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Guess Bond 25 will be no different, but I do hope Fukunaga will inject some fun to it at least.
Bond can go back into that niche again during the next era, even if it still maintains a touch of the personal stuff.
Though I honestly struggle to see what could be left of Bond to viably explore in terms of his backstory.
Speaking about 25 being a sequel of SP, well, it's pretty obvious. They brought back the main Bond girl of the last movie in the same role, which is something totally new for the franchise, so it's pretty clear that they're going to explore Bond emotions and Bond state of mind (something I'm pretty interested given some previous works - True Detective and Maniac - made by Fukunaga). Madeleine was the character that convinced Bond to quit, to stop and think about the possibility of a different life, and in the end Bond himself choose her over the MI6. So the movie will be a direct sequel to SP, at least from a character development and emotional arc point of view.
I'm just speculating but given who's gonna direct, Madeleine's return, the "Shatterhand" placeholder and the fact that this is 99,9% goin to be Craig's last mission, I'm pretty confident that the movie will present a kind of "broken" Bond, diving a bit in 007 state of mind.
Completely correct.
I'd beg to differ. YOLT was 1967 with Lazenby coming in and OHMSS releasing in 1969. Connery came back in 1971 with Moore taking over in 1973. Moore departed in 1985 with Dalton taking over in 1987. So far that's every two years. The six year gap between Dalton and Brosnan was for legal reasons, not due to casting. The four years between Brosnan and Craig also had part of that gap due to obtaining rights. With the legal aspects pretty much squared away, I can't see EON taking more than 2 or 3 years tops between outings, particularly with 2022 being the 60th anniversary.
They probably will stick to that personal angle for Craig's last Bond movie. They started with it, and hopefully they will end it with B25, so that Craig's successor can start without it and we'll be back to "Bond gets a mission and will fulfill it. Period."
Where I have issues is when you want me to believe that this wreck is also the quipping, super cool Bond of yore. I don't buy 5ft whatever, tight suit fitting Craig as that Bond. I bought him as the broken Bond, who openly cried when his girlfriend and boss died. Not the one who couldn't care less when his new love left him on the streets of London.
So whatever they do for the next one, I hope they try to remain internally consistent. It's this trying to have it both ways which fails for me, as it did in TWINE.
Or Darren Aronofskys' BATMAN BEGINS script, where Butlert Alfred would repülaced by Afro-American car repairman named Al.
I love Craig in the part, but I feel that he was best utilised in his first two films. The tone of them, although not to everyone's liking, suited him to a tee. He was good in Skyfall but I do find the jump from rookie to seasoned agent a tad jarring. And he was fine in SP as well - it's a perfectly fine performance - but the identity his version of the character got a bit diluted in the melodrama of it all. I do hope he's a bit rougher in Bond 25, as that's simply what he does best. I know people don't want that too much, but they've only one film to wait before they get something more suited to their taste.
@Shardlake, I believe you hit the nail on the head! Good post.
Maybe someday, as a counterreaction to these psychological explorations of our heroes as Platonic 'guardians', archetypical representations of the Spirit, films will try to recapture a more superficial sense of the slick spy of old, but I doubt we'll ever be able to escape these personal dramas entirely.
Lest we forget, Bond's very first appearance ever, in Fleming's Casino Royale, already features moments of personal dilemma's for Bond, for example when he pitches his own feelings against reason after surviving the torture session. He contemplates leaving the service in pursuit of matrimonial happiness. Later in the book series, no doubt in parallel with Fleming's own souring reflections on life and death, on the meaning of it all, many such moments of contemplating Bond's inner universe, his loyalty towards the secret service and more, are presented. In a sense, the 21st century Bond "drama's" aren't a modern thing but simply an aspect of Fleming's writings that was, for a few decades, mostly ignored. The cinematic Bond, for a while, had other goods to deliver and was going perfectly strong doing so. Yet even then, when we consider the pre-CR "counterreaction" films, like OHMSS, FYEO, TLD & LTK and GE, films that were trying to break free from a popcorn Bond that had often ended a previous actor's reign, one thing that binds them is that they almost always include some personal case for Bond, something that goes a bit further than M's mere instructions. In a sense, some of these Bond films, as with most of the Craigs, play out the stark contrast between 007 as an expendable resource (M's perspective) and James Bond as a human being with a sense of justice, personal pride and anger. Some adventures can easily work around those issues, making them barely matter, and others turn them into the main deal for most of the film.
The Craig era, coinciding with other film series that throw their heroes on the couch, like Nolan's Batman trilogy and the Bourne films, can be seen as just a modern thing, something dreadfully different from the "golden age Bond". But I think it was a natural thing to happen, not only because audiences have grown more sophisticated and, in a way, tired of vacant heroes, but also because these conflicts and dilemmas are in Bond's DNA and have been ever since the publication of Casino Royale.
