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That's your imagination being the limiting factor there, not what the filmmakers can make.
Goldeneye for me, at 15.
But I think it's incorrect to see the Craig era as one. For me, CR and QoS were one direction (which I loved), but from Skyfall on, they are tonally different and drifting further and further away in a sort of melodramatic way. In CR and QQoS Bond is confronted with personal loss because of his job, in Skyfall and further on, his personal hardship becomes the job.
I like the films with Bond beeing a profssional whom pushes through no matter what is thrown at him. I don't really like Craig's Bond in NTTD. Already in SP he becomes far too arrogant. In NTTD he's actually just a prick half the time.
So, preferably a straight-on mission in which MI6 suspect something is off, and send 007 to investigate what's going on. Or, like TB, be confronted with an international situation, and beeing send in to thwart whatever it is.
I like a bit of understated humour, a bit of swagger and confidence. But the focus should be on the mission, not on Bond. That, after all, was Fleming's propsition: a rather dull person (hence the dull name of James Bond(yes, I know, we don't see the name as dull anymore))who's resilliant, inventive, and gets the job done, whilst beeing put in peril.
We've had that in many films, more or less, and i think that's what keeps Bond going. Every time the films make it too personal, it detracts from the experience. Take 'Mrs Carver'. Of course, the casting was off as well, but the story didn't need a personal angle. And what was that bending over Elektra? Were we really supposed to think that this time he really cared, even though he now knew she was the one behind the plot? That's not Bond. His sense of duty and rightiousness comes first. Personal sensitivities are pushed out of the window as soon as they hamper him. He's not a super hero, he's a man on a mission. A dedicated man. That's why we can (at least partly) relate to him, and why we can fantasize to be (slightly) like him. We don't do that with Superman, Batman, Thor, etc. Or even Ethan Hunt, who is too infallible.
I'm not saying make him a stone man. I'm not saying he cant't evolve. He should. It just doesn't have to be this trauma focus, of "this personal loss is specifically explaining the actions he is taking here". He's not a normal, well-adjusted guy. Stuff happened to him. We spend the last 20 years looking into these things. We get it.
I have recently started re-reading the books (meaning, I'm towards the end of CR) and the psychological make-up of this guy is fascinating. He's such a rich character and such an interesting look at masculinity that is maybe more relevant now than it was 20 years ago. And at least in CR there's no need to tie that back to anything. Maybe it's because Fleming kind of takes as a given that this type of guy would have been shaped by the War and by the way society was and every reader immediatly understood that. I don't know. But I'm kind of blown away by how good the internality of Bond is and would love it if we somehow got that onto the screen without having to tie it all back to something we see or get explained in the film. It's there; we can understand the context.
About the same for me. I wanted to see TLD, but somehow never got around to it, and then was too young for LTK, and obviously had to wait a while for GE. So it was my first, but shouldn't have been!
B
A proposition he pretty much wrote off in the very first book with the Vesper storyline, and of course created a personal, evolving storyline for Bond which threaded through the later books.
I'd say a fair slice of the films absolutely show him as pretty much a superhero: look at those Connerys- he's practically indestructible and never concerned by anything. That's where the fantasy comes from. Making him more of a believable person as the last few films have done is the way they make him more relatable. I don't relate to the Connery Bond, he's just a lot of fun to watch.
Casino Royale for me, I've been that blown away by any film in the cinema. It was everything I wanted and more
Die Another Day at 14. By the time I had become a Bond fan, TWINE was in theaters but didn't know enough to warrant a theater watch. Plus my dad wasn't a Brosnan fan, but he took me to see DAD and he enjoyed it for what it was worth. He grew up with the Connery films and absolutely had a blast seeing CR-SP with me. He loved the Craig films but was absolutely pissed that they killed him off.
In order for Paul King to be a serious contender we would have to be headed in a much more light hearted "popcorn flick" direction. It would basically mean a return to the breezy tongue-in-cheek fun of the 70's that some fans apparently hate so much.
But I don't think it will happen. It takes self-confidence and self-control. It is easier to make a TSWLM or a GE.
I will say though it shows just how many different things Bond fans want, and indeed how many different directions they can go in (not that the current producers would read what we're writing). It's not a given a 'lighter' film is to be expected. I think after Craig's films there's even a natural desire/instinct to want something more grounded and even keep a bit of that harder edge, at least in certain respects.
But again, it depends in part on what story they run with. But I certainly wouldn't mind a film that mixes those classic Bond ideas with more modern ones as GE does.
