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So much negativism...
History has shown this time and time again. Bond survives, and adapts to the next generation. How do you think the series has lasted so long.
There was talk of Bond not being relevant anymore before GE, and then again after DAD, and we know how that all turned out.
The bigger danger is EON caving in to current trends and changing Bond's origins completely, losing all connections to how Fleming wrote and envisaged Bond himself back in 1952, and turning Bond into just another faceless modern day action screen hero, that can be played by someone from an ethnic minority background, or a woman, because Bond needs to be modernised to keep the young Twitter X TikTok mob happy.
The world around Bond can change and be modernised, but Bond himself cannot change. He needs to stay firmly in his old fashioned 1950's time zone bubble, and not stray too far from the Fleming description. All previous actors have differed slightly from Fleming's description in terms of hair and eye colour (apart from Dalton and Brosnan), but you can still picture them coming from the books. Slightly lighter hair or darker eyes is not such a big departure that you cannot imagine that actor in the books playing Bond.
Tamper with these origin roots too much, and there is a bigger danger of Bond not surviving the next generation, but I trust EON not to do this.
And I would enfatize that modernising something to keep the young twitter X TikTok mob happy would be a mistake in any given cultural area. Pedagogy is still a thing. Shaping our future is not tailoring to the present. It's giving them clothes that they can grow into. Give them clothes their current size, which is rather minuscule, and they won't grow an inch.
Besides, this is the dictum:
The world changes, Bond does not.
Many of you use capitalist arguments to reinforce the need for change, as if culture is but a market. Culture must infer upon the market, not the other way around. These arguments I keep reading are feeble. And when I talk about culture, I do not mean social agenda, because that one is a silent slave to the market. Again, we must shape our future, and the past plays an important role in that. We should not deny it, or we will repeat it ad nauseam. Bond is part of that past. It's not whether he is relevant nowadays or not. That would be like asking if the past is relevant nowadays. Of course it is. It should be made present, so we can learn from it and then shape our futures. Old speech, this one, I feel like Francis Fukuyama here, or Allan Bloom, or Herbert Marcuse,... But people keep forgetting this is an old discussion. Maybe people should read more about it, and then write an informed opinion, which is the only kind of opinion that matters, IMIO. I keep reading that the only way to survive is to loose identity. To shave off and forget about the wrongs of the past. Yeah, well, we are seeing where this is leading us all, aren't we? To an amnesiac society of the instantaneous, and uncultured opinionated bunch of bullies.
Again, I repeat the dictum:
The world changes, Bond does not.
That makes it interesting and exotic. Take away that, and you 'll have an homunculus that will only serve the purpose of the instantaneous, and have no place on posterity.
The wait has been compared to the gap between LTK and GE or the gap between DAD and CR but it's probably more accurate to imagine if Craig had left after CR, how would they proceed with a writers/actors strike and introduce a new Bond to the world. You just have to wait unfortunately, better to do than get it wrong because of external pressures out of EON's control. I completely trust they know what they're doing
If Craig had left after CR, so a one and done? So that would be a situation similar to Lazenby.
More so about moving forwards under the weight of a writers strike, than anything else
+1. I am certain that Eon is thinking about where to go next with Bond. Maybe the unfortunate strike downtime will give them time to decide that direction.
Personally, I hope they lean less into nostalgia (I'm tired of movies with callbacks) and just go back to Fleming.
If they have a strong story, they don't need to remind us of Honey Ryder's arrival, Jill Masterson's fate, etc. A new film needs to dramatize its own (hopefully) iconic moments.
EON will no doubt try to make a Bond film that is modern and of the highest quality possible. But like I said, we've seen in the past with films like GE and CR how they've done this while keeping the essential qualities of Fleming's original creation alive. Short of a Batman and Robin or Morbeius-esque 'so bad it's good' disaster, the film will reach a certain amount of success financially. The Bond series is in a good position in this sense.
Agreed!
And I may add, no retconning! I'm also tired of retcons.
No recycling of old plots, and no stealing of aspects from the older movies.
If we're talking about taking inspiration from Bond films of the past (in the same way DAD consciously took elements from DAF's plot and re-used them) that's not necessarily a bad thing either. For instance, if we got a Bond 26 that took inspiration from, say, TMWTGG's plot (the movie that is), but aimed to improve upon the general concept and ironed out many of the problems of that film, I think that'd be interesting. It really just depends on what they do.
But it also had its negatives:
The plot of You Only Live Twice was recycled two times: in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, three if Tomorrow Never Dies counts.
Goldfinger too, pretty much obvious in the following films like A View To A Kill, The World Is Not Enough and Quantum of Solace.
These Bond films tend to be identical in plots, almost the same, it's like a clothes with the same style but different colors.
And the recycling of those plots starts to become lazy that the lack of creativeness in the writing department is getting obvious.
The same for stealing some aspects from the old films like how No Time To Die stolen the love theme from On Her Majesty's Secret Service (the 'We Have All The Time In The World', in particular).
I really hate NTTD’s use of WHATTITW. That song is for Bond and Tracey, and their love story. Using it is a very lazy way to try and transfer that over to this, to make up for the utter failure to establish Bond and Maddie’s romance in Spectre. It’s not like they didn’t have their own (rather good) love theme… Newman wrote them one.
I mean, I'd argue that TSWLM is a better film than YOLT, and actually I'd much rather watch TND any day over it too. MR's quite fun too, silly as it is. To be honest I find YOLT a rather dreary film.
