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Sounds like our tastes are very similar. CR was also the first Bond film that hadn't disappointed me in a long time too. I still love it even now, yet what followed in the Craig era slowly evolved into more along the lines you outlined here. I am probably more upset with NTTD than I ever was with DAD, which I always regarded as a true low point in the franchise, until now.
I think CR is highly regarded as the best Craig film because it didn't stray too far from the Fleming novel. Say what you like about old Ian, but for whatever reason, his properly adapted work really works on screen. Many of the Bond films that are now regarded as classics in most circles - Dr. No, FRWL, GF, TB, OHMSS, they all rely heavily on their novels.
Fleming was a damn fine writer and intuitively had a flair for the dramatic. I think our expert in residence @Revelator can correct me if I’m wrong, but it seemed that Fleming was very aware how his creation could work on television or film and it seems, from my reading, that he always had his eye on this medium to further extend his secret agent’s life…(?)
His books work beautifully on the screen.
Saying that, I am surprised @jetsetwilly , that you don’t feel the same for Skyfall and, No Time To Die (not including the death of Bond). These films, IMO, have Fleming’s DNA all over it. If you don’t think so, I’m curious as to where it fell short?
I define Craig's Bond as interior made exterior. Fleming's novels have the benefit of telling us what's in Bond's head. Of course, film can't render that kind of unactionable detail in a satisfying way. But EON found a way to show us Bond's doubt and fear and distaste and drive by externalizing them in the narrative.
General audiences got to watch and experience a dimension of Bond that we as fans know intimately through Fleming's novels but rarely appears on screen. I've never seen Bond as a mere cipher for the audience. Bond is a fully realized character. He falls in love and makes mistakes. He doubts and questions. He has opinions and ideas. Finally, through Daniel Craig, people got see, hear and experience Fleming's Bond who, with all due respect and love to the actors who've portrayed him, is the best Bond.
Craig's tenure had its issues but I felt that the filmmakers finally fullfilled a promise they made when crafting DN. Here is Ian Fleming's James Bond 007. I don't know that many appreciate how special and unlikely the Craig era was. Just ask Lazenby or Dalton. Craig's era makes me so hopeful about the future of Bond because now we know what EON is capable of producing when they take up the challenge.
I'll add that Craig's era made Bond competetive and inluentual in the marketplace. The box office. The awards. The accolades. Not since the late 70s has Bond been this robust. I think we all have PTSD from the Summer of '89. It's franchise lore. EON took a chance to make LTK the most chilling (in the most complimentary meaning of the word) Bond film of the series, and it tanked. EON regained box office credibility in the 90s and spent that capital on a direction that shouldn't have worked. This was LTK 2.0.
But something was different. Barbara Broccoli came into her own as a producer. Many of you see Broccoli's non-Bond projects as distractions but they're not. This is Broccoli honing her skills. We have one of the most respected and talented independent producers, across film and stage,
working anywhere in the world at the head of our franchise. We're luckier than we know.
In fact and I'm probably the minority in this, B26 should be titled Shatterhand and they can implement unused Characters and plot points not yet used in other films. It works with LTK. Spangled Mob, Gala Brand, Horror and Sluggsy (which is Jaws and Sandor) but the names weren't used. The Duponts, a different variation of Mary Goodnight etc.
Moonraker was never adapted faithfully at all. Even though I love me some Moonraker. I feel they can easily update the Moonraker novel with nukes with the title Shatterhand being the project name. Don't even necessarily need Drax as a villian. The question is, would Bond being up against a villian that cheats at cards be too similar to the plot of CR?
@Colonel_Venus your aspirations for Nolan to be involved in Bond 26 are well known, to the point that this is pretty much spam.
It adds nothing to the discussion other than your point of view, which has been well documented.
@ColonelAdamski this is clearly baiting peter. Again, it adds nothing to the discussion and your past interactions are also well known.
I would strongly suggest that this kind of behavior is quickly nipped in the bud.
