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It's in the posted video of The Bond Experience.
The comment was came from a user named John Wells:
"This is a long one lol.
One idea I had: Bond and Madeline come face to face after five years. The whole Blofeld scene happens, Bond goes to Madeline’s house and they have their conversation about how he loves her. She’s very distant, obviously she has something to tell him, but she can’t. Bond pours his heart out, then meets her daughter.
We as the audience, as well as Bond, notice a resemblance. Madeline assures Bond that she’s not his, but Bond isn’t convinced. She looks a lot like him. Madeline can’t bring herself to explain because she still has feelings for Bond. Bond finishes telling her that he loves her and goes into kiss her, when all of the sudden the front door opens and we see a man who has similar features to Bond come in. The daughter runs to the man and says “Daddy!”. Him and Madeline embrace. We see now that Bond has lost his chance with Madeline.
He loses her because he was busy looking over his shoulder, into the past, while she wanted to move forward with her life. And she found someone to settle down with.
The rest would play out with Bond and Madeline investigating Safin and figuring out his island. We would see Bond still loves Madeline, and is very protective of her, while there would be tension between Bond and Madeline’s husband. Bond would still think he has a chance with Madeline and would not be willing to let go just yet.
Like in the movie, Safin and his men would attack them, Bond and Madeline and her family would drive away. Leading to Madeline a Mathilde getting captured by Safin while her husband has been shot. Bond would help him up and Nomi would pick them up. The husband would beg Bond to say his family.
The rest of the movie play out similar, but with Safin hitting home the points that Mathilde could have been his daughter, and questioning why even save a woman and her daughter that are a walking embodiment of his failure and his own paranoia. Bond basically states that he still loves Madeline and wants what is best for her, even though that might mean him stepping aside.
Bond and Safin would have a more vicious fight, with them coming to a standstill. Safin would have the vile over him, and Bond would let him infect him so Safin would let his guard down, allowing Bond to attack and kill him. Bond would start to exit the island where him and Madeline have a final conversation.
He states how sorry he is, and that her and Mathilde need to move on. Madeline says she still loves him, and the island starts to blow up from the rocket fire. The building would collapse around Bond and we would cut to black.
The next scene would be in Mi6, where his co workers would have a toast to Bond, this time Madeline and Mathilde would be there collecting mementos. They would then go down stairs and hop in a car driven by Madeline’s husband, who now has respect for Bond.
As they leave, M would say “Do you need time, 007?”, the camera would pan over and we would see Bond standing by the door. He would state “I have all the time in the world.” He would sit down and the briefing would start. James Bond is dead, now he is and will forever be, 007 is a long one lol.
One idea I had: Bond and Madeline come face to face after five years. The whole Blofeld scene happens, Bond goes to Madeline’s house and they have their conversation about how he loves her. She’s very distant, obviously she has something to tell him, but she can’t. Bond pours his heart out, then meets her daughter.
We as the audience, as well as Bond, notice a resemblance. Madeline assures Bond that she’s not his, but Bond isn’t convinced. She looks a lot like him. Madeline can’t bring herself to explain because she still has feelings for Bond. Bond finishes telling her that he loves her and goes into kiss her, when all of the sudden the front door opens and we see a man who has similar features to Bond come in. The daughter runs to the man and says “Daddy!”. Him and Madeline embrace. We see now that Bond has lost his chance with Madeline.
He loses her because he was busy looking over his shoulder, into the past, while she wanted to move forward with her life. And she found someone to settle down with.
The rest would play out with Bond and Madeline investigating Safin and figuring out his island. We would see Bond still loves Madeline, and is very protective of her, while there would be tension between Bond and Madeline’s husband. Bond would still think he has a chance with Madeline and would not be willing to let go just yet.
Like in the movie, Safin and his men would attack them, Bond and Madeline and her family would drive away. Leading to Madeline a Mathilde getting captured by Safin while her husband has been shot. Bond would help him up and Nomi would pick them up. The husband would beg Bond to say his family.
The rest of the movie play out similar, but with Safin hitting home the points that Mathilde could have been his daughter, and questioning why even save a woman and her daughter that are a walking embodiment of his failure and his own paranoia. Bond basically states that he still loves Madeline and wants what is best for her, even though that might mean him stepping aside.
Bond and Safin would have a more vicious fight, with them coming to a standstill. Safin would have the vile over him, and Bond would let him infect him so Safin would let his guard down, allowing Bond to attack and kill him. Bond would start to exit the island where him and Madeline have a final conversation.
He states how sorry he is, and that her and Mathilde need to move on. Madeline says she still loves him, and the island starts to blow up from the rocket fire. The building would collapse around Bond and we would cut to black.
The next scene would be in Mi6, where his co workers would have a toast to Bond, this time Madeline and Mathilde would be there collecting mementos. They would then go down stairs and hop in a car driven by Madeline’s husband, who now has respect for Bond.
