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The more pertinent thing is whether they can get their act together and get a film out every 3 to 4 years.
You can still do that while having three year gaps (maybe even two year ones) so I don't think that'll discount an actor in his mid-40s.
I’m not really sure if it would’ve been a missed opportunity to leave SP out of the Craig era entirely to be honest. I can understand EON wanting to capitalize on regaining the rights to Blofeld at that specific time, but it’s not as if the series had trouble creating memorable villains from scratch before.
I don’t think these movies should be shot back to back, nor should they be shot in such quick succession. But if they plan on doing another Multi-Film arc for the character like they did with the Craig era, they should at least have some sort of idea on where things should end up, even if they deviate from it sightly. Or they could go back to the “one-off” style of the first 20 films. The returning characters are enough to provide continuity, and maybe they can make references to events of previous films.
I’m fine with either option; I just want a good Bond film first and foremost.
As for the question, we’ve kind of had an older Bond in Craig; but I’ll be open minded if the next pick if someone in their 40’s.
I reckon most of us here would claim it was a missed opportunity if they hadn't used SPECTRE (let's be honest, Quantum was a bit lame/non-existent, and the Craig era was beginning to lean into those classic Bond tropes anyway).
Yeah. If that's done again, EON must have a special reason, like the older actor being the best they saw fit for the role, after thorough checks.
Perhaps. I think this is one of those situations where fans wouldn’t have been pleased either way given how some already complain about the way SP was used during Craig’s tenure. I personally felt had they fleshed out the Quantum idea a bit more that could’ve been something special; I like the idea of a shadowy organization being ran by corrupt politicians instead of the typical Blofeld-like figure.
The benefit of featuring Blofeld across multiple films is that you continuously build him up as a credible threat to Bond. The 60’s films by and large did a good job at doing that; YOLT actually feels like the culmination of everything that was leading up to it. Whereas the Craig era lacks that sense of build-up with Blofeld/SP - it sort of lacks that sense of tension and history between Bond and Blofeld/SPECTRE that was present in the 60’s films. That’s probably why some still complain about the way Blofeld/SP were handled in Craig’s tenure. At least with creating new villains for Bond to battle, you don’t have the baggage that comes with living up to previous incarnations.
Honestly I think all we’d be getting is “why did they stick with Quantum for three films when they had the rights to SPECTRE right there? We could have finally seen Blofeld back in the films but Babs was obviously too in love with Jesper Christiansen to use the best villain Fleming came up with” etc. etc. Fans will find a reason to rag on these films no matter what they do.
Maybe. I’m sure some would have complained no matter what, but if we knew for a fact Craig would only do 1 or 2 more films tops after SF, many would understand that it’d be a bit late to cram Spectre into his era. This is, of course, how I and many others ended up feeling. I’m pretty sure this was a concern of mine before I first saw SP, just wondering how well they would be established and everything.
There’ll always be those who complain just to complain, of course, and there’s definitely something to be said for narrative adjustments just so that complaints can be made, but I at least like to think most of us agree that the retconning and forcing of Spectre didn’t end up the best in what we got. If they had been available since the start of Craig’s era, I’d understand the criticism of not using them more, since they had been gone since DAF, and the opportunity to set them up well would have been there with an era’s fresh start. I guess it’s sort of damned if you, damned if you don’t. I just think the logical move still would be to wait on it until a better plan to use them was made. After all, they are taking their time and waiting to get this next era right!
They should have stuck with using Quantum as the main baddies. Let that play out and then bring in SP for the new guys. Or use SP for Craig but use them for more than one film and then dispose of them in a quick sequence in the very next film.
So many missed opportunities with the Craig films. A shame
This. To me the Blofeld death is more controversial than the "other" death in NTTD. Spectre should have had a stinger where two armed guards were carting Blofeld off to prison, and they zoom in on a guards hand... wearing a Spectre ring.
Then in NTTD, they use Malek/Safin for all the marketing as he'd just won an Oscar, but in the film, they have Blofeld escape prison, visit Safin on the island and kill him, and usurp him and become the main villain again.
Then, if Bond's fate had to be met, I'd be happier at least that it was Blofeld that orchestrated it (and then he can die as well), and not someone else.
Or imagine, Bond lives and gets amnesia as he does in YOLT, and sails away from the island not remembering his life, or Madeleine etc., with the implication that his mere existence would likely kill them anyways... could have been interesting (and the tribute to YOLT I so desire).
Anyways, not the thread. Luke Evans, please.
And Daniel Craig era is full with symbol of remake / hinting to upcoming remake of event that we thought we left behind us.
