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Time for a realistic world threatening event in Bond 24
I know, perhaps this is not the best example, but after watching 'Olympus Has Fallen' I am wondering where the real world threatening events are in a Bond film. Yes, we had a madman in 'Tomorrow Never Dies' trying to ignite a war between China and the UK (Yeah, USA doesn't exist...how believable). But I think these kind of world threatening events, created by villains, could be executed way more realistic.
As a matter of fact, I can recall such events in only three Bond films that felt more or less believable and realistic: 'Thunderball' and the hijacking of two nucleair bombs, 'Octopussy' and the accidental detonation of an atomic bomb within East Germany and 'Casino Royale' and the terrorist attack on Miami Airport.
The 'nucleair events' in 'Goldfinger', 'You Only Live Twice', 'The Spy Who Loved Me', 'Die Another Day' all felt a bit too cheesy. And I didn't have the 'time is ticking away'-feeling in 'Moonraker' and 'The World Is Not Enough'. No, for me...the 'chase bomb storylines' in 'TB', 'OP' and 'CR' felt the most realistic.
What kind of realistic, exciting and tense 'world threatening event' would you come up with for Bond 24?
Some suggestive questions:
--> Time to set a large part of Bond 24's storyline in the USA? Washington DC?
--> Facilitate an event in which China and Russia become one large 'Economical And Defense Union'?
--> Create more tension between Russia and the USA because of unrest in Middle East?
--> Actually start Bond 24 with a PTS that excludes the presence of 007 but that includes a nucleair accident?
--> The above suggestions off course by taking into account realism and credibility?
As a matter of fact, I can recall such events in only three Bond films that felt more or less believable and realistic: 'Thunderball' and the hijacking of two nucleair bombs, 'Octopussy' and the accidental detonation of an atomic bomb within East Germany and 'Casino Royale' and the terrorist attack on Miami Airport.
The 'nucleair events' in 'Goldfinger', 'You Only Live Twice', 'The Spy Who Loved Me', 'Die Another Day' all felt a bit too cheesy. And I didn't have the 'time is ticking away'-feeling in 'Moonraker' and 'The World Is Not Enough'. No, for me...the 'chase bomb storylines' in 'TB', 'OP' and 'CR' felt the most realistic.
What kind of realistic, exciting and tense 'world threatening event' would you come up with for Bond 24?
Some suggestive questions:
--> Time to set a large part of Bond 24's storyline in the USA? Washington DC?
--> Facilitate an event in which China and Russia become one large 'Economical And Defense Union'?
--> Create more tension between Russia and the USA because of unrest in Middle East?
--> Actually start Bond 24 with a PTS that excludes the presence of 007 but that includes a nucleair accident?
--> The above suggestions off course by taking into account realism and credibility?
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Comments
The profession is a ghost/shadow of past, re-peat in the world we living now. Eliot Carver in TMND, in Harry Potter by Voldemort, in QOS by Mr White and Dominic Green all of them have something.
Re: RC7 / I think it's more about learning from the past. It's easy in this modern world to forget the past, believing all that matters is the here and now.
Re: 0BradyM0Bondfanatic7 / I saw the film as a symbol of the old over the new.
And BeatlesSansEarmuffs too http://www.mi6community.com/index.php?p=/discussion/6721/christian-symbolism-in-skyfall/p1
This is the TMND example. What i like to see be mixed style of QOS and Bond 25 all of this with OHMSS elements. I also like to see You Only Live Twice, DAF, LALD,TMWTGG, TSWLM, Octopussy and TLD elements be used.
None Bond movies elements who should be take as example are Jarhead, X-men, Harry Potter,Twister, Shanghai, Barbara.
Title: The Property of a Lady.
Or a biological attack of some sort? A new super bug created by someone called Hildebrand? :D Now only need to think of a title? ;)
:))
Bond versus the EU
Bond versus the UN
Bond versus Eric Holder
But regarding the OP, the terrorist attack on the airliner in Miami in CR hardly constituted a plot that would endanger the human race. It was nowhere near on the scale of a GF, MR, Spy or YOLT, or even TB or OP.
