YOLT Novel Discussion

Comments

• thelivingroyale

  November 2013 Posts: 12,837

  Good idea about the ending. Although I do like TMWTGG and I thought the amnesia/brainwashing plot was brilliantly done, YOLT wrapped things up nicely. The Blofeld arc had finished and it would've been nice if Bond got a nice happy ending after all he'd been through. Proper closure.
  
  Anyway, YOLT is my favourite. Mainly because of Blofeld (Tanka summed it up best, "the devil dressed as a man" or something like that), and the brilliantly realised setting but I also really like how Fleming developed Bond as a character. I really liked Kissy too, and the Garden Of Death and just how different it felt. There was sort of a morbid tone too which I thought really suited the novel.
• timmer

  November 2013 edited November 2013 Posts: 4,622

  Flemings fixation with Bunt's ugliness is quite entertaining and makes for comic relief. Tanaka considers Frau Shatterhand too ugly to live. That was a huge clue as to what her real identity might be.
  Great read. Very interesting and topical observations on the changing Japanese socio-political culture of the time and the adjustments it was having to make to post-war western encroachments. Fleming takes pains to have Bond boost England's relevance in the post-war world as well.
  Its also interesting how many elements of the book were incorporated into the film. This is sometimes not as apparent if you focus on the movie's wild space plot, but there is all sorts of stuff worked in from the book, from the ninja traing facility, to the Garden of Death-like pirannha pit, to both the Castle and Rocket Base being destroyed due to volcanic eruptions, not to mention the fishing village.
• Revelator

  November 2013 edited November 2013 Posts: 2,918

  People who "seem disappointed by the lack of 'Bond elements'" tend to be especially vocal on book review sites like Goodreads. I recommend that Bond fans look up the Fleming reviews there and up-vote the ones they like, since up-voting increases a review's prominence. Unfortunately, the most prominent review for YOLT is a mediocre one, so I recommend down-voting it and finding a better review to up-vote.
  
  On to YOLT. That book and Dr. No have been described as "fertility myths" (literally so with the former, since Bond gets the Bond girl pregnant!). In YOLT, Bond starts out in decline and is gradually broken down and reborn. He looses his memory, sense of self, and sexual desires and has to re-find all of these. That's why I like the final chapter--Bond having to relearn how to make love to a woman via dirty books and toad sweat is both amusing and deeply weird. It's unsettling territory Fleming had never really explored before. Like the suicides, Bond has arrived at Blofeld's "Disneyland of Death" in order to die. Unlike them, he will be reborn in this world. Sadly, Fleming was too exhausted to make Bond's full rebirth convincing in TMWTGG.
  
  Blofeld's recently-acquired syphillis seems to have made him degenerate into a Hitlerian mad scientist, with elements of the stereotypical German ranter. His dialogue is great fun to listen to and perhaps borrows elements from Fleming and Bond's most outspoken critics. Having Blofeld strangled by Bond gives his death a personal touch, but when the novel was faithfully adapted by The Daily Express comic strip, an interesting change was made--Blofeld died after being flung onto the hot-mud geyser that he had threatened Bond with. His incineration is shown off-panel, but must have been as gruesome a death as he deserved.
  
  Kissy is possibly Fleming's strongest female protagonist--literally and figuratively. She is stubborn, has a great deal of agency, and knows what she wants. It's Bond who acts as the damsel of distress in the book, and Kissy has to save him. You can understand why she wants to keep him to herself. Yes, it would have been nice for Fleming to have given Bond some happiness by leaving him on the island with his memory intact, but Bond is not meant for happiness. If he was, Tracy would still be alive. I suspect that if Bond is meant for anything, it is to be killed before the age of 45 like most of his fellow 00s. And yet...
  
  The great loose end of YOLT is the baby Bond leaves inside Kissy. Whatever became of it? We're free to reject Raymond Benson's answer and imagine our own.
  I like to think that Kissy had a boy who enjoyed a happy childhood among the Ama, though he must have missed his father, described by Kissy as a brave foreign policeman who killed the wickedest foreign dragon in Japan and converted the garden of death into an eden. Eventually the boy (named Taro after his father) left his hometown and, propelled by an innate sense of justice, became a local policeman. Despite unease at his mixed-race status, the young man became well-liked, and though his district was small and provincial he occasionally handled an exciting case. In one of them he captured a foreign criminal with the help of a foreign policeman sent from England who was gray-haired and, as he explained, semi-retired but employed by his country on occasional missions. He and Taro worked together for only a day, but they hit it off and enjoyed dinner and sake before parting ways forever. As he got up to leave, the foreigner explained that before he left Japan he would travel south to see some Ama girls. Taro thought the foreigner was joking and so he did not say his mother had once been an Ama girl, though she had retired to Tokyo several years before. Had James Bond known he'd left Kissy with child, he might have put two and two together. Had Taro Suzuki known his father's real name, he might have too. But all these things were, in Tiger Tanaka's phrase, of as little account as sparrow's tears...
• fjdinardo

