You mean something like this:
From The Avengers 1998 movie, I mean the REAL Avengers, not the Marvel ones.
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I had totally forgotten about that abomination…
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Dou Dou
Could be used as a killing device for lots of Amazon properties. Bosch diesel trying to protect it. Jack Reacher can’t reach far enough to retrieve it and falls to his death, endless possibilities
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September 20.
Oh Barbara of the Golden Tresses, your productivity astounds me. That’s not a compliment.
I suspect this little amusement might be diverting you from work of “importance”, so to bring this to a conclusion, today’s (and final) category for potential returning characters in the Bond Universe Manipulation (BUM) / a.k.a. Bond Arc Sensibly Told Adding Rigorously Developed Scenarios (you work it out) is - Minor hostiles from the Craig epoch.
- Armed Ugandan child
- Gregory Beam
- Clair Dowar (MP!)
- Mr Moreau
- Matera Necropolis Lad
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voters
If you can’t get an armed Ugandan child for visa reasons, you can always draft in an American one. They all appear to be armed.
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What can I say - that Beam guy really has potential. Still. Unbelievable, these Americans. One hopes for them to choose wisely. But then there are those Beams.
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Beam - Bring. Back. Beam!
Firstly - most importantly! - for the obvious product placement opportunities. We’re going to flood every supermarket, liquor store and off-licence with Gregory Beam Agency ™ (c) gold-plated bourbon/vodka mix, spiced with the aroma of rotten apples. This is going to be THE drink of the century!
Beam of course has been present all along from the very start of the series:
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Beam sold No the precise frequencies for his toppling op
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Beam sold Spectre Bond’s preferences in women from his CIA dossier on 007 so they sent Tatjana, not Klebb
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Beam arranged the US visa for Goldfinger and brokered the deal on the Kentucky stud farm
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Beam sold Osato the Siamese vodka
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Beam sold Filet of Soul their restaurant furniture
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Beam sold Drax the space station from his catalogue of Star Wars-themed weapons of mass destruction
(Are you beginning to see a pattern here? So is Amazon…)
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Beam sold M the idea for a perfect intelligent murder virus
Plenty opportunity for shenanigans and even future streaming spinoffs: Beam’s testimony in front of a senate committee - ‘Nothing but the Truth’ - is good for nine seasons of politicking and smarmy leering at objectivised staff. And it’s going to be a hit with the growing army of incel imbeciles who demand their own cult show from Prime.
Make room on a couple of offshore bank accounts, this is going to be huge…
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I’m a sucker for duos, so in the spirit of young Brozza and Remington Steele, how about Beam and the Ugandan kid. The kid is the straight man, the wannabe revolutionary, like Stephanie Zimbalist paired up by necessity (too young to get served in the pub) with his vaguely slapstick sidekick of Beam bumbling around with a dodgy safari suit and a hilarious inability to tote an AK47 (a la Tiffany Case).
Hi-jinks ensue.
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Clair Dowar, still bitter over losing the Tory leadership contest to Rishi Sunak, chose not to stand for re-election in 2024. She is currently a gardening volunteer with the National Trust, and awaiting her elevation to the House of Lords (might be a while, dear girl).
Gregory Beam is so busy with his distillery and food businesses that he cannot be bothered to return Barbara’s calls.
The Ugandan child and Necropolis lad have moved on, and are currently pursuing post-graduate studies.
Which leaves Moreau, who survived the Project Heracles bioweapon, by taking accrued, but long unused, vacation time at just the right moment. From his isolated outpost–Moreau loves nothing better than to go off the grid–he entered the world of crypto, reinvesting all of Spectre’s assets (somebody had to), and tripling their value in a few years.
He is both intrigued and indifferent about a return to the Bondian universe–curious to see how he might become involved, but not relishing being part of another rogue/redemption story arc.
Barbara–his dms are open.
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Am I mistaken (a frequent occurrence), or did the options narrow over the course of the films, with the entries of the 1960s and 1970s providing better/tangier fodder than the later Bonds?
If true, does it point to a change in how film narratives were conceived over this span?
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Harbour is a fantastic actor. In every movie I saw him, he is completely transformed into a different guy.
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Absolutely and sadly true.
Yes, there are exceptions to this rule, but the - dare I say it - more sophisticated elements I seek I don’t find in most contemporary movies anymore. And while I turned to television productions instead during the last decades for those highs I rarely even find them there now either.
Of course, everything looks slicker and technically perfected, the actors are highly talented and skilled, the writing delivers every plot point like a clockwork… but something is missing.
The surprise, the discovery, the reality, the individualism of storytelling. Instead it is so often just streamlined, algorithm induced formula in every aspect, like processed food made to taste a certain expected way, not allowing for a particular flavor but enforcing the same flavor every time.
