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Raising eyebrows?
Moore: Hold my martini.
Me neither.
I'm now waiting for the staunch NTTD defenders to once again defend the indefensible on how Bond's death `works' for the good of the franchise, and that this genius creative decision had nothing to do with a desperate attempt to lure Craig back for one more film, how this death was not following current crappy trends one little bit, how this somehow keeps in line with what Fleming would have really wanted, how most people on earth except a few disgruntled members on here will not question Bond's death whatsoever when Bond 26 appears, etc. etc.
Rinse and repeat...
So "Casino Royale" sets up the choice the character makes by becoming a 00 — everyone he loves will die, and he will have to watch them die. He loved Vesper, and then that love killed her because she chose to die instead of selling him out. What a pain it is to see someone who love die, especially because of you!
This happens in the book too, and at the end of the book (just like the film) — Bond decides "Well, I guess I can never love anybody ever again!". Not because he didn't trust, but because of that fear of it happening again.
Now you get to ":Quantum of Solace", and what happens here is Bond (like all mythic figures) wanders in a desert in solitude brooding in pain and angst at his loss. And at the end of the movie, he has a choice again: he can kill the man who lead to the woman he loved dying, or let him go. And he puts down the weapon. Because when you respond to violence with violence, you're just creating more violence...
Which leads to "Skyfall", where Silva for all intents and purposes is Bond-who-kept-killing. Silva was angry at betrayal (M) and that anger festers into creating a monster. It's no surprise why Silva is costumed with blonde hair and exaggerate suits — he's a distortion of Bond. The monster who will become if Bond can't let go of his anger towards his two mothers: his biological mother and M. The whole movie is Oedpial. Bond has to go to his ancestral home (the family he's spent life running from) to defend his surrogate mother (M) from his own rage (Silva). But in the end, M still dies. Another person Bond loves, dies. Only this time — the ending scene isn't Bond rushing off for revenge a la "Casino Royale", but him at peace with it. Because he understands now. It's in one of M's last lines, probably the most important line in all five films "At least I got one thing right. Think about M in the film — everything she does fails. MI6 goes down the tubes, Silva escapes. Everything looks lost. Except Bond! Who grows up and doesn't succumb to anger. Because that's the goal of any "parent" — having a good kid.
Now "Spectre" is when Mendes flexes his fairy tale chops (see "Away We Go" for the same film as "Skyfall"/"Spectre") a bit. You have a king (The Pale King aka Mr. White aka the man who Vesper sent him to), and his daughter (who must be a princess) who are in grave danger. Why? Because the Pale King grew a conscious and stopped killing. And Bond, now more at peace with his emotions and ready to become a big boy, is finally able to navigate that. The whole film twists into a Sisyphean nightmare, where Bond is confronted with the haunted house of MI6 and a bunch of skeletons as the ultimate reminder of the theme for all these films — killing ain't living, and if you keep killing you'll keep killing yourself. This, by the way, is underlying in all the Fleming books too. So at the end of the film, Bond has his "Return of the Jedi" moment and throws down his weapon. Finally able to stop killing.
Which brings us to "No Time to Die" — which sort of combines all four of these into one, but also permeates on this a bit. Because Bond has been able to let go of his anger and his violence, but he hasn't overcome the toughest battle of them all. Fear! He's terrified in the PTS that it's happening again with a girl. He let his armor down (again) and she betrayed him (again). So, once more he shuts up and isolates himself. But then he gets sucked back into it again (the Sisyphus stuff — if you don't change, like actually change, you're doomed to repeat all of this over and over and over again forever). And as the plot of the film unfolds, Bond learns he had a child and his whole world view shifts. What's that line M says, again?
So this is how the death of Bond works in the logic of the film — he's ensuring his daughter and wife will be safe forever ("Everything's good now. There's no one left to hurt us.). And he's not afraid anymore! Safin was deadly afraid of dying, like all these villains are. So they try to accumulate power and status to cheat death. But Bond, the hero, isn't afraid of death. Because he knows death isn't death ("Final Ascent" and the lighting of the scene, Linus Sandgren calls "No Time to Die" a religious movie for a reason!).
You're free to not like it, that's okay. But the logic and arguments and emotion have been there from the beginning.
CR basically followed the novel, QoS was a writers strike so Craig and Forester tried their best to cobble something together, as for the endless rewrites of SF, SP and NTTD, with `too many cooks spoil the broth' approach from every man and his dog having an input into the scripts, not to mention NTTD original script being binned in favour of another cobbled together attempt once Boyle exited, there isn't one single clever Kubrick mastermind behind every move, carefully plotting a sensible continuation arc that made logical sense across all 5 films, and was planned from the very beginning. CR and QoS Bond is a rookie, but by SF has Bond at the end of his career, yet SP he is back in his prime again. None of this was thought through at all.