  November 2013 Posts: 1,970

  I thought this was the best of the flemming bond book. The producers made a big mistake not making the movie YOLT like the book
• DeJunkanooo Banned

  November 2013 Posts: 25

  Thunderball's my fav Flemming. But YOLT is a joy too. Why not re-adapt it for the Craig era. It'd be easy and very plausible to do a modern day Garden of death. With surveillance cameras everywhere, everyday citizens being implanted with microchips and nanotech (google "electronic harassment"), just extrapolate on that technology and you'll have a fine "obstacle course" for Bond to overcome.
• Bentley

  November 2013 Posts: 267

  I just love @Pierce2Daniel and @Revolator's appreciation of this novel. Frankly both are the best I've ever read by (I assume) non professionals. Bravo to both of you!
  YOLT is one of three of Fleming's books that I've only read once. TMWTGG & TSWLM being the other two.
  My reasons for not revisiting the latter are obvious - they are, for different reasons, a couple of clunkers.
  YOLT I have never returned to because of my strong disappointment in it as a sequel to the phenomenal OHMSS (by this point in history, I was reading the novels as they were published by JC). I always remember it as the weakest of the Blofeld trilogy and overall I regarded it as rather unexciting and dull.
  Maybe I was too young when I read it and your articles have certainly urged me to give it another chance. Maybe it should be retitled; " You Must Read Twice" - God knows I need Bond motivation after Boyd's humongous intervention!
• Pierce2Daniel

  November 2013 Posts: 4,409

  timmer wrote:

  Flemings fixation with Bund's ugliness is quite entertaining. Tanaka considers Frau Shatterhand too ugly to live. That was a huge clue as to what her real identity might be.
  Great read. Very interesting and topical observations on the changing Japanese socio-political culture of the time and the adjustments it was having to make to post-war western encroachments. Fleming takes pains to have Bond boost England's relevance in the post-war world as well.
  Its also interesting how many elements of the book were incorporated into the film. This is sometimes not as apparent if you focus on the movie's wild space plot, but there is all sorts of stuff worked in from the book, from the ninja traing facility, to the Garden-of- Death-like pirannha pit, to both the Castle and Rocket Base being destroyed due to volcanic eruptions, not to mention the fishing village.

  
  After Tiger talks about Britain's diminishing role in the world, Bond argues back but Fleming makes it clear that despite what Bond is saying he's not entirely convinced in is own words. Even Blofeld later in the story laughs over Bond's suggestion that the calvary are waiting over the hill as he can't comprehend the sense of sending in a British agent alone when the Americans would likely take charge. I would refute your claim that Fleming takes 'pains' to have Bond boost England's relevance and in fact the author seems resigned to the knowledge that his realm's power is starting to diminish.
  
  Also the film adaptation liberally takes odd morsels from the book and is far from faithful. I'd love to see a real adaption of YOLT, quite a lot of elements from the novel however did find there way into SF: the broken weary Bond and 007's later rebirth/resurrection. Interestingly, Purvis and Wade in their Empire interview talked about how the Garden of Death was actually going to be in the film but evolved into the Hashima abandoned island as the script developed. Silva's Island and Blofeld's Castle do share a passing resemblance.
  
• timmer

  November 2013 edited November 2013 Posts: 4,622

  There are far more elements from the novel in the movie than many appreciate, because of the movie's Spectre world-domination space plot.
  What is helpful is to read the book again after watching the film. The filmmakers jammed as much as they could in, it seems, albeit in a scattershot kind of way.
  @Pierce2Daniel. Yes Fleming of course has doubts about England's post-war relevance, which I think is why he engaged the discussion involving Tiger and Bond in the first place. By slaying the dragon, Bond is offered an opportunity by Tiger's political masters to gain for England some much needed post-war espionage capital.
  Presumably Mi6 in the wake of Bond's "suicidal" but successful mission, was rewarded with an intelligence tit-for-tat.
  I can't remember if Fleming resolved that matter, but it was certainly implicit in Bond's being tasked with the thankless assignment.
  