So the template would be like:
Something happens in the world that causes M go "where is Bond? we need him" > Setpiece > Bond meets Q, then investigates in foreign location > Villain and henchmen introduced. Must have cool lines > Bond meets villain socially > Villain: "see that some harm comes to him > setpiece > Bond sleeps with sacrificial lamb > Sacrificial lamb dies > > Bond meets the main Bond girl > Bond narrowly escapes henchman in a setting with a huge crowd > Bond gets cool vehicle from Q to investigate further > setpiece > Bond is captured > Villain explains his whole plan and has Bond and the Bond girl as "guests" > They escape and Bond calls in help > Final Boss Fight amidst some sort of battle > Bond and Bond girl end up in some isolated place where they kiss.
Not exactly original, but like Terry Gilliam would say: it's only a model!
SF definitely has Fleming's DNA all over it, but I still don't prefer it to CR. Craig probably gives his most Flemingesque portrayal in SF, although looks wise he also least resembles Fleming Bond (whose decision was it to give him that shaved skinhead cut)?
NTTD, there are certain moments I like (mainly Bond in Jamaica) which feel very Fleming, but I also think Craig's acting is very muddled in this film. The exchange scene with Blofeld is without doubt the worst acting I've seen anyone playing 007 in a Bond film. In this scene Craig suddenly isn't playing Bond anymore, he's being Daniel Craig. This is far worse than anything Lazenby or Brozza ever did with the character.
And there are too many other faults with NTTD - nanobots, SPECTRE party, Felix dying, Bond having a daughter, Bond dying, ATTITW being used. Give me an old fashioned realistic baddie like Sanchez any day of the week.
Had NTTD given us the full YOLT ending (which it almost did but fell short at the final hurdle) including Bond having amnesia and setting off for Russia, then I would probably have a very different opinion on the film.
In this scene Craig suddenly isn't playing Bond anymore
See I think it is important to engage in this point — because it is completely accurate. He isn't "Bond" anymore. He tries to be Bond again during the Jamaica/Cuba segments, but it doesn't work out. He doesn't get with the girl. He doesn't help Felix Leiter. He doesn't save the day. He tried to put on the tux again but it doesn't work.
Something about him has changed, and he can't go back. He only wins in the film when he accepts that. All five of these films move toward unmaking the man made in "Casino Royale".
TLD. That is the best example of a modern bond film that is fresh and contemporary for its time, goes in a slightly darker direction, has some interesting dimension to the characters, but still maintains that lightness of touch (Chasing down the mountain in a cello case is a slightly more toned down version of one of Rogers comedic vehicle sequences). Its a film that somehow manages to play both the light and the dark, captures a certain realism while committing to having a good time. That should be the standard for EON, I think, over trying to discover some bold new direction for the character.
It's always been TLD & GE for me. That's what Bond 26 should feel and look like, added with the modernity Bond 26 would bring.
I think the 'sacrificial lamb' will be less common in future Bond films. It's one of those formula elements that can be, if not totally discarded, played with a little so it's a bit less mechanical-feeling. Paloma is a 'secondary' Bond girl that Bond doesn't sleep with and doesn't die to give 007 an emotional stake in the mission as it's not needed in NTTD, and I think you can play around with elements of the formula with some success. Not to say having a sacrificial lamb should never be used, but perhaps not every film needs it.
Why it’s taking so long to find the next James Bond
Three years since No Time to Die ended the Daniel Craig era, there’s still no sign of the next 007 film
Robbie Collin,
Chief Film Critic
25 August 2024 • 10:15am
Late 2026, at the earliest. Maybe 2027. Perhaps even 2028.
You’re reading this because you want to know about the next James Bond film: the one that will pick up where the Daniel Craig series left off, and introduce a brand new 007. But the above dates – the British film industry’s current best guesses as to when we’ll actually see the thing, as shared with me by a senior talent representative last weekend – is, for now, about all there is to know.
There is no script, no title, not even a director – though I’m told a small number of contenders have been summoned to Eon Productions’ London HQ for what have been described as “a first round of speed dates”. No setting has been chosen, no source material selected, from the Ian Fleming novels or elsewhere. There’s obviously no singer for the title theme either, though that hasn’t inhibited the bookies: you can get 10/3 odds on Dua Lipa or Lady Gaga; 5/1 on Lana Del Rey or this year’s Brit Award-winning Raye. Most crucially of all – despite regular claims to the contrary – 007 himself has yet to be recruited. If Blofeld strikes in the next 24 months, we’re basically doomed.
