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
The other obivous one at the moment would be energy, but wasn't that part of Gustav Graves' scheme or at least the public facing part of it? Also, neither a Drax-like figure who claims to have solved energy problems nor a Carver/Elektra King-type CEO-figure seem very appealing as villains at the moment.
Maybe, redoing Tomorrow Never Dies, but this time the media mogul is actually aware of the Internet...
It would be cool to see him taking something on completely outside of MI6. Like Licence to Kill, but more noir and less action.
I too think Espionage > pure action is the way to go.
Avoid cartoony Spectre at all costs.
Maybe Le Carre is more your bag.
Accidental plot line always makes my mind jump to Thunderball when he stumbles on the Tong tattoo, but obviously that jumps straight back into pure MI6 territory.
It's easy to imagine a story taking inspiration from both AVTAK and Dalton's Bond 17, while using the current geopolitical landscape, with MI6 discovering that a government contractor is selling semiconductor technology to China, despite the restrictions imposed by the US. Bond would then discover that the bad guy, the said government contractor, has a grudge against both Britain and China and is selling corrupted hardware to both countries in order to take control of their defence systems.
As for Bond sleuthing, I'm all for this, especially if it's done in the way I described above. And I'm definitely all for something more 'Hitchcockian' in places (so long as that Bondian fare - set pieces, creative stunts etc are kept in and it's not slow or too cerebral). One thing I'd like to see again is Bond doing stuff in his quieter moments. Things like Bond setting up little makeshift traps in his hotel room, checking his gun, perhaps even a modern spin on him checking for bugs in his hotel room etc. Just little things that really emphasise that idea of Bond always having to be on his guard.
I obviously have a very limited perspective, but it is interesting that what I would consider to be the large possible geopolitical conflict points of the near future have all already been a topic in a Bond film. Weirdly, most of them in the Brosnan era.
I would say climate change could be taken up again, but that is of course a hot topic. The other one, that is even more of a hot topic would be migration, especially migration driven by climate change. I can envision a DAF-style story about Bond rooting out a human trafficking/people smuggling ring from root to petal, but the politics of that especially in the UK and the US are pretty bad, so I don't know if EON want to poke that hornets nest.
Not a bad idea, but it is the entire plot of The Departed. Anytime anyone says microchips now I hear it in a Boston accent.
Maybe Bond's favorite social media site gets taken over by a nefarious billionaire who uses it to distribute right-wing propaganda. (sarcastic)
Speaking of The Departed, somebody once said (maybe here) that Ray Winstone would make a good modern version of Goldfinger. I’ve been writing a number of James Bond ideas down, hoping to get them made into stories.
If we get more of an everyman Bond again, they still could do that, but it'd likely be less transparent in government getting involved in business, which seems a little schemey for Bond.
I agree with your first paragraph. One or two films of Businessman Bond is what the series arguably needs soon.
I like rebel Bond over Capitalist Bond any day, but I'm not complaining about anything we've gotten in the past and have full faith in the filmmakers going forward.
Let's do Bond meets Temple of Doom. Bond has to stop a madman businessman using slave children in rare-earth mines.
I can imagine Jesse Plemmons playing Goldfinger for some reason... or at least a villain like them...
The Fleming novels aren't particularly gritty and certainly aren't always serious though. There's plenty of humour, absurdity and fantasy in those novels. Villains try to blow up Fort Knox, Bond fights a giant squid, buries a villain in bird dung etc. It's that escapism, that ability to make the fantastical feel real that defines Bond.
They should do the squid fight on screen. It could work as the third act "henchman" fight, I think. I've seen Moby Dick and Jaws. I would have preferred CraigBond died fighting a giant squid on screen for 15 minutes than the actual way he went out.
I always assumed the giant lizards from SF was inspired by that passage in DN. P&W are well read on their Fleming, and we know that the game of William Tell Silva and Bond play with Severene was inspired by a chapter in TMWTGG. So it's possible.
But yes, I'm absolutely fine with Bond fighting a giant squid. To be fair the way it's written in the novel makes it feel tense, and Bond does get badly wounded. For me, it's symbolic of what I'd like to see with the film series going forward. Keep that sense of the fantastical/absurd, but portray it in a realistic, serious way.
Yeah, the knife on the net, fighting to stay out of the water would be great tension and if they can animate Davey Jones' face in Pirates of the Caribbean so well, they can do the Bond squid with modern computers.
James Bond 007 in AN UNFATHOMABLE AFFAIR
I have been watching the Poirot series and can't help but be amused how often Poirot stumbles onto an eventual murder.
I don't find stumbling across something by chance any less believable than HQ ringing up Bond to let him know there's another megalomaniac bent on world destruction. I've always liked Bond's chance meeting with Tracy. I agree with the view that watching Bond put talc on a lock or a hair over a door goes back to those secret agent days. Loved the Krilencu ssassination bit in FRWL as vengeance for the gypsy camp attack. Sometimes the smaller, one on one scenario is as interesting, if not more so, than the huge finale that has come to define the series.
