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Lucky that’s not what’s happening here then. The funny thing is that folk complain that the Craig movies were made without an overall plan, as if they should have written five movies in 2005; and now it’s terrible that they wrote one movie with a plan as to how it would end. It’s as if you’ll always get someone moaning about something.
So the strike is on. It looks like they are very far apart from each other indeed (well, they would want to make it look it that way on the first day of a strike wouldn't they?). I guess we can settle in for the long wait.
Unless EON goes completely off the rails and decides that they don't need any actual writing by professional writers (past what they may have gotten done and dusted until last night) to go into casting and spend the next few months finding an actor and then get a script for him after the strike is over.
Tiny sidenote: This minimally raises the odds of them hiring a more classical, "workmanlike" director who isn't interested in working on the script. That person could direct screentests off of old material, but once that is done, they'd be on hold as well as they can't start pre-production for a film without a script.
Provided we have an actor who's willing to work on the film the same way Craig did.
The other reason is because from what I understand QOS was on a tight schedule regardless of the '07 writer's strike. The difference here is that it doesn't seem like any significant work has been done on Bond 26. It means the producers will have more time to flesh things out on a broad/conceptual level before actually getting people to work on a script. Which could be a good thing. With longer waits and no 'tight deadlines' we've gotten films like GE, CR and SF (I wouldn't necessarily count NTTD as they had to deal with Boyle dropping out/rewriting the script late in the game but even that seems more fleshed out as a film than SP or even QOS to my mind, and certainly the producers had most of the bare bone ideas in place).
Not as a matter of principle, but preference. Craig was insistent Bond dying would end his tenure irrevocably. Yet his predecessors ended their runs without knocking off Bond. Disappointed or not, we all moved on. The connection between each Bond has been flimsy at best. We've long accepted each Bond has his own timeline with little relation to previous Bonds.
Feelings about the end of NTTD are mixed and disagreement is no doubt permanently baked in. Many feel the end was justified and poignant. Justified yes, given the set up. But was it necessary? Poignant? Not for me. It didn't have the emotional pay off it did for others. In my opinion, killing Bond was the easy way out. The real challenge would have been how to wrap up Craig's tenure if Bond had not died. I've read all the justifications of Bond living on the edge and could be killed at any moment etc. Going out in a literal blaze of glory feels very much like a cliche.
Imagining Bond enjoying fatherhood and domestic bliss was no doubt a step too far.
But the writers could have gone back to the source material and given us the ending Fleming wrote in YOLT. That, in my opinion, is the better ending.
What else was available? A happy ending with a wife and kids feels even more cliche to me; and not very Bond either. He could have retired off to Jamaica, but that's how the film started so we've gone nowhere; and just rejoining MI6 and carrying on as before isn't an ending at all- plus wasn't really an option after he decided to leave at the end of the previous film. What ending can you give him?
Which ending do you mean? Bear in mind they had already done the 'Bond appears to be dead but isn't' situation from YOLT in SF, right down to the obituary. They didn't do the amnesia/brainwashing stuff because, well it's too silly even for the films. The Bourne films only just about got away with it by making the conditioning program central to the whole thing.
If Craig Bond walked away with amnesia, and into the lion's den, and then in the next film, Bond number 007 strolls into M's office, I think most audiences would be questioning: is this supposed to continue the Craig timeline?? Or is this a new timeline? Most would be waiting for references to Madeleine Swann,Vesper, and the DB5.........
Because they made the Craig Era interconnected, they now needed a full stop with the promise of a fresh start for the new actor.
This is why this death works so well, especially for the health of the franchise moving forward (no questions. Craig Bond is dead. New actor. New timeline. Nothing left over from the Craig Era)
No kidding.
I think if you had presented the previous actors with an opportunity of ending their run with Bond dying, not all of them would object. I can easily imagine Connery being open to that idea, as he would later do that with Robin Hood. Actors LOVE having a death scene.
I think Brosnan wouldn’t have gone with it given his comments on how unsure he seemed about NTTD. Dalton? Might have liked a more ambiguous death like Fleming gave Bond (before revealing Bond survived in the next adventure. Lazenby? He started off with OHMSS, so who knows if the ending to that would have made him open to Bond’s death, but he did give praise to the movie. Moore wasn’t a very dramatic Bond, so I don’t think it would have fit his take on the character.