While that's pretty subjective to me as a viewer, I'd argue TSWLM has a better reputation amongst the general public than YOLT (arguably amongst us fans too), and many people nowadays seem to look back on TND quite fondly. So I don't think the fact that they share plot similarities is a bad thing. Like I said, I think TSWLM improves upon YOLT.
It's a bit like criticising Ian Fleming's GF by claiming it's a carbon copy of MR (ie. Bond meets the villain through doing a favour for someone by thwarting the villain who cheats during gambling, the villain is someone posing as a rich industrialist who wants to do something world altering). Yes, they share similarities and are comparable, but it's within the same formula of story and are different enough to hold up on their own. Several plot elements carry over from Bond film to Bond film in a similar way.
I can see the plot similarities in AVTAK and I guess a bit in QOS (the reference to the 'golden girl' in the form of Agent Field's death is another similarity), but I think all those films have their own identities and stand thoroughly apart from GF.
Like I said Bond is a relatively formulaic series. There's always going to be similarities of some sort in terms of plot, characters, and even stylistic features. Again, just depends on how it's done.
Yes, I'd argue that didn't work for me either. But I'm sure it did for some.
But that love theme was for a specific romance, there's an identity in the Tracy-Bond romance.
That's what makes the romance special and unique and John Barry made sure of it, because it's the film where Bond gets married for one time.
Again, just like If You Asked Me Too for Bond and Pam, for example.
Now, using it for Bond and Madeleine's romance removed the identity of the Bond and Tracy romance, the thing that made it special and unique, the thing is the Bond and Tracy romance was unlike any other because they've got married.
It's not similar to the James Bond theme.
Now, in the Bond and Madeleine romance, since they've tried to make her romance with Bond an unusual one (in a different way), they could've used a different and new theme for that.
Bond says 'we have all the time in the world' to Madeline too: now it's the 'love of his life' theme.
Folks watching YOLT might have been equally miffed that the 'stealing the Lector' theme reappeared as Little Nellie flew around, but it turned out to be fine. And what's good about it is that John Barry gets to make an appearance in a 21st Century Bond film: it's not something to get angry about.
John Williams' Henry Jones theme from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade turned up in Crystal Skull: he'd decided it was actually the family theme, and that was fine too.
But, again, there's an identity in that song.
It's even lyrical, unlike those that you've mentioned as an example.
So, everytime Bond falls in love (even in the future Bond films) that song would be played?
'We Have All The Time In The World' signified how unique Bond and Tracy's romance because again, they've got married, very unique and special, it's not just about Bond falling in love, it's about Bond marrying this woman.
Now, in Bond and Madeleine's relationship, it's a different identity that they should've created a new and original love theme.
I'm not sure what you're saying: it has lyrics therefore it's different? The lyrics don't mention Tracy or getting married.
And as I said, Bond says the title of the song. It top and tails the movie, and both times he says it to Madeline. The phrase has importance to the film and their relationship. NTTD uses the 'identity' of the song.
Again, it's not my favourite aspect of the film, and I find the reference a bit too on the nose/would have preferred something original, but honestly there are a chunk of people who watched NTTD who have no idea what the relevance of the song is in terms of Bond, and even if they did it worked for some.
What I'm talking about here, was the identity and trademark that make Bond and Tracy's relationship different from any other.
And like other love themes in the series: If You Asked Me Too for Bond and Pam, If There Was A Man for Bond and Kara, Experience of Love for Bond and Natalya, it's the same with We Have All The Time In The World for Bond and Tracy.
I have no problem with Bond mentioning it alone (in fact, long before OHMSS, Bond mentioned the motto many times in the books, he did said it in LALD), the problem was the usage of the song.
They could've created another love theme for Bond and Madeleine to give their romance a different identity.
Exactly.
That's what I'm saying, no problem with mentioning it alone (more acceptable as a reference), because he did mentioned it in the books.
But to use the song, yes, it's a bit too on the nose, that's too much taking it away from the original film (the identity of it).
Which makes the choice of WHATTITW even more perplexing.
Use the Eilish theme.
I'd have probably preferred something original, but then again it's John Barry, and I'm not going to complain about hearing a bit of his lovely work paid tribute to.
I'm not really following your logic, sorry. I don't know what you mean by 'lyrical' in the context of it being different then.
I get that it was used only once in the past and was unique up until then, much like the Lektor theme; but now it's been used twice. It doesn't take the identity of OHMSS away, again I'm not sure what that means.
Okay, let's move on from that lyrical subject.
That's why I've provided a new example in the love themes that's used in TLD, LTK and GE, and WHATTITW is not different from that, to bring significance to the relationship (Bond and Tracy, in particular).
The Lektor theme had no significance, it signifies nothing, so to use it in another film was okay.
But the We Have All The Time In The World was made for Bond and Tracy, not for Bond and Madeleine.
And now it's been recontextualised and represents Bond's forever, and indeed doomed, loves.
And that's the bad thing about it.
It's one of my hopes that Bond 26 should never do again.
WHATTITW was written specifically for Bond and Tracey, and was so effective at being that, when I hear it, emotionally my mind goes to their relationship and the events of the film.
Plus, it never reappeared until NTTD, a 50 year gap, by which point I would argue it is safe to argue that it’s use is purely for them.
Which is why when I hear it applied to Bond and Madeline, my mind goes “hang on, that isn’t right”.
Perhaps I am explaining my feelings a bit ham fistedly but in essence, it’s the emotional response by me as a viewer to it, that makes it’s use in NTTD very awkward.