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
Both movies do (I mean, TFA opens with that awful "who talks first?" joke), lots of self-aware quips in both (though I do agree with @mtm that they felt forced and cringe-worthy in TLJ).
The prequels were made by George Lucas. Else you might as well say that Bond getting married and having a child is not faithful to Bond as that never happened in the original novel. And what I want from Amazon is to respect ALL of Bond, not just the parts they like (which is what Abrams did with TFA).
I'd appreciate a smaller adventure, like DN or FRWL or CR or even TLD. Give us some time to be with the new Bond, M, Moneypenny and see how Bond thinks and acts before launching him to some exotic locale.
I wouldn't mind a closer adaptation of MR but they would need to make it less UK-based.
Someone I'm recently impressed by for Moneypenny is Aimee Lou Wood, currently stealing all her scenes in The White Lotus season 3.
Amazon are probably going to do the opposite if you want to know the truth. Personally, I want somewhere in the middle, a talented director who loves and understands Bond would be Ideal, but I also don't want too much of an arthouse director.
Of course, Fleming’s novels are a bit racist and sexist, but they’re also amazingly written and inventive and theatrical and, as the series went along, they became introspective and melancholic and foreboding. Instead of blunting or excusing the racism and sexism, a series could better contextualize these attitudes and critique through the narrative. For the most part, each novel is a standalone adventure. But the show could use Bond’s WWII service or the death of his parents or both to undergird each adaptation with emotional and psychological continuity.
There are aspects of each book that could be modified or inverted in such a way as to honor the original and address modern perspectives. For example, Broccoli and Saltzman toyed with the idea of making Solitaire a Black woman, played by Dianna Ross, for the ‘73 film adaption of “Live and Let Die.” I think that’s an inspired idea for a new adaption. Changing Solitaire’s race doesn’t simply change the aesthetic, it tweaks the dynamics of all the characters.
What if, instead of working for the Soviets, Mr. Big wants to finance civil rights or Black abolition. Committing crimes for the greater (perceived) good is a compelling theme that could be used to question Bond’s attitudes, and that of the White establishment in the U.S. and UK. Bond can change and grow and have opinions as he does in the books. Bond is a hero with flaws, as Fleming is to so many (including me) and as are so many of the best characters. The 2006 adaption of “Casino Royale” proves that the worst parts of Fleming’s books can be overcome by carefully curating and adapting the best parts of Fleming books.
If there’s a desire to have multiple, simultaneous interpretations of Bond, then casting one actor for TV and another for the films could work. In contrast to a period tv series, the Bond movies could stay modern and cutting edge. I’m imagining a dynamic in which something like Jeffrey Deaver’s “Carte Blanche” is produced alongside Anthony Horowitz’s “Trigger Mortis.”
I imagine so — well I imagine they, theoretically, had them since the MGM purchase closed given that iirc the screenplays were/are their joint property.
I think they should avoid that. An alternative Bond under the same company dilutes the character's importance and the tenure of the official actor. I think ideally the films should be central/something of a pillar with Amazon's Bond, with any spin offs, if we're to have them, rooted in that era on at least a basic level (ie. how The Penguin is related to The Batman).
Anyway, the idea of adapting Fleming's novels in a tv show is something I've gone back and forth on, but ultimately I don't think it'd work. I think they'd have to comment on some of the more outdated elements and probably make some of the creative decisions you described. I think those are great ideas incidentally, but to some extent I think the idea in practice would drift away from the spirit of Bond - that's to say escapism and even how modern the books were for their time - in favour of a more self referential Mad Men type comment on the past/how we view it today. As contradictory as it sounds, I think a way of bringing out the spirit of Fleming's novels is through contemporary films.
I'm not desperate for TV shows at all, but we know they are coming, so I'd want ones which keep the 007 movie experience special.
That is sad news, she deserves a happy retirement though, she's been a vital part of James Bond for last few decades.
Thank you Debbie
The main problem would ultimately be the formatting. Would the TV show be 12/13 episodes only? How does a TV adaption of Casino Royale even get close to the big screen version, especially with a lack of action? (And the one main action scene from the novel was adapted to a world record level). Or even take something like Goldfinger, that was replicated pretty faithfully to the big screen, near Fleming's era. Things like the buzz saw or Bond being a secretary will feel like a damp squib compared to their updated counterparts, and a TV budget may make the whole thing a bit less impressive
Ultimately a Fleming-faithful TV show would be amazing, but also not profitable and to the general public it'd feel like a money-grab
I think that Amazon would ultimately decide that truly faithful Fleming adaptations would be a turn-off to the general public, and might seem inconsequential compared to the back catalog because yeah, a laser heading toward Bond's balls is a lot more cinematic than a buzzsaw.
Yes this has long been my problem with the idea. There's a reason Broccoli and Saltzman adapted them in the way they did. They're great books, but books aren't movies.
Moonraker is a terrific thriller novel, but it's also a long card game (pretty much in silence) followed by a very straightforward brief bit of spying around a rocket base- if you put that straight on TV it wouldn't be very thrilling.
Points taken. But we live in a streaming world. The downside to that is too much content. The upside to that is the willingness of studios and production companies to try new things. Things that seem niche have a big audience. We live in a post "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad" world. We live in a world in which all sorts of genre/niche television has found an audience. Amazon spent a billion dollars on a LOTR spin off series (no matter the quality).
