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Sir, I'm not debating the term myself, I'm merely demonstrating that it could be debated. Which is why I think too many people are wasting too much energy debating whether or not CR is a 'reboot'.
* Only Casino Royale is a "faithful" adaption of The Fleming Book (More or less)
* QOS and SF are completely original stories with nothing connected to any Fleming books- except perhaps the title of QOS
* James Bond isnt a Blonde or blue eyed in the books or the previous films
* Felix Leiter isnt affrican American but rather a cacuasian texan (but given that Felix Leiter was affrican american in NSNA ill pass that one)
* Moneypenny is not african british
*In the Casino Royale book Bond goes through 2 hours of torture with a carpet beater instead of the film which has a knotted rope instead (i forgot what its called exactly)
* Why is Judi Dench's M is the new timeline if she belonged in the original Classic Timeline
What gets me is that they should have done what they did with Dalton- still make it a continuation but remove or change elements...they could have gotten rid of Q and the gadgets by having it that the economy has affected Mi6 and they had to shut down Q Branch, Moneypenny could have left or a new person could have replaced her with the codename Moneypenny....i mean wasnt it drastic from Moore's Bond to Dalton's Bond it could have worked brillaintly
the only other thing i can suggest is the two theroies- 1) That James Bond is a timelord and had the timeline altered or 2) James Bond is a codename
Wrong. They wanted to take Bond there a lot sooner but now they saw the climate was right for such a move.
When I watched the Connery films as a kid, one of the pleasures was seeing the world of Bond built over the first few films. This was lost later on, especially in the later "checklist" style of film-making - several elements that appeared over several films were now compressed into every film. By having the reboot happen, there's an added impetus for slowly getting back to the complete world of Bond, one which might seem strange to some people if that were done without the reboot.
But what is even more important, and to me is brilliant, is now we get a story with a beginning and middle, if not an end. To see Bond develop over time makes the series and the character FAR more interesting to me. Once Craig's tenure is over, especially, say, 20 years from now, it will be great to see how the films and his Bond develops over time. That would be extremely limited without the reboot structure.
Some people seem to feel very strongly that there shouldn't have been a reboot. To me the obvious question is how would the last three films have been better without the reboot structure? How are they worse because of it?
Magic words, @thelordflashearth!
People often sound upset over the back-to-basics path that CR - and subsequently QoS and partially SF - chose to take but isn't it fair to say that the series needed some rather radical invigoration after '02? Launching Bond well into the 21st century by simply stretching the string that had been tied to the movie tree back in 1962 a little further, and then further still, would have exhausted the series beyond repair. Instead they let the old string bounce back to the 20th century and tied up a new one in 2006, one which can be stretched a long way from here on before it will itself have lost its elasticity.
Completely agree. There was no need (CR could've been virtually unchanged without it being an origin story). Just change the direction and maybe give Q and Moneypenny a film off (Q has missed movies before), no need for a reboot.
And since the reboot timeline now is more or less the same as the old one, I don't see the point.
We wouldn't have had a 40 year old rookie agent and we wouldn't have had 44 years of Bond wiped.
Even little phrases or details are interesting when they're not just thrown in as given. Like this Bond introducing himself for the first time at the very end of CR - after both the character and the actor had spent the whole movie earning the right to do so, and indeed becoming Bond, James Bond. Like how the martini order has been handled... the snappy "Do I look like I give a damn?" was perfect and indeed appropriate in the circumstances... and of course earlier he had given the precise recipe (straight from the novel), which showed that he was actually very particular about his drink. The "Perfect", with an appreciative smile in SF was also very good. Sure we could have had those without the reboot, but it certainly works better in a reboot.
Introducing other characters, and giving at least some of them some background in the process is also interesting. Bond and others are not just ready made and fully formed when we first meet them (and then forever staying the same), but we get to see them develop, and while watching that process get to know them better. In some cases we got to share with Bond the process of getting to know the other regular characters. I realize not everyone cares about character development or background info or such things... some even seem more interested in how people look than what they are like, and some seem more interested in gadgets than people. The new beginning got me more into Bond, both as a character and as a franchise, and I'm more than happy that they did it. I feel like I'm getting to know Bond all over again, and I appreciate him even more now (including the older films, I mean). I understand if some people feel there was no need for a fresh start, but I don't quite understand why they'd object - was something lost for them because of the reboot?
Excellent post, @Tuulia, you have managed to speak my own thoughts much more eloquently than I did myself. I particularly agree with what I bolded above.
Hm, I can't agree with that statement, TLR, my good friend. ;-) In all fairness, any new entry in the series doesn't wipe out its legacy. If anything, the 'reboot' closed the pre-Craig book while it was still good. Further Bond films might have added films of lesser quality (remember, DAD) to the legacy and thus reduced the overall quality of the "classic" era.
Let's be frank. Batman Begins didn't wipe out Burton's Batman films. The Amazing Spider-Man didn't wipe out Raimi's films. And heaven forbid if Platinum Dunes' take on F13, Nightmare or Texas Chainsaw wiped out their powerful respective legacies.
I really think we must also keep in mind that our youngsters have developed different movie sensibilities than we have. And it seems that they really dig this Craig stuff. They might, in time, explore the preceding 44 years with profound interest and become huge Bond fans like ourselves. They will learn to differentiate between films from the various decades, treat them as separate entities and without the futile attempt to find one big continuity behind all the Bonds, a mistake not uncommon amongst us here.
Or a far less stupid option, that the producers don't really give that much of a crap about continuity. You need to come to terms with, in order for the series to sustain itself, it needs to change things up and keep itself fresh and reinterpret characters. However, the one undeniable fact remains, James Bond since 1962 is the same man he was back then and the same man we've just seen in SF and in every other Bond movie in between, just portrayed differently.
