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
I saw a few buildings. Or maybe some were trailers.
What does ST stand for?
That's pretty good
What is this all about?
Also I forgot, thank you very much @NickTwentyTwo for the article.
It will be grand, I think. Very excited for it.
I like that they’re using two versions of classic Land/Range Rovers too.
Right now, a smoking protagonist, a ruthless assassin, some sex,... can get you an R. But even more than that, there are social warriors out there. We've given them a forum and they're using it. They're keeping count of things and they will build a case against you if the male-female unbalance is there. They'll overanalyse the lines, the gestures, the plot twists, ... and "deduce" that Bond is a sexist creep, a terrible role model, a bad example for future husbands, ... Why Bond? Because the bigger their target, the more attention people will pay to their nonsense.
And that's what we need, isn't it? The Bonds are no longer the biggest action flicks. They may not even be the most glamorous spy adventures anymore. Others have surpassed the Bonds where they used to be the hottest property in filmland. But Bond has a secret weapon and journalists with an agenda have handed it to us on a plate.
Bond still reaches a wide audience. And at the same time, Bond can strike a little controversy. Controversy sells. Nothing worse than a bland, boring, tediously PC perfect Bond. A Bond who shows some sexual prowess, who doesn't want to be a role model, who reminds people that this world is not controlled by body-positive Instagram celebs, now THAT Bond sells hard! Let the equality crusaders have it in big for Bond--the more they write about how Bond is swimming upstream in their river of perfect social conscience, the more "risqué" it feels to watch and enjoy a Bond film. Everyone likes that bit of "safe danger", of sitting comfortably in your movie theatre chair, enjoying what the holy media are saying is "wrong". Like the juries deciding on porn, or Wertham's "Seduction of Innocent"--dark forces have railed against the very thing that ended spinning totally out of their control. The more "forbidden" the fruit, the better its taste.
I'm not saying Bond has to actively pursue controversy. But by staying true to its Flemingian nature, the film series can easily defy the voodoo curse of enforced gender equality and whatnot that has infected even the Marvel films and--some will say--even Star Wars. James Bond can become edgier again by basically not changing a bloody thing about the formula. By not giving in, by not swinging the pendulum even farther away from his legacy, Bond can gain popularity. Obviously we don't need to go back to Bond hitting women. But a little Fleming in our Bond doesn't hurt, now does it?
I also heartily support your view about not giving in. It´s a lot like ACDC, everybody says they always do the same, but when they come up with new album every five years, everybody is hungry enough to want it, and justifiably so.
I know this is off-topic, but just one more thing.
A colleague of mine told me the other day, when we were talking about NTTD and how much I am looking forward to the film, that she won't allow her 11-year old son to see the film. Because "he's too young for those films". It's true that Bond films aren't made for children, but I still don't think age has anything to do with it.
I watched a guy's heart getting ripped out when I was 7. That moment in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom made me not want to sleep with the lights out for weeks! And you know what, I loved it! And I still do. Every time I watch that movie--and I'm in my 30s now--I fondly recall being really impressed by that scene.
Films that were completely safe for children barely did it for me then (which is why I'm not the Disney cartoon kinda guy), let alone now. But films that made me tense up, that weren't made with a 10-year old in mind, like The Terminator, Poltergeist, Goonies, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, were the ones I actively sought out and that are still my darlings.
Kids don't get enough credit in my opinion. They want to be spooked--and the ones that don't can still be kept safe from cinematic traumas by their parents. The Bonds aren't horror, but there's some edgy stuff in them that 7-year old or even 10-year old me didn't fully understand. Some of the fruitier jokes, for example... "Take me around the world one more time," or "Just keeping the British end up, sir," held no significance for me when I was in my single digits. But that was fine because Jaws had creeped the hell out of me, so I was still trying to keep my heartbeat under control. Perhaps that is why I still love these movies so much! And a few years later, when I obviously caught the jokes but was still just in my early teens and not supposed to catch them, I had these internal giggles.
