Haven’t read them yet, but some say Colonel Sun was the closest to Fleming?
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Agreed on Gardner. Within what felt like the “mass” that he turned out (respect him for that, couldn’t have been easy churning out so much), there are some that I really quite enjoy. So I was going to offer that maybe it be best to limit the efforts - limit an author a chance to do just a couple. But even that’s had mixed results.
But as Sharpshooter pointed out - if we want more content this is how it’s going to be. So my comment would be, do we really need more content? As StB said - Fleming is now regarded alongside the likes of Chandler, so if that’s the case, what point the impressionists? It’s not as if there’s a market for Shakespeare continuations…I’m being trite of course, but that is the gist of my point. No one who ever follows is ever going to be regarded as writing something as good as the original, so, from an artistic level, rather than commercial one, why are we bothering?
As Young Bond and Moneypenny Diaries have shown, perhaps (I can’t believe I’m about to say this) there’s scope in exploring the universe (my god, I’ve just said it) rather than more standard efforts that ultimately will be regarded as inconsequential.
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But how would stories about “Bond as a kid” or “people from Bond’s office” or “some agent Bond worked with, once” be more consequential? Utlimately, only Fleming had the right to do anything consequential with Bond, and anything else is apocryphal. At best it’s like cotton candy; pleasant enough but unfulfilling.
I’m not sure how I feel about the “universe” thing. Marvel has a universe: lots of impossible characters doing impossible things in a world demonstrably not our own, and running into each other now and then. Bond is supposed to be in our universe, so what would a “Bond universe” look like? Would it just involve other double-ohs reporting to the same M, and maybe mentioning “that Bond guy in the office down the hall?” Is that enough to qualify as a fully-realized “fictional world”? If so, why commission new authors? Publishers must have any number of unpublished spy novels sitting around; just change a few references, add a scene in M’s office, and now it’s part of the “Bond universe.” In a sense, even acknowleding that there is such a thing as a “Bond universe” is an admission the franchise has failed in a primary goal: making Bond seem a remotely plausible part of our own world.
Maybe I’m just getting too old to get into stuff like this. I remember thinking Star Trek was a bigger concept than one crew on one ship, so why is that all we see? But now there are book series out there dealing with other Starfleet ships and crews, and I can’t be bothered.
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The whole “build a universe”-idea is nothing else but a marketing ploy to use a brand as a less risk-averse endeavour than an original idea.
Sure, Marvel has lots of heroes, and they can interact as they do in the comic books. So can the DC guys.
But other narratives were never conceived as “brands”, and now they are supposed to behave like that.
I just hope people will get bored by that eventually.
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Last night I finally got around to watching “No Way Home” and I enjoyed the gag where Tobey and Andrew didnt know what “Avengers” were, but by the end I realized; I like it better that way. Spider-Man is more interesting to me when he’s not just one more super-type in a world full of them.
Which is to say, I guess, that the “shared universe” concept has its limits. Also, after “the Blip,” Strange’s global “forget” spell and soon the fracturing of the Multiverse, it’s obvious any resemblance to “our” world is coincidental at best. It gets harder and harder to keep caring.
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By that argument Lord Of The Rings and Star Wars would’ve tanked aggressively and kitchen sink dramas would be the unquestioned king of the box office.
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Well, those did not start out or pretend to ever take place in our real world. But „The Matrix“ did, so…
My problem is that a dense and complicated universe like the Marvel one has already become a lot of work to keep up with. And I don’t have the desire to watch every movie and tv show just to understand all the references or even know the characters.
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I’m of the belief that the ‘shared universe’ trend is on the verge of imploding. There’s going to be too many, they incorporate streaming shows and are leaning more heavily on the connections than before. Basically they’re trying to force audiences to commit to the whole franchise and I think they’re going to get alienated and jump ship. Marvel is the only one who made this work and everyone else is trying to do what Marvel is doing now without putting in the groundwork.
The low quality of these attempted shared universes isn’t helping either.
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As for today’s question
April 16
I disagree on the simple grounds that there are continuation novels I have read, enjoyed and would be comfortable recommending. John Gardner’s Nobody Lives Forever and Raymond Benson’s High Time To Kill have been the highlights for me.
I’ll happily admit that there have been more misses than hits but some are worth reading.
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I’m a fan of the Young Bond books, and really got on board with the concept. But I wish it ended with Higson. It’s stretching believability that James was having regular large scale adventures even as a child. Three or so books documenting the main segments of his development would have been enough. I don’t think it works as an ongoing franchise.
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Its mere existence does more than stretch credibility.
And if Young Bond and The Moneypenny Diaries are the only examples of there being any value in exploring a wider universe with Bond, it means that there is no wider universe. The Bond franchise is one thing. It’s Bond. It begins and ends there, at least until Amazon gets the bright idea for a Felix Leiter series or a prequel series that follows Judi Dench’s M on her wild, globetrotting, planet-saving adventures in her early twenties before she became the “M we all know and love”.
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If only because these are the films that they keep going back to themselves, it seems to be a tacit acknowledgement that such are the images and items that would “feel Bond” to the audience, for want of a better phrase. Accepting that No Time to Die had some nods to later films, albeit heavily using OHMSS, but Casino Royale seems all about surrounding him with stuff from the earliest films. Had he won a white Lotus at that card game against Mr Dimitrios, I might feel differently.
