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10 years until the books go public domain, plus another 2 for someone to come along and do their own adaptation of CR, FRWL, OHMSS, MR or whatever.
The sky will be the limit! All will be right in the world. :D :D :D
A satisfying element necessary for any film to be good, no matter the genre, is the character’s journey. Not necessarily a character arc, as someone like Bond doesn’t need a complete change, but the protagonist must have an affecting journey during which they learn something about themselves or the world around them. The plot and character journey intertwine for a satisfying narrative.
There are a lot of creative writer’s, actor’s and director’s that may have inventive yet mindful interpretations of which EON can mold and shepherd. If rumors are to be believed, EON is exploring some of the most (assumedly) appealing directions with various creatives. There is no good film without having something substantial for the protagonist to experience.
This all takes time and consideration. Deliberation in art isn’t a barrier, it’s the necessary step to produce what may approach the good. I’m not disheartened (yet) by this fallow period. I think every time EON breaks to recalibrate it results in a fantastic film, e.g. The Man With The Golden Gun to The Spy Who Loved Me, License To Kill to GoldenEye, Die Another Day to Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace to Skyfall.
More focus on his naval background?
Give Bond a family and have him keep his job a secret from them?
Amnesia Bond?
Bond vs Artificial Intelligence?
Options are wearing thin on what can be done but a great film regardless will stand the test of time. I wouldn't worry much about pleasing the younger crowd, if the film is great they will come.
I just wanted to comment on this specific point because I feel very strongly about it. I think rules in storytelling are sometimes incorrectly formulated, or incorrectly generalized.
But I don't want that again. Bond learning about himself, his roots and his family - done! I'd rather have they explored the tragic villain if they must have some sort of inner journey and character development in a character. An arc like Mr.White's fitted into one movie for example.
I don't agree that there are no story routes for Bond to go in either (I think that mindset shows a lack of creativity). The truth is it's a very adaptable series, ironically because it has such a distinct formula. Even if a film like TSWLM's plot is essentially a spin on YOLT's, the writers managed to craft a unique story. They put Bond in a situation where he was faced with a Bond girl who was his 'equal' in the form of a Soviet agent, where they would have to work together, and of course him realising that he was responsible for her boyfriend's death. It's all engaging stuff dramatically. Similarly SF is pretty much a riff on TWINE with Bond getting injured, the villain having a personal vendetta against M etc. It even contains ideas from GE in there too - the old vs new, the villain being a mirror image of Bond, the inclusion of Bond's past. SF does a great job at readapting those elements for where Craig's Bond was at, and we get this really unique spin on these old ideas. Even DAD, which effectively becomes a loose remake of DAF by the end, had the pretty unique premise of Bond being betrayed, imprisoned, and then ultimately going rogue from MI6 (again, it's not that Bond hadn't gone rogue in the past, but certainly not under those circumstances, and it's one of the most interesting things about the film).
The truth is a Bond film's plot doesn't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel. It's a series which readapts itself. But ultimately the writers/producers aren't looking to simply remake the same film over and over, and they'll always look for new places to go, especially ones which test Bond. If anything this mindset of 'just make a spy action flick and see where it leads' in one sense would be much more limiting, but ironically quite radical and strange in the context of making a Bond movie. On another it's not dissimilar to what they do anyway, and often 'where it leads' is where we get those new ideas and character challenges for Bond that some people here claim to dislike. Purposely going into a film with the mindset of making Bond this flat and completely non-changing character would also be quite weird. Same for completely shunning any ideas seen in the Craig and Brosnan eras such as 'sympathetic' villains. It's not how the organic process of crafting a Bond film works.
Excellent post you put together for us there, @007HallY.
You wrote, "But ultimately the writers/producers aren't looking to simply remake the same film over and over," and that's key, I think. AVTAK is sometimes criticised for its likeliness to GF from twenty years and a dozen films before. We tend to notice similarities and recurring motifs and complain about some while endorsing others, but originality is celebrated if not at times deemed too big a departure from the "established formula". Recycling tropes (if they are still acceptable) within a new narrative frame, is probably the best way to go. Whether it's "just" a matter of mass-producing one standalone Bond film after the other -- "like in the old days" -- is debatable. But whatever the case, "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue" always seems right for Bond.
I disagree.
There's a reason why, despite the style and craftsmanship, out of 25 Bond films (27 if we include CR '67 and NSNA) only a handful outside the first three are considered to be "about something." That is to say most Bond films don't stick in the minds of the general audience as separate from the whole.
There's a reason why the "Fleming" moments in any Bond film tend to tell us something about Bond's interior life or his point of view or makes him vulnerable in some way. There's a reason why those moments are typically fan favorites. There's a reason why OHMSS is a particular favorite for Steven Soderbergh and Christopher Nolan.
