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They need to get back to interesting spy plots, how many were actually taken in by the surveillance scheme in SPECTRE?
Saoirse Ronan seems too young, although she does have, 'I'll burn the world down to get what I want' look about her'. I just see her as too much as the spoilt heiress rebelling against daddy and doing what her boyfriend tells her. Now Daisy Ridley or Emily Blunt in some Talia Al Ghul type of role would be interesting in some kind of wanting to set the world right and not caring who they hurt, since man is beyond saving.
Trust me it's PC posturing, especially in the event of this past summer. Bond will never be anything than a red blooded hetero sexual white male. From the UK, Ireland, Australia or New Zealand. Babs isn't crazy to alienate fans.
Where do they go next? Who knows? If the Hardy rumours are true, I guess we'll be treated to more Bond as ex military who wants to right the world that Craig did. But if they go for a mid 30 something Bond they might go back to what Brosnan did. Oxbridge grad who served in the military with a penchant for getting himself in trouble.
There are elements from that show that I would love to see brought into the Bond universe, Martin Phipps for example does excellent work with the music especially in the last season, it has the sense of grandeur, romance and sinister vibes that would fit a Bond movie like a glove IMO. I'm also a fan of the cinematography, it really captures the locations beautifully which would be a plus in a Bond movie too. Wouldn't mind seeing Emma Corrin in a Bond movie either, she gave a star performance as the Princess of Wales.
I'll take Helena Bonham Carter as a Bond villain.
For Saoirse Ronan, when she’s older, she would great for the franchise, as long as she stays with art house movies. Daisy Ridley would be great as well. As for Helena Bonham Carter, she overexposed, to take seriously anymore.
Peter Morgan deserves another chance to write. He should have been credited for the story Skyfall, as M dying was his idea.
Actually, would say that the following the trends started with OHMSS and DAF. The former because of its abrupt, sad ending, like a lot of movies in the late 60s. The latter is following campy TV shows of the late 60s.
As for OHMSS, it was all in the book.
I always found it a remarkable accomplishment that the producers were convinced to go with the original ending. The first 4 films followed the books. In YOLT they got away from the book, but in OHMSS they returned. In fact - if any film might be the first to show Bond FOLLOW something else in film or popular culture, it was the space stuff in YOLT. I would not really say that, though, since that aspect of YOLT was reminiscent of the evil plot in DN. I feel they updated their own formula.
Had, say, skiing become a popular movie action bit around that time, and were it NOT in the book, but was then inserted into the film, then I'd say they followed something popular and put it in their film, but everything was in the book already.
DAF ? I'm sure someone may have written about this, with good source information, but I've not seen it. Clearly, though, the producers lightened up. Went for more humor. It was not shocking, though, since even the "serious" Bond films of the day were regarded by those IN the films as escapist larks. They just opened up more about it, even with a self-referential joke that "Peter Franks had killed the famous James Bond !" There was something of pop culture of the day inserted in the film -- Willard Whyte clearly was inspired by Howard Hughes, who, by then, had a reputation as being a self-isolating loon. But even that was not the same as borrowing something which had become popular in other films. At the time, it seemed that the producers -- having had things not go as preferred with G Lazenby appearing in just ONE film -- knew that even ONE film with Sean Connery would help keep the franchise going, and making it fun and not take itself so seriously -- as with YOLT -- was the way to go with it. And they did. And kept on that route for a while thereafter.
Yes, I think the '70s was the movie-trend-copying era, and Eon has not let up since. There have been a couple of exceptions that feel fresher and more innovative like FYEO and, perhaps, TLD, not incidentally two of the better films in the series.
With Craig they could have just written 3-4 scripts back to back. Similarly the recent Star Wars trilogy suffers from not being planned out beforehand.
Bond 25 was finished in late 2019 - early 2020. The movie has set on a shelf for a year, and besides that , it concludes an era that has been going on for a decade and a half. The same time from Connery in YOLT and NSNA. So, there's a slot of baggage that has been hanging around the franchise which they can't seem to move on from with Craig, and once we get a fresh, new film without any of that, its just gonna be so exciting. Literally endless possibilities for a new Bond without any personal drama or trust issues, or looming skeletons in the closet from Bond past.
It's interesting just how many Bond films occurred between YOLT and NSNA. How many different styles of Bond film, various changes and evolutions during that 16 year period. A wide variety. Certainly pus things into perspective.
I don't put too much stock into either Fukunaga being offered B26 already or the producers having a particular actor or even actor type in mind yet for the next Bond, as I don't think they are even thinking about the next Bond yet. That said, I'm all for starting off with a younger, 30ish year-old Bond à la Lazenby. It would be a refreshing change.
As for Fukunaga, I actually kind of like having a new director with a new perspective each time. Bringing Campbell back after a good long hiatus for Casino Royale was a winning move. Bringing a creatively tapped Mendes back for Spectre wasn't. Not saying that will be the same case for Fukunaga. Who knows. But I like getting a new director's take on Bond each time.