But yes, I would like to see a plot of global import once again. Nukes, biological, chemical, natural disaster, whatever. Just be creative about it and do it well.
Other than a cameo featuring copious ass shots, I guess I missed the point here :-?
Maybe I'm in the minority here but I can't recall after SF came out many cinema goers or reviewers clamouring for a swift return to the big, diabolical, world threatening plots. Things seem to be working out just fine as they are for the Bond films at the moment.
I'm not sure these are necessarily the best examples of 'believable scenarios' in the Bond canon, although in saying that, truth is stranger than fiction.
For me, you could arguable describe many of the scenarios in any number of Bonds as being simultaneously believable and yet unbelievable. For example - you state TND could be done in a more believable way, this is true, but you could also argue that thematically it was bang on the money and has become increasingly relevant. In other words the dressing may have been a little on the fantastical side, but the sentiment is interesting and thought-provoking.
I think it's about striking a balance of the two. Personally I hate the words 'real' and 'realistic', they're misnomers too commonly used in the world of film.
It all starts with the characters. If the characters are interesting, relatable and believable you can place them in whatever world you want and the audience will go along for the ride, as long as you keep that world consistent. So if we want to plonk Dan in, as you call it, an outrageous scenario such as GF - I think the audience will buy it, as long as they can relate to the characters, understand their motivations and really believe there is something at stake. If they can't, or if the world in which the characters inhabit loses consistency, that's when it becomes a big old mess. The short-hand dismissal being 'Oh, it's unrealistic'. The key is not to bore the audience, nor confuse them with techno-babble, it's so difficult to maintain an audiences interest when you wander off into pseudo-technological exposition, especially when the general public are more tech-savvy than ever. I think it's important now more than ever to play on peoples emotional fears. If they can recognise the importance and relevance of an event I think they can forgive a little outrageousness.
A remake of Goldfinger would need the writer/s to address the mechanics of the plot in a much more detailed way, but deliver it using only sparse and selective exposition. People read films differently to the way they did ten years, twenty years, forty years ago. Blockbusters used to be relatively immune to nit-picking until much later in their shelf-life, but nowadays your average cinema goer will have picked apart the plot on first viewing. The only way to counter this is not to overload your movie with tedious exposition, but to make sure the films internal logic is consistent. That way you can hand pick the snippets of information you want to show the audience and leave the rest to their imaginations. It's much easier for a viewer to join the dots if the film maker knows what the dots are. Even if its a tad outlandish I think most viewers will accept it, but only if it's true to its own internal logic. I guess what I'm trying to say is - the devil is in the detail.
I suppose a decent marker would be TDK. There's a consistency to the world Nolan creates in this film, you as an audience know the rules, you understand the parameters. If he'd thrown in a curve-ball that was at odds with the world, such as a CGI villain, or as he did in 'TDKR' a doomsday bomb, you start to consider what you're watching, rather than just going with it. In TDK the plot drivers were all emotional, you understood what Bruce was going through, what his dual motivations were. The same can be said of Harvey, Rachael, Gordon. They all had something at stake, they were all effected emotionally by the actions of each other. Then there was the ultimate anarchist at the centre of it all. It works and it's considered 'realistic' because everything is so tangible, so much so that when Batman kidnaps Lau from HK and jets off Bond style, you buy it because you're invested in where this is all going. It's not fluff, you believe there's a decent story unfolding in front of you (Cue TDK haters ;) ). Part of what worked so well with SF and why I believe it struck a chord is that, much like TDK, it had a human story at it's heart.
If with B24 they can bring to the table the same level of characterisation featured in SF, with an attention to detail that at times went walkabouts, then I believe they can deliver any film they choose, as outlandish or as trivial as is necessary.
Sounds like the McGuffin in David Stone's The Skorpion Directive.
