It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
Secondly, I don't think the films have had the best plots over the last 40 years. I think the films should continue to be original because there's simply too much of a barrier to copy any other sort of continuation work. There's also more volume of literary Bond so that's natural that Gardner and Benson over 20 attempts (and the other celebrities over another 6) could achieve higher highs. Over the last 40 years the best film with little Fleming influence is probably one of Skyfall, Goldeneye or The Living Daylights, and those films reach similar heights to the Horowitz and Gardner eras.
In name only stories don't work for me, nor do screenplays that sample bit and pieces of previous films and novels as if that somehow legitimizes new works. The original YOLT was an abominable adaptation. All Safin's garden of death did was remind me of a better novel and WHATTITW reminded me of a better film.
There's DAF I suppose, but the villains are forgettable and I'm not sure there's enough there for a full film either. I guess you can use Spectreville, although something like TMWTGG's fun house isn't a million miles from that, and even Silva's abandoned island is very much in the spirit of it being a ghost town. Both of those ideas are far more creative and interesting riffs on the basic idea of that source material in my opinion.
I can't see TSWLM being used either, even just as a PTS. Maybe the broad ideas can be adapted (ie. the Bond girl being caught up by chance in the villain's scheme, her falling for Bond and him eventually walking out on her, perhaps elements of Viv's character/past etc), but not faithfully. YOLT and TMWTGG are so specific with their inclusion of Blofeld that you really have to use the broad ideas rather than specific plot points (ie. M lying to Bond for his 'own good' as we see in SF, Bond recovering from something traumatic throughout the story, the villain slowly being consumed by his madness/obsession etc). I can't see the amnesia plot ever being used (it was a bit of a cliche even in Fleming's time, albeit one done in a creative way in YOLT. Anyway, the basic theme of fate always bringing Bond back to the 'spy game'/him never being able to settle down with a normal life was there in NTTD). The brainwashing/assassination subplot is another I can't see being done in a straightforward adaptation. Honestly, something like Bond being used as a pawn to kill Pushkin in TLD isn't far away from that idea (just remove the brainwashing, which again can be a bit hoakey, and it's Bond being used to assassinate an ally).
You can maybe include broad elements of FAVTAK (I actually love the idea of a motorcycle assassination) and the other short stories... but really I think it's better just to use Fleming's work as a bouncing off point for new ideas, similar to the ways I pointed out. It's very much a skill in itself, and I think P&W and the other creators involved in the recent Bond movies have done relatively well at this. I'd go as far to say that doing this is unavoidable, and without even a trace of Fleming's work it's not a Bond film anymore.
I even think a faithful, period adaptation of Moonraker wouldn't be all that great. It's a pretty hokey story really, and has been riffed upon and added to so many times since that the original will seem a bit tame and straightforward in film form.
Casino Royale is a faithful adaptation just like the 60s Bond films did (DN, FRWL, TB, and OHMSS), it's just that the book didn't became available until 2006 due to the rights.
I think what could be the best example here is Licence To Kill, which adapted some scenes from Live And Let Die the book (Felix being mauled to a shark, "he disagreed with something that ate him" line, happened in a fictional island, and a villain using a religious cult), but it worked, I guess, it's more of a straight adaptation of the book than the 1973 film with Roger Moore, just replaced the Latins with the Blacks and it would be too close to the source material.
The difference between CR and MR anyway is that CR’s story was relatively untouched by EON. It’s an unusual Bond novel even for Fleming. It had a freshness to it. Much of MR is in films like DAD and GE (not to mention the gambling scene in OP) and of course things like Alex Rider as mentioned. The bare bone plot doesn’t have as much freshness, at least by the second half. It’d need a heavier adaptation than CR did, and I suspect even then it’d become a different story.
Oh right, I thought the first Alex Rider (Stormbreaker?) was enough of a Moonraker ripoff in itself! :D
Yeah exactly: Moonraker is a pretty hoary old story about a villain trying to blow up London with a big rocket- that's almost every 60s knock off spy film as it is, let alone all the Bond films which do it: it's not a story which people haven't seen at this point. Gambling a man to death though- that is a bit fresher to an audience.
I'll take a Fleming story any day over most of the nonsense passed off as an adaptation of his work.
We need James Bond against cookies.
But a faithful adaptation of MR is something else entirely. Even if they did use it for inspiration for Bond 26 it won’t be the exact same story at all.
Blofeld also used viruses in OHMSS, I think that's the first Bond film to tackle biological warfare.
It's really not. Just off the top of my head the Jessica Alba-starring Dark Angel TV series used programmable nanobot viruses twenty years ago. All these things have been done before.
