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Really? I just didn’t read it as being contemptuous of the last century. Maybe you can explain how you came to this? I’m being serious. I just don’t see it.
And since we shouldn’t clutter Where Does Bond Go After Craig, please PM me. I’d appreciate it.
Peter is quite right in everything he said and what he took it to mean: the last Bond novel was written just over half past the last century and we’re a quarter into this one: that’s a long time to be constrained to the exact events prescribed by a small amount of books when you’re onto the 26th film. I’m obviously not dismissing the last century as being inherently bad as that doesn’t make any kind of sense, especially not with regards to the point I was making.
I apologise if my meaning wasn’t 100% clear or if anyone feels insulted in any way.
This is why I am starting to believe maybe Nolan is signed up to do the next Bond, and why everything is very secretive right now at EON, nothing being leaked, no news. etc.
It would be a surefire way of getting the next Bond film greenlit, and of making a huge blockbuster return too. Noland & Bond seems a match made in heaven for many. Sign him on for a 2 or 3 picture deal makes it even bigger news.
Nolan has also kept quiet on his next project too.
Yes, usually we have some idea what Nolans next project is by now. Both him and EON are being "too" quiet lately... :-?
I've often wondered about that last page of TMWTGG. Did Fleming spend more time on it? It seems more fully realized than most of the book.
Agreed. Mostly because the Bond actor is cheaper at the beginning, before he's established...
It’s a strange final chapter. Everything seems just a bit too light and satisfactory - Bond is making jokes, him getting a knighthood, Goodnight saying she’ll look after him for the rest of his time in Jamaica. It almost rings false and feels a bit too convenient in some ways, but then Bond has these little introspective moments about having an anonymous name, not wanting the knighthood, the only time he brings out his credentials being for war reunions (and of course the aside about these colleagues getting older, and then the final paragraph).
It kinda makes sense I guess, and it shows what Fleming was going for. Like I said I think the literary Bond accepted what his future would look like from that point.
I think he just wanted to reestablish the character's old status quo.
Bond has died and this is as close as he'll allow himself to get to a happy afterlife :D
Yeah, that’s an interesting thought! It kinda reads like that, whether literal or figurative.
Supposedly not. Fleming completed a first draft and went through some of the editing process but it basically lacked the detail his novels usually had. After his sudden death Amis was hired to make editorial decisions/potentially add stuff but none of his suggestions were taken.
This is according to what I kinda understand/basic info on the internet though. I’m pretty sure that’s the official story regardless. To be honest it makes sense. TMWTGG legitimately lacks a bit of Fleming’s eye for detail and if someone like Amis had worked more extensively on it I suspect the novel would come across as more fleshed out, albeit potentially a bit different to Fleming’s usual style.
I agree with this. The Prisoner is much more cerebral, and largely devoid of female characters, so it's much more in Nolan's wheelhouse than Bond.
I have no problem with a Bond in the present. But I am not a fan of original films and Bond films in title only. Somehow they don't capture the feel of Fleming for me. Others don't share that opinion. Those last century films are simply more entertaining. They have a style that later films haven't been able to capture. Depending where one comes into the Bond series, typically that's one perception of a Bond and a Bond film.
I understand your point about not being constrained to the Fleming novels. The films not based on Fleming borrow quite a lot from films from stories we've actually already seen. The parallels of NTTD to YOLT are unmistakeable. So why not remake YOLT? (Not that they would seriously consider that.) The Fleming novel was much better than either film. I'd much rather EON start adapting the continuation novels as the character does evolve and have those new experiences you spoke of.
Of the last nine Bond films, by far the best was the one based on a Fleming novel. All the rest, mostly by P&W, simply don't feel like the classic Bond films.
It was suggested the producers are possibly thinking about today's world threats and how Bond will fit it. I don't want to see Bond involved with current world events, as I can watch those on the news. I would much rather see a crisis on a much smaller scale that is as potentially deadly as anything Bond has ever faced.
That’s not to say I want them to stay away from them completely. I suspect certain ideas in certain novels could be interesting if adapted very loosely and worked into an original story. Hell, they’ve already added bits of Colonel Sun into TWINE and SP, the original idea for Quantum shares similarities with Benson’s The Union (ie. operatives infiltrating governments/secret services, women being set up/blackmailed into being moles for them, the penchant towards more self serving schemes/brutish acts of terrorism rather than elaborately laid out plans). I think there’s even pieces of Gardner which have cropped up.
