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Some knew of him and others didn't. This is what I encounter as well. Having said that, how could ANYONE not know who James Bond is?!?!?!?!!?!?!!?
Then again I can’t speak for everyone.
Several weeks earlier another student said he didn't know who The Beatles were. That sort of thing doesn't bother me because as a 16 year old I wouldn't have known much about the icons of my parents generation.
For those of us who grew up in the 60s, it was a staggering decade. And I get why younger generations say, "Shut up. Get over it. Move on." That's fine. Which icons and events influenced those later generations? For me the 60s was the most impactful decade of my life. What defines an X or Millennial? What decade has been most impactful in their lives?
The closest the Craig era came to being a trendsetter was with SKYFALL. The John Wick movies owe their existence to visual aesthetics that Roger Deakins established.
Yes, I think Skyfall is a Proto-John Wick, but who knows? Both of them may be copying third parties.
Exactly, or even Wesley Snipes in "The Art Of War" a tepid B movie which came out in 2000, long before Skyfall
True dat, Chuck (or the Director) may have got the idea from some Hong Kong or Japanese martial arts movie.
I don't really see any connection between James Bond and John Wick myself.
To me the opening sequence of the film "JCVD" in 2008 was the moment that sign-posted the road back from the excesses of the Bourne franchise era of quick cutting /shaky cam in action movies. (A trend Bond was perfectly happy to imitate in "Quantum of Solace".)
But, as you say, who knows, that's just from my personal experience, and there are an awful lot of movies I haven't seen, which may have been the origin of artistic concepts I attribute to movies I have seen
Yes, I agree, that seems much more likely
The only way the Bond series can set the trends is if B26 does its own thing without caring what other franchises are doing. A return to the fun, colorful style of the 60s movies would be the complete opposite of what's popular at the moment, but I don't know if the producers have the guts to do that.
It would be interesting if Eon truly took their inspiration from DN for Bond 26. A straightforward, one-setting film set in Jamaica, or some equivalent (Bermuda?).
I'm sure it was refreshing for '60s audiences that they basically opened the film with casual, consensual sex between Bond and Trench. In many ways, Trench was more thought-out as a character and Bond's equal than so many of the women who followed her.
Now there would be things they would have to jettison--"fetch my shoes," the yellowface in particular.
But it's an idea at that.
I keep coming back to some kind of show down with a Scaramanga -type (if not Francisco himself).
@mtm and some of his ideas on this was like a brainworm (and not the type that eats portions of a Kennedy brain (RFK jr reference, not anything more macabre than that)), and I can’t shake it.
A talented, young James Bond 007 has twice now, jeopardized missions, when Francisco rears his ugly head. Perhaps Mi6 get information that this mysterious, yet famous assassin (famous by reputation), has been hired to take out an important player on the world stage (perhaps this woman, or man, is in charge of a peace treaty, and the organization that hired Scaramanga doesn’t want the treaty to be passed).
Bond is basically sent on a suicide mission against a man considered more dangerous than he is.
We’d have a very active character, who’d also be forced to use investigative skills to track down Scaramanga, which would lead to a deadly climax (with the ticking time bomb playing in the background (the target of the assassination and pushing the peace treaty forward)).
I want to see the new man tested, especially against a foe like Scaramanga…
Spit balling, and nothing more.
Why is being a tend setter important? It wasn’t in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. Bond did just fine in those decades.
And how would making the movies like it’s the 60s again make it a “trend setter”?
I think it’s a thankless task trying to point out which ‘trends’ certain Bond films use. They all have examples of that, even the 60s films, and it doesn’t mean anything about the quality of the actual film. With SF and TDK I’d say while they have similarities they’re very different films (again, plenty of films in the years after TDK had similar plot points, and I’d argue there’s nothing inherently unique that hadn’t been done before in some form in TDK anyway. That’s not a criticism incidentally).
Good point. Like Terence Young admitting to stealing from Hitchcock, both Mendes and Nolan have openly spoken of their influences. Bond influences can be seen in about half of Nolan’s resume.
Yes, thanks @007HallY . Exactly…
Once again, someone takes from someone. Always. We told stories by fire… the Greeks developed these stories. Shakespeare and his contemporaries cribbed from the Greeks… on and on through the history of storytelling… There aren’t original stories to be invented; just the way in which we tell them can be seen as unique and/or original.
Stealing what?
He did openly admit the helicopter fight was a homage to North by Northwest.
I prefer to see Bond films taking the lead, rather than borrowing from other successful films. Have any of us seen anything truly original in a film we haven't seen before, so there will alway be that. I expect a little more of a Bond.
Again, take The Dark Knight which supposedly SF has similarities to. There’s nothing in there that hadn’t been done before, and by the director’s own words was consciously created with other movies in mind. A villain elaborately escaping from prison and psychologically gaining the upper hand from the hero during an interrogation? Silence of the Lambs, and the similar segment in SF evokes that film too. A major character being killed unexpectedly far into the story? Psycho. Even Burn After Reading from the same year as TDK did that, amongst many other examples which is how broad a plot point it is. Severine’s death in SF isn’t anything new either in that sense. Batman gets given gadgets which has similarities to a typical Bond/Q scene. The bank heist and truck chase in TDK have visual similarities to similar scenes in Heat and LA Takedown. There’s more examples, but that’s just the big ones (I’m sure when you start going deeper into the general ideas of both films they’ll start to look very similar to other movies from years previously).
Films aren’t created in a vacuum. They’re individual works that use story and filmmaking techniques which have been around longer than any of us have been alive. Even if Bond were to take the lead (whatever that means - one can argue CR ‘took the lead’ with regards to the Bond series even with its Bourne influences) it’d still have similarities to something else, even other successful films from the same period.
We are back to this again. It's funny how, even our conversations aren't original, lol. We loop back to the same "storylines" over and over, 😂.
I'm not sure what you mean here, @CrabKey ?
I’d like to think of them more as riffs on previous conversations and using them to create a new one…
But yes, it is quite funny 😂
...riffs of the same old conversations, creating new ones, to circle back to the old ones again in ten days, lol...!
Oh it’s alright. In those ten days between that there’ll be discussions about whether any character conflict is needed in a Bond film, how slow and unmotivated EON are, and how no one who’s 14 years old cares about Bond.
Not that I of course ever engage in such conversations and help keep them constantly circling back to each other 😂
Agreed, agreed, and me too, 😆!!
Silence of the Lambs came out many years ago didn’t have Lecter deliberately getting caught after a long sequence where the good guys almost lose. A good story takes from much older material and adds something fresh and new that helps stamp its own identity on it - in the 70’s Star Wars took its ideas from all over the place (several sci-fi novelists considered suing), but it did so with such panache (and ground-breaking special effects) that it felt new; years later Raiders of the Lost Ark did the same thing. Skyfall unfortunately took a criticised plot-point from a very recent, very successful film, and failed to improve upon it. It’s one of my favourite Bond films, but that ‘this was the villain’s plan all along!!!’ plot-device is its weakest point.
Yes, all films borrow ideas from somewhere else, but ideally they don’t take from something that was a big success just a few years previously, and most importantly they do it so well and put their own stamp upon it feels new, and feels like a quite natural place for the franchise to go. Moonraker, with its laser-pistol battle in space, would be an example of chasing a trend that feels rather out of place with the franchise’s identity.