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And that's the thing, many of us were children when we saw our first Bond film and for many of us our first Bond film predates GE. Which means all the unique stuff that's been long since ditched has been somewhat unecessarilly thrown to the wayside.
Bond isn't supposed to be a role model, he's not inspector gadget or some cartoon characters we should take advice from. He kills people, enjoys casual sex, enjoys good food and drink and is morally grey. He has his vices and these are things that shouldn't necessarily be celebrated as such but explored and shown because this is who he is.
If the future Bond films can be treated with a bit more maturity and embrace the characterisation and the essence of the type of stories found in the source material (as long as the films are well directed and executed well overall) it's not going to be a problem.
All they need to do is create a proper marketing campaign that genuinely communicates the next film is really going back to and embracing the stories that Fleming told. Fun yet murky adventures that conveys the essence of who the creature that is James Bond is supposed to be. Market and inform audiences as to what they're actually getting and really deliver on it. That's exactly how Deadpool went on to gross over $700 million and why Logan has grossed $524 million so far. So how much more for a Bond film? Why compromise on the story and character if the BO won't be adversely affected?
And for clarification, for those arguing film x is better than film y, that's not really the point here. The point is, there are blockbuster films that hold true to their characters and stories they're telling that don't require being watered down or PC or whatever and can still go on to be highly profitable. If we got CR today I'm telling you it would make close to a $Billion. Now imagine if we got a slightly more Flmingesque portrayal with his vices etc; the numbers would be similarly high. Fuck all this Bond as a role model rubbish. Yes, there's a fantastical element in wanting to be Bond; cars, women, frequent travel, lovely locations, having his vehicular, fighting and weapon skills but that's about it. If the films show the consequences and fatal risks of what it's like being Bond then it's not so much a glorification of the character but more of a study and exploration that audiences and critics can at least appreciate. The world's been too soft for too long.
He eventually going to have go then what will you do not be a fan anymore and James bond wasn't ending after brosnan die another day made a good amount of money its not like they ran out of cash they just chose take a different direction not because the money was running out. It wasn't needed saving financially like you try to get at but creativity but he didn't really save the franchise from dying he just made it better in the long run
Couldn't agree more.
Bond shouldn't release in theatres R rated for sure, it doesn't need to be, bond is very much a 15 film, not pg 13 but not R18, so with the current mpaa ratings it's impossible, so I think they should film it as a 15 film, release it as a pg13 film and then on the blu ray make it fully uncut
Agreed too. Excellent post. I've been saying similar things for years. One can only hope that it will one day happen.
If anything, the Craig era has actually scaled back any chances of people wanting to push Bond as this PC superhero. In this era we've watched Bond go from a very reckless man who did outwardly wild things (if for good reasons), only slowly becoming a much more professional man over the course of the films. And even through that, he's still been the most "flawed" Bond yet, and has his vices along with everything else. We've watched him drink himself into a bin through a depression, repress his rage while exploding inside, pop pills to dull himself and manipulate women through seducing them and dumping them once he's used them up, in between his acts of killing which have never been more visceral and raw. So where in all this has Bond been painted as this perfect role model?
Sometimes I'm certain Bond fans watch different cuts of these films than I do.
http://www.mi6community.com/index.php?p=/discussion/13322/realistic-serious-story-ideas-for-bond-25-to-be-used-by-eon-productions-ltd#latest
http://www.mi6community.com/index.php?p=/discussion/14847/the-things-we-want-to-return-to-the-bond-movies#latest
Embrace the man's vices and his quirks, but root it in a contemporary environment. Stop telling us what a dinosaur he is through third party exposition (usually from M). Rather, show us through his behaviour. I'm open to them injecting a bit of the charming rogue back as well though, as that's unique to Bond among the heroes we have out there at present who are all neutered puppies in comparison.
Absolutely agree that a little more unfashionable finesse & timeless style would be welcome.
The way I see it now: We have a very good Bond, potentially the best if you remove certain factors. There shouldn't be any kind of rush to find the next best thing. That's being prisoner of the moment. With the exception of Roger Moore, most of the community thinks about things like, "What if Connery didn't leave after YOLT?," "What if Dalton started with ATAK, got a 3rd film before 1995, or ended with GE?," and "What if Brosnan and Tarantino got to make a serious film (CR perhaps)?" There are moments to be captured with Craig, since the potential for greatness is always there if the other elements are sound.
http://www.indiewire.com/2017/03/daniel-craig-return-bond-25-james-bond-1201795057/
It's a smart, if unethical move from the standpoint of that publisher. What are the two biggest political shake-ups that P&W happened to mention? How can we twist Trump and Brexit into a larger conspiratorial story for extra clicks while also tying them to the biggest British character of the moment outside Sherlock Holmes?