I can see the logic in putting SPECTRE into the Craig era later on. You had this mysterious (albeit underdeveloped) criminal organisation in the first two films. Yes, they were called 'Quantum' (or something) but effectively they're a version of SPECTRE anyway as most alternative criminal organisations in Bond are in practice. They had the right idea framing SPECTRE as the bigger villain. They even got White to return with us learning the potential consequences of going against Blofeld. I know some people complain about the 'author of all your pain' stuff, but ultimately I think it's better that a figure like Blofeld (and again, it may as well be Blofeld and not some lesser character) be the one to have been pulling the strings all along and effectively responsible for Vesper's death.
I think it works, even if that rise and fall is something only applicable to one or two films. I'm not sure if we'd have gotten something as interesting by sticking with Quantum or some sort of elaborately pre-planned affair. Personally, I wish they'd leaned a bit more into the idea of SPECTRE coming from a little civil war within Quantum, with Blofeld rising up and rebranding it (I suppose it's there in SP to some extent, but maybe if they'd leaned into it a bit more it could have been stronger).
Ian Fleming established them and used them in one book, pretty much; I feel like two hours of screen time is enough to establish a villain.
And that's not to mention all of the fans who complain at the notion at having linked story threads running through different Bond films; now they're bad because they didn't do that enough. As you say, they're damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Yes I think the idea of two super evil organisations fighting each other is a fun one we've not seen before, and I agree we could have had more of that. I guess it was just too much story to pack in though.
Wasn't the real misstep actually calling it Quantum in QoS? Without that, it easily could have been revealed later as Spectre all along...
Probably. To be honest I don't know if the average viewer of Bond films would have known Quantum was meant to be called Quantum before 2015 off the top of their heads. I even remember one friend at the time kind of just assuming it'd been SPECTRE all along anyway.
Good point about Fleming. And yeah, I suppose. It's still somewhat there with what happens with White, but maybe it could have been honed slightly more without being too expositional.
Damn if they did, damn if they didn't. Quantum mutating into SPECTRE never bothered me, because they used Quantum only because they didn't have the right to SPECTRE. Yes, it was handwaved rather quickly, but I think it was the right call.
Anyway back on topic, what I'd fear about casting an older Bond would be a Dalton-like situation (albeit for different reasons): short tenure due to his age, an early tenure too similar to Craig's later half of his era, a difficulty to establish the new Bond as his own man as well as having to go through the same casting process over again sooner. And as much as the Craig era was successful, he isn't what Sean Connery was circa 1967-1971: we don't need a Roger Moore. Oh and that's something else: I can't think of a single British actor in his forties with the stature of Moore.
Yeah and lets not forget that for all the complaining about SPECTRE being retrofitted into the Quantum story, Quantum had been basically retrofitted into the CR story! :)
Certainly a plot which is all about an all-out war between two huge criminal gangs is enough to fill a film with, I think.
As for the whole continuity thing, though my preference is for standalone movies, the approach of direct sequels isn’t a problem itself - it’s the way they try to retroactively explain away all the past threats being caused by Spectre. I don’t mind Quantum eventually becoming Spectre (though I agree with others it would have been more interesting to see a war between the two, inevitably leading to Spectre winning), but to say it was like that all along + every other villain just feels so lazy. There were still better ways to use Spectre if they were going to, but I maintain I would have liked it more if they just waited in general so they could have all the buildup and intensity they did in the first few films.
It’s more distracting to retroactively use Spectre than Quantum, because us Bond fans know about the rights situation with Spectre whereas Quantum simply wasn’t named for a while (maybe in hopes they would have gotten Spectre rights earlier?), while Spectre legally couldn’t have been. I’m glad if some people are happy with what we ended up getting, but for me it was ultimately lackluster and a significant downgrade from the back and forth affairs we saw between Bond and Spectre in the oldest films. And to reiterate, I’m not knocking SP and NTTD in their entireties, although the former is one of my least favorite installments. I just was not and am not happy with how Spectre was handled, and I do believe they would have been better served with a clean slate. If they want to go that route with the next era, now they can from the beginning.
As far as the question goes, why do Bond in his 40s-50s? Go full Lazenby!
Oh I wishes they used the Foreign Legion backstory and I hope they use it in the future!
The temptation to use Blofeld will always be there. The lawsuit was the only reason they didn't in mid-series (TSWLM being a prime example).
I think if they were to use SPECTRE it'd only be if they see a creative opportunity to include it. Otherwise there's no point of shoehorning it into a new era out of obligation. Blofeld's a tricky villain to get right anyway. Without some sort of personal element between him and Bond he's just another generic villain. I suppose they could play up the 'white whale' angle with Bond hell bent on getting him as per OHMSS, but even then I think you need more, and without Blofeld SPECTRE doesn't fully work.
I wouldn't bet on them using it in the short term to be honest, but again never say never.
I also can't see them pre-planning these stories out years in advance either. Why would they? That's never been how Bond films have been made, and it's certainly not how Fleming crafted his novels.
The white whale obsession can be reversed: Blofeld can become obsessed about this MI6 agent that had thwarted his lucrative schemes one time too many. There were elements of this in SP, the stepbrother angle notwithstanding.