  Yes it would have been interesting to know what Fleming might have done with the dangling thread of Bond Jr. but I do think that John Pearson handled the matter quite well, explaining that Kissy eventually revealed the exitence of James Jr to his father.
  Bond offers to marry Kissy but she declines. Neverthless, Bond sees his son whenever he can, even takes him to London, where he is enrolled in Eton, which is where Pearson left it.
  IIRC correctly, Kissy had left the Ama village and was raising James Jr in New York City.
• Pierce2Daniel

  November 2013 Posts: 4,409

  Fleming seems to very much accept Britain's dimishing role in the role. After all M does send Bond on an 'impossible' diplomatic mission to gain Japanese intelligence that the Japs have so far been unwilling to give to such a fading power. It's made explicitly clear by Tiger when he talks to Bond:
  
  “(Britain has) not only lost a great Empire, you have seemed almost anxious to throw it away with both hands... You apparently sought to arrest this slide into impotence at Suez, (but) succeeded only in stage-managing one of the most pitiful bungles in the history of the world, if not the worst. Further, your governments have shown themselves successively incapable of ruling and have handed over effective control of the country to the trade unions, who appear to be dedicated to the principle of doing less and less work for more money. This feather-bedding, this shirking of an honest day’s work, is sapping at ever-increasing speed the moral fibre of the British.”
  
  Japan dosen't want to work with such an ailing power as Britain. However, Tiger notices Bond's reckless disregard for life and can see he is a man on the edge. He therefore exploits this aspect of his character by sending him on a suicide mission to the 'The Castle of Death'.
  
  Bond's child is also a very interesting notion and something I think (if done correctly) could play well in a film especially the rebooted era. However, there is no evidence that Kissy had a boy (the continuation stories are hardly canon). I think a daughter would better suit James Bond.
• 007InVT Classified

  April 2015 Posts: 893

  Marvelous discussion. I agree that a Bond child would be a great plot device.
• Dragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com

  April 2015 edited April 2015 Posts: 18,281

  The Madness of King Ernst I as a factor in Ian Fleming’s You Only Live Twice (1964)
  
  
  You Only Live Twice (1964) is certainly one of Ian Fleming’s most brilliantly bizarre and offbeat pieces of work from a Bond oeuvre which was by that stage already rich with originality (cf. 'Quantum of Solace' [1960] and The Spy Who Loved Me [1962]). The novel incorporates travelogue, references to Japanese culture, lists of deadly flora and fauna, a revenge tale, the beginnings of serial killer fiction and fine Gothic horror as well as being the unfolding story of a dystopia on a Huxleyesque scale. Fleming was sadly literally dying from the admirable ailment of “having lived too much” (in reality a bad heart) at the time he was writing this novel and so the fascination with the theme of death throughout really rings true from a man already all too aware of his own mortality. No world domination plot here (cf. the film version) but instead a private estate run by a veritable mad hatter called Dr Guntram Shatterhand who of course turns out to be none other than Bond’s arch-enemy and the murderer of his bride Tracy Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963). The Ernst Stavro Blofeld of You Only Live Twice is a different animal to what went before and here he can be seen as a veritable mad king (called King Ernst I most likely) and a lunatic ready for the asylum. Blofeld shouts in German much like the ranting and raving Adolf Hitler in the Führerbunker near the end of World War II when the war was all but lost and he seems equally as much out of touch with reality. We are told of "that lunatic, Hitler scream" from Blofeld in the Garden of Death at one point in the novel for instance. One reads of Nazis escaping to Argentina and Spain at the war’s end but perhaps a few escaped to Japan too? It may be that that was what Fleming was pointing at – that there was diverse Nazi evil being spread throughout other third countries as a result of such post-war Nazi SS resettlement organisations as Odessa or Spinne.
  
  It is notable that Blofeld’s plan here is not to hijack a Vulcan bomber and its deadly nuclear cargo for a grand ransom (Thunderball) or to use biological weapons against the UK (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) but merely to induce the notoriously suicide-prone native Japanese population to kill themselves in ever more eccentric fashion in a “garden of delights” populated by highly poisonous flora and fauna, snakes and fumaroles. This garden is the locale where Blofeld goes utterly insane and indeed it is a veritable anti-Eden where the Fall of Man is all too evident. It is as if the imaginative horrors of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale or a novel by the Marquis de Sade have somehow come to life in the early 1960s with a little Swinging Sixties hocus-pocus thrown in for good measure. Blofeld does his rounds of the garden in a full suit of armour as does his companion Bunt and Fleming seems to be making the point that Blofeld is trying to be a legitimate samurai warrior with all of the code of honour that implies though we the reader see he is woefully inadequate in this role and that he is a mere gaijin and definite bounder. Blofeld and Bunt even plan to eventually sell up from Japan and then take their “death show” on the road in other locations around the world such is their ultimate depravity and inhumanity.
  
