I suppose you’re not alone with this. I’m not sure myself whether this could be in the end a positive development.
But we also have to be fair towards Amazon - at least until we hear more about how they want to continue from here onwards. Amazon doesn’t set out to make bad Bond films. Or streaming series or whatever. Amazon wants to succeed with this and 007 is no doubt the gem in its portfolio. If we look at series like Bosch and The Boys they definitely can do prestige productions that are entertaining, engrossing and amongst the better part of the market.
They will now have to adapt their talents to THE tentpole production of Hollywood and, while this is certainly another league, I don’t believe it’s impossible for them to deliver something that charms fans and general audience. Let’s see what further news there will be.
On the positive side of things, the movies will, I would assume, finally feel a bit different. There’s been a staleness that has set in for a couple of decades at least now. Now, the franchise is getting the shot in the arm it needs. Time will tell whether it ends up being a good or a bad thing, but at least things will be different moving forward.
I was (once more…) rewatching the films recently, and I had the thought that EON hasn’t made “iconic” Bond movies for decades. Back then, a Bond movie was an adventure, it took you places noone knew, it had local scenery and culture, it had quotable one-liners, it had a real sense of thrill and passion. But ever since Craig got onboard (and probably even with DAD already), things became one-dimensional, self-centered, pretentious and fake “artsy”.
So, as some here have said, the franchise was dead anyway. We had to move ahead; there was no recapturing of what we all fell in love with in the first place. Maybe this Amazon deal will actually reinvigorate it. Maybe it’s time we got something EON could not give us anymore. Why not a quality series? Or yearly movies?
They certainly have the money to attract top talent, although, to be fair, EON was doing that fairly consistently with the Craig films. But this will almost certainly mean new writers and a new creative vision behind the films. That’s the one area where EON struggled. They’d try to break out and do something different, see what that different thing actually was, and then retreat to the old ways of “rogue Bond” and the dynamics of the Bond/M relationship. We may just, for once, get a film that doesn’t feature any of that for the first time since, what, The Living Daylights in 1987?
This, along with a more consistent release schedule, is what excites me most. I like the Craig era (even the end) more than most on this forum, yet even I think new blood could be good for the future of the series.
Could things go horribly wrong? Sure, but I say let’s wait and see.
And, even better, one where we get oligarch-approved villains. It will be fascinating to see how coterminous Bond’s villains will be with the enemies of our overlords.
Rampaging business men? Out.
Russia? Out
Racial/sexual minorities? In big time.
Doubtful. Amazon could turn out something as bad as CR’67 and it still won’t even slightly sway me from my opinion that the last two films were outright abominations.
One could (ok, I will) take the position that the biggest issue with the series moving forward is not “ownership” or “creative control” - it’s the series and its own history.
If new management give us a familiar feeling version of what we’ve digested for the past half-century, then I don’t doubt we’ll be putting the boot in for not “taking any chances.”
And if they turn out something that “we” feel isn’t the Bond-we-all-know etc, then we’ll be just as critical.
Maybe we’ve reached the point that this is what it is. We can wish for something new (and then have a meltdown over QoS or be fully fledged member of CraigNotBond) or complain that it’s all too familiar (put my hand up for having a gnash over SP).
As for Amazon, perhaps they should be careful what they wish for. We are, for the first time perhaps ever, truly about to find out if running the franchise is a license to print money, or an oil field that has just about run dry.
Decades ago people could not afford to travel, and Bond movies allowed them to do so vicariously.
Then budget airlines, the Internet, and Airbnb happened, with the result that places no one knew about are now trying to figure out how to limit visitors.
The thrills and passions of the 2020s are quite different from those of the 1960s/1970s.
@dalton You are, of course, exempted from any and all generalized statements regarding SP and NTTD. Apologies for not noting so above.