Should we be worried? “Not unduly,” says Professor James Chapman of the University of Leicester, and author of Licence To Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films. If 2027 proves correct, Bond 26 will arrive roughly six years after Craig’s explosive 2021 demise. And, as Chapman points out, the series has taken a similar hiatus before.
The gap between 1989’s Licence to Kill, the final Timothy Dalton film, and 1995’s GoldenEye, the first to star Pierce Brosnan, was six years, four months, 14 days – for what Chapman describes as “all sorts of complex and wide-ranging reasons”.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Bond’s home studio, was embroiled in buyouts and bankruptcy. The response to the surly second Dalton film had been lukewarm – it remains the least successful in terms of both box office return and profit margin, adjusted for inflation – and coming out in the same summer as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Tim Burton’s Batman had done it no favours. Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the franchise’s guiding producer since the Sean Connery days, had also turned 80, and was afflicted by worsening health.
Creatively, corporately and personally, everything was up in the air – which is not so far from Bond’s current plight. Barely six months after the release of Craig’s 2021 swan song, No Time to Die, MGM was bought out again: this time by Amazon, with whom Eon will have to thrash out the franchise’s future.
Could the tech titan transform its acquisition into a mega-budget streaming series, as it did with The Lord of the Rings after acquiring the rights from the Tolkien estate? It doesn’t sound the sort of move that would appeal to Barbara Broccoli – daughter of Cubby, vivacious co-boss of Eon (with her half-brother Michael G Wilson), and very theatrically inclined keeper of 007’s flame. But when it comes to setting Bond’s new creative direction – she has talked about the next film as a “whole new reinvention” – she doesn’t appear to be in a rush. Indeed, she’s currently busy with a long-term passion project of Craig’s: a film adaptation of Othello, set in a US Army compound in Iraq.
Craig is said to have been romancing a number of Gulf state cultural funds for backing, including one operated by the Doha Film Institute in Qatar. Given the region’s ongoing soft-power grab in the film world, it’s also possible that the first mission for Craig’s successor as Bond might take him out there, so he can marvel at the glamorous hyper-modernity of whichever nation coughs up the most. (The 2014 Sony email hack revealed that during the making of Spectre, a similar deal was struck with the Mexican government, who paid Sony between $14 and $20 million for a favourable portrayal of the country in the film.)
To be clear, this is one critic’s speculation. No screenplay exists – though an agent tells me that when one of her clients blocks out a significant chunk of time for a gig, rumours fly that they’ve been secretly hired by Eon to compile a first draft.
“This early part of the process typically has to unfold in a certain order,” explains Calvin Dyson, a leading Bond content creator whose videos have accrued more than 21.5 million views on YouTube. “When Casino Royale was in development, Eon chose Martin Campbell to direct before casting Daniel Craig, because Campbell rightly wanted to be a part of that process.”
Campbell also had Paul Haggis rework the original script, which Bond veterans Neal Purvis and Robert Wade had written with Craig’s predecessor Brosnan in mind. It was a jokier affair than the muscular thriller we got, which would have seen Bond playing chess with Lord Lucan. So the director, rather than star, will almost certainly be the first block to drop into place.
But who? Wishful thinkers pine for Christopher Nolan, but Eon is almost certainly looking for another Campbell: a safe and seasoned pair of hands without the sort of distinctive personal style that would impinge on Bond’s own.
It could theoretically opt again for Campbell, who marshalled both Brosnan and Craig’s debuts with aplomb, and is still working at 80. But another name understood to be on Eon’s radar is Germany’s Edward Berger, whose reputation soared last year with his multi-Oscar and Bafta-winning adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front. (His follow-up, an adaptation of the Thomas Harris papal thriller Conclave, is out later this year.)
