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In goldeneye Bond was a friend to Alec but still his mission was stop the Goldeneye to be launched and destroy it.
In Tomorrow never dies he was Paris ex Boyfriend but still his mission was to stop WW3.
In The world is not enough was about not letting a whole city to be ill because of a newclear weapon and yet Bond felt something fir Elektra and had to save M
And Die another day shut down the Icarus but still looked for The person who betrayed him north corea and clean up his name.
So i think the mold for the next Bond movies should be the Pierce Brosnan flicks, maybe the scripts a little more polished but follow his formula.
Ideally, we get one personal story every three films or so. The Craig era has been a bit too eager it seems.
The films need to stay far away from personal stories for the forseeable future.
The problem is I think actors like this element so I wouldn't nescessarily expect it to be gone when the next actor roles up.
The thing is each of the Craig films have been trying to be important, like OHMSS and CR. SP was a little different in that regard, because it was a more straight mission, but not entirely.
Motive: Writings On The Wall. Motive 2: We have people everywhere. Motive 3: Another person/reasen found for possible Bond 25 or Bond 26 title: Property Of Lady.
Another thought, I think we have to differentiate between personal stories that stick within the confines of that movie (in SF, the slate was clean and he was ready to start a new story ) rather than personal stories which impact the whole Bond world and make it hard to continue down a new route.
Bond is not a robot and it seems perfectly OK to me to see him emotionally connect with characters. But surely SP is the worst example of tampering with the whole Bond universe in an attempt to create a greater emotional connection/impact, simply failing and leaving a right royal mess to clear up.
Perhaps we should see the introduction of the "SF Rule". Every Bond script leaves him fresh to start a new adventure.
Bond, smarting from Madeleine dumping him between films, self-destructs the Aston and is consoled by Q and his cats over a pint. Place gunbarrel here for an "artistic" reason. Moneypenny arrives to give Bond his mission--M has been kidnapped by some former enemies in Ireland--but she suffers from flashbacks from shooting Bond atop the train in Turkey so she resigns on a Sony phone and is replaced by Tanner. Wracked with guilt over betraying Bond in Tokyo, Tanner wields a long-missing photo of Greene ("my first briefing was my best, 007") then jumps to his death from the inexplicably-still-not-quite-destroyed ruins of SF's MI6 building. Camille shows up for no particular reason, spouts some nonsense about revenge, and Bond yet again does not sleep with her despite her obvious hotness.
Bond jumps into his Ford Mondeo and drives up to Belfast, where Blofeld paralyzes him by forcing him to watch home movies of their ski holidays in Kitzbühel while he practices his bird calls. Insert nonsensical shot of Birds of the West Indies. When Blofeld suddenly notices that he has no socks and in embarrassment accidentally pushes the wrong button, another eeriely prescient post-mortem video from Dench-M reveals that she foresaw Blofeld's torture of Bond, and with a high-pitched sound, she activates Bond to rescue Fiennes-M and kill Blofeld. Bond awakens to see a white cat and Vesper, who faked her own drowning ("Surely you knew there are simpler ways to commit suicide, James") to escape her bizarre love triangle with Yusef and Corinne. She falls into Bond's arms, "Oh, James."
James Bond will return.
My hope for Bond 25 is that they cut out all the fat, including the personal subplots. But I also hope they make a lighter entry, with a quicker pace, perhaps around 120 mins. I'm really fed up with the overambitious piling on of elements until the films sinks under its own weight. Bond needs to be snappy and punchy, he needs to get his groove back and swagger. I would never say I was a huge fan of the Brosnan era as a whole, but recently I have begun to enjoy them alot more after SF QoS and SP.
This should be a must for every Bond film from now on.
The sad thing is I can actually see ALL of that happening in Bond 25 under the directorship of Sam Mendes except any and all references to Quantum of Solace, which is the one and only Daniel Craig film that henceforth shall not be referenced or named. (Somebody on Spectre's design team got sneaky, however, and snuck a photo of Amalric onto Q's laptop there.)
Edit: I particularly like how the story thread about M being kidnapped by enemies in Ireland is dropped completely in the second half of the film in favor of Blah-blah-blah-feld. Really in keeping with the trend of things. ;)
And don't forget the brooding. Lots of brooding from our moody, bad-boy Bond.
I think Craig's first 3 films did them well, though while any 4th film of it would've resulted in inertia, Spectre didn't do much on that front aside from toss those elements in and expect us to find them meaningful because "this is the final level, guys, full circle!".
Doesn't Bond getting his arse kicked by Hinx on the train raise any emotion , @Birdleson ?
