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Most people look past that because they have a fundamental understanding that fiction is purely make believe. You underestimate that.
It's impressive that you can manage to ignore everything pointed out to you. Maybe you saw the Dark Knight, where the Joker (who had been killed off in 1989) came back to life as a different guy. Or the next film where Batman/Bruce Wayne's career is finally ended for good with someone else taking over his mantle; and then he came back in the next film to fight Superman as if nothing had happened.
Then the Joker came back as three different guys.
It's even happened to Bond, several times. Maybe you think the Bond in Carte Blanche, living in the 2010s is the same one who grew up as a little boy in the 1930s in the Higson books, I don't know.
I think a good novelist would expect their audience not to have to struggle to get that.
Oh no! How will readers be able to make sense of that???
Even Conan Doyle felt the need to give some kind of explanation to the re-emergence of Holmes. Yet in movies, it seems the audience is expected to accept these different universes.
And don't forget, this isn't like Tarzan, Batman, Godzilla or whatever, where the films are made by different production companies sometimes in different countries. It's an on-going series made by the same people. And it isn't supposed to be sci-fi.
Given that the next Bond film won’t be of the same continuation, there is no explanation needed, because audiences actually understand and have a pretty good grasp of the conceit of a reboot.
They don’t have the same hangups about the nature of fiction as you do.
Most audiences aren’t even aware that Bond is produced by the same people, so that’s irrelevant.
Makes no difference: it's an official Bond novel. And, as Makeshift points out: On His Maj is written by the same novelist who had Bond in the 1930s and yet is set 90 years later.
And time and again, audiences have shown they have no problem understanding it.
Batman, incidentally, has been made and remade by the same studio, with many of the same producers on each version. Are you going to reject Batman too now? Maybe there's some other arbitrary condition you can think of which makes it okay.
John Wick was a completely new idea in 2014 which has only gained traction based on the efforts of the current team involved. There was no series of novels, no 50 years of on screen good will with audiences. The films are made on a fraction of the budget that bond has, including marketing. It would be highly unfair to expect them to go toe to toe, but for what they are they have been extremely successful. When you say that Mission Impossible have the benefit of Tom Cruise that's slightly misleading because besides top gun, cruise wasn't much of an action star before the MI series got going. His reputation as an action star has been built in large part thanks to the series, and at the same time the series would be very little without him. There's nothing to say that the TV series was destined to become a major global franchise were it not for him.
You are working from the assumption that audiences realise such things. Even in '83, tons of people had no idea how a Roger Moore and Sean Connery Bond could be released almost at the same time. And even if they did know such things, do you think they worried about that? Even before the multiverse thing happened in the Marvel films, people accepted three different Spider-Men from the same studios. They . Don't. Care! When the next Bond is announced, not that many people will cry out that "it can't be! Bond is dead?!" They'll say, "oh, a new Bond film. Cool!"
To be honest, I'm surprised it took them over forty years for a reboot to happen. They could have done that with the Dalton Bond, and then again with the Brosnan Bond. Not that they didn't. Those were 'soft' reboots already.
Good one!
Good luck, man! I’m rooting for you!
You should have mentioned it before if that's how you feel.
And somehow I feel uncomfortable speaking in those terms. Someone who doesn't get the analogy could get different ideas. ;-)
If anything I'd argue the Cuba sequence offers us a glimpse at the next Bond era could potentially look like. People often miss that the 'fun' parts of that scene are preceded by one of the most gruesome moments in the Bond series - namely, when the nanobots are released and the SPECTRE agents die in a manner that wouldn't look out of place in a horror film. The ideas behind the sequence are also pretty subversive in regards to the tropes of a Bond film - instead of being a ditz Paloma turns out to be a competent agent, instead of the classically stuffy boardroom this SPECTRE meeting takes place in a campy 'bonga bonga' type party etc.
Personally, I think viewers simply want to be entertained, especially when it comes to Bond. But an important part of being entertained is precisely these sorts of contrasts. A whole film with the tone of those 'lighter' moments in the Cuba sequence would fall flat, whereas when it's there in a film like NTTD - with all it's fatalism and 'emotional heft' (whatever this means) - it makes it all the more sweet.
The truth is the Craig films were becoming more and more fantastical and 'classically Bond' in terms of concepts, action sequences and iconography from SF onwards. Should we go from precedent - that's to say a new actor's tenure often begins in a way that's not a million miles away from the tone/ideas of the previous film - then it's likely Bond 26 will also have NTTD's more fantastical, even campy ideas mixed with that darkness. Bond will have personal struggles of some sort (although I doubt he'll be a 'bruised, emotional wreck', which is not something I recognise from Craig's often stoic portrayal of Bond), and will likely have some sort of cynicism in regards to his character. We'll probably see an acknowledgment of certain Bond tropes/ideas (whether or not this will drift into outright reference or callback is to be seen) but there will also be some sort of subversion or attempt to play around with them.
It's interesting to think about, whether or not this turns out to be the case.
Obviously they'll need to change the surface elements and give it a refresh, just as TLD did, but that would be my sweet spot.
The Matera scenes in NTTD looked like SPECTRE's extended scene.
Sure, the action was great, but the narrative or the concept of that scene was kinda letdown.
Actually, I would just have the Flashback to Madeleine's past as the PTS, with the Dr. No callback dots showing when Safin shoots the frozen lake (seen from Madeleine's view looking under the water).
I agree @Mendes4Lyfe ! They're so dumb! And the films they made were so unpopular they bombed at the box office badly... so bad I think that buffoon Craig was nominated for some razzies... and worldwide audiences are begging for Bond to slip back into a crocodile costume... Christ, EoN is the laughingstock of the entire film industry!! I mean, everyone knows Babs is so in love with her boy toy Craig, it's just embarrassing!!! 💯%
But then you lose the transition of madeline as she emerges from the water.
Yes, I'm fine with it, hence that's what the main plot's all about.
Doesn't the audience (those who aren't bond fans) need some way of knowing the girl and madeline are the same person?
Couldn't have said it better mate. I feel the same
I love that despite the fact that DAD was their biggest Bond hit at the box office (unadjusted), they still decided to wipe the slate clean and take on a different direction. Brosnan was considered a popular Bond, so to replace him with a lesser known actor like Daniel Craig was controversial and risky. The beauty thing is that it not only paid off but it also surpassed DAD as a hit and was their most critically acclaimed Bond film since the 60s.
A fascinating ranking that is full of surprises. Only 1 Connery in the top 10? Do my eyes deceive me? I guess we chalk that up to what is acceptable for Bond these days. Still though, 10 years ago (5 even), the Connery era was god-like, with criticisms few and far between.
Both Dalton films just scraping through into the top 10, i'll take that as a win.