As they leave, M would say “Do you need time, 007?”, the camera would pan over and we would see Bond standing by the door. He would state “I have all the time in the world.” He would sit down and the briefing would start. James Bond is dead, now he is and will forever be, 007"
In a way, I think the writers bottled it. If they really wanted to do something different/brave, they could have moved forward in real time from Spectre with Bond happily married with a kid or two and done a more "Taken" style movie using his own set of "special skills" - (how about M's boss leaking Bond's location/new identity to set a trap for an international assassin?) , Craig could really have worked, showing how the man had changed from the Bond we knew.
yes, this would have divided fans but it would have been interesting and consistant in tone. They tried to retain the traditional Bond by excluding Mads for a huge chunk of the film and letting Bond be Bond and, it seems to be, these section of the movie works well with Armas, Wright etc doing stirling work. But this is sandwiched between the emotional suff with Mads at the beginning and the end and the contrast in tone and the shifts required to give Bond time and space to be the Bond we know and love really does not work.
Thanks, @patb
But Bond being married and having a child was something Fleming never intended when he was writing the character.
Bond was written as a reflection of himself (Fleming), he wrote Bond because of his nervousness to his marriage to Ann and him becoming a father.
So having Bond being married and having a family would be a betrayal against Fleming in my humble opinion.
It's not bad to see the other side of Bond's character, but to go far from it is not a good idea.
I like that Bond mistaken Mathilde as his daughter, but suddenly Bond found out that Madeleine has already a family of her own, she found a man who can give her the future that she wanted, when Bond turned his back on her.
It was the consequences of what he made from the start.
So that will be his ultimate regret, his actions made him suffer.
So Bond alone, willing to fight Safin and prepared to die because he has nothing.
That's probably will be the most Flemingesque moment, like in YOLT.
Bond can't have a family even if he wanted to, the future that he dreams of, he can never have that.
Bond was a tragic character, he's living a tragic life of being a loner, born to protect Queen and Country.
That's Bond.
On a wider note, does a Bond movie script writer have to have in their head "Is this what Fleming intended" or can they overide this in an attenpt to create a great movie? Surely, there has to be room for flexibility?
this is the issue. They had to have them split so Bond could go off and be Bond. If they had been married, then how could Bond have just chucked her on the first train out? This is the problem of writing a great story with one arm tied behind your back.
Without those two main points, it might as well have been a totally different script.
Nobody wants to see Madeleine's husband. Cinematic Bond is supposed to be irresistible to women. Fleming knew with MR to keep the fiance in the background until the very end.
Definitely mate. I do wonder what the story would have been like, had they kept them together for longer. I wonder if there was ever a temptation to marry them, Bond basically spent the film as if he was married to Madeline
That delivery was straight out the Moore years, I thought.
I have often referred to NTTD as "The Spectre Reclamation Project." Never before has a Bond film been so devoted to shoring up the defects of its predecessor. I think NTTD is a better film than Spectre, but I agree it's hamstrung by an unreasonable attachment to continuity. I have little doubt that the filmmakers could have given Craig a better send-off with a completely new story and new set of characters. Especially within a three hour running time!
When writing a 21st century Bond film a screenwriter has to sometimes override that and be flexible. On the other hand, Fleming's stories are the DNA and bedrock core of the character, especially since the first Bond films, which set the pattern for the series, were close to the books. So it's a balancing act. I think a core part of Bond's appeal, as set down by Fleming, is that Bond is an escape from domesticity and family life. Hence the total absence of children and (house)wives in the books and all but one of the Bond films. The Bond film that includes such elements veers close to invalidating that core part of the character's appeal, in my view.
Art is not reality. It is an image.
If a James Bond movie was operating under "real world rules", then we'd talk about how a licence to kill isn't actually a real thing. But we suspend our disbelief, because it's story. And that object becomes important in creating the story-world. It makes sense because the logic of the story-world assumes it makes sense. It's the same reason when seeing Hamlet, the existence of ghosts is just presupposed by the play itself. Are ghosts real? Of course not! But in the story-world, the ghosts are real.
So this motif isn't operating under the rules of reality, it's operating under the rules of fiction. It's a metaphor. Writing, like any art form, exists in the realm of metaphor. Listen to any writer talk about their writing. They speak in the language of metaphor.
And art with no connection to reality, where human beings no longer behave like recognizable human beings, is an ugly image. Furthermore, a Bond film still has more ties to reality than something like Lord of the Rings. It still operates under plenty of "real life rules." That's why Bond, who works for a real country and real government organization, can be shot and killed whereas Superman can't. It's why Bond can't expect miracles of divine intervention.
I think what you're trying to say is that the Bond films operate in a very stylized world and that, like any form of genre fiction, they depend on some implausible conventions that the audience accepts in order for the stories to take place. But none of that implies that in Bond's world someone can be automatically redeemed by having kids.