The way you have reasoned with the Craig era, the minute CR was drafted, QoS, SF, SP and NTTD was already being carefully planned at the same time too in some grand Masterplan. You are giving the producers way too much credit, and judging by the thought and analysis you have put into assessing the Craig era, you would have been a much better candidate to write the scripts yourself.
I just googled 'retcon', and it says Sherlock Holmes' literary return was retcon. Which is different to a reboot, right?
As I understand it, a retcon is where they add new information to events in the previous installment, so they can carry on with the same characters and storyline. Whereas a 'reboot' is where they completely ignore the past episodes and tell a new story from scratch?
With all due respect, I suspect this is a tautological argument. If a character is seriously "killed off" then wouldn't every attempt to bring them back automatically be a "massive retcon"?
What about Sherlock Holmes? There are various conflicting stories about how Zorro/Don Diego de la Vega dies (usually of old age, but f.e. in The Mask of Zorro he dies in a fight) and nobody is going to give a damn when the next TV series or film is launched. One of the oldest Robin Hood stories is called "Robin Hood's Death" and still he appears in dozens upon dozens of later stories and TV series and films and whatnot. That's the company that Bond keeps now. The great literary characters whose stories are being told over and over and over again. And sometimes, there's a story of how he dies and someone else later tells another story with the same character or a different version of the character. I really don't understand what the problem is.
I mean, if you or @slide_99 keep going on about how this is the biggest crime in fictional storytelling ever, do you just expect people to stop answering?
Yolt, moonraker and Die another day just called…
Children doesn’t mean 5 year olds. Younger audiences become older audiences.
What if Bond has been put under a criminal liability which something that he didn't done. He's only mistaken, and he needs to find the man truly responsible for the crime that he didn't done.
M became angry of Bond and he doesn't trust him and he relieved him from the service.
This is where we see Bond hiding anywhere because the police were pursuing him, but there will be a second Bond Girl who will seduce him and this girl is actually the villain's supposed to be henchwoman, but she turned good, she offers Bond her flat as his hideout, then she will help him escape from the authorities. But it came to the villain's knowledge that this woman was actually trying to save Bond, and he orders his other men to kill her, she's killed. Bond was hurt when he saw her corpse, he wants a revenge, but he can't do that because he needs to hide, but Q found him, he believes that Bond is innocent, and he gives Bond a gun to defend himself. Q will explain to M why he thinks MI6 should be on Bond's side, and M rejected it, but later regretted his actions, and decided to help Bond prove his innocence.
Now, Bond will tell M everything that he knew, mainly the information that he got from the villain's former henchwoman, and also the details about the Main Villain that he needs to capture.
And in this, he will have a bond girl who's a lawyer who will defend him to the court and of course Bond needs to speak for himself, he needs to prove his innocence, the hearing will be similar to that of Skyfall's. Then at the end, you have the villain and it will be revealed that he set up Bond for that crime.
Guys, what do you think of my idea?
Is it good?
Gross exaggerations invite bold replies. I am interested in seeing how the angry arm-crossers will respond to the next film.
"Not gonna see that film. Bond is dead, so I'm good."
More empty theatre seats for us to occupy. 😉
I don't like the idea of turning a Bond film into a courtroom drama, but there's a cool Hitchcockian feel to this idea (perhaps a bit too much so!)
I like the idea of Bond being framed though, perhaps due to something that occurs outside of duty... I dunno, maybe Bond returns from an assignment like the opening of the Goldfinger novel and has to stop off somewhere but meets an old flame. She's involved in some trouble and needs Bond's help so Bond agrees. During the course of this the girl dies and Bond is framed for the murder so has to go on the run, while M and the MI6 gang have to work out what happened/face the possibility that Bond did something bad.
Not sure if it'll happen, especially for Bond 26, but could be a cool idea down the line. A sort of LTK type thing.
The other problem is that I think there have been to many "rogue Bond" films. I'd like for the next one to start out with a handful of rather straight forward missions. So maybe I'd see this as more of a third film idea.
This is interesting, thanks, never thought of that.
Agent of SPECTRE? So the Producers was still not aware of a Kevin McClory rival Bond film when this draft was written, so when they knew that Kevin McClory's rival bond film was in the process (and they will use Blofeld and SPECTRE), they ditched this idea?
And that would be too dark for a Roger Moore Bond film, maybe the producers wanted to go a lot more darker after FYEO?
One thought:
* I can't also imagine Moore's bond going rogue.
It's interesting, I didn't know about this either. It seems like the idea of Bond going rogue was on their minds before the Dalton era/LTK in that case.
