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That’s it in a nutshell. Will.
The world is running out of nongeneric cinematic experiences.
How many huge film series are knocking out a film a year? Even Star Wars didn't manage it successfully when they tried (and Marvel is a studio with different productions going on). It's easy to say that you think more effort would solve it, but there's not much evidence that they could bang out films just like that.
I suspect that there's something legal or otherwise going on that we don't know about too: there's still no sign of a B26 ltd. company being opened, which is unusual.
Also a lot of you aren’t considering the factor that MGM was just bought by Amazon, which means Eon has a lot more on their plate on how to proceed with the next film under new management, distribution, etc.
They had source material to work from.
I agree. I'm not sure what the big deal is, here. The dust has barely settled from NTTD.
There was a three-year gap between DAD and when Craig was announced. That seemed fine. People need to cool their jets.
I think it probably means less that they're turning him into anything different than trying to work out a direction to go in. Even if they decide to go with a Roger-style comedy version, that's still a direction to be picked.
I guess they did still have things to work out regarding NTTD before it was finally released, I imagine the job isn't completely done until the film is out on home release. Regardless, they do usually start of the process of the next film before the last one has been released, which they haven't done this time- hence my feeling that there's some extra dimension to this we're not privy to (and the MGM takeover seems prime candidate).
George Lazenby enters the chat room. And I say that as a Lazenby fan.
I don’t agree with that point, but I do subscribe the thought that not every Bond actor can easily be slotted into someone else’s. The most extreme example I can think of is trying to imagine Roger Moore’s Bond working in LTK. To me they’re incompatible.
I take it from Broccoli’s words that she wants the next Bond to be different from Craig, which IMO is the correct course of action to take, just as Craig was after Brosnan and so on.
Well it depends. I think if Connery played Bond in OHMSS like he played him on Dr. No, and FRWL, that would’ve been the best performance from any Bond actor. But post Goldfinger Connery? I struggle a bit trying to picture that scenario. But I do think Connery and Lazenby’s Bond are perhaps the most similar to each other, even more so than the Dalton/Craig comparisons. It’s almost sort of difficult to talk about Lazenby for me. I think he was great in the part despite some of the dubbing and acting skills, and I’m one of those people who thinks he should’ve stuck around and done more, but it’s hard to ignore when he’s trying to do something Connery would’ve pulled off effortlessly. I will say that after the proposal scene is when we actually start seeing Lazenby’s Bond coming into his own stride a bit, which is odd given how OHMSS wasn’t shot in sequential order.
I'd put odds on him.
I think the initial idea was that Lazenby would simply be written and directed to play Bond no differently from Connery to assure audiences that this is the exact same person. But because Peter Hunt wanted to stick close to the novel, that meant giving Bond moments of vulnerability, so it gave Lazenby an opportunity to do something that made his Bond unique.
I would like to see a Dalton esque style Bond era; one that's not afraid to bend the formula without completely breaking it.
Bond has been through countless 'reinventions' but this next one may be, by far, the most important if the series is to continue in any noteworthy way in the future. Certainly ranks up there with the pivot after LTK when Barbara and Michael took over the franchise from Cubby full-time.
Looking at those modern examples, and what reinvention could mean:
1995: People just plain missed James Bond. Fun, classic, broadly appealing James Bond. That's why we got GoldenEye, and Pierce Brosnan. Almost universally loved, an easy film to enjoy, yet also quite edgy and ruthlessly modern given the series' precedents (scenes with M and Moneypenny come to mind, as well as using a brute-force plot framework to confront the idea of Bond in a post-Soviet Union world).
2006: The 'reinvention' move here was so brilliant and appropriate that it seems almost obvious, in retrospect (but that made it no less a risk). Bond had become science fiction, needed more edge, needed more reality, and we got Daniel Craig. Pared down plot, as steeped as possible in Fleming source material, abandoning tropes, and a massive dice roll given Brosnan's established success. And yet Craig performed so well, and the film itself was so immensely good, that it was a massive victory.
In many ways, those two 'reinventions' would seem opposite ends of the Bond spectrum. Classic familiarity on one, hard-edged modernity on the other.
I'm absolutely fascinated to watch where this one goes. Is it one, or the other? Or something totally unexpected we (gasp) haven't seen before, at all?
Something tells me their goal won't be figuring out a way to pay more homage to the previous 60 years. The Craig era leaned (subversively) hard in that direction, particularly near the end. I suspect they're more concerned with establishing something that will provide a foundation for 60 more years of franchise success, if such a thing is possible for the world's most iconic cinematic spy.