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Afraid you are right about P&W. I was hoping for something new and fresh.
Arguably P&W were the best writers on SP. Better than Logan, who clearly had only one Bond script in him.
Better than Butterworth: "Butterworth considered that his changes involved adding what he would like to see as a teenager, and limited the scenes with Bond talking to men, as 'Bond shoots other men—he doesn't sit around chatting to them. So you put a line through that.'"
Has Butterworth not seen DN? Or OHMSS? Or TMWTGG? What nonsense.
If anyone kept the "Bond guardrails" on SP, it was P&W.
Yeah I think they still come up with good ideas. I look at the continuation novels from the same period for example, and the movies feel like they have more original and thematically-developed stories most of the time.
I don't think so; they did the very first draft which contained many elements which eventually made it to the finished film.
Fair point.
If Hodge and Boyle's great idea was that Bond would spend the majority of NTTD in captivity in Russia, I'm not sure we lost out, tbh. Copenhagen shows that Dan would more than do justice to an extended character piece and, selfishly, I'd love to have seen him tackle Bond in-depth in something like that - but, realistically, as the new James Bond movie aimed at a global audience...? I can see why EON might want to steer away from it, tbh.
Yeah. Maybe if they had an excellent track record then it would make sense, but they not only do not have an excellent track record, they have an explicitly bad one.
According to them yes. The only reason they retained a credit was because Haggis’ drafts kept enough plot elements of theirs.
I disagree.
I'd also disagree. They may be associated with some poor films and therefore some poor scripts to blame them for. But they are not the sole reason a poor film is poor.
Scripts go through many re-writes and tweaks along the way. To blame this all on Purvis and Wade is unfair.
In saying that, I would like some fresh blood all-round for Bond 26 if possible.
I know that's asking a lot.
Something like TMWTGG I would say is far more of a mess of a script than anything P&W have overseen.
Really? TMWTGG script is fine.
NTTD has a messy script all the way.
They need to adapt novels. That's all. Any novel, It doesn't matter which one.
If P&W wrote a script about the world's greatest assassin which for some reason turned into a story about an irrelevant gadget and an empty power station, and featured no assassinations whatsoever; in which the Bond girl being an idiot drove the last act; in which Bond went to Beirut to get a bullet despite literally being mailed one in the previous scene, and in which he gets left behind by his ally when he comes to rescue him because he just drives off; we'd never hear the end of how bad they are. It's not tied together and characters have to be stupid to make the plot work.
A lot of the novels are messy. Plotting was not Fleming's strongest suit. Nor of most of the continuation writers, although I stopped after Benson. Why read a copy of a copy when you can read the original?
As for Chris Nolan writing and directing, I also could go either way. EON has copied him more than once lately, they might as well as give him personally a try. I could see him bringing back a classic villain (probably Blofeld, honestly). As long as he isn’t writing solo, I could trust him.
The main person that I think shouldn’t come back is Michael G Wilson. He’s too old, and clearly unhealthy. He should do what Cubby did on GE: supervise bringing in the new era.
I don't care. EON can't do it any better. That's the point. They can't.
They are fooling themselves
The continuation novels are in the same boat really, and are in my opinion all of lower quality than the Fleming books. Colonel Sun has even had scraps of it make its way into the films. Maybe they could do something similar with some of the stronger novels (ie. only use specific ideas) but I’d argue overall the more interesting things about even the Horowitz novels had already been done in the Craig films. So they wouldn’t benefit from being adapted fully. Personally, I’d take any of the recent original scripts over any Bond continuation novel.
Well, I never say a "faithful" adaptation. They can use Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
:)
Any adaptation is better.
I love that when they adapted OHMSS, they kept the opening scenes in the same order as the novel, despite those being a flashback in the book. They removed the flashback element and made it linear and pretty much nothing changed! :)
Yes, I enjoy the novels, but I don't think you'll find one with ideas as strong as the recent films. Something like Skyfall or even Spectre actually take Bond to new places and have coherent themes; TWINE is a pretty bold story with lots of new elements. The Horowitzs are great fun but I'm not sure they're pushing any boundaries: something like Trigger Mortis is (intentionally I think, to be fair) a pretty standard Bond adventure story.
Well, they wrote Skyfall in which Bond being an idiot drove the last act.
Did EoN reject you some time in your life, Deke?
I’m not sure why you’re a fan, 😂
You obviously have the answers to all of EoN’s ills… perhaps you should write your own adaptation and pitch to the powers that be?