It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
Monica Bellucci was the typical Bond girl and personally I experienced that EVERYONE talked about here extensively.
So in my opinion, EON succeeded in providing us with a much talked about Bond girl.
In a future Bond film there will be another Xenia Onatopp or Fiona Volpe or Vesper or Pussy Galore.
I have to admit that Murino certainly delivered a little of the requisite goods in CR, but I too long for a little more exposé (and I don't mean Craig in swimwear or underwear) going forward.
The changing has to be done according to what people want to see in films, while I would have loved them to continue with the typical Bond formula i feel like it was the right thing to give Criag a more realistic take on the character otherwise the franchise could have been killed.
I don't think its that relevant if Bond smokes or doesn't or if he slaps women. What matters is how he feels about his job and how he acts with the villains and how good he is at seducing the ladies.
But i do even myself wonder what would have happened if they wouldn't have rebooted and just scale down the film on the gadgets making them a bitt less futuristic but still keep with quips, non bleeding Bond and no Rookie Agent stuff just continue like nothing in cinema happened and they wouldn't have followed the trend. The Bourne, 24 and The Batman Begins.
Keep exactly like they were doing with Pierce just a bitt more polished scripts and scaleing down on the futuristic side.
Would it have worked or the franchise would have died ?
Craig's timeline makes me feel like he is Bond 1 again. That the count of the Bonds started all over again.
Officially he is Bond number 6 but because there is a whole new timeline with a different backstory for Blofeld makes me feel like he is Bond #1 and Bond #7 will Bond #2 again.
So yes, I think it would have worked, and I think that's what some of us (myself included) are advocating for the next film.
Personally, I'd like to see the films push the envelope with Bond's masculinity. Even women want to see a real man on the screen. Okay, so patriarchy's gotten a bad rap, probably deservedly so, and feminists fight it. But aside from Fleming's design for Bond's character, and probably the need for more equality here and there, remember we had the men's movement starting in the 1980s, and men's groups flourish today...I organized one over a year ago and it's going strong. So masculinity is alive and well, and Bond should continue to be something of a symbol for that. Robert Bly wrote about the "Wild Man", who cannot be fenced in by society. We live in society, but wildness still lives within us--I think that's one reason why we, or I at least, identify with Bond. The ability to make whatever moves are necessary to get the job done--and to enjoy life for all it's worth!
Yes I meant staying popular with the crowds and make good profits and while Bond seems to be always profitable cinema changed drastically and maybe everyone would have thought keeping the formula was holding on to the past instead of looking to the future.
@JasonBond
Yes Goldeneye did jist fixed a few mistakes from the Dalton era but still kept the formula so I guess it would have been possible to renew Bond without the drastic change.
And let's hope Bond 25 bring us back to the formula but updated just like Goldeneye once did. Martin Campbell brougt Bond back to the beginning in Casino Royale lets make him bring Bond back again to the old Formula but in 2016.
We need Martin Campbell back again.
"moving back, instead of forward, seems to me absurd."
... i'll just leave that one there.
That's a great argument in favor of changing that i never thought about before with Bond.
its so true we can understand how movies were at certain times because the character behaved according to the decade and the films were according to the mood people were in at a specific time.
We know the 60s were all about political incorrectness and great style thanks to Dr No, Goldfinger, From Russia with love and the Sean Connery films.
The 70s was a great time for comedy thanks to the more light hearted film with Roger Moore.
The 80s had this need for more hard action flicks and more violence was allowed thanks to Licence to kill and the living daylights we also had in the same style die hard and Rambo.
The 90s was about bombastic pure fun action,the action of the 90s was about entretainment and leaving the theater Happy. Many critized the Brosnan era for being more shallow and maybe silly but that's what worked in the 90s till early 00s.
And now the Craig era is giving us more depth and realism because that is what cinema is going through right now.
The esscence of the character is the same. Just some mannerisms change to adapt to each different decade and its great People can learn from some decades while watching the Bond movies.
Craig definitely changed the Formula big time but like all the other Bonds he is an answer of what people want to see in their films right now.
But Mission Impossible is a great argument against the chsnge why? Because unlike Bond they never drastically changed their franchise they have kept it the way it was when they started. There are a few changes here and there but I don't feel much line which marks MI before Nolan and 9/11 and after.
I see very little difference from the first MI to Rouge Nation. The one which fell the most different was Mi 2 with that one they went as far as Bond went with Die Another Day but for the third they just tonned down the gadgets they didn't go the Casino Royale root.
So there is a great argument in both sides : against and in favor of the change,
Personally im a little more inclined to against to change that means they shouldn't have rebooted and make Bond so dark and realistic just tone it down a little bit but i would have preferred they took the Mission Impossible Route.
I'm not that against it, since i do like the Craig cuadrilogy a lot and how they made the reboot.