I mean, GE takes the classic megalomaniac villain hell bent on destruction trope and does something new with it. So I have no doubt they could run with something like what you're describing and give it a similar modern twist with some new ideas, and of course some great action sequences etc.
I must admit, my preference would be to have a story a bit more like that too. Not necessarily a McGuffin or a direct riff on FRWL/FYEO, but it doesn't not have to be either. I'd be very up for an otherwise simple premise for the next Bond film that integrates some new and modern ideas - I don't know, a fellow 00 or agent is killed and Bond has to investigate, Bond is sent to assassinate someone or seduce a woman for a very particular reason, retrieve some sort of McGuffin etc. Could even be something a bit more original than that, but ultimately something broadly familiar with enough creative room to do a lot. Give a bit of personal weight or conflict for Bond, give us the spectacle and scale of the recent Bond films, give us new and interesting villains and Bond girls, but also give more a sense that we're going back to basics and let the story/film get bigger as it unfolds. It'd be nice if Amazon could prove they can create a gripping story as well as something with spectacle for their first Bond adventure at any rate. Again something familiar but new. And ultimately I'm of the opinion if, first and foremost, the next Bond film is well crafted and exciting it'll do well regardless of what its story is (no doubt it'll be advertised to a great length anyway), but the more gripping the film, the better it can do.
Hate to break it to you, @Mendes4Lyfe , a great many screenwriters start writing the script already knowing their ending. Then they go back to the beginning, the inciting incident, the plot points and midpoints, that will deliver them safely to their already conceptualized climax and resolution.
Screenwriting 101.
It's not advised to ever just start on page one and "wing it" to some kind of "exciting conclusion" (and that's not to mention all the outlines and character bios that go into the work before opening Final Draft).
Well in recent Bond films it usually means the villains scheme is left vague and poorly defined, more like wallpaper than an actual engrossing story. What are the real world stakes of the Nine Eyes program going online, and what's to stop M getting a warrant for Denbighs arrest and shutting it down 30 minutes or an hour after its already live?
What are the real world stakes of Goldfinger blowing up Fort Knox? What are the real world stakes of Blofeld releasing his virus causing infertility? What are the real world stakes of Drax releasing poisonous globes to take out the world population? None because these are all movies and nothing real is at stake. I have issues with SP too, but the Nine Eyes Program is actually an intriguing concept.
I thought Nine Eyes was interesting and I agree it could’ve been much better. In a post Edward Snowden world, the idea of a real world “Nine Eyes” counterpart ran by nefarious people actually terrifies me somewhat.
There's something to it for sure. I suppose for me with SP I got a lot out of MI6 being taken over by nefarious people posing as bureaucrats trying to 'modernise' things (there's something about that idea which goes back to QOS and Quantum/SPECTRE operatives being high ranking people and playing a long game). I do prefer the nanbots as there's something much more tangible about seeing people actually die from it.
It was a solid concept that wasn’t well executed.
I’d say that that plot got lost in all the drafts that were done when the various creatives weren’t liking the third act (but if they exorcised it from the final scripts/shooting draft(s), then many elements of Spectre would have collapsed. They didn’t want to delay shooting and kept polishing a deeply flawed script when, ideally, they should have scrapped the script, delayed shooting, and started on a page).
I don’t know much about the various rewrites but you’re more than likely on the ball with that one. It did feel as if the main scheme did take a back seat to everything else going in SPECTRE so yeah it’s not really memorable. I’d love for the idea to come back in a future film though - maybe have it fleshed out a bit more.
On the subject of the rewrites, wasn’t Irma Bunt supposed to appear in the film at some stage in development?
Yeah I think Nine Eyes could have been talked up a bit more. Basically it's Blofeld taking control of the intelligence network of the free world, and governments take action based on the information they receive, so if you control the information you can steer governments and basically control the world. With this one action Blofeld essentially takes control of everything, and exploits every country for his own aims: we already hear briefly about their exploitation of pharma, wars, sex trade etc. - it'll be more of that but on a scale unimagined, misery for all except the Spectre bosses making themselves richer. Y'know, there could be a really disturbing picture painted of a world under criminal Spectre control, a kind of global ghetto, but it's not really touched upon.
Maybe make C into an actual believer -as Blofeld briefly mentions in the final film-, a zealot for some kind of ideology that believes in power going to those powerful enough to take it or surveilling the world or something like that.
And intercepting information is really very faithful to the Blofeld in the books, that's how he started out.
Which has been my point the whole time, thank you. :)>-