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I think you can maintain optimism. NTTD was as far as the personal-issues approach to Bond could go, just as DAD took the campy-fantastical approach to its limits. What more can you do with Bond's personal life after giving a (de facto) wife and daughter and killing him? It's a literal dead end. There's nowhere to go but in the opposite direction.
Also keep in mind that the Bond films have always had a talent for course correction, for knowing when it had exhausted an approach. OHMSS followed YOLT (and then was followed by DAF), the low-rent TMWTGG was corrected by the splashy TSWLM, the down-to-earth FYEO followed MR, TLD followed the exhausted AVTAK, GE came after LTK underperformed, and CR brought the series back to reality after DAD.
EON's first task will be to establish whoever they choose as the new Bond. And they probably will try avoid direct comparisons with Craig by taking the films in a different direction. If you want to know what the next Bond film will be like, pay attention to the trends in action movie franchises over the next couple of years. Just as DAD followed the XXX playbook and CR the Bourne one, the next Bond film will try to surf the zeitgeist.
I think I may have just phrased it wrong. Thinking back, I think I'm more cautiously optimistic, rather than not optimistic at all. Same way I was for NTTD.
Great point, and one that gives me hope :)
I'll keep my fingers crossed that they don't start taking cues from Marvel! By this (accurate) logic, the course correction from all-too-human Bond in NTTD could bring us...
superhero Bond
>-) :-O ;)
I also find it interesting that Blofeld is in each of the fifth Bond films, and dies in two of them.
They’ve already taken cues from Marvel. Hence the Spectre “saga”.
I have never seen anyone admonished for repeating points about liking NTTD, and I have followed the threads closely lately. I also believe that better tact might be used to those that are deemed to be “repetitive.” I have seen some remarks come across as snide. Perhaps even a private message to discuss something like that would be better imo. This film (NTTD) is extremely divisive. I get the feeling that some in charge take it personally when people on here are continuous in negative commenting about NTTD (see some of the posts above). I was told by a mod when I got on here if I didn’t like a poster, ignore their posts. And I’m not trying to argue, just saying this in the interest of fairness. Like someone mentioned, in time these comments will calm down.
Really sorry to hear that mate.
Good point, and leaves me optimistic for the next film. The one thing I would really love now in the next film is a return to some properly adapted unused Fleming scenes, whether its Bond and M at Blades playing cards with a villain (MR), Bond going undercover against either a bunch of gangsters called the Spangled Mob (DAF), or Bond going undercover as Mark Hazard against the most deadly hitman on earth (TMWTGG), or Bond meeting Viv Michel in a rundown motel to rescue her (TSWLM).
Drop the family backstories, weave in these Fleming scenes while adapting Forever and a Day, Trigger Mortis or Colonel Sun and I'll be an ecstatic Bond fan once more!
However, I think there might be considering a series, maybe using some of the ideas you mention Jetset, you just laid out what could be 4 seasons of 8 episodes on Amazon.
The other is going The Joker / The Batman route, and hire indie filmmakers to produce limited in budget films that put the edge back on the character by doing one off films that are alternate takes on the character.
Throughout the Craig era they always tried to find the most dramatic situation for Bond to confront. In CR Bond learns how to kill without remorse, falls in love for the first time but he is betrayed by her, so he learns he can't trust no one. In QoS he meets Camille, sees what her desire for revenge does to her, and decides not to follow that path. In SF he loses his maternal figure - he becomes literally an orphan again. And in SP he's hunted by his stepbrother, goes rogue from his MI6 family because they are compromised and he cannot trust the establishment any more and signs off to live a new life with a new love.
So in NTTD they gave him a family that he needs to save. For a film like Bond you cannot get a more dramatic and emotional situation than that.
Good post, and I agree with every word.
If they wanted to build some form of continuity between the new films, I wouldn't mind if they built up Scaramanga in the background of each mission. So that we hear of his reputation before we meet him in the third film (for example). That way he can properly be built up as the deadliest assassin. Maybe he can off a 00 or two. Or is hired by the Spangled Mob in the first film.
Good summary. And worth noting CR is the only drama angle explored by Fleming. The rest has been conjured up by the producers, developing angles and family situations that were nothing to do with Fleming whatsoever.
I for one hope they now go back to Fleming for the next film, instead of inventing more personal and family backstories for Bond to deal with that had nothing to do with the books. It’s a path they started on in the Brosnan era, and is my single biggest issue with the films since Cubby left the reigns to his daughter.
Good for you, son.
Another thing is that they should really stop coming up with villains connected to the protagonists. They literally said how difficult is for them to create a good villain and it seems the only way they know to do that, or at least try to do that, is going personal.
Silva was a figure from M’s past and an evil version of Bond. Blofeld was Bond’s envious stepbrother. Now Safin is a figure from Swann’s past and another alternative evil reflection of Bond.
They do that in order to achieve a more dramatic and emotional impact with less screen time but it never really worked…
It’s a trend they started right the way back with GE. Before that the villains were just villains being villains. No personal angles whatsoever.