  In You Only Live Twice there is no world domination master plan but in its stead there was just the mad king Blofeld lobbing off people's heads with a samurai sword, years before the serial killer fiction craze of the 1990s that Blofeld's plan to maximise Japanese suicides in his Garden of Death is akin to. In this sense Blofeld can be seen as a forerunner to that other madman in a Castle of Death, the serial killer ex-actor David Dragonpol in John Gardner’s Never Send Flowers (1993). Dragonpol intends to kill Princes Diana and her two sons on a Royal trip to Euro Disney in Paris, though some might blanch at a comparison with Fleming's Blofeld! However, there are many interesting connections between both Bond novels. Like Dragonpol with his assassination targets, Blofeld attracts the suicidal Japanese seemingly for his own sick enjoyment and the delectation of the squat and grotesque Irma Bunt also. Bunt has the type of wardress face often associated with a Nazi death camp guard and as she is German and of the right age that could well have been her occupation. Of course, Fleming’s novel is as far away from the dire Roald Dahl-scripted 1967 film version as it is possible to get, but one can only hope that it will someday be filmed as a new chapter in Bond villainy where evil is seen to have had no point than glorying in evil itself. That seems a good theme for a Bond film that could sit along with the Bond film villains Karl Stromberg and Hugo Drax (of the films The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker respectively) who were not interested in money or extortion but rather in creating new worlds in their own inherently evil image, just as it could be said Blofeld did originally in his Garden of Death in Japan. Ian Fleming's other villainous creation Dr Julius No was of course also an influence on Stromberg and Drax. Blofeld has seemingly single-handedly turned the Godly garden and the Englishman’s dwelling place of a summer day into a dark and grotesque “Disneyland of Death”. In opposition to this perversion of the sacredness of the garden is the fact that the English county of Kent is known as "The Garden of England" (cf. The Garden of Eden?) and this was of course on the side of the angels and was a haunt of Ian Fleming's and was where the majority of his third novel Moonraker (1955) was set with a duplicitous Nazi called Sir Hugo Drax is based with his answer to Britain's defence, the “Moonraker” rocket. This was done in much the same way as Stromberg wanted his underwater civilisation at the expense of the rest of the world or Drax wanted his new Super Race of perfect physical specimens to repopulate the Earth after its annihilation in a Hitlerian holocaust of his own creation.
  
  One can easily see the seeds of these barking-mad characters in some of the Bond villains of the Roger Moore era Bonds in the Blofeld of You Only Live Twice. In this sense, perhaps a bit of the You Only Live Twice Blofeld has rubbed off on some of the cinematic Bond villains that came in the years after Ian Fleming’s death. One also thinks of Richard Maibaum’s original plot suggestion for The Spy Who Loved Me film to have real-world terrorists blow up the world’s oil fields with stolen nuclear submarines and watch the world burn just for the sheer hell of it. That would have been close to the Blofeld of You Only Live Twice it seems and it was sad that Maibaum’s vision for something “completely different” never made it onto the screen. The producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli ruled it out as being too overtly political for the James Bond film series, although he did like the idea. Of course sections of the recent Skyfall was based at least in part on events near the end of You Only Live Twice where Bond is shot in the head and loses his memory, and for the Fleming enthusiast that was surely a great thing to behold and it gives one hope that more of this criminally neglected novel will make its way on to the cinema screen in some shape or form.
• Ludovico

  April 2015 Posts: 15,124

  timmer wrote: »

  There are far more elements from the novel in the movie than many appreciate, because of the movie's Spectre world-domination space plot.
  What is helpful is to read the book again after watching the film. The filmmakers jammed as much as they could in, it seems, albeit in a scattershot kind of way.
  @Pierce2Daniel. Yes Fleming of course has doubts about England's post-war relevance, which I think is why he engaged the discussion involving Tiger and Bond in the first place. By slaying the dragon, Bond is offered an opportunity by Tiger's political masters to gain for England some much needed post-war espionage capital.
  Presumably Mi6 in the wake of Bond's "suicidal" but successful mission, was rewarded with an intelligence tit-for-tat.
  I can't remember if Fleming resolved that matter, but it was certainly implicit in Bond's being tasked with the thankless assignment.
  
