe, is that Bond can handle himself. Once he's left M's office, he operates in isolation, with, at most, one or two carefully selected allies whom rarely save him or the world.
Jason Bourne, you say? Not really, because that bloke operated outside the system, fighting for his own survival or that of a loved one. His mission was as much to stay alive and find out who he was, as it was to do away with some corrupt individuals and enemy assets.
I prefer James Bond neither "rogue" nor a "team player". He is the team; he's the spy, the shooter, the fighter, the seducer, the driver and the tech guy in one. (Well, he gets his tech from Q, but still.) He's even more than that, more than the sum of his parts.
The MI6 team-ups in recent films didn't aggrevate me as much as they did other fans, but I welcome a return to form for the all-in-one James Bond, the 007 who has earned that licence to kill and doesn't need to rely (too much) on others to execute his mission.
Yeah I think the Craig films perhaps did hold onto the old iconography a bit too long. It was nice to see M's office and the car etc. again but perhaps it is time to ditch it all now. Keep the gunbarrel and the Bond theme, and that's it.
Yes I never minded the MI6 team playing a part either, I thought it worked.
On the subject of how Fleming dealt with it, I would say there is an important distinction which is that in the movies Bond does need a team, or at least one or two friends, because he needs someone to talk to. In a book we can see inside his head and understand what he's thinking, but you can't do that in films: in order to know someone's thoughts you need them to say them out loud. It's a very important aspect I think people miss when they say they want perfectly faithful adaptations of the books put onscreen - they will be way less interesting than the books because Bond barely speaks in them; there won't be any 'Reflections in a DB3' - just a guy driving in silence. Or you end up with an internal monologue, which is pretty weird in a Bond film, and the radio series just ends up with Toby Stephens grunting to himself a lot :)
Hoping for exactly that. I'd even take a new sidearm for him at this stage.
Yes, the Craig films were very referential to the iconography but not necessarily the substance or 'formula' of the classic Bond films or indeed the novels. We got the DB5, M's office, SPECTRE, Blofeld attaining a facial scar/having his eye blown out but we rarely got the traditional Bond 'formula' of Bond going into M's office for a non-personal, seemingly run of the mill mission, investigating it, meeting the Bond girl... Heck, even the traditional gun barrel at the start was missing for most of them despite them using it.
In a sense, perhaps going back to that formula but finding ways to update/do something different within those parameters is the most 'radical' thing to do now? We won't get a DB5, or a villain with a facial scar, or one who resides in a self conscious Dr. No style lair, but we will have Bond going into MI6 to get his mission, going to a location, meeting a Bond girl etc. M could be a very different iteration of the character than what we've seen before, have a different dynamic with Bond... Perhaps instead of Moneypenny we get Loelia Ponsonby and we see Bond in his office and his little flat with May etc. Instead of a Q scene where Bond is given his gadgets and they act as a sort of 'Chekov's gun' Bond is instead given a 'package from Q-Branch' by Ponsonby and it's an innocuous looking item (a watch or something) and it's only during a later scene we discover it's a gadget... that or perhaps she states that Bond's vehicle has been sent to him 'with all the trimmings' (not the DB5) and during a scene where Bond has to escape it's revealed in full. I dunno, I think the key to a good Bond 26 is trying to keep the actual substance fresh as much as possible, not trying to harken superficially back to previous Bond films, while at the same time trying to create what is essentially a Bond adventure.