I do not see an issue with the occasional villain with a personal angle, so long as it does not happen in every other film. Arguably it started with Scaramanga in TMWTGG (leaving aside the film's questionable merits). IMO it worked well in GE; back then it was a fresh approach, and it was a self-contained plot that did not have far-reaching implications for later films. Then there was a 17-year gap before SF gave us Silva, who had a superficial similarity to Trevelyan as an ex-agent, but with a different backstory and motivation. But when each of the following two films had a villain with an intensely personal angle who went after Bond, it got old really fast.
This, exactly.
The seeds were firmly sown back in GE though, leading up to this. CR is the odd one out, the blip in the franchise post Cubby, and instead harkens back to the Cubby era. No surprises that its the only film post Cubby that relies heavily on a Fleming novel too.
Coincidence? I think not.
The connection in TND was not a major plot point, and was likely put in to step around the cliche of Bond jumping into bed with the villain's woman he had just met. The rest of the film was driven by Carver's plot, rather than Bond's personal crusade to avenge his ex-girlfriend. The personal angle in TWINE was even less direct, with the King family being friends of M but without a prior direct relationship with Bond. It has been forever since I saw DAD in its entirety, but I do not recall a personal angle there at all. IIRC Zao Moon/Graves was just a garden variety villain with an agenda; he knew Bond from when he was captured, but it had limited consequence for the plot rather than being a main driver.
ETA if you look at other Bond plots, you will also see Bond avenging Felix and his wife in LTK, courting a former adversary's daughter in Octopussy, working with the girlfriend of an agent he had killed in TSWLM, etc., to say nothing of OHMSS. It is impossible, and IMO inadvisable to excise personal angles completely, so long as they do not take over the plot or alter Bond's persona.
DAD had major other issues, but being a family soap drama with personal angst is not one of them.
While I disagree with @jetsetwilly's hyperbole statement of "family soap drama with personal angst", which is a ludicrous exaggeration, I can see what he means. Yes, Bond is a man fighting for the survival of a wife and a daughter (though not exclusively since he's also trying to clean up M's mess and save the world.) And yes, this is something we haven't quite seen before. But does that make it forbidden territory? Is Fleming + the other films the only available canvas on which to paint every new Bond film? I find the argument pretty weak.
And so it narrows down to personal taste, as usual. DAD was dumb, NTTD is taking things in an unexpected--some would say unwelcome--direction. I prefer the more dramatic take in NTTD over the insulting dumbness of DAD. But I respect the fact that for some, it works the other way around.
Lastly, we can debate an abstraction of "family soap drama with personal angst" all we want, but in the end, when I look at how this film handled things, I'd say it did so very well. Bond saving people he cares about is nothing new. But when he's ploughing through armed personal like in a first-person shooter game or trying to ignore the fact of being shot multiple times while fighting for us all, I'm seeing that dare I say 'heroic' side of Bond, a man who simply won't give up. Exhausted, wounded, crippled... here's one tough SOB who will keep going until he's won. This is not father James who starts a bar fight because some punks were looking funny at his baby girl. This isn't Mathilda's old man giving the principal hell for not letting her on the baseball team. Because that's what real "family soap drama with personal angst" would be (especially the "soap" aspect of it all.) NTTD is clearly something else.
Very gracious of you to imply that both the writers and Babs and Michael actually knew what they were doing with the DC 007 character arc all along and actually had a proper plan in place from the start... :))
Alternatively - this is the equivalent of the magician who accidentally has a rabbit wander onto to the stage after his final reveal goes wrong and opportunistically uses it to illustrate that his hopeless trick was a success after all =D>
I completely, though amicably, disagree with you, my friend. I wager that they basically make it up as they go along (and although I'm being flippant about it, it's probably not even that far from the truth :)) )
Bond being a(n ex-)secret agent, once he is given a family, the heroic circumstances involving saving said family are more or less pre-determined; in what is notionally a Bond film, he would not be shown arguing with school principals, but rather, risking his life for the family's sake in a dramatic armed confrontation. The underlying relationships that drive him to act the way he does are still more soap/melodrama material than classic Bond IMO, or at least a rehash of "family guy" action film cliches. We also have him peeling apples, making breakfast, looking after lost stuffed toys, etc., which bits to me dilute the character more than they add to it, cute as they may seem.
Regarding domestic Bond, I think it's funny to poke fun at the character thru that.
Fleming was getting in this place with the last novels, before he died.
I didn't found him taking the doudou offensive. I thought it was a nice crazy touch.
Maybe if the film had been made 25 years back before I was a dad, I would be offended, but not in this time and place.
Well, that's the curious dichotomy - I did connect with this Bond at the end of the film - as I am a father myself and I could completely empathize with DC's Bond and the fate he chose
- BUT, STILL I did not like the conclusion : simply because I do not want James Bond movies to remind me of my emotional dependancy on my children's welbeing and that I am utterly fragile because of it... I watch Bond exactly to disconnect with this paternal part of my ego.
Here we are in agreement. DAD is the worst film ever made, but I cannot say that about NTTD. As much I sound angry, its more down to disappointment at what could have been, as the potential was there to make it one of the best movies in the franchise, up there with OHMSS, CR, GF and FRWL. The first hour certainly puts it in that category.
I'd still take NTTD in its current form any day over any of the Brosnan films, and most of the Moore ones.