Even for this last one though, I hope they don't try to blend cinematic iconic Bond with Craig Bond. For me, it just doesn't work although I realize some bought it.
Craig's (and EON's) problem here is that they think that iconic Bond can just be switched on and acted. It can't. It's an attitude. A projection. It's far more difficult to make convincing than many believe, and particularly in the context and within the confines of a broken hero continuity narrative which they have given us since 2006.
The difference between James Bond and Batman/Bourne etc. is that most of us (I hope) want Bond films to continue and to continue regularly. For that to happen, direct continuity and explicit character 'arc' must stop imho. It can be subtle, but it can't be as direct as it has been. If so, then we will become like any other 'stop-start' series. Perhaps fine for Broccoli, but I'm sure most of us here don't want that.
Wasn´t that a recording or at least an Arrangement based on Arnold, rather than Newman?
Compared to Newman Arnold was way better but if I were to rank Arnold scores it still won't be in my top 5. I want someone way better than both of them which won't be that difficult to find imo.
And Connery in DN. Dr. No suggests that Bond join SPECTRE. Bond replies that his Department of choice then would be Revenge.
+1. Bold. In Capitals.
Two exceptionally fine posts by a couple who truly get the essence, the DNA, of James Bond.
See if Wolfgang Stegemann or Iko Uwais is available.
Btw, if you haven't seen "The Night Comes for Us", give it a watch. Indonesian Martial Arts/Triad epic!
Only scene I find melodramatic in skyfall was M's death in ending and Spectre was "full of it".
He was motivated by his duty. It's 007 after all. BTW in SP it always seemed to me that it was Madeleine the one more interested in a love relationship between the two. She's the one who tries to play with Bond's psyche in order to convince him to quit the life of her father. She's the one that really fall in love with him, as proven by the torture scene. She's the one who seem to really care about a real relationship and that's why she decides to leave after she understood - in the Hildebrand Print and Rarities scene - that Bond cared most about his work than her feelings.
I'm pretty curious now because she's an interesting character that wasn't able to express its full potential. But I'm 100% sure that if she's goin to suffer a "Tracy" treatment Bond reaction to her death would be totally different than Vesper's.
In terms of Bond's feelings towards Madeleine, sadly Smith's song indicates something more than what you suggest, which leads to further confusion for the viewer. They have an opportunity to address what these two have going on (is it a relationship of convenience of one of heartfelt commitment?) soon enough, and they'd better get it right.
I'd be quite happy if she ends up being a conflicted Vesper type who leans to the dark side - one who was playing him. As I mentioned earlier, she has that mischievous thing going on. Perhaps he ends up saving her from herself, and that is the 'complete arc' vs. Vesper who he failed to save. On Valentine's Day, how more apropos is that?
I would very much like Madeline to turn into a villianous Character which would very well explain why she didn't have any sort of chemistry with Bond in SP.
I'm curious to see what they end up doing with her. Unless she will exist only in flashbacks or shows up at the end.
Madeleine rarely smiles and there's an introverted aura around her, emphasised by the fact that when we see her, it's in an empty office in an underpopulated building standing alone in the mountains, or in a hotel room that seems to exist in a different dimension, cut off from the world so to speak, or in the desert, in Blofeld's remote hideout... Even in London, we rarely see her except in vacant streets or empty buildings. Her own father, from whom she had grown alienated, is seen in this film all by himself, hidden away in a barely accessible room in a shack hidden in the mountains, behind thick layers of mist. The Whites are synonymous with being "alone" and possibly "lonely" too. Bond is also alone: look at his apartment. Even Moneypenny calls him out on it.
Perhaps it's because I'm something of an introvert too, someone who wouldn't mind journeying around the world if it was just me and only one significant other, that I'm drawn to their relationship, that despite the emotional barriers I can still sense the warmth that exists between them. Perhaps I'm being reminded of relationships that I have had, which weren't all that different, of two people mostly left to themselves, meeting up, bonding quickly but solidly, living the 'L Américain scene as it were. Perhaps from experience, I recognise chemistry where others see an impossible team-up; I can feel love where others find nothing of the sort. Their romantic cue in the score exists of barely more than a few piano notes and some distant strings. Everything expresses the "aloneness" of Madeleine and Bond. I can accept that this is not what most people want to see, but then only about 25 % of the population is introverted, so perhaps that explains the overwhelming hostility towards Madeleine in some discussions.
In any case, having watched SP close to 15 times now, possibly more, I can safely say that I enjoy the presence of Madeleine; and even though there's barely any competition as it is, I think she's the second best Bond girl in the Craig era, behind the near perfect Vesper of course. After seeing SP for the first time in 2015, I walked out thinking that if they ever brought her back, it would make perfect sense, at least to me. And though I haven't the faintest idea of what they're planning to do with her in B25, I will concede that if she spends a good portion of the film alongside Bond, like she does in SP, I'll probably come out a happy fan.