As for current world events and Bond, I presume what the producers mean by looking at today’s threats isn’t as much for specific events for Bond to get involved in, but rather thinking about what scares people today/what a villain’s caper could be in today’s world.
There are two major conflicts in the world tugging at Western strings and of course there's the new petrodollar era where sabotage to oil could ruin economies. There was the bombing of transport ships through the Suez canal. And Bond hasn't stuck his head in industrial espionage yet, which is supposedly a large part of the Chinese machine.
While I haven't read the newest Sherwood novel yet, her first is quite an interesting contemporary spy story, and the second, about art smuggling, sounds like it too. There's absolutely no need to get stuck on the Fleming novels.
At the same time, a Fleming needs to be kept: key things about the character and the setting, mood, pacing and things like that could be used to fully craft a story about one of the above plot ideas.
Yeah I don't think any of them have strong enough ideas, or at least not as strong as the original films. It's hard to give any of them Friends-style 'The One With..' names to rhyme with any unique, catchy ideas. Maybe Benson's climbing one, Solo, Mind To Kill... perhaps Win Lose Or Die... not much else. Even then I wouldn't be desperate to see any of those concepts on the screen.
Thing is, a good chunk of what we get in the continuation novels are spins on either Fleming or the EoN films. Between Gardner and Benson we seem to get variations of evil supergroups which are seemingly a riff on SPECTRE (High Time to Kill I’ve always thought was also a riff on TB in terms of basic framework, albeit with a much weaker stop and start plot based around a lot of stuff completely out of Bond’s hands, and Doubleshot isn’t all that far off of the FRWL film with SPECTRE devising an elaborate cat and mouse trap for Bond out of revenge). Bond stories have often repetitive structures, no doubt, but I think compared to EoN’s more recent efforts few of the continuation novels stand on their own for me in this sense. The more original ones like Horrowitz’s efforts aren’t much better and often contain weak villains and other problems.
I'm not sure it would work for a whole plot, but it might be a good starting place.
I don't think EON's plots are that original.
Skyfall is Mission Impossible meets The man with the Golden Gun. Sure, it's a well made movie but you can catch all influences easily
Most people say SF is a bit like The Dark Knight. Not sure where you got MI from (I guess the list of agents is a bit like the first MI film plot but it’s still very different in practice). There’s bits and pieces which resemble TMWTGG but they’re quite broad too (ie. The boat that brings them to Silva’s island, Severine bargaining with Bond as a means of escape like Andrea, and the very general idea of Bond and the villain being mirror images of each other).
Anyway, nothing’s completely original. That’s not the point. Like I said Bond has an inherently repetitive formula. What I was trying to get at was I think some of the Bond continuation novels feel a bit too derivative of the series without doing it quite as well, adding anything quite as interesting, or developing these ideas in a fresh way in comparison to some of the more recent films.
Forget it Jake, it's Deketown.
They can do the same thing they are doing with Fleming's novels. It's not that hard.
They have the titles, they have the plots, they have the characters... They can make whatever changes they want.
Yeah, @007HallY ! Taking a book and making it a smash hit around the world isn't hard at all!! Jeez, when will you ever learn??
Thanks for spreading the wisdom Deke!
Fair enough 😂
Perhaps we’ll get a future Bond 26 fan fiction script from @DEKE_RIVERS if it’s so easy. Brownie points if you can work in Bond going undercover at Disneyland, or Blofeld’s secret daughter. I for one am looking forward to the dry but to the point dialogue…
But in all seriousness they could rework bits of the continuation novels if they wanted to… but like I said I’m not sure if it’d be worth being substantial adaptations if they do, and I’m not even sure how much they can use in practice (especially titles and characters).
In Deketown we use common sense. More books, more ideas.
No, Deke, you may think that's common sense. But that's your lack of humility talking.
There are less ideas in one book as there are after an hour of pitch-meetings.
And if those ideas in these books aren't any good (some on here believe that the recent Bond films have better cinematic ideas than the continuation books), then that has no value either.
So, no, Deke. Not common sense. Just a half-baked absolute in your eyes, that isn't particularly well thought out.
We don't need another YOLT adaptation. Or another big character's death.
Maybe they need more hours and more humility too.