Did Roger ever die in a movie?
He died twice in The Man Who Haunted Himself!
I think Connery might have gone for it, yeah; he was always dying. Dalton, I expect so... the weird thing is I can't quite imagine any of the others having quite as much impact. Funnily enough, the closest probably would have been Brosnan, as he actually brought in more drama than most of them apart from Craig.
I kind of find it quite hard to imagine caring that much if Dalton's Bond had died, because you never really quite connect to him onscreen. I'd say I probably care more for Roger's Bond: when he's about to die in the centrifuge, silly though it is, I think it's more affecting than Bond dangling off the cocaine conveyor belt, or other moments of Dalton peril.
Absolutely. However his Bond legacy plays out ten, twenty, ... years from now, he was seriously committed. Dalton was too, I understand. The smart move of the current producers was that they actually let Craig get so deeply involved.
Bond is shot, and the missile strike has already been ordered (the poisoning is overkill* he's not getting off the island). Why not have Hinx turn up in a steamroller, and flatten Bond?
*Excuse the pun.
So although I wasn't spoiled, Eon's spoiler warning probably spoiled me more than anything- when they make a lot of publicity about this being the lead actor's final film and then put a spoiler warning out it doesn't take a genius to add 2 and 2! :D But I was sad during the ending: it was an effective and affecting scene and it worked for me. Some of the backlash confused me too though.
I think Brosnan was talking about SP.
I agree.
Exactly! Safin should have missed B-)
I absolutely get your point. But isn't that what we've had to do with every change of actor? We accept a new Bond in a new timeline that has no connection to the previous films. Bond's death will not put an end to the questions.
Had a feeling it was coming for all the reasons stated, and it made me even more moved as I watched him still desperately trying to get away… and then the blast doors started to close again… and, and, and…. I bawled. Still do. For whatever reason I deeply connected to this Bond, and his death was, and is still, and will always be, powerful and moving to me.
I'm biased, Craig is my Bond, I make no bones about that. I think Craig and Seydoux (and to a lesser extent Whishaw) sell the emotion, when her voice breaks that's me gone the waterworks start flowing no matter how many times I've rewatched it at this point.
Like I said @CrabKey , I really connected to Craig. Right from CR. I can’t explain it, other than to say, his performances as James Bond hit me straight in the heart.
I’ve always loved Bond. As a child, my father, a Brit, an original fan (Connery was King), fed me a healthy dose of the Connery films on VHS. Although he despised Lazenby, and thought of Moore as only The Saint, he also took me to all of the Bond films that were released in cinema.
I read the Fleming books over and over. Each passing year, I understood them more and more. I loved Fleming for his dreamy descriptions, violence, the absurd…
But when I walked out of CR, something had changed. I was swept away. It’s similar to a passionate love at first sight encounter. I don’t know why. I didn’t plan it that way, but the actor moved me like no other actor in this role.
By the time I saw NTTD, it was like I was watching a good friend, someone I loved and admired, lose his life. In other words, this actor, and the way he played the character, was in my nervous system.
I hate sounding melodramatic, but that’s the closest I can get to describing something so raw and personal to me. Then again, I’m an emotional guy in real life, but I never expected James Bond to ever affect me like this. Ever.
I also don’t try and change peoples minds; I can understand why they may be upset, angry, or just plain ambivalent. But it does get frustrating when people haven’t seen the film comment on the ending, or others use it as justifications of why Barbara Broccoli should be fired, or they feel some kind of entitlement to the character (“you can’t kill Bond!” (as a creator of fiction myself, I beg to differ: the producers and their creative team can do whatever they want, and their job is to make the best films for the worldwide box office, and not to fifty 007 fans)).
So I can understand where you’re coming from.
I hope you can read through my statement and see that this is the most authentic and genuine way I can describe my feelings for Craig-Bond and why his death was impactful to me (I also think it helps the franchise start completely fresh, after connecting all of the films).
Oh, when her voice cracks, I think of my wife. It pains me to hear and see Madeleine in their final good-bye. Hits me right in my gut, @CharmianBond …
As you point about Madeleine's voice cracking, to an extent our perception of things has a lot to do with our own experiences. Men don't often talk about their emotions. Who would have thought James Bond films might encourage that.