So what are the current trends?
I recently rewatched Mission Impossible 4 and 5 and was struck by how gadget heavy those films are. It's weird how the different franchises are viewed. I of course haven't done any representative study on this, but I think a Bond film would have been ridiculed for something like the sticky glove stunt on the Burj Khalifa or the flute gun in Rogue Nation and so much more, not to mention all of the mask business. Maybe the differentiating factor is the whole "Cruise did this for real"-framing?
Superheroes have obviously been the biggest box-office for the last ten years, but other then forced continuity and melodrama, I don't see, what Bond would take from that. I don't see a space mission à la Star Wars -> Moonraker and I don't think flattening whole cities is the way to go.
I would group John Wick in a category of "kinetic action" with stuff like The Raid. And that is basically what can be taken from them: Amped up fight choreography and other than that very classic action movie stories with great one-liners and beautiful framing. Letting Gareth Evans do a Bond would certainly be super interesting. The question is whether he could create something more or just re-do Wick/Raid/Gangs of London. Maybe he would be up to "just" do some fight choreography and cinematography?
Fast & Furious is not something I have seen a lot of and seems like the farthest from Bond. The only thing that comes to mind for me is that those movies have shown that suspension of disbelief really works for a certain, large section of the movie going public. Also, F&F has some of the same melodramatic tendencies that superhero movies, specifically Marvel, have. Again, I don't really know if there is anything here, Eon would/should take as an influence.
Other non-franchise action films seem few and far between. Most of what I can recall would be either gritty war stuff like Fury or more comedic movies like Baby Driver.
In conclusion: I don't really know what to take from this. To me it seems clear, that there has been a return of gadgetry, suspension of disbelief and set pieces, although I would argue the focus has been less on just big set pieces and rather on complicated or stylish sequences (Wick and Baby Driver f.e.). The question is whether the history of the Bond franchise precludes it from following these trends and of course whether Bond should follow trends at all..
Although your category of "kinetic action" is very relevant, I allow myself to add the nostalgic dimension upon which the John Wick trilogy and a movie often associated, Atom Blonde, are based. These films, to which we can link the upcoming Wonder Woman 84 or the Stranger Things series, are founded, it seems to me, on a nostalgia for the 80s or the imagery associated with this decade. This is not necessarily new, we saw a few years ago a nostalgia for the 60s and 70s in Hollywood productions meeting a certain success with the audience. In the same category, Marvel's Captain Marvel played on this nostalgia, this time for the 90s. This trend of playing with the imagery of a past decade does not seem to be negligible in the current Hollywood landscape.
It remains to be see to what extend this nostalgia could impact the series in the future but we have already seen with Spectre that the creative team tried to play on the imagery of the 60s, the humor that we readily associated with the second half of the Connery era (Thunderball, YOLT). I would not be surprised if Bond 26, if the public is still sensitive to this trend, would be tempted to play on nostalgia.
Interesting. I never really saw Wick as very nostalgic. What makes you say that?
But the overall point is absolutely correct (and I should have included Atomic Blonde). Nostalgia is definitely a trend and I think we have previously discussed the connection between Bond, the 60s and nostalgia. While I think that is very fertile ground and I like the aesthetic myself, my previous position was that there is a weird problem in that 60s nostalgia pieces are very prevalent in what I would call an upper-middle-class bachelor set. Specifically the social stratum Bond would belong to. The irony is that Bond is a huge reason for the current popularity of this aesthetic. This might be me thinking myself into unnecessary knots, but how do they keep Bond from looking like Bond cosplay? It's a very strange conundrum that might be exclusive to the Bond franchise.
I don't know.
By going back to Fleming. CR 2006 felt like 60% Fleming, 20% Bourne, and 20% Batman Begins. And it worked.
To stay on a potential influence from John Wick, and this is a point I've made on this discussion before, I think the most important lesson, and which could also be learned from Atomic Blonde, is that a spy-tinged action movie with a moderate budget is capable of delivering something stylish and polished. NTTD will probably not succeed in recouping its colossal budget and it seems to me that if Eon wants to continue to be able to be profitable on the big screen, to take a page from these mid-budget movies would seem necessary to me.
Ah. Got you.
Especially Wick 2 is very operatic in a way, which automatically makes it feel old school. Another area would be that the movies structurally work like very classic actioners.
As for the mid-budget thing. I'm absolutely with you. I get the feeling they don't really have an idea what to do with the budget. The epitome of that is the big explosion in SP. What was it? The biggest or most expensive explosion ever on film? And it leaves you with nothing. It just happens and you forget about it. I have high hopes that Cary Fukunaga is still hungry and happy to experiment and that NTTD will have some great pieces that are there for a reason.
And I've said it before: My hope for B26 is that somebody has a real filmmaking idea the way CR was an idea and not that they go through the motions.
To be honest, who the next director will be is something that today interests me much more than all the speculation about the next actor.