Outside of maybe comedy, show me a list of the top films in any genre that don't reveal anything about the character's opinion of themselves or their place in the world. Look at what most would consider to be amongst the best action films of all time: Die Hard, Lethal Weapon and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Those films don't simply move their protagonists through the plot. Those films do more than just throw physical problems at their protagonists. Those films develop their protagonists by melding the external problem with an internal goal.
The reason why it's common for mainstream films (and most films) to have their protagonist undergo a character journey is because its satisfying and it works. This isn't controversial or really even debated. There's no exact formulation on how to do this but it's something most creative/development producers look for in most projects.
Yes, look at the earliest “performed” stories (plays), like Oedipus…. A complete arc, certainly a journey and we absolutely are witnesses, or we “see” what’s going on internally.
It’s the best way to tell a story that collectively affects those watching when there are goals and stakes, and a transformation of some kind (doesn’t have to be earth-shaking changes, but we want to see the results of the journey, that something’s been acquired or learned that benefits our protagonist…
And Die Hard— great example @Burgess . The structure to that story is beautifully simple and brilliant.
I hope this gets reintroduced in some way with Bond 26.
If a successful Bond film explores the Bond Girl's character journey, then wouldn't exploring Bond's character journey make for a great Bond film?
Character journey doesn't necessarily mean digging into a character's past or exploring a character's roots. A character journey is simply contextualizing the character's wants and needs within the plot of the narrative. Every good Mission Impossible film does this. Every good Jason Bourne film does this. Every good comic book movie does this. Every good Bond film does this.
To put it another way, if what I'm saying isn't true then A View To A Kill would be considered as good of a Bond film as License To Kill or Casino Royale. If this isn't true then Skyfall and On Her Majesty's Secret Service wouldn't be considered two of the best films of their genre. I'm not sure why this seems so controversial.
Craig was the wet-shaving Bond!
I know what you mean though. I'm just putting you right before anyone else does, because that's what nerds do.
I wasn't too keen on the Moneypenny wet shave scene though in SF. Something about the slow, whispery dialogue exchange really grates on me `old dog, new tricks', etc.
Exactly @peter . This is how Western stories have been crafted since Aristotle ruminated on dramatic structure in "Poetics."
And amazingly, with portions of a second act and a near total third act almost completely written as they were shooting. So it just goes to show there's no real right way to do these things, and often the things that are destined to work will simply just.....work.
But I don't disagree that bond can and should have interesting dynamics and challenges, I just think that the best bond films are plotted and paced to account for the heightened reality and stylised approach so one takes advantage of the other, and the progression between the characters naturally fills the downtime in the action, like breathing in and out. The inciting incident between Bond and Anya begins about 3 minutes into the movie and doesn't fully conclude until the last few seconds before the credits roll. Their dynamic is what drives the drama and keeps the audience engaged throughout, and when she finally confronts him everything has been building to that moment and it works perfectly to top off the stakes leading into the finale. I don't feel they have got this balance right at all with SP/B25, and rather than crafting a story that naturally flows between a sense of playfulness and frivolity and then, like breathing out, some downtime for the characters relate to eachother and their dynamics to develop, it feels like they have the story jumping around to hit the emotional marks they want, without much concern about how this plays into the narrative as a whole. It feels like they have their emotional beats in mind, and then the mechanics of the plot are macgyvered to try and make it all fit, and I just don't think that's a very effective way to construct a story.
Perhaps in the Connery films (although even then you get hints of those ideas I'd argue -in FRWL much of it is about Bond having to willingly step into a trap, unsure if Tanya is in on this plan and effectively having to 'play' her in order to attain the Lekter, which I always got the sense he was a bit conflicted about seeing his reaction to her photo/how he snaps at her after Kerim's death. It makes the film more engaging than DN in my opinion anyway where Bond is pretty much one step ahead throughout).
In the Moore films it's there though. In TSWLM there's the dialogue he has with Anya about killing her boyfriend, and it's actually a moment where Bond seems to convey perfectly his attitude to his job ('you know as well as I do, it was either him or me'). I don't think it's especially well done but Bond trying to warn Melina against revenge in FYEO tries to get to that as well. I'm sure there are other examples for both Bonds.
Not a big fan of the MI films and I'm sure others remember them much better than I do. But I suspect the sorts of ideas we're talking about are present in Ethan Hunt.
I'm sure many would criticise how these ideas are done in practice. I'm sure how they develop/write these scripts isn't quite as straightforward as that, and I think it's an organic and even lengthy process of trying to put the character into new situations.