Of course some things would be updated from Fleming. We live in world where the majority of James Bond films are adaptations of those novels. Even "Goldfinger", an adaptation released only five years after the novel, made key changes to the narrative and the aforementioned buzz saw.
Since "Casino Royale" had a hugely successful adaption in recent memory, maybe that gets added as backstory and the first novel made is "Live and Let Die." Similar to something like "Presumed Innocent" (either film or show), Bond's relationship with Vesper and the events of the book play out like flashbacks or memories interspersed through the first season.
Maybe multiple Bonds dilutes the property, or maybe not. Batman seems to do pretty well with animation and film and comics and games and toys of all sorts. We have Batman podcast dramas. We have a newly launched adult-centered Batman cartoon on Amazon. We have a DC Comics reboot happening right now. We have a new Matt Reeves Batman film coming in a couple years that's following a Penguin television series which will run concurrently with another James Gunn Batman adaption.
I don't know if all of that is ideal for Bond, but we have to start thinking a little outside the box instead of simply recreating EON's dynamic under another name. I use "we" editorially, of course, because we have no say. It may be useful, though, to follow through on these thought experiments. More Bond is coming. It may be useful to retrain ourselves on what we understand the franchise to be. I'm nervous, but I'm ready to celebrate Bond again.
Amazon could make an amazing multi-part documentary series on Fleming alone, like "Churchill's War" on Netflix. The films, I hope, will always be the center jewel in the crown but we could be heading into a Bond renaissance. Imagine if we do get a Moneypenny series as good as good as "Slow Horses" or an "Enter The Matrix" style anthology series from the world's top animators. There will be shit pitched at Amazon for sure but, if they learned any lessons, then we could get some seriously good art out of this.
Yes, they would need to beef up the story considerably a la CR. And probably change the bridge to something else, while preserving the Bond/M dynamic. It's possible.
With Batman the horse has kind of bolted though: it was a serial and silly TV show long before top quality movies so they've kind of not had to worry about preserving him too much: Bond on the other hand is only a prestige product at the moment, and even the occasional novel release kind of holds that up too as they try to make those events as much as they can. I think to the audience 'James Bond' is a promise of big, cinematic epic excitement in a way that 'Batman' isn't: 'Batman' can mean a great film or a cartoon TV show, it's not the same kind of brand promise.
Possible, but if it's a 'faithful' adaptation folks are after, does changing it massively make sense?
I always say we have the Toby Stephens BBC Radio adaptations which stick closer to the books than the films, and on the whole they're, y'know, okay. Personally I prefer the films.
Personally I think Bond is less comparable to Batman and more something like Dr. Who as an institution and in terms of casting. Both have a precedent/expectation of a single actor being crowned 'the next Bond/Doctor', and in the public's eye that single actor is associated with the role at any given time and even acts as a sort of face/representative of the franchise. I think that tends to be best as the viewing public are more likely to have a stronger bond with... well, that Bond. Batman's great, but I'm not sure it's quite the same dynamic with that role for various reasons. I don't see any reason to splinter Bond himself off into different shows and it'd be a shame to give up this particular precedent of cinematic Bond.
I see the Dr. Who comparison, but Bond is orders of magnitudes bigger than Dr. Who that the comparison falls a little flat when not talking about the longevity or lead actors. I’m not saying Batman is a perfect analog but it would be what I’d look to if I were Amazon. I think, at least, the iconography of both franchises is an intersection point: the suits, cars, logos and design aesthetics are instantly recognizable as not just brands but pop art.
We may see the largest production turnover since GE.
all depends on how much Amazon is willing to pay.
Actually I’d say Dr. Who and Bond are more similar in terms of iconography too. At least in a sense. Both have had, for example, the same theme music (or variations on it) since their first inception, and even with each reinvention of the characters they’ve had recurring elements/iconography that are instantly recognisable and specific, and again go back to their first appearances onscreen (the Tardis, Daleks, gunbarrel, etc). Presumably Amazon’s Bond will still use these things. Batman tends to have more radical reinventions even if the story/very broad elements are specific. But ultimately it’s not a franchise that’s ever been run consistently by the same people or company who’ve been responsible for popularising its iconography. I don’t think it’s a fully comparable property to Bond, and while Batman certainly has had similar creative trajectories to Bond (ie. both went through more grounded reboots at a similar time) it’s not the same.
I’d also say if anything I’d rather Amazon Bond do spin offs/‘content’ more akin to how 2000s Who did it (I’m not a fan of Dr. Who, but even I can admit that era was very successful and had at least two well received spin offs that I remember - the Sarah Jane one and Torchwood, both aimed at very different audiences).
I think it depends on how clean a slate Amazon wants after fighting with Eon for several years. I'm guessing: completely clean!
Maybe Amazon could give the directors job to Chris Corbould?
Before it’s brushed aside, that Amazon aren’t going to hand over the reigns to a first timer, we should remember. Corbould has a huge amount of Bond experience dating as far back as TSWLM. Put say the watchful eye of Martin Campbell to assist and it might work.
Besides, Cubby gave John Glen FYEO with no previous directing jobs.
At least we’d get someone who knows Bond films.
If you hire Nolan you hire his team. Nothing strange here...
I disagree. I still think Amazon wants some people from EON to help give it more traditional Bond feel. Daniel Klieman with the gun barrel and main titles. And let’s say David Arnold to bring back a Bond sound that long time fans will recognize. Chris for special effects as well unless he truly is retired from it
Would Nolan make a Bond film virtually incomprehensible ? Out of temporal sequence ?