  Yes it would have been interesting to know what Fleming might have done with the dangling thread of Bond Jr. but I do think that John Pearson handled the matter quite well, explaining that Kissy eventually revealed the exitence of James Jr to his father.
  Bond offers to marry Kissy but she declines. Neverthless, Bond sees his son whenever he can, even takes him to London, where he is enrolled in Eton, which is where Pearson left it.
  IIRC correctly, Kissy had left the Ama village and was raising James Jr in New York City.

  
  We will never know, but part of me suspects Fleming wanted it to remain unresolve.
• TheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'

  April 2015 edited April 2015 Posts: 9,117

  Dragonpol wrote: »

  In this sense Blofeld can be seen as a forerunner to that other madman in a Castle of Death, the serial killer ex-actor David Dragonpol in John Gardner’s Never Send Flowers (1993). Indeed, there are many interesting connections between both Bond novels.

  
  Oh dear - and it was all going so well old chap. I note your wording seems to favour Dragonpol as being comparable with Blofeld. Personally I think I might have worded it thusly:
  'As another madman in a castle David Dragonpol comes across as a feeble imitation of the Blofeld of YOLT'.
  
  I do like your theory that Irma Bunt might have been a concentration camp guard though, although I think its a bit tenuous to base it merely on her type of face (isnt that how the Nazis selected people for the camps in the first place?). However its a great notion and one which I like so much I think I might subconsciously incorporate it into the back story of the character in the future if I may.
• Ludovico

  April 2015 Posts: 15,124

  Bunt may or may not have worked in a concentration camp. That is moot. However, I do think Fleming based her character on female Nazis, in appearance and profession. Or that he knew the readers would associate her with them.
• Dragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com

  April 2015 Posts: 18,281

  TheWizardOfIce wrote: »

  Dragonpol wrote: »

  In this sense Blofeld can be seen as a forerunner to that other madman in a Castle of Death, the serial killer ex-actor David Dragonpol in John Gardner’s Never Send Flowers (1993). Indeed, there are many interesting connections between both Bond novels.

  
  Oh dear - and it was all going so well old chap. I note your wording seems to favour Dragonpol as being comparable with Blofeld. Personally I think I might have worded it thusly:
  'As another madman in a castle David Dragonpol comes across as a feeble imitation of the Blofeld of YOLT'.
  
  I do like your theory that Irma Bunt might have been a concentration camp guard though, although I think its a bit tenuous to base it merely on her type of face (isnt that how the Nazis selected people for the camps in the first place?). However its a great notion and one which I like so much I think I might subconsciously incorporate it into the back story of the character in the future if I may.

  
  Ok, I've amended it a tad old man. I want to expand this article for my blog at some point. That was just the short version.
  
  And, of course you are free to use my writing in whatever way you please, old pal.
  
  Draggers. :)
• 007InVT Classified

  April 2015 edited April 2015 Posts: 893

  I also like how the novel is a return to a true secret service story with the use of a cover for Bond, working with the Japanese and some cryptology in there. The briefings with M and Tanner are a joy to read.
• CrabKey

  May 2015 Posts: 1,993

  Zimmer said Bond see his son whenever he can, even takes him to London, where he is enrolled in Eton, which is where Pearson left it.
  
  And Benson follows up with James Jr. in London being murdered by a revenge seeking Irma Bunt in "Blast from the Past."
• Thunderpussy My Secret Lair

  May 2015 Posts: 13,384

  I've always liked YOLT, especially when you take into account how unwell Fleming
  Was when writing it. Some brilliant ideas and concepts integrated into the story, plus
  The brutality of Bond getting his revenge.
  I remember reading in an interview from J Gardner that he wasn't allowed to use any
  Bond family in the stories ( except an old uncle in ROH), so was surprised when R Benson used his son in Blast from the past !. Also Tiger pops up in Benson's " The man with the red tattoo"
• Dragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com

  May 2015 edited May 2015 Posts: 18,281

  007InVT wrote: »

  I also like how the novel is a return to a true secret service story with the use of a cover for Bond, working with the Japanese and some cryptology in there. The briefings with M and Tanner are a joy to read.