The veteran studio screenwriter Kelly Marcel, of Fifty Shades of Grey and the Venom films, has also been linked – let’s see how her directorial debut, Venom: The Last Dance, goes down this October. Australia’s David Michôd (Animal Kingdom) has too, while younger names such as Bart Layton (The Imposter) and Yann Demange (’71) would also be plausible choices. “Any of my clients would drop everything for Bond,” an agent tells me. “Despite the obvious pressure, for all but the very biggest working filmmakers it’s a dream gig – career-changingly high profile and absurdly well paid. And who doesn’t have ideas about how to do James Bond?”
Quite: hence the steady drip of casting rumours, each feverishly war-gamed by both traditional and social media outlets, since before Craig’s tenure ended. The candidate to gain most traction so far is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, whom The Sun reported had been “formally offered the role” in March this year.
Chapman describes the story as “a rumour, but possibly an official rumour – a testing of the waters by Eon, just to see what the public reaction would be”. A cynic might observe that being touted as a likely Bond would be a handy PR fillip for an actor whose highest-profile forthcoming film was Kraven the Hunter, the latest in a series of hitherto-dismal Spider-Man spin-offs. Note the ATJ-as-Bond story surfaced a few weeks after Kraven’s forerunner, Madame Web, turned its star, Dakota Johnson, into an internet punchline. One man’s rumour is another’s pre-emptive damage control.
Besides, “One of the most exciting things about Daniel Craig’s casting is how unexpected it was,” Dyson notes. “Clive Owen was the name that kept coming up in the tabloids at the time, so it’s possible that the next Bond will be someone who isn’t currently even in the conversation.”
The level of fame also has to be right. “They have to be established, but on the cusp of something greater,” Chapman says. “It’s often said that Connery was an unknown, but in fact he was already active in television, and taking meaty supporting roles in films in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Roger Moore was closer to a star, but overwhelmingly on TV, in series such as Ivanhoe, The Persuaders! and The Saint.”
Who fits the Bond profile today? Perhaps someone like Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page, whose stylist barely let him leave the house without a tuxedo in 2021, as the end of Craig’s term approached. Debonairly handsome with a winning comic touch, he would also fit the Broccoli reinvention brief. (Not being white is no obstacle: thanks again to the Sony email hack, we know that in 2014, the studio’s then-chairwoman Amy Pascal was backing Idris Elba to take over from Craig – though at 51, the London-born actor has now aged out of contention.)
At 36, Page would be a plausible new recruit to the 007 programme, with time for multiple sequels ahead of him. Or if his moment’s passed, 39-year-old Theo James – whose starring role in another hit Netflix series, The Gentlemen, might as well have been a Bond audition – could easily pass as a super-spy in training. As would Jack Lowden, the 34-year-old star of Slow Horses. As Chapman points out, however, a conspicuously young Bond was something the franchise traditionally viewed with suspicion.
“Around the time of For Your Eyes Only, when Eon was considering recasting, it drew up some treatments for Bond as a young man on his first adventure.” But Cubby Broccoli intervened: “He thought audiences wanted to see Bond as capable and established, rather than making youthful mistakes. And it was only a decade after Broccoli’s death that they dared to give us a Bond who was fallible in Casino Royale.”
In a way, the question of how to launch Craig was made simpler by Eon having only acquired the rights to Fleming’s Casino Royale in 1999. (MGM did swapsies with Sony for Spider-Man.) That ironically made the first Bond novel the last to be raided for material by the films – though as Chapman observes, hardcore Flemingites would likely turn backflips for a new run of straight period adaptations.
But there’s a catch.
“Brand tie-ins,” says Dyson. “A 1950s-set reboot would definitely give the series a clean break. But a lot of the associated brands – the cars, the watches, the clothes – would have to go very retro with their product placement.”
In 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies and from Casino Royale to Spectre, Bond used a series of Sony Ericsson and Sony Xperia mobile phones. (At some point before No Time to Die, he apparently switched to Nokia.) And with the studio commanding a £3.3 million fee for Bond to simply hold an Xperia handset in Skyfall, having cinema’s suavest spy tacitly endorse certain products can be a useful means of plumping the budget. Move too far back in time and that revenue stream disappears, unless there’s an Xperia rotary dial in the works.