That's why most of the Connery and Moore films are not amongst the best films of all time or the genre. From Russia With Love and The Spy Who Loved Me are classics of genre and cinema because there is a character journey for Bond in both films. That journey isn't as pronounced as maybe it should be but it's there. In FRWL, Bond learns that he and MI6 have been played for fools by SPECTRE. In TSWLM, Bond is allied with and falls in love with an enemy spy whose partner he killed on another mission.
The first Indiana Jones is one of the perfect genre examples of a character's arc. Jones starts as a skeptic at the beginning of the film and is made an eye witness to the supernatural at the end. In Mission Impossible, Hunt is betrayed by his mentor and friend. Mission Impossible 3 is about how Hunt's secret life as a spy almost destroys the person he loves the most. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning explores how Hunt's tragic backstory informs his relationships with the women in his life.
What drives and motivates a protagonist IS the character journey when intertwined with the plot. The common question when constructing a story is "What does the character want?" That "want" isn't what the character needs to accomplish in the plot. That "want" is shorthand for the thing a character needs to learn about themselves or their circumstances to necessitate change or bring about an epiphany.
I know it's changed a lot in the last 20 years or so. The hero now has to have all sorts of personal issues, an inner conflict and journey (Bourne, Bond, Batman, all DC/Marvel superhero characters etc) to a point where I am fed up because they keep toying with a character that should be established so it can pass as drama, instead of creating antagonists with enough screen time to become memorable.
I remember MGW saying in 2006 that the reboot was a way to introduce a new Bond and establish the character. And it was beautiful. Bond even seemed happy in some late scenes with Vesper. Four movies later they were still establishing his now grumpy and tormented character. Now with love for a daughter (!) I fear that they will do this somehow all over again starting with the next. Alienating what was once fun about the Bond movies because the trend is that it is
Die Hard, which was brought up earlier, is a great film. It was one film that worked great that then tried to stretch the concept to a bunch of films which didn't work so well. John McClane is an ordinary cop with a failing marriage who gets stuck by chance in a one-in-a-lifetime bad situation where he is in a building taken over by terrorists. By the end of the film his marriage is stronger than ever and he has beaten the bad guys and is recognised as a hero. The later films struggle to come up with convincing reasons why an ordinary guy (essential to his character) should get stuck in similar situation, and they have to back-peddle on the marriage iirc. Great concept for one film, great character arc, stretched to breaking point by trying to convert it into a series.
Bond has worked as a series because it has a simple and believable mechanism for putting Bond into an adventure, and the Bond series has used big action spectacles and glamorous women and locations, as well as basic beats in the formula such as the pre-credits sequence, the briefing with M, a scene where Q gives Bond specialised equipment etc, because the work in the context of a long-running series. You can keep going back to them without straining the concept. You can't can't have Bond fall in love and decide to quit the service every film, or even every other film, and still have it keep its impact. It's the law of diminishing returns.
Basically: imo an open-ended series like the James Bond films is a marathon; if you run every film like it's a sprint sooner or later it will collapse.
Otherwise on a basic level the things that Bond has to overcome in that film are set off by the plot itself (his injury, him getting disillusioned because of M's orders getting a colleague/him nearly killed etc.) Bond's past isn't something he has to specifically confront in this film as such, rather it's just very well entwined with the story. Sure, there's some background detail about his parent's death, and Bond is understandably annoyed when the psychiatrist (who he seems to have no time for anyway) tries to use it in the word association, but it was always made clear that Bond is a character who tries to keep his past behind him, and it's not even the first time we've learnt about this past (GE was the first film to reference it). You get nice little moments like Bond being able to shoot again by using his dad's rifle, or him using the manor as a way to lure Silva in (so very much in the 'returning to the old ways' theme) but again it's all very entwined with Bond returning to his full capacity.
It's not a weighty character drama where Bond goes into a full monologue about his past has affected him (that'd be weird). Just seems like quite a well thought out blockbuster.
I think sometimes fans have a tendency to exaggerate and even conflate some of these things they don't like about the recent films. The Blofeld subplot in SP is an example. Fair enough if one doesn't think it works as a background to these characters (I would very much agree), but I don't really get what it has to do with what we're talking about in terms of Bond overcoming obstacles, even personal ones.
The truth is it's more something that impacts Blofeld than Bond (namely through him resenting his dad, and even then it's presumably not the core thing that has led him down this path in life, rather just another thing that cements his psychopathic nature). There's nothing really for Bond to overcome personally about this, even with minor references to a mentor figure or interrogation videos of Vesper.