But part of me wonders if it is Bond or maybe Craig himself is getting over-confident,and maybe big-headed..he seemed a bit like that in his interviews compared to his other 3 films..and he had a lot of power in the production of SP.
Of course,but this was a different kind of arrogance to his other 3 films,not as subtle...its hard for me to explain tbh,but I can see where @Birdleson is coming from regarding this.
Don't get me wrong,i still like his performance in SP of course,just not as much as the other three.
I love SP but the history between Bond and Blofeld was superfluous. That he was "the author of all his pain" was more than enough to create antagonism and personal motivation.
Yes, and for a while there we thought that SF and Silva were like GF in that Quantum dud not feature there. Of course SP came along and showed us all just how wrong we were. Some of us felt chested by this. It would have been refreshing and nice for Silva to have remained an independent individual quite apart from Quantum and SPECTRE but it was not to be as it worked out. No repeat of another third film by a Bond actor, GF.
Well, the other huge difference between Craig's run and Connery's run is that—as you briefly mentioned in your first paragraph—60s SPECTRE exists in spite of Bond whereas 21st Century SPECTRE exists because of Bond.
In the 60s, SPECTRE only became aware of Bond because Bond went after SPECTRE during the events of Dr. No. FRWL was really the only mission where things were personal for SPECTRE, and even then the killing of Bond was part of a larger plot to steal the Lektor and publicly discredit the British Secret Service. The only other time things get personal is when Blofeld goes after Tracy at the end of OHMSS. Apart from that it's SPECTRE doing its thing and Bond acting to stop them. If 60s Bond didn't exist, the world would be done for.
Whereas with 21st Century SPECTRE, evidently the whole organization and Blofeld himself as we know him today only exist because Bond ruined Blofeld's childhood. So if Bond never existed—or if his parents hadn't died or if he hadn't gone on to join Mi6 but had become a baker or a painter instead—SPECTRE wouldn't exist. Which means no Quantum for LeChiffre or Greene to be a part of, no funding for Silva, no 9 Eyes, no nuthin'. In other words, if the world had no 007 during Craig's tenure then Vesper, Judi's M, and Ronson would still be alive, Moneypenny would be less traumatized, and the world would generally be a safer place. Quite the contrast from the SPECTRE of the 60s.
Edit: And you more or less said the same thing in the post just before mine—creating his own mess to clean up. ;)
Blofeld--Because I am upset at my step brother and I want to be able to say," I am the author of all your pain."
That's pretty much how I see the whole dopey Bond brothers plot device. It exists to say one dumb line. The next film needs to find a way to debunk that idea and move on. Erase the whole damn plot line as 'Dallas' did the year the producers erased an entire season that went off the rails.
:)) Please, don't be giving them ideas!
The scariest part of that treatment, is Blofeld without socks ...again!!!
Maybe Eon should just stop making Bond movies, because based on the latest drek, @echoe 's treatment is something they might actually consider.
@somekindofhero Yes, well put re the stark differences between Spectre of the '60s and the current edition.
Old Spectre or more to the point, the old iterations of Blofeld were so much more enjoyable, so much less strained .
My understanding as to the reason for the brother angle in SP, is that dumbass Mendes needed something like this, something personal, to make him excited enough to do another Bond.
In fact Mendes has said as much.
It truly is all Mendes fault, and of course Babs and Craig's for humouring him.
Craig to his credit at least, played Bond as not-giving-a-toss about the brother angle. Rather this tedious, utterly superfluous, not-interesting-at-all back story, was entirely Blofeld's obsession.
Poor Mendes, it almost seems Craig tricked him.
Going forward, this being cinema fiction, Eon need not be burdened by the brother angle in any meaningful way, and that's even if all of Swann, Waltz and Craig return.
Eon can write the sequel anyway they want. The key is that Mendes is gone!!!
Bond can be Bond, blunt instrument on mission, which is pretty much what he was in SP, despite all the character drama surrounding him.
Blofeld can be good ole Ernst, motivated by his world domination obsession, with a sidebar of I-hate-Bond because he effs up all my plans, and away we go.
I figure some riff on Fleming's YOLT and Castle of Death is in the offing, with or without Swann.
Bond doesn't even have to be motivated by revenge. He just needs reason to attack the Castle of Death and say the dragon within, and he's got plenty.
Eon chose to reintroduce Blofeld by playing with OHMSS, and Swann as new half-arsed Tracy, but I think they wisely shied away from getting too cute with the Tracy parallel.
The fact they dropped the "We have all the time in the world' line is telling.
So I think Blofeld Is Back Part 2 will involve some playing w YOLT, as SP played with OHMSS - an homage of sorts to Blofeld and Spectre's Fleming literary roots.