No other film franchise would prompt this sort of granular guesswork. But where Bond’s been and where he goes matters more than with Marvel or Star Wars.
“For one thing, Bond is the only film series to have been around consistently for half of cinema’s existence as a mass entertainment medium,” Chapman says. “But as a cultural figure, he’s also inextricably tied up with Brand Britain, reflecting the nation’s self-image.”
Chapman suggests that at times when Britishness has been in style – the swinging sixties, Cool Britannia, the 2012 Olympics – the films have resonated in a profound way with their domestic audience. And during the country’s less becoming moments – think the Iraq War, or the Winter of Discontent and its miserable build-up – our favourite spy strays into self-parody, laundering the national unease through invisible cars, trips to space and Union Jack-brand parachutes
“Bond is a product of the Neo-Elizabethan era – so the end of Empire, but still with a sense of pageantry and patriotism,” says Chapman. “But he now has to adjust to the Carolean age – a new king, and the new national outlook that entails. I would hope the next film will address that.”
Of course, as the credits always promise, James Bond will return. But much has still to be thrashed out before he can.
There may have been some creative decisions behind Craig's portrayal here, but it doesn't seem to tap in to the character that Fleming wrote. This is where Craig has taken the role and transformed it into something else and taken it into a different direction completely. Some fans like this approach (yourself included) whereas I hated it.
Dalton really had a grasp on the literary essence, particularly in LTK. Craig also did throughout certain moments in his tenure, but this moment in NTTD really took me out of the film. The spiky dialogue with M in his office also did too. This didn't tie in to Fleming's take on Bond and his dedicated devotion to M.
Yeah to be honest I think it would be quite odd in this day and age to make a film where the main character drifts through it unmoved. You might do it with a Judge Dredd or some other unknowable stoic force, but that's about it. I think it's worth looking at Indiana Jones films which are pretty similar to Bonds in tone and action: they've never made an Indy movie which hasn't had the main character undergo some sort of change or development. Even the M:I films make an effort to have Ethan Hunt a changed man by each of his adventures and get personally involved in the plot: audiences were genuinely crying out to have the storyline with his wife resolved. Audiences prefer to see their heroes get emotionally involved and to explore their inner lives: it's why OHMSS has long been a favourite.
I guess you could say every Bond movie changes him in so far as he hooks up with a chick by the end, but really that's pretty shallow stuff.
I think you really need to watch those movies again! :D
I would disagree with that sentiment. They have to make each film like it's the last and throw everything they have at it. That's as true of the stunts and locations as it is the story: these are epics and they pull out all the stops every time. Then they have a little rest and do it all again. You could well be talking about the villain's evil schemes: is destroying the world too big for a marathon series? Should they have had a baddie who wanted to do that only once every ten years or so in the Cubby years?
There are some aspects in the Craig run they obviously did leave for themselves, like giving us Q and Moneypenny, and it turns out they had also planned his death as well, but I think it's absolutely fine to go for maximum punch, in action, adventure, villain's scheme and personal story every time, because Bond films are supposed to be big.
I agree. You can have hefty emotional drama without reverting to half of the tropes the Craig era overused to death. I think the emotional stakes of a film like FRWL where Bond is a bit unsure of himself/emotionally invested in the main female lead despite not knowing her allegiances is the best example of this, and most Bond fans would place above the Craig era entirely. I think TSWLM is another wonderful example when they add the “ticking time bomb” of Anya knowing about Bond’s killing of her boyfriend, and whether or not she’ll kill him by films end.
There’s no shortage of ways to get emotional validity out of your audiences - but by the time NTTD came around I found myself wondering; “Okay what emotional stakes is Bond going to have to deal with now?” “What big revelation will be coming next?” “What demon from Bond’s past will be rearing its ugly head” and honestly that takes away from some of the fun and magic of these films for me. If I had to describe the Craig era to an outsider I’d describe it as “Abundant in Drama; Deficient in Fun.”
In terms of Indiana Jones having character development, I’d say LC and DOD come close. Recoiling with estranged family. Only DOD ends before we get to see character development. Which is why I think Sallah, Marion and Short Round should have gone on the adventure with Indy and Helena.