I dunno, fans tend to like Alec Travelyan, a character with a pretty close personal history with Bond. They seem fine with us learning in that same film about him being an orphan. They seem fine with the Paris Carver subplot in TND. I'm sure many who forgot about OHMSS would have been fine with learning that Bond had been previously married in LTK. They certainly seem fine with the personal vendetta angle in that same film. I'm sure they'd be fine if, say, a future Bond movie involved some sort of new character from Bond's past returning, asking for his help akin to something like Du Pont enlisting Bond's help in the GF novel (some fans would love that adaptation in fact). So it's not the inclusion of things from Bond's past or necessarily any minor character revelations that seem to be the issue. It's more that this particular one in SP hasn't worked for us. But I don't see why this exact idea will be repeated or twisted into some sort of 'jumping of the shark' thing, nor how some of these very basic ideas can't be redone in a better scenario.
SF wasn't succesful because of its action setpieces or (rather ludricous) plot, but because of its resurrection tale. No other Bond movies come near it in terms of character journey.
So there's an argument to be had, that Bond should still somehow evolve on ...because it's a recipe for success in these days where no one wants to be accused of creating one-dimensional characters, even though the character has been established and re-established prior.
I don't like it, but I understand why they keep doing it. The glamour days where you had movie tough guys and heroes to look up to are long over. Now you have to identify and connect and Generation Z, who hasn't grown up with the same exposure to (toxic) masulinity as earlier generations, loves this.
There's only so many times you can play the same cards, and I'm still not sure why Bond is in hiding after the PTS nor is any explanation given. EON just like the emotional beat of him being coaxed out of the shadows, and emotionality takes precedence over story apparently.
Good films are good films, in part, because the plot can't be immediately parsed from the protagonist's inner journey. Raiders works because the plot to find the Ark of the Covenant is also a journey in which Jones discovers something beyond what he was capable of conceiving at the beginning of the film. The film's villain is a dark version of Jones. The villain believes in the legend. The villain pursues power at the cost of destroying or desecrating artifacts that Jones believes have value but only historical value. At the end of Raiders, Jones understands that artifacts like the Ark have significance beyond historical value.
All of this is done without speeches, monologues or grand pronouncements. It seems that people mistake melodrama for a satisfying character arc, or that focusing on the inner journey will inherently lead to melodrama. Melodrama occurs when the synthesis between character and plot is done badly. Melodrama is the lack of subtext. Citizen Kane doesn't have Charles Kane or any other character explain that Rosebud is a metaphor for lost innocence. Citizen Kane ties Kane's rise and fall to his inner wound of lost innocence.
There's what is probably an apocryphal story in which Quentin Tarantino asks a friend/colleague about the 2005 remake of King Kong. Tarantino asks if the remake preserves the subtext of racism and interracial love from the original. When his friend/colleague says that the subtext is gone, Tarantino flippantly declares that the remake is simply about a f***ing monkey.
I'd disagree slightly - SF was a hit because it was a crowd pleasing Bond adventure that came around at a particular time, full of those wonderfully evocative Bondian moments such as the Aston Martin being unveiled, those brilliant moments of wry humour, cool moments etc. Its story as a whole had an impact and clearly resonated with audiences, but I think if it were some dour, gritty character drama masquerading as a Bond movie it wouldn't have landed.
I mean, simply saying 'big character-defining moments or revelations' is a bit vague. It depends on what specifically they do. Like I said Bond has always readapted its ideas, and often it's a case where what some of us don't like/criticise in one movie we praise in others.
I can understand you're not 14 anymore as you said you were when you got into Bond, and perhaps these recent Bond films just don't fill you with the same sense of joy/escapism you got with other Bond films because they are a bit different. That's fine, like I said before I suspect some viewers in the 70s who grew up with Connery's early movies would have felt that same disassociation with something like MR. But the Craig era does resonate with others and not specifically because they're intense character dramas but because viewers do see them as engaging and entertaining Bond movies.
I have absolutely no idea why that 'standard' mission would have been needed nor why it matters beyond it being something some fans might want (and even that's a very big maybe). I'm not even sure what a 'standard' mission looks like in this case. SF seemed to come around at the best time all things considered. It was a departure from CR/QOS, introduced more of those classical Bondian elements and is even a film which revelled in it (again, there's quite a lot of humour and crowd pleasing moments). It's clear there's a bit of a gap between the first two films and SF, and audiences were able to go along with it. I really don't think anyone really cared/cares about that beyond these forums.
The fact is we don't know what they're going to do next, and it's rarely straightforward. We might get something similar to SF where typical Bond tropes/aspects are readapted, while also bringing us something a bit different (again, putting Bond in that new situation, finding something interesting to do).
In Skyfall, the subtext is that M is Bond's mother. Bond's wound is that he feels expendable to his own mother. He feels that his life holds no value for the only authority figure that he cares about. Bond comes back into the fold when he feels like his mother--M--needs him again.
The fact that the real film didn't feel the need to include such scenes and works well as just a standard action romp, with mild characterisation is testament to sandbaggers point. Sometimes less is indeed more.