Also it's interesting that they felt they could conceivably have a film where M is killed off (especially after Bernard Lee's death). I don't think it would have had as much impact if Brown's M had been introduced only to die. The SPECTRE involvement is telling. I'm glad we got the Octopussy we did. I can't see Moore's Bond going rogue either.
Unfortunately the draft never surfaced online, here are the details that we have:
https://www.mi6community.com/discussion/comment/838488#Comment_838488
https://www.mi6community.com/discussion/comment/1175869#Comment_1175869
The killing of M always puzzled me as I don't think a new actor would have been introduced to to be killed off right away. I rather think that it would have happened off-screen or with a body double. Anyway, glad to share some trivia. This draft is still for me the most fascinating script that we have yet to read, maybe even more than the DAF starring Lazenby scripts.
You definitely want a body double if they are going to kill you.
Interesting stuff. All seems very rough to early draft though. Again, I'm glad we got the Octopussy we did.
Remember as for Roger Moore, they are weren’t sure if he was returning at the time it was being written. As for Blofeld, I think EON might go back to this story in some ways, now that Blofeld and SPECTRE are owned by them. Plus with everything having a main villain in a set story arc as rumored, it makes sense to use Blofeld as well.
So, the draft was also considered for a new Bond actor, in case that Roger Moore decided not to return?
Well written @BMB007 ! I feel like I learned alot from this breakdown.
Though, I have one hope for the series going forward: that we can have stand-alone stories and character development. Especially if there continues to be 4-5 years in between films.
Agreed. And in my perspective, Mendes brought that disconnect between camp and drama. I admit there was a spark of something interesting with the cartoonish stuff in Skyfall but it quickly lost its way.
Silva isn't trying to mock Bond with his look. That's what Moon is doing with his "Gustav Graves" persona in DAD. Silva doesn't know Bond beyond reading a couple of reports on him. His look is clearly a hit against Julian Assange, who was at the height of his notoriety when SF was made.
Also, Bond doesn't rush off to avenge M because the person who killed her was already dead, not because he grew up or anything like that. I interpret Skyfall's ending as more of a comeuppance for how M betrayed both Bond and Silva.
As for the rest of your post, I have a different interpretation of Craig-Bond's arc, and I think it's because, in my opinion, Skyfall fundamentally altered the purpose of the Craig era. Casino Royale was meant to be a reconstruction of Bond, as in, "this is how James Bond became 007." The ordeal with Vesper is how he turns from a hotheaded adrenaline junkie into a professional killer for MI6. QOS continued that trajectory.
Then Skyfall basically resets his Bond. Again he starts taking things personally like he did when he was a novice, quitting MI6 for several months because of a friendly fire incident. Not that he didn't have a right to be angry, but it felt out-of-step given what happened in CR and QOS. SF deconstructs Bond's origin, imposing "childhood trauma" on his character and giving him all sorts of Oedipal issues that you mentioned, which I think are out of place in this series.
This trend continued with SP, and by then the series was no longer about reconstructing Bond, but deconstructing him to the point where he was no longer recognizable as Bond. Whereas the point of CR and QOS was to show how Bond became 007, SF and on was about Bond gradually rejecting being 007. Like you say, these movies are about him turning away from his life of killing, but I find that silly. It's not like Bond is a serial killer. He's killing terrorists.
As for NTTD's ending, the message seems to be that Bond HAS to be 007 and that if he rejects that to enjoy a family life, he'll be killed by his own Navy as some kind of divine punishment. I don't find that logical, it's just the message the filmmakers wanted, and they wrote an awfully-contrived script to get to that conclusion. They could just as easily have had a Winner Take All ending where Bond saves the day and retires to live with his family. They didn't want that, so we didn't get that. It doesn't have anything to do with logic, it's just the filmmakers following trends in major franchises.
This was long before Skyfall was ever even a thought. A lot of the ideas I thought were novel at the time were actually done at some point in Craig’s era.
I had never heard of that version of Octopussy until today. It’s hard to picture Moore in it, although FYEO showed he could pull it off.
I think Bond is the understated British equivalent too. The man who can seduce any woman, defeat any bad guy, expert driver, pilot, marksman, skiier, etc. He’s just as fantastical as any comic book superhero really, there’s just a thin veneer of reality that grounds the fantasy. And some of the films don’t even have that.
I like it. Bond as a fugitive would be a fresh idea (I’m picturing a big GTA style police chase with Bond in a stolen MI6 Aston) and M or anyone else in the MI6 crew doubting his innocence would be a nice source of drama. Maybe they could frame Bond with Deep Fake technology? Basically ripping off the BBC series The Capture. Not sure about the courtroom stuff though, I think it could potentially slow things down too much.