Remember that line in San Monique hotel in LALD, that referred to Rosie Carver as Bond's wife 😅
Agreed with this, if you're going to give Bond a child and wife, then you're going to change the character, it's now an entirely different character, that's not Bond anymore because he's not built that way in my opinion.
Bond is a male fantasy, a wish fulfilment, that's one of his appeal that makes him strong up to this day.
This line of thought is quite funny considering so much space of Bond's internal monologuing in the novels is him lamenting that his work puts him in a position where he can never truly love anybody without the risk of them being hurt (or, worse, hurting himself). I'm think about the ending of "Moonraker", or his opening bit in "From Russia with Love", Or that knife-to-the-heart that is the the last page of "Casino Royale".
Whether or not one likes them or not, the Craig incarnation of the character is the most in-line with the psychology of Fleming's. Of course, this is irrelevant in terms of quality or preference. But to say "it's now an entirely different character" is a bit funny considering the internal conflict of CraigBond is 1:1 what the internal conflict of FlemingBond is.
Craig has been the ‘grown up’ Bond for a generation who were children under Moore and Dalton, and teenagers under Brosnan. Gen X and Millennials basically. Connery and Lazenby, and Moore, were ‘Boomer’ Bonds, and Brosnan was their Craig.
It’s ok to see someone be a hero and still think about parenthood, or the nature of time passing.
Yeah maybe it’s just the way I watch these films, but I don’t go into them hoping they make me forget all about normal life or to project myself into the character. I just want to see a good film with some cool James Bond stuff. And if they manage to do something new and exciting without sacrificing any of that cool James Bond stuff, then that’s even better. Being reminded about things like family and mortality doesn’t detract from the escapism for me, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve really ended up loving the variety of the series, so I’ve found myself caring less and less about what sort of tone they go for. All I want is a good film with a story that keeps me engaged. Something like MR might be more “fun” than NTTD in the sense that the story is a lot lighter, but I don’t enjoy watching it anywhere near as much, because it just bores me, and makes me wish I was watching TSWLM instead.
I agree with you on NTTD too. The Craig era had always been a bit of a mixed bag in my eyes, but the way they tied it all together and wrapped up all those themes with the finale made the journey there feel worth it for me. It’s one of my favourite eras of Bond now, and I never thought I’d be saying that a few years ago.
The fights with Primo and Logan Ash were real highlights just wish they weren't so quick
That'll always be one of my complaints I have: the good action bits are over way too fast. I'm also still upset how much they hyped up the Norway chase for how underwhelming it feels (though still beautiful looking) and quickly it's over. I think they showed most of it in the trailers.
However, the finale certainly more than makes up for that. The tracking shot up the stairwell is brilliant, that's the sort of grit and intensity I'd been missing from the era since QoS.
That’s the thing isn’t, the idea of identifying with the character, or — in terms of escapism — what is it you are trying escape from?
Parenthood itself, spending time with your kids… these things are actually aspirational for a lot of people these days. And Bond is a Gen Xer himself now pretty much.
The scene where he cuts the Apple is ‘Bond being Daddy’ and you know, there are plenty of Dad’s in the audience who will see themselves in that, some who would like to be that, and plenty of people who will find that attractive. That it also brings the character that little bit closer to human, less of a ‘superhero’ (as was also done with Iron Man over in Marvel, to a much greater degree, and also in the exact same film the character was to die in… admittedly, dads dying is a flipping ancient trope by this point.) then makes the bits when he is firing guns and smacking the bad guys about more exciting and interesting by contrast. Being kind to a kid, your kid, does not make you less manly (or as discussed, less Bondian) anymore than the shower scene in CR or the flames scene in QoS did.
I think the CR-NTTD run actually got more back to being ‘art’ and I think that is what makes me like it more now in retrospect. It’s just art for now, for this generation, in a way that Dr.No was trying to be way back at the beginning.
About the Norway chase, I know it has suspension of disbelief, but I can't help but to turn my eyes big at how dumb and foolish are the villains when it comes to driving like how easily the cars got stumbled and flipped by Bond’s little car, are the bad guys in this film really that fool to drive a vehicle?
And how come that the villains can’t able to shoot him but Bond can easily shoot them, Bond easily dodged all of the bullets.
I laughed when Logan Ash starts to shoot Bond from a car but Bond was just calm and comfortably walking around the woods until the car hit that broken tree trunk then it rolled down then Bond shoots the car, I'm really laughing at how dumb some of the action scenes.
My favorite action scene for me in that film was the stairwell fight scene.
I think that Bond having a child (or wife who doesn't immediately die, or long-term girlfriend) seems off with the Connery/Moore/Brosnan incarnations of Bond.
It seems perfectly in line with Lazenby/Dalton/Craig, and Fleming.