Perhaps. But the films may be on the verge of becoming a bit too "samey." It may be time to do something conceptually different. If not in B24, then definitely in B25.
Don't tell me not only was I unoriginal, but so was Elmore Leonard. It didn't work in his novel, but I always thought it would fit better the Bond universe.
I also think it can work as long as they don't forget the human element. Both TB and OHMSS were very large scale, they still had plenty of character's development.
Very recent, it is from 2011. One of the reasons why I don't think we will see this scheme in Bond 24.
Besides, if you want a boring novel with a floating bomb, Forsyth´s The Afghan is from 2006. Nonetheless a worthy scenario.
Elmore Leonard is an amazing writer. One of the best dialogues writers in modern literature history and he creates incredible characters. Djibouti is the first novel I read of him when I was actually bored.
I did not read Raylan yet. I think Leonard was uncomfortable with the setting, so it ends up being about a couple of people drinking and watching TV. He used to make such trivial things absolutely fascinating, make the plot move with dialogues and arguments, but in this novel it just felt flat. And I LOVE his dialogues usually.
Anyway, this is off topic. The boat as a WMD in this novel is a great idea for a Bond movie, but I don't think it will be used any time soon.
Back in the 60's, 70's and 80's, world destruction was a real, everyday threat due to nuclear bombs and the cold war (you younger people who grew up after the fall of the Iron Curtain have no idea what you missed out on). We don’t have Kennedy and Khrushchev facing each other down in Cuba, the fate of the human race hanging in the balance. It seemed fitting back then, that the bad guys in the Bond films expressed that fear that we all carried with us, back in the recesses of our minds.
Nowadays the world is just as dangerous, but in smaller, sneakier, more random ways. Bad guys look to fight their cause in more attainable battles on the local level. Al Quada doesn't seek to blow up the entire world - at least not all at once - they just seek destroy random bits of it. A plane here. A commuter train there. Greedy corporate conglomerates don't take to the airways to announce their intent to control the world (or destroy the environment) - they do it slowly behind a wall of secrecy and anonymity, one acquisition or buyout at a time. The biggest threat of worldwide destruction comes from the environment, and that is a process that will take several decades, if not centuries, to finish the job.
Movie theatre shootings. Grade school shootings. Bombings at marathon races. This is what evil looks like now. Not some larger than life megalomaniac intent on doing everyone and everything in all at once. A Bond villain who wants to destroy the world would look far too out of step, far too comedic, far too……1970’s.
It would also be taken by most casual fans (who, let's face it, make up the bulk of the audience) as confirmation that the Bond franchise is hopelessly out of touch, a relic. It would be seen as an unintended comedy and, even worse, a self-parody that doesn't realize it's a self-parody. It would undo all the good that the Craig era has done to bring Bond into the 21st century.
The magic of the medium is that you can build up slowly, getting the audience to accept little bits along the journey in a believable way, until you bring it all together in the end and by then it's too late to NOT believe what's going on!
Or.
You can bring in an invisible car & a space laser & a volcano lair & do what you described.
Al-Qaeda seek to destroy Western Judeo-Christian civilisation in it's entirety, they just don't have the means to do it in one fell swoop. That's not to say they won't ever get the opportunity. The threat itself is one that effects the whole of the western world. I remember 9/11 feeling like the end of the world. I genuinely felt 'this is it', where do we go from here. A story that can deliver the kind of gut-punch I felt that day would have a lot of resonance. The destruction of the world with a nuke is obviously ridiculous, but I think a large scale attack which has massive repercussions for the rest of the world is achievable. A worldwide threat as @Gustav_Graves calls it in his OP.
I am afraid due to Austin Powers to an audience it is a cliche/parody now. Is what the Craig era has worked so hard for - to be taken credibly.
~Its only little fanboys who want a return to volcano sets and shark pools.
Excellent post Quarrel.
Eon have worked that out to be honest
Excellent post Quarrel.
Eon have worked that out to be honest
And you certainly missed my point or chose to ignore it.