This whole thread is a perfect compilation of the above. It's a piss poor collection of nothing worth reading, and instead amounts to a bunch of links to bookie bets, random fake casting news and click-bait titles regarding Bond 25 that were engineered by "journalists" to really get the internet fired up to visit their site. And people fall for the traps, and even worse, take it seriously.
It's why people think Mr. Poldark has any chance of being Bond, and why they think Dan is a greedy piece of shit who is coasting on Bond's financial profits to enter early retirement. These "journalists" are able to wrap a lie in a truth, giving it the context or appearance of fact, and readers aren't sharp enough to avoid gullibly falling into it. They believe all that hogwash just like they'll believe the above, sadly.
That comment alone sums up this entire thread. My thing is, I don't really care for the progress of Bond 25. Yes I do want another Bond film, and I will be interested when an official announcement is made, but I'm not going to bother wasting my time clicking on some click bait article saying "Daniel Craig is done with Bond?" or "Is THIS person going to be the next James Bond?"
I agree that there shouldn't be any need for the franchise or any subsequent film to prove Bond is still relevant but I'm sure that a lot of the negative US press reviews of SP I read were as much about the potential redundancy of the Bond franchise than they were about the qualities of the film itself.
If the question is repeatedly asked of EON I imagine they feel an obligation to respond to that.
A shame as a brand new Bond film should be cause for celebration in itself and we've had this all before with GE and CR.
@007ClassicBondFan, that's obviously because you're the kind of person who is sensible enough to understand two major things. One, you know that we will get Bond 25 sooner rather than later, and you're willing to be patient and wait it out instead of popping in here every day to post the same statement of, "Is it here yet?" like so many do. Secondly, you're also smart enough to avoid click-bait articles that profit off all these engineered rumors, and by doing so you avoid supporting the modern day brand of faux journalism they practice and instead wait for EON to actually say something because you understand that their word is the only one that counts for anything here.
In short, I thank you. I really shouldn't have to thank people for being logical, level-headed and aware of the truth, but in this day and age it's becoming a real rarity to find people who don't accept the first word as the truth and whose heads aren't so far up their arses they can't see or hear what's really going on. So again, thank you!
Of course, I don't know much about film productions and how they run. But, Bond has too many competitors nowadays and they are mostly the Marvel and DC superhero films, as well as the Star Wars entries. The film market is keeping reliance over big budget franchises that keep spawning continuous sequels one after another. And they're performing a lot better with the audience on the commercial side as well as the critical than Bond is. Their numbers are bigger. Danjaq, I gather, are worried about this. What if the public loses interest in Bond and the box office gross of their next entry experiences an implosion? It happened with Spectre, didn't it?
Thank you for the kind words. I've always tried to avoid this discussion because for one thing, it kept getting all these comments and discussions that I can't keep up with it, and like you said, people are gullible because this "news" passes so quickly into acceptance. I get a good laugh at some of the articles journalists are posting. "Is Tom Hiddleson is next Bond?" "Is Taylor Swift the next Bond girl." Like EON would ever consider her. People also forget that this is a film franchise with 24 installments and still plenty to talk about. I can't tell you how much I go and revisit the earlier films, and still always finding out new stuff about them.
If you're calling a near 900 million box office take (and for sure video and digital releases that pushed it past 1 billion profit) as Spectre imploding, you've got a serious perception problem.
Yeah, superhero films are big, sure. Some of them make tons and tons of money, yes, and they are essentially their own genre now. But if you look at inflation adjusted totals, the films of today are not bringing in the dough when compared to earlier films, where the early 2000s Spider-Man films wipe the floor with every Marvel film of the last 10 years outside the two Avengers films. Even going with totals that don't account for ticket price change, only the two Avengers films and Iron Man 3 surpassed what SF and SP have done box office wise, with every other film earning less than $800 million and down. So what is perceived as Bond falling behind is actually Bond being pretty damn awesome, and meeting or exceeding in most cases what you would think the films could do in the face of franchises like Marvel's.
I don't understand the need for this fear-mongering "it's the end of Bond" talk. These movies are some of the most profitable ever, period, even when adjusted for inflation, and are able to chart with the massive Bondmania-fuled hits of Thunderball and Goldfinger through their gigantic profits and ticket sales. These films only continue to assert that Bond is as viable a commodity as ever, with no slowing of interest from the public who embrace him even more as a regal knight of the modern day than they have for who knows how long. Audiences have shown support for all of the Craig era, for the two films that stripped Bond back to essentials like the early 60s films and for the two that slowly and delicately sprinkled old elements back in.