Most kids can handle edgier movies, even if they weren't necessarily made for them. It's okay for most kids to get the chills from watching a horror flick or to blush when watching something juicier. They brag about it at school; they learn things their parents will no longer have to explain, they'll also develop a clear fear or loathing of "bad things". And years later, they'll watch these films again thinking back on those days when they got goosebumps doing so the first time. That's the fun of it all.
If we made our Bond films morality tales that are even safe for children, grown-ups won't like them, and the children of today won't like them ten years from now either. Part of why I love Spielberg and Lucas so much is that they used to not care about upsetting us as kids. There are moments in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws and even Star Wars that are absolutely not safe for children. Yet we, as children, devoured those films, religiously. Have we turned traumatic, maniacal, abusive, aggressive, ... because of them?
Age has nothing to do with it; if anything, most kids, other than the extremely sheltered, crave a little tension in their films too. True, not every kid out there can handle an edgier movie with ease; neither can every adult. That doesn't mean we need to overgeneralize things and either exclude kids from our Bond audience or make our Bonds safe for them, whatever that means. I'll repeat what I said before: we aren't giving our kids enough credit these days... We were given loads of freedom to explore the world of cinema as kids, and we turned out all right, didn't we?
Business wise, to see which option is better (being save vs. being daring) one only needs to compare how Terminator Dark Fate is doing vs. how Joker is doing.
My cinema is still showing 5 screenings a Day of Joker vs. 2 of TDF.
People are flogging to see Joker because the media has given them the impression that it's 'dangerous' and edgy. Oldest trick in the book really.
That creates excitement all by itself.
As for Bond, he is the opposite of being boring and bland. He is edgy by desing. Doing things other guys would not be able to do, or to scared of. He goes after what he wants and never apologizes if he happens to ruffle some feathers. He has questionable morals (which he questions himself in the Books all the time) he kills people that happen to be in his way, and goes after whatever girl he fancies even if she might show no interest at first.
The media will always jump on that because it's easy. We as fans should not let that get to our head or try to water it down so it doesn get critiqued anymore. It will.
It would be a disaster to only hand it to P&W. I have full confidence in her, and yes this purely based on what she did with Killing Eve. And it's not that she rewrote the entire script, ey.
She brought the first "likeable" female psychopath to the screen. I bet a lot of people didn't even know that psychopathy exists in women too.
Mind you, the series is not THAT close to the novels, but it doesn't matter for once.
So yes, bring on April!
And @DarthDimi, wheter one agrees with you or not, as usual that is a very eloquent post.
That's where it all started, yes. I would put it a bit differently though.
"The tabloid media coverage of Phoebes addition was designed to make people loose their minds."
And it worked, as it usually does.
Or is adapting to today's times a bridge too far for some? Anyway, as Waller-Bridge said, Bond himself doesn't need to "change", the film though and how it views him and other characters, particularly the women, does...
Of course it's adapting to the times, and they are free to change all the characters any way they like, black Felix, black MP, Female M etc etc etc. They can modernize the villains and give them topical schemes.
The can make the women more independend and "strong" and keep shouting it from the roofs so that everybody finally get's it.
BUT James Bond needs to keep certain characteristics. It's essential to the storytelling as we are seeing the world through his eyes. He needs to keep his confidence (arrogance), and his 'appetites'.
That's just the short version as we could go on endlessly about this.
Full steam ahead, @DarthDimi. Your views mirror my own.
Yes, Russian, as already seen filming.
I know we've seen russian plates before on some baddies cars, but I don't remember seeing it on the Land Rover.
Also Safin is a Russian surname....you thinking what I'm thinking
The original villain casting was looking for someone who could be Russian or Middle Eastern.
Well technically it's origin comes from Tatars, Turkic ethnic group native to the Volga-Ural region of Russia...