Right!
Both theories are entirely ridiculous. The first one, well, obviously, but the second one keeps annoying the hell out of me. If JB were a codename, SF wouldn't have shown the tombstone of Bond's parents. This little feat proves, for those who at this point still needed it, that the codename theory is just fundamentally wrong.
I see the Bond films as time capsules. They open up a gateway to the cultural phenomena and political spectrum of their individual times. During history class, when the teacher mentioned the Cold War in East- and West-Germany for example, my mind travelled to OP and I saw things in perspective more readily than some of my fellow class mates. Herein lies one of the series' major strengths: the Bond films evolve with time but they each also freeze time in their own confines. It is a wonderful bonus every Bond fan receives...
... but really it oughtn't be any more than that. The folks at EON never bothered stating things explicitly, with perhaps the single exception of GE's reference to the old days versus the new MI6, the new Russia,... However, when doing so the film also makes it abundantly clear that this Bond is the Bond of the old days, that he needs to rethink his methods for perhaps they no longer apply in this new world, that Russia isn't the country he might once have thought it to be. Anyone who at that point starts wondering about why Bond's physique seems not to have been impacted in any way by the time jump, is applying a certain logic to something that doesn't value it.
This. The producers tossed continuity out of the window when the actor changed for the first time, there's no point thinking too hard about it or trying to justify it with theories like the code name theory. Just go along with it.
There's also the GF-esque guy in CR and the ejector seat in SF. They're just little nods to the past films, but if you think about them too hard, it makes the timeline even more confusing.
The Batman series can get away with that because the stories have been constantly retconned or restarted throughout its existence. Throughout the bulk of the series, the Bond cycle has always been through a loopy continuity (evidenced through Gardner's and Benson's extension of the original Fleming stories and to a lessser extent the film series).
To leave out Bond's marriage would indeed be a big problem, as would remaking OHMSS. That would leave me in the prequel camp for the three Craig movies thus far. I believe Sam Mendes said something to the effect of Skyfall being in a loop of sorts with Dr. No. I can accept that.
What is "a traditional style Bond film"? If you mean just carrying on where DAD left off (eeek), or having a checklist to tick for each film, or trying to copy what had already been done... well, there would be no need to wonder if people would have taken to Craig in that type of films - he might not have been even asked, and if he had, he wouldn't have taken the job. :)
I'm sure you are right he wouldn't have taken the job, it seems that everything was done to give the new man the chance to take off, tick box stuff if you want to call it that was removed in order to avoid comparsions with previous Bonds, something Dalton was never afforded.
There will always be comparisons, anyway, just like there always have been before, and that's only natural, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that, nor do I think there is any way to avoid it. It's still Bond, so people will approve or disapprove, and otherwise comment with each new actor, and they will make comparisons - reboot or no reboot.
That last statement is very true. Craig's thoughts were much like Dalton's, he didn't want to follow a previous actor's take and in this case he was only interested in taking the role provided it included getting as far as possible away from box ticking caricatures.
It's interesting what identigraph has to say. Perhaps the reason EON went this route was because they had seen how the continuity from Moore to Brosnan had not gone well with the general public, and wanted to avoid repeating that rather than just carrying on in the same way by replacing a popular actor with a relative unknown with little fanfare. There would have been quite the outcry if they had replaced Brosnan with similar results, many more people would have been calling for his return much like in both Sir Sean and Sir Roger's cases. I remember clearly disagreeing with many people back then who felt Moore could still continue and the series wasn't "broke", and I believe this may have contributed to their idea to 'reboot/reinvent" the series by returning Bond to a more human character as Dalton had done.
The other main factor that contributed to this was being able to film Casino Royale itself, treated seriously in a manner Fleming would have wanted for it. They might not have had this approach if the 2006 release was just about a new actor doing his take on an old character as we saw in 1987. This being an origin story, it had to be properly filmed as the origin adventure that came before all the previous entries, it would be fairly presumptuous to not think that in this day with all the information available to casually interested parties that they would not know this. QOS had to continue from there and acknowledge CR on a certain scale. Now, they could have brought in a new Moneypenny and Q "cold" for SF as they had in the past and acted like nothing had changed, but it had in the form of bringing back the contractually obligated Dench because they obviously rejected the notion of paying her off. So now they must have felt the need to not bring in her replacement cold and gave Fiennes a backstory, so at that point they decided to do the same for MP and Q. The series is full of examples of lack of continuity such as in YOLT where Bond says he's never been to Japan yet in FRWL we have M cut off a story Bond starts to tell Romanova "one time when M and I were in Tokyo".
So now it's taken 3 films to do, and now everyone can enjoy BOND24 and we shouldn't need to revisit the past again. The normal support characters are fleshed out and now they can concentrate on their normal roles with more explanation being given to the new batch of heroes and villains and less to worry about in the way of missing key storyline points along the way. I'm glad they did this with SF to be honest, but at times this tact may have contributed to the couple of times SF "lost it's way".
(Spoiler Alert: She dies at the end of every mission.)
But what did they do with Tracy's death in the previous continuity? Barely anything, a few passing mentions, that's it. In DAF she was forgotten almost before the PTS was over! And don't get me wrong, Tracy's death was a major moment in the Bond franchise, but the event was never treated like it should have been.
My mind exploded when I found out that somebody was stupid enough to create Aeon Flux.
Oh Aeon Flux, how I love that series! (not the film though)
Other examples of distorted continuity:
The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II. Try to connect those. ;-)