Say Daniel Craig and everyone shouts "Bond!" Journalists are sitting back with their feet up, dropping his name in articles just to feed a firestorm of rumors for the next film, a hoopla you don't see for any other franchise outside of maybe Star Wars. Bond is still a niche market, no matter how popular he is, and it's quite frankly gobsmacking that we're having films reach such amazing financial highs as we are now for this one character, to the point that it feels like Bond is fresh as a baby boy. Bond is the only film franchise I can think of that is able to consistently make this kind of profit without resorting to pandering to audiences with big effects, hero battles, and all that visual "noise." They're always stories about one man facing a specific threat with no funny business (excluding some extreme examples), and they are always able to turn a profit from that while not going all "Marvel" on their market.
Nothing about Bond has staled with people, and it's a cultural event to go and see any Bond movies, period, even today in a digitally run world. If anything, the past ten years have shown us that the public are willing to walk with Bond through any change, even if some don't agree with it at first (look at the Craig backlash). On the whole, audiences are willing to take that risk, and if they find they were wrong to overreact, they'll champion the change as they have Dan. The numbers show that, the acclaim shows that, and the massive attention on Bond at all times shows that. Bond is able to thrive at new peaks in an age where people don't want to exert energy going out to cinemas, and even in the over-hyped world of superhero films and other budget-blowing blockbusters reaching $400 million price tags, the franchise is able to not only survive, but profit exceedingly well, keeping its dignity and image through it all.
I don't want to hear anyone reading Bond his last rites at bedside. He's got a whole lotta living left in him.
There is no such thing that "James Bond is having his last rites". It culturally has left impact on the people and will continue to do so. But, when the next one comes out is under question. It will when it's ready. But, we don't know when. People losing interest in Bond has happened before and for a long amount of time, they wouldn't want to see it because of the "repetitive cycle complex" they see in it until they start missing it. There was the six year hiatus with Eon when they were figuring out how to reintroduce Bond to the public, and after people had the starting expressiveness of earning that dreadful income of an insight from Die Another Day, Eon had to retool the series again to see what serves the audience right. The film brought almost half a billion, didn't it? But, many people considered it failure and Eon feared where the series might have been headed next, so Casino Royale happened with the trend of the reboot (like many other IPs) with completely different theme for a universe than it was in the previous installment.
'Bond 25' is under that kind of circumstances. Being developed and figured out. It's a franchise on a higher plateau than Mission: Impossible and others who merely make it to $400 Million. Bond is way above those. That's why Eon are figuring out how to live up to the success of Skyfall (my personal opinion of the film aside) and how to win the hearts of millions of people with it. The "Bond coming to an end" comment on whoever's behalf is what I class absurd and laughable. It's part of the pop culture and has been thriving for decades whereas some other series stopped. From your perspective, Bond may not need to compete anyone, but Spectre did try to compete with other big name franchises and didn't finish first. Whatever Eon are doing, I am sure they're setting their bars straight and are willing to break in to the race with a strong strike equipped with the next entry in the series.
I agree - At it's best, Bond has always taken risks before guaranteed "safe" profits. This should be the model they use with this next film, if they want to avoid withering on the vine.
In all cases, we had films that raised the bar with the audience, substantially outdid their immediate predecessors at the box office and got tongues wagging outside of the obsessives that hang around sites like this (myself included).
That's what needs to happen from time to time in order for the series to continue as the longest running continuous film franchise. A comprehensive shakeup is required at certain points in order to give the audience something new and fresh.
While I've enjoyed the Craig run, I think it's been as uneven as the other long running actors (but in a different way as is always the case) and it is long in the tooth (from a time and story standpoint at least, if not from a film output one).
I contend that the time is right for another shaking of the tree. Either it will happen with B25, or we will endure one final Craig outing (hopefully a better one than SP) before that inevitable injection of freshness.
Right, and I think the first step is taking it for granted that Bond is a viable commodity. That's been well and truly established now. It's important that they avoid any more distortionary tricks to make it appear like Bond is on the back foot again. They need to actually begin to think about how to take things forward, and not just going round in the same cycle.
Just be proud of the character (warts and all) and give us the most compelling story they can, showing why he's the best. Anyone with half a brain knows that real life intelligence operatives are more important than ever today. Even the creators of Homeland know that. There's no need to continue to question how important a 00 can be in today's world.
Additionally, to hell with the PC idiots. They can champ at the teenage Marvel bit with their holier than thou squeeky clean characters. Bond is Bond.
Good, good. >:)