We're saying that a faithful adaptation of Moonraker, nothing else, would be a bit uninteresting to a modern audience who have seen it all before. As 007HallY says, the nanobots in NTTD haven't been seen before in Bond, a targeted virus bioweapon has happened a lot less than a baddie with a big rocket. It's a fair point that the hacking in SF wasn't the most original theme, but really that was just something to hang the revenge plot from. I'm sure you didn't enjoy them, this site is full of people who don't enjoy the Bond films but inexplicably want more made immediately, but we're talking about the originality and freshness of the thing, and great and classic book though Moonraker is, a very faithful adaptation of it wouldn't make for a particularly gripping blockbuster because it's all a little bit passé 70 years on- it's not the complex story. Even folks who've seen Die Another Day would wonder why they're doing the same plot beats again.
You're right about the scars, we need to leaved scarred villains behind now.
It's a bit weird it's mentioned but never shown. At least in Moonraker (the movie) we got to see the poison kill those scientists. I feel like it's better to establish these threats by showing them to us.
Anyway, speaking of Alex Rider novels, Ark Angel riffs Moonraker by focusing on the Krebs thing. The story makes it seem like a terrorist attack is going to come and then we see that the terrorists and "Drax" (in this case a Russian called Drevin) are the same people. I posted a story idea where perhaps the dead German man was a part of a terrorist organisation and the first part angles on that analysis rather than on Drax himself.
It would make a nice change for the baddie in an apparently benign organisation not to be its CEO, but a villainous second in command or something, with Bond suspecting the boss before discovering it wasn't his fault at all!
Indeed, he was very open about his influences (and I think even the dogs on the street knew he loved Bond from early on in his career). I think what I'd take from it is that the old novels can certainly be used as a spring point but as noted above by yourself and others, we probably need to abandon the idea of a fully faithful adaptation because a lot of the things in the books are old hat at this point.
It doesn't necessarily mean you can't do something exciting with the old reliables - your nuclear weapons, your missiles - etc. Both Ghost Protocol and Fallout did very thrilling stuff with those tropes.
To go back to the Moonraker thing, I'd say there's a case to be made that the strongest, most adaptable aspect from it is the relationship between Gala and Bond.
I could imagine Gala being the next important Bond woman- almost like Ilsa in the Mission Impossible films: a capable, able Special Branch or DI officer or something like that who crosses paths with Bond, forms a growing attachment, but then comes and goes from his life, across several films perhaps.
Rather than a doomed romance where someone has to die, it might be quite fun for Bond to have a will-they won't-they connection with a woman which builds a bit more than the usual instant love affair.
Never heard of this show. But ultimately no ideas are truly original/new. Fresh, yes. But not wholly new. The nanobots from NTTD aren't like anything I've seen before anyway. I'm sure it'll be distinct even from that show in some way.
I do.
I don't care if things have been done before. That ticking clock plot device in the circus in OP worked great and was damn nailbiting when I first saw it, even though it's been done in TSWLM, GF and tons of other movies. They just need to put a new creative spin on it.
Because, sure, if it can be filmed in as heart-poundingly an exciting way as Fallout then I'm hardly to going to say I don't want to see it. But the conversation is about a faithful MR adaptation, not putting a 'new creative spin' on it, and the book MR ain't Fallout.
And if we're open to the films putting big, creatively new spins on these stories, then we already have DAD.
Quite where the line between what's acceptable as a Fleming adaptation and what isn't doesn't seem to be based upon how faithful it actually is, but just whether it's any good. I don't think sticking to a Fleming book automatically makes a good film, because sometimes they've done it and it's been great and sometimes they haven't and it's not been the best.
Yeah, GF isn't a great film just because it sticks to Fleming's novel. Actually you can argue it's a great film because it deviates from the material and adapts the story successfully. Same for FRWL. That's not to say there's anything wrong with the books. Just that what makes a great film isn't always what makes a great book.
MR is even trickier to adapt. I think they'd have to try very hard to make the climax work (again, it amounts to Bond and Gala in a bunker, hiding in a vent/getting burned slightly, and then fiddling with a computer).
Nothing wrong with ticking clocks or a villain wanting to destroy the world. As you said, just have to do something fresh with it.
Which is great, but kind of missing what the conversation is about. As I said in my specific reply to your post: I'm happy to see those things too, but not as presented in the novel we're talking about. With a new and creative spin, as you said; and I agree entirely.
+1. It would be cool to see Gala in a couple of films.
I think there are parts of MR that would still be interesting to see on film: the blowtorch scene, for example. If they want to go for a grittier Bond a la CR, I can see those scenes happening. There's something exciting about *not* having a big set piece but yet bringing Fleming to the screen. I'm sure they could embellish it.
No one is saying a 100% faithful adaptation, but a lot better job could have been done with some of the titles that exist in name only.