I think there are ways to make this series feel fresh. It may seem contradictory, but going back to the original Fleming works might be a start. Fleming wrote long before microchips, media moguls, and climate concerns. A missed opportunity, poorly conceived by NTTD, was Blofeld's garden of death. A new spin on some of the old stuff either not used or misused might make for some interesting ideas.
The Garden of Death in YOLT feels surreal and nightmarish. In NTTD they didn't really do anything with it, and the 'garden' itself seemed a bit small and insignificant. It just felt like a reference only a few people would have understood. They could have done more with it certainly. I love the idea of Safin having large areas of these lush, poisonous plants inside cold mechanical domes - as if he's trying to artificially preserve the memory of his father's work. We could have seen a henchman being thrown into it and dying to show how dangerous these plants can be.
I don't want the next film to faithfully adapt, say, MR or DAF under a different title, but evoking more Fleming is something I'm all for. Doesn't have to even be specific references such as Spectreville from DAF, or the plot of the short story FAVTAK. It's more about understanding what makes the fantastical elements of those stories feel exciting, understanding Fleming's Bond as a character in order to come up with a fresh cinematic take on him etc.
And yes, chance is very much a major thing in Bond stories. Ie. Bond happens to run into DuPont in GF and meets this strange man, M happens to enlist Bond's help in exposing Drax's cheating at cards, Bond happens to see Lippe's tattoo etc. Again, it's not inherently bad. I like the idea of Bond slowly uncovering something very dark after what he thinks is going to be a routine affair.
As per the novel, Bond attempts to assassinate M, but he is stopped. Rather like the Manchurian Candidate, it seems whoever captured Bond, brainwashed him and therefore he could be triggered to carry out another assassination or another deadly sabotage at any time. Mi6 want Bond retired and carefully watched, but M believes Bond, as per the novel, can be tested if he is sent on a mission - potentially a suicide mission. M doesn't expect Bond to survive, but at least the agent, who has been so loyal and effective in the past, will die in action and will not be discarded by Mi6 and everyone else he once trusted.
Bond is determined to prove he is loyal to King and Country, but he also wants/needs to discover who brainwashed him and what the ultimate agenda is, killing M seems like only the tip of the iceberg.
So we have a "new" Bond who no one trusts, but he knows who he is, except for the missing 2 years, and the mystery of what happened to him, and why, will carry across this Bond's series of films. This Bond lives for today, indulging in his appetites for the finest foods, wines, cocktails, cars, women, and his need for danger, almost like he has a death wish.
Secondly, the full emotional impact of seeing a brainwashed Bond trying to kill M requires the audience to know that particular Bond. If this subplot had been used in SF it'd have been shocking because we can't fathom the idea of Craig's Bond doing this from his previous films, and we've seen how his relationship with M has developed which gives it that extra impact. With a new Bond actor it would feel less dramatic because we, the audience, don't know him yet, nor do we have a sense of their relationship with their M.
Thirdly, I don't think the films are going to be closely adapting Fleming material in this way. If elements of TMWTGG are going to appear in a future Bond film I think it'll be in subtler ways: a villain who's an assassin perhaps, a main plot involving brainwashing (think The Ipcress File)... something like that.
Yes, def need to update the novel's opening for 21st century tech etc., as you rightly say.
What I'm proposing is Mi6 and indeed the audience are not 100% sure about Bond this time, he's been got at, but we don't know by who, or how or why - and neither does Bond. I know DAD played with that idea in a way, but I think, with a new Bond, it could play in a very interesting and dramatic way.
OO7HallY has point, that such an opening may seem like a reset of the end of NTTD, but that's not really the (or my) intention; I've always felt using the opening of TMWTGG novel would be a very cool and intriguing way to introduce a new Bond.
Like I said, I think we'll continue to see elements of the Fleming novels adapted, but more loosely than I think any of us realise. This is just me, but the thing I find most interesting about that plot when thinking about a future film isn't necessarily Bond trying to kill M, but the idea of someone brainwashing agents. Again, that's very much The Ipcress File or The Manchurian Candidate territory. I'm sure there's a great plot that could be taken from that.
Who cares? Fleming died a very long time ago, and it's not that they're going to adapt the full novel (as a whole), only the best part that involves Bond, of course. ;)
I think it should be a stand lone mission, like the novel (but obviously not that storyline) which Bond, unexpectedly survives, and this keeps him in Mi6, but understand close scrutiny, only at the end of the first film do we get a strong hint that he's still under the influence of whoever took him and brainwashed him to kill M, so we set up Bond's quest to find answers before he triggered again, which builds over the new Bond's films and only reaches its climax in his final (5th?) film, giving this Bond a very different character arc to Craig's Bond.