Hi guys, I made a video on this topic and would love some feedback on it. Personally I don’t think they could ever do one because of the situation in the North of Ireland during the 60s-90s, and which still prevents them doing it to this day out of the sensitivity of the issue. However, I do feel with the changeover to Amazon, that they might be willing to throw caution to the wind and do an IRA plotline in a future bond, especially if that mad rumour is true to bring pierce back, who has said he would be interested in an IRA plotline.
Wasn’t even the last M (allory) a former para captured by the ProvoIRA?
Welcome to CBn, @Dipsuchos! I don’t think anything actively prevents them from using Ireland at all. IRA storylines may be not terribly likely, but you could easily spin a yarn on the island itself and its many fantastic sights.
“the troubles” always found that such a ludicrous term.
Fantastic Bond story set in Ireland definitely, reference to past atrocities yes absolutely could. Both together in Northern Ireland no.
You can find the ‘troubles’ mentioned in SKYFALL in Mallory’s background. Take a look here:
Also, literary James Bond of the Gardner years a few times mentioned the IRA; most prominently perhaps in No Deals, Mr Bond if memory serves. Several chapters set on Ireland around the Dublin/Dun Laoghaire region, where Gardner himself lived.
Oh right, got ya, in the books and backstories. Red grant in the book is an IRA man and I think Diamonds are Forever has a scene in Ireland. It would defo be like kicking a nest alright. I always felt World is not enough with attack on MI6 was an allusion to IRA and the opening of Living Daylights in Gibraltar is another nod to IRA.
I’ll risk this: is there a world where Amazon may release a fifth, may be low-scaled, Brosnan/Bond movie, AND another “definitive new” Bond movie with a new actor, within 6 months or a year?
EON would always have developped one movie after the other, but I wonder if this is something Amazon would do.
And speaking about Ireland: yes, this could be and I would love it.
Sorry but I don’t see this happen soon. Amazon could put out a number of films semi-parallel and they might feel desperate enough to go that route if earlier films don’t cut it with the audience - but right now they will likely first want to get Bond going. Side projects and spinoffs would then branch out from that, similar to the way Marvel went about their films.
Why would they undermine their investment like that? An ancient product where in the last one, the hero died? They have a sufficiently difficult task ahead of them anyway, that at this stage shoving out a confusing message with all sorts of fanbait sideshows would further complicate.
It’s the GoldenEye position, juiced up a nodge. Series is basically dead, or perceived to be. First step, just concentrate all effort into producing something blandly crowd-pleasing with little bits of tinkering whilst claiming great revolution, and once that succeeds, freedom then to piss about with it. The Bond Awakens, that sorta thing.
As for Ireland, no reason not to film there and possibly pretend it’s somewhere else I suppose but a film thematically touching on Ireland might risk some of the observations already made.
Agreed. Relaunching the franchise under new management is a big task in itself. Keep it simple to start with. One Bond at one time without a direct competitor or comparison. Robert Pattinson has already had Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton appear in a film after his own, and there’s now a DCU timeline starting up. I’ll be interested in both but can’t deny it’s not an ideal situation. Ideally one era ends completely before another begins.
The comic strip mob have had varying success with bringing back prior holders of the role, but beyond the fan-service aspect, I’d offer that at no time has doing it pushed any franchise forward. Batman now seems stuck in its own arse, ahem, past, completely wasting the potential in Pattinson’s debut, while poor old Superman just can’t ever get any forward momentum.
If anything, the notion of “bringing back” actors is the example No. 1 of the unimagination that seems to go hand-in-hand with creators suddently getting the keys to “potential” of the entire IP (hey Star Wars fans, how about we bring back the Emperor! Wouldn’t that be great?!).
What has set Bond apart has been EON’s complete disinterest in world-building (and IFP have always stepped with care in spinning off anything), and I’d offer it’s been to the franchise’s success that it has proceeded one step at a time.
I’d offer that while Amazon clearly want to explore the potential of the world beyond Bond, fingers crossed they’ll do more than the lazy fan service of both DC and Star Wars where it seems that just giving actors “another go” is the m.o.
My take: the DC approach was doomed because WB wanted what Marvel had achieved - but much faster. And at the same time they had Snyder whose idea of Superman and Batman was niche at best. The result: they did not get what Marvel had - and realized it much too slowly.
Star Wars: the original three films were a simple story which worked so well because it was simple. The prequels added the origin of Darth Vader and the rise of the Empire but stayed simple, with no interest in branching out. As it should have been.
The new trilogy made a completely baffling mistake: getting the three original and popular actors… but separating them film by film. Also, internet bullies and shareholders decided now that TLJ was not what they wanted, so Abrams was forced to make a hodgepodge which did not please enough either.
The basic mistake, however, was not to realize that Star Wars is a fairy tale with the simplest story, and that story has been told. Sure, you can tell the “rise of the Empire”-story as a series, like “Andor” has done very well - but it all remains just been there done that. And if you want to tell a story about the “rise of the Jedi” you will also end up doing the same thing over and over again. There is no upside here. Sorry, Disney. You overpaid. Lucas knew and was laughing all the way to the bank.
Bond, however, is very different. Not because you can tell tons of stories which are always fresh. Just the opposite: it´s the same story over and over again. BUT you can make it fresh because it always is different when you adapt it to the zeitgeist. This is what made Bond work throughout the decades. And this is what Amazon/MGM has to achieve now. If they just try to branch out and make every side character the hero of their own show/movie they will fail just as much as WB did with DC (until James Gunn realized that less is more and Superman is hope).
Oh, but what about Ireland in James Bond movies? Yeah, why not!
Perhaps because Bond’s world is supposed to be our own*? Fleming himself needed hardly any kind of world-building outside the grey granite facade of the Secret Service overlooking Regents Park. M had to have an office right below the top floor where the radio experts listen to the coded dispatches of the opposition and their own stations; Bond has an office behind that of the secretary the 00s share. And M’s various agents are scheduled for training in the shooting gallery below ground level.
Later, we learn about offices tasked with dealing with the ‘outside’ world and situated at arm’s length from Regents Park HQ. And of course the various sections and departments are peopled with the adequate officers, vaguely bourgeois upper middle class males and females (the latter to be disposed off the Service’s hands by way of marriage).
The Service, the Scotland Yard ‘ghost squad’, the Treasury or Blades - these are described, explained and finely drawn with anecdotes, both real and creatively imagined. But the world they exist in is definitely ‘our’ London, just as Smersh is operating in ‘their’ Moscow. When Fleming writes about the PM without giving a name, we automatically insert the proper one for the era. When Bond laments how Paris sold its soul to the tourists, most of all the bloody Germans, we have no problem to recognise it as our Paris. Or Rome or whatever.
Bond’s world is supposed to be our own. And if we haven’t met him yet, in spite of countless frequent flyer miles, well, that’s just because of that thin membrane - less than an atom thick - that’s dividing fact and fiction.
*It’s not really though; rather a highly romanticised version where money doesn’t matter, where countries rarely object to the hero doing hero things on their soil and where in the end the good guys win (as opposed to the winners claiming they were the good guys, all evidence to the contrary).