Also, the 70s wasn't really a great time for comedy. It was probably the most darkest decade in movies, with the likes of The French Connection, Dirty Harry, Death Wish, The Godfather, The Exorcist, etc, all set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, The Munich Olympics massacre, The Black Panther movement and the Watergate Scandal. That's a short list, but there's a long list of violent movies produced in that decade, more so than any other. Bond only branched off into the comedy/lighter approach due to the casting of Roger Moore; Tom Mankiewicz even said he wrote the comedy into LALD to suit Roger Moore's personality. If Bond had really been following the culture trends of the 70s we would have had a gritty, violent and bloody series of movies, not the bawdy comedies that they morphed into. Sure, there were the Woody Allen movies which were mostly X-rated adult comedies, even Mel Brook's two big hits Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein earned AA certificates in the UK, but the 70s wasn't really that big on comedy - certainly not the family friendly kind.
There's no real point to my post, other than to say you have a skewed perception of those two decades, @Szonana. I'm just trying to straighten you out.
Then again I suppose that style of (British) humour wasn't exclusive to JUST the 70s. However, I do get the impression that, when it came to popular trends in British comedy at least, farce was definitely "in" (Fawlty Towers, Dad's Army etc). I wonder if that might have been something that had been picked up on by the Bond people.
Ahhhh, well thanks for correcting me and explaining me more about the 60s and 70s periods in cinema.
how The Moore films were ahead of its times but you could think that the 70s were so dark in real life that people looked for films to escape and comedies gave them that escape but thanks for explaining mevthat the Moore era being so light hearted was because of Roger Moore himself.
But the Connery films did follow its trends a bit didn't they ?
i mean you could see some strong woman between the Bond girls with a voice especially Sylvia Trench but the diference from the Politically correct Bond girls the 60s were more un intentional it was much more natural.
I'm going to go out on a limb here & suggest that the Comte may never have made any sort of film professionally, Bond or otherwise. I believe you may be speaking beyond your personal experience, Comte. Not that I can claim any experience as a professional film-maker either...but I suspect it's not an easy realm to "make a good profit" in, otherwise, a lot more people would be doing it.
Personally, I always felt uncomfortable that Bond took the lighthearted route in the Seventies with TSWLM and MR, as it would have a long lasting effect on the series going forwards into the next decade, and would take a long while after to shake it off, which it eventually did with Casino Royale almost 3 decades later.
In no way am I telling you how to rate or like a movie, I'm just giving you my first time account of how I felt back in 77.
That built-in audience can be as much a curse as a blessing. Look at OHMSS -- it had a huge audience drop-off from the films preceding and following it, despite the adherence to Fleming's original storyline. Or LTK, or QoS, both with actors in the lead role that are largely approved by the modern fan community. The built-ins can be an enormous hindrance if you don't handle them right -- and there's nothing guaranteed in the film business, other than the fact that a small army of people out there want your job, desperately, and they're absolutely certain they could do a better job of it than you have been.
The sentence I have emboldened is my point. The brand alone doesn't guarantee success if the product starts to repeatedly disappoint the audience. Too many people on this forum get their jollies by constantly bashing any Bond film made since whenever their idealized Golden Age may have been. (If Pierce Brosnan could bear the scars of their critical scorn, he'd be the ugliest man walking the planet!) Additionally, the brand didn't just magically appear out of the vacuum before most of us were born -- several very talented people have worked their tails off for decades now to MAKE that brand. Michael G. Wilson has been involved with the making of this series since Goldfinger, for Ian's sake! Let's show a little credit where credit is due and not walk around assuming that any marginally talented chimpanzee could make a successful Bond film!
The most critically successful Bond films of the last 25 years have not been the most successful at the box office, with the exception of SF.
Branding can result in continued box office success, but only critically acclaimed quality will result in respect. That respect was lost to an extent during the 90's even though the films were very successful (Brosnan even made that point when arguing that he should be brought back - well they keep making more money was his argument - or words to that effect). EON made the smart decision to reboot, because they had gone of track critically, despite casting Oscar winners in key roles, and despite 'moving with the times' arguably.
What they gave us with CR was actually a return to a more 'sexist and old fashioned' Bond, but credibility was restored. It was a less successful (at the box office) reset, which re-established and re-positioned the brand for the future.
I thought it was obvious I was saying it's very difficult now to make a bond film without a good profit, not at the beginning.
I was responding to someone who asked whether it Brosnan type films had continued to be made would it be a success. Now the Brosnan films barring goldeneye are not my cup of tea, but I do believe they would have been a success.
I am not making any point other than that the brand is very strong and people's opinions of a Bond film are quite strongly influenced by the very fact it is a Bond film. That's the power of a brand. Additionally even if people did not like the last few, they will probably still go to the cinema to the see the next one. I am not saying complacency will work for ever, only that a bad film can still take huge profits & with the branding of Bond it is very difficult now to make a Bond film which does not make good profits.
But even if that is true, Bond is strong enough to weather a storm. Die Another day was the sixth highest grossing film of 2002 behind several box office juggernauts including Harry Potter, Star Wars and LoTR.
However times are different now. Social media is a strong force