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Agreed, I don't think a Bond origin film is interesting creatively.
A Bond who's still learning yet has all the skills to be the best agent in the service.
I always seem to lean toward the likes of TLD as inspiration. Even though it's not a young Bond or suggest he's relatively new to the service, the way Bond is shown on a training exercise and then later in full assassin mode in the defection of Koskov.
It's pure cinematic Bond for my money, and if Bond 26 has that vibe, then I'll be happy.
Say, you bring back Pierce Brosnan as an older Bond, for one last outing, Frank Miller The Dark Knight style. This we have never seen.
You could even do one set in the 60's with a new actor. The possibilities are endless.
Lots of successful movies don’t have a sequel, so I don’t know where you got that from.
Also, if it's going to be one film per actor, can I be first?
Joker 2.
A bit of continuity, which started to come back in with CR and QoS, was welcome. While they probably overdid the continuity, at least it was a change.
The Bond musical extravaganza. Coming soon.
The most popular Bond films amongst fans are the ones which have a heightened element of drama or personal stakes for Bond, they like the ones where there's some continuity to Tracy or whatever: even the origin story one comes very close to the top of being the most favourite one of fans ever.
I mean, in many ways that's not far off GE and TLD. In the latter especially you've got Bond making conscious choices to not kill, and in turn to go against M's orders which saves the day. Just develop that relationship with M ever so slightly more and they could do something similar for Bond 26 and it would work as a modern film (ie. what if Bond/the new M have a close relationship as per the books with Bond as much more of a blunt instrument. During the story Bond has to make a decision to go against M's orders in order to save the day. By the end Bond is now a character more willing to do the right thing/deviate from orders when needed, much like Craig, Brosnan, and Dalton's Bonds were). Could be anything though. The larger than life villains, action, and espionage should always come with that too. It's all what makes a Bond film entertaining.
You're thinking of The Batman again, aren't you? ;)
Probably, yeah! :))
I can see them going for that sort of thing broadly though. Not in the same way (not sure if anyone needs a depressed Batinson-esque Bond or a darkly lit film, and Batman's arc in that film isn't really applicable to Bond, as much as the series loves villains being mirror images of our hero). I don't think we'll see Bond making quite as many mistakes as Batman does in that film, and perhaps his youth won't be hammered home as much. But find the right story for Bond and you never know.
The plots will always be relatively standalone- a baddie and their plan will always get defeated in a film. But there should be narrative links between the films too- you just don't get movies series which don't do that.
It’s the nature of Bond really. They’re always individual adventures with returning elements each time, whether characters, tropes, some overarching plot threads etc. I don’t see any reason to break that precedent with either something so elaborate/interconnected it’s impenetrable for non-fans (a sort of Marvel type thing), or something so stand alone it feels too episodic and like Bond is always back at square one every film.
Again, it’s why I like the idea of a Bond and M relationship that’s closer. Have Bond be genuinely respectful towards M, and have M view Bond as his best agent - the man who he sends for MI6’s most difficult tasks. During the story Bond has to consciously defy M’s orders to thwart the villain, and by the end M develops a newfound respect for Bond as a result. In a way it brides the blunt instrument of the early films with the more maverick prone Bond of the Dalton films onwards.
I think it's something the Mission Impossibles get very right. Each one is a standalone film; you don't have to have seen any of the others to know what's going on or who the characters are. But there are continuing plot strands, notably Ethan's wife and a recurring baddie between a couple of the films, but when they reappear the film explains who they are and what the situation is with them: no prior knowledge is needed as a casual viewer can pick it up (Ethan's wife reappears in one of them, so the film opens with a dream sequence where Ethan dreams about marrying her: so we see her and know straight away she's his wife- it's information very deftly conveyed). But equally, the continuing story can be appreciated by those who can remember the previous one.
It's something I'm not sure QoS got right. You get completely chucked into that one cold, and it moves so fast that a lot of information comes at you; I'm not sure a new viewer would know who Mr White or Vesper were in that opening interrogation scene. NTTD on the other hand does it okay I think; maybe you might wonder why Bond isn't a spy at the beginning of the film, but if you can go with that I think it's fine; Madeline doesn't need a huge introduction (she's someone he clearly loves); and we're told Blofeld is in prison etc. I think it's reasonable to assume most audience members have heard of SPECTRE, and if not I think you can pick up that they're evil.
The opening of QoS is confusing to the point of ridiculousness. There are some good stunts in there...maybe? But they are lost among the worst editing this side of a Michael Bay movie. Even John Glen would have established, say, the chase in the quarry properly.
Likewise. The Tocasa(?) opera chase, in my opinion, suffers the same. Didn't feel like a Bondian chase.
Plus I absolutely hate the Bourne shaky camera fight scenes. I grew up with the Matrix. Give me something where I can see exactly what they are doing. I don't want to feel apart of the fight. I want to watch it. But that's me.
I'm not sure which Bourne film it was, but I sat through that film with my eyes closed almost the entire time. The constantly moving camera and the hyper-frenetic cutting created so much motion disturbance that I was nauseated. QoS wasn't quite that bad, but you sense a lot was missed in that opening scene.
It probably would make for a better film, but I wonder if Eon and Aston Martin’s deal called for an action sequence involving the car? There seems to be some sort of action/chase sequence involving an Aston in every Craig film.
Not as much as people think anyway (it’s more the editing that’s the issue).
That said a weird cinematography quirk of QOS I’ve always noticed are these occasional elaborate but useless shots that add nothing and even take you out of the action. Stuff like a random shot of bowling balls in the foreground as Green and his men walk into the hotel in the background. Or the camera being placed high on the ceiling/above a fan during the Slate/Bond fight (which isn’t easy to do and must have been a bit of a faff. It’s literally only in the film for 1 second too which is wild).
I think the chase would be fine if it were interesting. Something to make it more distinctive. It’s just not a very Bondian car chase as it is.
Yes, this is a very valid observation I would say. Rather than QoS being a film that utilises shaky-cam, to me it seems more like a film that was shot was almost too much coverage when more concise shot planning might have been beneficial. Part of me wonders if the script issues led to scenes and sequences being overshot, and then Forster decided to use as much of everything as he could in the editing room to give the film a distinctive (and at times distracting, as you say) style. That's how you end up with these kinds of shots in the film that are quite attractive in isolation but seem very random.
In terms of the action: take the final altercation between Bond and Mitchell in the bell tower as an example. I don't think there's a single angle in that sequence that is repeated more than once. All the shots are very good, and I think the scene is actually quite effective, but it is quite difficult to figure out where both men are in relation to each other because we've no fixed angle/landmark to use as a reference.