They might be indelible through exposure over repeated television broadcasts over the years. They might just be the best ones, though.
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They are. Even if I still have TSWLM as my favorite. But that one was probably the first greatest hits package. Followed by the remake of the greatest hits package.
At some point one just has to admit: there are no original things one can do with Bond anymore unless one changes defining elements.
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You all know me well enough to know the sort of poster I try to be - to quote the great Malcolm Tucker talking about think tanks “on the one hand this, on the other hand that” - fair and balanced and trying to see things from all sides etc (and politer that Tucker - I leave that imitation for real-life…)
But on this one, I’m going to come down hard - EON with Harry leaves EON under Cubby, in the dust. Are there mitigating factors? Sure. EON leaned heavily on the source material under the duo, Maibaum was at his best, Barry too (but only just - TLD is a fabulous score).
Not that CubbyEON turned out bad films - on the contrary, TSWLM (and to a lesser extent TLD) are films chugging along in high gear, and MR - it’s all up there on-screen. And yet, they are (even more so than the series in general), all kind of the same.
I have heard it said that Harry had, by-his-nature, itchy feet, always looking for the next thing, excited by projects away from Bond. And from Look Back In Anger to Njinsky, it showed. I’m not saying that everything he was involved in away from Bond was fabulous, but he was a man with an eye for other things.
Cubby was all in on Bond. But perhaps the lack of outside interests is responsible for a series that, for the longest time, was content with variations on a theme (and that’s being generous). Bond became less an “event” and more a seasonal pantomime, getting the gang back together, whether it be story beats, crew, cast (hey, let’s get Louis Jordan to be in it, he lives down the street!).
With hindsight, the lack of push and pull at the very top, nearly killed the series. The numbers are what they are - a gradual decline in a marketplace that the duo defined. If the series had continued in '91 and '93, it might have been buried in a blockbuster field that was merciless. Being out of the game was far from the worst thing that might have happened.
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April 17 - Happy Easter All.
They are iconic and are a benchmark in big spectacle film making. They are consistently well written and they have the eye of people in healthy conflict coming up with great creative decisions. It was I’m sure both rewarding and toxic in equal measure…but from that struggle creativity can spring. One can see the stress of the toxicity writ across Connerys face on screen in the two years from TB to YOLT.
When Broccoli produced on his own, he created a fabled ‘family’ which is great for morale but can be creatively bankrupt and be a very self satisfied business environment.
TSWLM - repackaging what we’ve done
MR - remake the repackage
FYEO - try to do something different ( forced by one of the family saying they are leaving) scrap it almost immediately, put a pretty dress on it and send it out
Until the change of actor it doesn’t change, yet still the ‘family’ took precedence over making the best movie possible. Glen should not have directed either Dalton movies, for no other reason than after 3 he must have been creatively knackered.
But…
Since BB took over albeit with a leading man she obviously didn’t trust/ want, she has fostered Bond into a modern blockbuster. Her movies with her leading man will be the iconic ones of the future to fans too young to excuse the more problematic parts of the first 9.
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“Best” will always be subjective, but the nine Harry/Cubby films are definitely the most “iconic.” ALL of the villains, vehicles, women and sets – and pretty much all the songs – that are burned indelibly into the global conciousness as defining “Bond” came from those first nine films.
It’s arguable TWSLM could be included as one of the few Bonds that are truly iconic, but even that one, as noted, is a “greatest hits” package, built around ski chases (OHMSS), underwater action (TB), a superhuman henchman (GF), a supercar (GF, TB) and the general plot of YOLT. From that point on, we get films that are sometimes more and sometimes less derivative but certainly never as “iconic” and defining as the first nine.
For all the talk that Craig’s the “best Bond ever,” the only scene in his entire run that could rise to the level of “iconic” – if we define that as capturing the public imagination and being disseminated globally to point where it’s one of the images that first pops into millions of minds when they compose a mental Bond “clip reel” – is the one where he emerges from the sea in his micro-shorts. And even that scene is mooching off the already estabished iconic status of Ursula’s entrance in DN (just as Jinx’s scene had already done in DAD). Aside from that, the last decade are two have been content to live off the iconic status of a 50+ year old car.
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From all I have read one must conclude that it was not Saltzman who had the great ideas but the crazy ones (shoes for elephants, Bond waking up with an alligator in his bed).
So if one wants to give credit to the first seven films it still has to go mainly to Broccoli who always managed to control Saltzman.
To be fair though SAF, we do have a film with Bond being chased by men on elephants, and then later disguising himself within a crocodile. And then in the big countdown suspense sequence, Bond wears shoes that could have been made for an elephant… 
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With a franchise as long as this one it raises some questions going forward. Does the franchise always need to be justifying itself in every new era - or can it just be? Do we now need the system to be shaken up all the time with gunbarrel sequence variations and the like?
I am not against evolution if done right, but a return to the more traditional style of no personal drama and straight up adventure would be the real revolution after the past 33 years.
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Beautifully put, and I would add, MR perfected the repackage (which was an attempt to fashion/adapt the iconic Bond elements to a new actor). MR is peak iconic Moore Bond (Connery Bond would have been out of place). Each subsequent actor had the pieces retooled for his sojourn in the role.
I would propose a corollary question: which of their films is their most iconic retooling?
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