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Yes, yes, yes! GF and TSWLM each made a whole generation Bond fans for life.
There are some very easy metaphors available to signify we are moving forward and getting rid of Aston as a marque would be an obvious one.
The DB5 is like the Terminator, it needs to be lowered into a smelter to kill it off. Meanwhile MI have already used the BMW I8, a much cooler car in the eyes of the "youth" rather than the tired Aston.
We just need to have a big Bond "garage sale" and clear all of this stuff out and make room for new and innovative material.
(like a McLaren P1 or similar?)
I liked John Gardner's plot to SeaFire, wherein the villain sought to perpetrate a natural disaster because he had the remedy and would become the event's savior. So crazy environmentalist would be good.
There's also lots of stuff from the books they could update to a modern context. I posted an outline somewhere in this thread for an adaptation of MR with Islamic terrorists as the villain rather than Nazis. You could do something with LALD as well, the smuggling to fund espoinage plot (instead of pirate treasure, could be human trafficking?).
I think it'd be fun to strip Bond of the glamour and see him out of his element a bit more. Have him on leave expecting to be sent to some exotic location but instead his mission starts in a run down English town (obviously this would just be a set up and lead into the usual glamourous locations, e.g. the villain he's sent to investigate grew up there so he's looking for clues).
Ideally if it's a new Bond, Blofeld/SPECTRE wouldn't appear for a couple of films and he'd already be familiar with them (keep it vague but make it clear they have history). I don't want another 40 year break from them but at the same time I don't want it to feel like Bond's sole purpose in life is to fight Spectre, which is part of the issue I had with the Silva retcon but also a problem with the Connery era imo. He should face a wide variety of threats.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4684574/Russia-s-NUKE-TRAIN-Satan-2-missile-implemented.html
Oh yes! Come to think about it yes, yes and yes! A real larger than life weapon against a larger than life spy. Great find.
That's a proper Bond plot.
Bollocks to all this personal stuff. I want a finale of Bond battling a giant henchman on the roof of this train while a country destroying warhead controlled by SPECTRE counts down to WW3.
I think I just had an orgasm.
I think if they would do something like this today, but update the tone to have a bit more genuine danger, then they could produce a Bond film for 150 million easily, especially if they shot on digital, which is cheaper and didn't exist in the 70's.
But then there followed 15 films with Bond in the PTS. I just don't think the audience will accept a Bond-less one, and more importantly, Eon won't want to take that risk...
CR was a brave one without a stunt, but even that may have just been a one-off.
I agree, @echo. I think that EON wouldn't want to take Bond out of the action for a big space of time, even just a PTS, and that may put that kind of idea on hold. I also find the Bond-less PTSs infinitely more dull than all the others, and I don't think that's by accident. Cool idea, maybe, but there's a reason it didn't stick around.
One thing is for certain: I don't think we will ever see modern a Bond film that did what FRWL did, where Bond is on the bench for nearly 20 minutes before we even see his face.
I like that idea a lot. It'd be a fun way to freshen things up, especially if they followed through on that and went for a Bond film that was as stripped back and bare bones as possible (following the Mad Max trend). Maybe open up the gunbarrel on him getting off a plane and making his way through the airport then driving to meet his contact, hiding his face ala Lazenby in OHMSS?
Thanks! It would be a subtle way of putting the character back in mystery, back at arms length after so much time in Craig's personal space. I actually think it would work better after the credits though. My idea would be a tense, atmospheric PTS where we see the villain and get just the very bare minimum of information about his plan. Then the titles, and then open with Bond at the airport or traveling to his contact. They don't have to explicitly put in shadows, or hide his face. Just don't give a full on close up until he meets his contact and they have some spy banter.
You could do the same thing with Bond and have his small team in the field for the PTS on a mission where they're waiting for something to happen, and talk about the new guy. Each has something to say, some good, some bad, some worrying, manipulating us into thinking he is going to be what everyone says.
"Who's this 'Bond' we've got?"
"Ex-RAF, sir. Comes highly recommended, though we're told to be wary of his 'proclivities.'"
"Proclivities? Like?"
"'Boldness,' the file says."
"I can account for the boldness. The bastard attempted to charm me at the bar last night over vodka martinis, as if men really drink those."
"He does seem to be a bit of a character, eh? Not necessarily one I'd like to have guarding my life in the field, if I may be bold myself."
From an assortment of male or female perspectives we get an initial idea of who this Bond may be. Is he so bold that he often becomes too rash and risky, making him dangerous, and does he care about anything more than lying with a woman? All of these notions and half-baked impressions could then be directly refuted when something goes wrong in the mission, or the team's cover is blown, and the new Bond is introduced in a heated moment of action as he races directly to the conflict to help the team who are extremely critical or dismissive of him. As the scene unfolds it's not just the spies who get proved wrong, it's the audience too and we see Bond beneath the layers of what people say he is or expect him to be.
I think it would be an interesting idea, as we've never seen that done before. We've seen Bond introduced for the first time in the heat of a job, as with Tim and Pierce, but never in a style where characters set you up beforehand to build his character before the big exit. I think a dialogue like the one above could be a good chance to play some light and fun games with the audience, teasing that Bond is only a womanizing martini sipper, before showing them that this man is far more than a caricature or what you expect from knowing the legacy of the series.
In many ways it's how Fleming wrote Bond, where a woman would have a built-in notion of who he is, like Vesper viewing him as a glorified spy hero she wanted to charm before she saw the darkness of his job and all he'd had to do in the field to be who he is, or Gala Brand in Moonraker who initially writes Bond off to be a globe-trotting womanizer not far removed from the kind of man many think the character is in the films. These moments and the characters' false impressions regarding the spy then gradually get to be proven wrong in a karmic way, as Bond lays down his life to save them and shows a deeper side of himself through that bold action.
I like your idea to turn it into more of a set piece, where the agents are proven wrong one by one. That would certainly tell the audience "this guys a real person, not a myth".
My idea is slightly different. I thought if he met a contact after the credits, it would serve as a briefing scene, but without one party having definitive authority over the other. Perhaps they banter a little, and Bond's wit is displayed. Then, a few scenes later, Bond meets the Bond girl and a completely different side of him comes out, like a different person. Then, the action kicks off, and Bond's dogged determination is shown. By the end of the film we have this completed picture of the character, without Bond being a rookie on his first mission.
That's not what happens in that film, though...
Essentially the same. Just different scope.
Just even close. The only similarity is there's a bomb, and that's it. I've seen The Dark Knight Rises many times and I'm foggy on the part where Batman and Bane are fighting as a bomb ticks down. In fact, I think Bane was a bit...incapacitated by the time Batman had to drive it out himself.
Not that any of it matters, I just got so confused why such a random and bare comparison was being made and found myself speaking up.
Indeed. We're talking a YOLT style finale with the world on the brink of WW3 and Bond the only one who can stop it.
MI:GP a far better film to pluck out of thin air.
Anyway what is your point @QuantumOrganization? No one ever said that a bomb countdown was original. And Bond was doing it long before TDKR anyway so not sure why you randomly pick that film.
@TheWizardOfIce, I'd be interested to see a film inspired by the ending of Moonraker where the rocket actually shoots out towards London and Bond has to speed along as it takes flight with Q in the back trying to reprogram it. Maybe a bit too over the top, but the WW3 world on the brink of war is too.
But that actually is quite exactly what happens in MI:GP and even that wasn't too original. I'd still lobby for something a bit more creative.
It's definitely a well worn image, like much in the genre. I just like the image of Bond racing back to London opposite traffic with Q to stop immense death.