  
  Yes, it's indeed interesting that he goes to Japan under an entirely different pretext altogether and the whole Blofeld thing just springs out unexpectedly as a bit of bother in Tiger's own backyard that a gaijin such as James Bond would be suited for in return for British access to the MAGIC 44 cypher.
• Thunderpussy My Secret Lair

  May 2015 Posts: 13,384

  It's a nice touch for the Japanese to keep their hands clean, get a British
  agent to deal with the problem. ;)
• TheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'

  May 2015 Posts: 9,117

  CrabKey wrote: »

  Zimmer said Bond see his son whenever he can, even takes him to London, where he is enrolled in Eton, which is where Pearson left it.
  
  And Benson follows up with James Jr. in London being murdered by a revenge seeking Irma Bunt in "Blast from the Past."

  
  I have to say that the idea of Bond's son popping up either in the books or films leaves me entirely cold. I'm just not interested in seeing it happen in the slightest. The day when Bond Jr is tagging along will be a dismal moment IMO.
  
  Am I alone in thinking this way?
• Thunderpussy My Secret Lair

  May 2015 Posts: 13,384

  If Disney ever win the rights, I'm certain we'll see Bond and Bond Jr. :D
  Although, I'm not a fan of the idea, hell I don't even like Robin working
  With Batman !
• Dragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com

  May 2015 Posts: 18,281

  DrGorner wrote: »

  If Disney ever win the rights, I'm certain we'll see Bond and Bond Jr. :D
  Although, I'm not a fan of the idea, hell I don't even like Robin working
  With Batman !

  
  If Disney ever wins the right to Bond maybe we'll see a film adaptation of Never Send Flowers too. :D
• Thunderpussy My Secret Lair

  May 2015 Posts: 13,384

  Bond in Euro Disney. ;) They'd invent a ride or two in his name, or a nice
  Baguette. They could call " A roll of Honour" :D
• 007InVT Classified

  May 2015 Posts: 893

  DrGorner wrote: »

  Bond in Euro Disney. ;) They'd invent a ride or two in his name, or a nice
  Baguette. They could call " A roll of Honour" :D

  
  Oh dear. Venturing into Roger Moore territory!
  
  
• Thunderpussy My Secret Lair

  May 2015 Posts: 13,384

  Roger Moore territory ? I can remember when all around here was.......
  ..... Fields, strawberry Fields. :D
• Ludovico

  May 2015 Posts: 15,124

  TheWizardOfIce wrote: »

  CrabKey wrote: »

  Zimmer said Bond see his son whenever he can, even takes him to London, where he is enrolled in Eton, which is where Pearson left it.
  
  And Benson follows up with James Jr. in London being murdered by a revenge seeking Irma Bunt in "Blast from the Past."

  
  I have to say that the idea of Bond's son popping up either in the books or films leaves me entirely cold. I'm just not interested in seeing it happen in the slightest. The day when Bond Jr is tagging along will be a dismal moment IMO.
  
  Am I alone in thinking this way?

  
  No I think the same thing. I suspect Fleming did not want to develop or tell what would happen of Bond's son. That he just existed as an accident in his life, unknown to his father.
• TheWizardOfIce 'One of the Internet's more toxic individuals'

  May 2015 Posts: 9,117

  Dragonpol wrote: »

  DrGorner wrote: »

  If Disney ever win the rights, I'm certain we'll see Bond and Bond Jr. :D
  Although, I'm not a fan of the idea, hell I don't even like Robin working
  With Batman !

  
  If Disney ever wins the right to Bond maybe we'll see a film adaptation of Never Send Flowers too. :D

  
  The day I finally give up on the world and call Dignitas.
• Dragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com

  May 2015 Posts: 18,281

  TheWizardOfIce wrote: »

  Dragonpol wrote: »

  DrGorner wrote: »

  If Disney ever win the rights, I'm certain we'll see Bond and Bond Jr. :D
  Although, I'm not a fan of the idea, hell I don't even like Robin working
  With Batman !

  
  If Disney ever wins the right to Bond maybe we'll see a film adaptation of Never Send Flowers too. :D

  
  The day I finally give up on the world and call Dignitas.

  
  You would be first in line at your local cinema. Don't lie, Wiz!
• CrabKey

  May 2015 Posts: 1,993

  I agree with Ludovico. Had Fleming wanted to deal with the son, TMWTGG would have dealt with it. That Benson felt the need to do what Fleming obviously would not felt unnatural and forced. Not a good story.
  
  When television series featuring unattached couples finally marry them off and bless them with children, it usually spells the end of the series. Bond as husband and father would destroy everything Bond.