Bond is human. Let that be the starting point from which we explore character arcs and journeys. The formula looms so large over the character that it overshadows Bond’s simple humanity. What does Bond think about murdering in cold blood? What would be his modern worldview? What would cause him to have a crisis of conscience? Would Bond suffer from PTSD? Can he change his mind? Can he show compassion to a villain (that isn’t a woman)? I think it all starts with probing Bond’s humanity in ways that allow us to contextualize his “thoughts on things” in the modern world. I don’t mean repeating the same “…sexist misogynist dinosaur…” line, but following Charlie Higson’s interpretation in “On His Majesty’s Secret Service.”
To apprehend Bond as human means delving into things I don't want to know about the character. I like the mystery of the film Bond we see in those early films. I don't want to know about his moral dilemmas, his crises of confidence, PTSD, heartbreak, and everything else comes with being human. It was bad enough he wasn't a Beatles fan in GF. That he didn't shoot the girl in TLD, was good enough. We don't need a deep dive into how he feels about killing.
Nor do we need any more scenes like the one in TSWLM in which Bond recalls a past heartbreak. (A scene I have never understood why it's so highly praised.) Bourne's head required some examination. Bond's does not. Nothing is clearer to me where knowing more about Bond went off the rails than in SP. It irritates me when I watch those early films in which Bond and MI6 are learning about Blofeld to know that in the future we discover he's Bond's half-brother by way of adoption.
The problem with a reboot is you don't really wipe the slate clean. Is the Bond of NTTD the same Bond in DN? Yes and no. Same character, but different timeline with a different past. So, not the same. If none of that matters, then in the next film maybe Bond can have a sister and parents who are still living. Because if you can make the series villain a half brother, you can rewrite Bond's past however you wish.
Things can be done well or performed terribly. For every The Spy Who Loved Me there’s a Moonraker (respectfully). For every Skyfall there’s a Spectre (again, respectfully). But, I think, our divergence seems related to taste rather than execution.
Being that Fleming put much of himself in Bond, the more I learn about his life the more I treasure his semi-biographical hero. Fleming was complicated as is his creation. Sure, Bond is Fleming’s fantasy, but it’s a fantasy of his desired self, if not best self.
All that to say, I think people are looking, paradoxically, for more authenticity in their fantasy. Bond has both led and followed in the marketplace of ideas. The franchise embraced spectacle in the late 70s and a harder edge in the late 80s. This is where storytelling is at the moment, and I think the franchise would continue to benefit from keeping in its embrace.
I don't think EON will go into a Bond film with the mindset of not doing anything with the character. As I said, it would be very strange trying to craft a film with Bond as this flat and completely fixed character (even just by virtue of putting him in new situations and having him face new challenges which test him, he'll be given conflict). Again, they don't want to make a rubbish film. What these particular challenges/ideas are are also up to the creative team, and will help give the film its own identity.
So long as they stay true to the character and these stories while doing this, I think we'll get a good film (and honestly, I suspect what that actually means would be slightly different depending on which member here we ask. For what it's worth I think EON have always made great efforts to be true to this series/character, especially during the Brosnan/Craig years).
DOD ends before character development? Not sure where you're coming from on that.
I mean between Indy and Marion, getting back together again. Sorry for the confusion.
Hopefully the next Bond will not have the imprint of a television role. If that actor leans more toward dark and lethal, that's where the series will go. If he is light comedian who tends to be unflappable and really never in danger, that's what we'll get. Dark and lethal with a bit of humor can work, but unflappable and never in danger enough to believe will make for a weak Bond.
Use FRWL, TSWLM, TLD, GE and CR as inspiration.
Me too. :D
Most of all we just want things to be done right this time. I don't want to hear stories about Bond 26 being another troubled production written in books in a few years.
Confident and intense.
Reserved and charged.
Resilient and scarred.
Electrifying and haunted.
Enigmatic and isolated.
Relentless and weary.
The driving guitars in the Bond theme perfectly capture his dual-natured character and would make for some great themes to explore along with a gripping story.