It’s what streamers want: a quantifiable way of making story sausage. And the studios emulate that, of course, because their beancounters were hoping to go that way.
Will that pendulum ever swing back?
I doubt it. Even if people stop buying the streaming sausage the manufacturers will keep on trying to sell it. And many audiences are already conditioned by it so much that they don’t have the patience for slower storytelling, less exploitation of sex and violence and humor which does not play to the lowest common denominator.
So I only find solace now by turning to my stacked shelves full of „old fashioned“ movies, rediscovering their genius, and occasionally find new films whose creators think in a similar way.
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September 21.
Yes, Barbara, I can confirm that your injunction was served and I acknowledge receipt. Slightly hostile act on your part; all I want to do is run my fingers through your money.
However, OK, after today I shall stop interrupting your hectic life and your otherwise replete days of seemingly bugger all. You can, of course, blame me for not getting Bond 26 made any more speedily; s’always someone else’s fault, innit?
Reversing the position slightly, but still locked into this notion that everything is one big story, and given that you steered the initially promisingly detached Craig pocket universe into a misconceived bloated reference-fest, today’s choice is to bring back one gadget from that era as fan service that will make the audience squirm, for a variety of reasons.
Having killed Bond, you might find it hard to reference in future this most successful period of your tenure, which is ironic and something of a quandary. Tough.
Cheery ‘bye, and love to Mick.
- Casino Royale’s defibrillator kit
- Quantum of Solace’s computer table thing
- Skyfall’s little radio
- Spectre’s smart blood
- No Time to Die’s EMP wristwatch
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voters
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‘I think we’ll have port with the fruit - and SKYFALL’s little radio. Only we’ll bring it back as a tamagotchi/e-cigarette…’ said Barbara, increasingly thrilled by the merchandise prospects.
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Smart Blood - because it’s actually a devilishly nifty idea, only introduced and then quickly discarded like so many other good ideas in that film. Can’t have too good thinking here, folks, this is just for the dumb masses.
So use it again, and this time use it well.
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Most of all: show Bond getting rid of it at the right moment by hooking up for a dialysis.
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Most of these things made so little impression on me that I don’t even know what is meant by the computer thing from QoS and the watch from NTTD. Difficult to choose.
Edit: So I opted for the defibrillator thing, you couldn’t miss it or look over it and I thought the radio from Skyfall was just a lame gadget.
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The EMP watch was one of the Craig era’s few loud and proud gadgets, and a traditional one at that. In the spirit of the Moore and Brosnan eras. I’d like to see more of that going forward and voted accordingly.
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I was there for smart blood, until I read Dustin on dialysis, and then sharpshooter on the throwback nature of the EMP watch. I realized that a Bond gadget has to be both a touch outrageous, and perfectly suited to a circumstance not at all apparent when it was designed.
MOONRAKER’s wrist-mounted dart gun is the ne plus ultra of gadgets–useful not just once, but twice, and invisible when not in use. So the EMP watch gets my vote in tribute to the gadgets of gadgets.
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September 22.
The popular character “James Bond” first appeared in 2006.
There were no novels; Ian Fleming died in 1943 of Blitz / syphilis / whichever got him first.
Tom Connery had a good career as a supporting actor, invariably the subject of the query “oh him, what’s his face, what else have I seen him in?”, with perhaps his most notable roles being “Tony” in two episodes of a Pertwee-era Doctor Who, and “The Creature” in “Lick the Sweat from Frankenstein” (Terence Young, 1975).
Roger Moore was The Saint, Lord Brett Sinclair, Flashman, Shaft and Charlie Chan, and finally won his Oscar for his raw portrayal of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. George Lazenby was a second-hand agricultural machinery dealer in Dingowiddlybong, New South Wales. Timothy Dalton remained a noted stage actor - his Widow Twankey was perhaps too intense, though; some children died - and Pierce Brosnan was a peep-show booth wiper, peripatetic knitwear model, singer and (because everyone gets a go) Batman.
Albert Broccoli made a series of increasingly boring war films, and Harry Saltzman was a loony.
Determined to create a British Ethan Hunt, in late 2005 a committee made of greedy people devised “James Bond” as a means of selling foul wristwatches to the gullible. They cast Daniel Craig,about whom nobody complained because nobody knew what any of this was. The first film, “Casino Royale” was a massive success.
Tiring of the role, having gone mad and also running out of knees, Craig retired on a percentage share of 2019/2020/2021’s “No Time to Die”, and the character very naturally was killed, his story having been told. Some felt five films was about right, if not a little too protracted. Still, everything that could be said about this “James Bond” was said, and the hugely successful franchise produced a number of culturally iconic moments, such as Quantum of Solace’s computer table thing, a character being murdered by being doused in oil and Mr Fukutu’s ponytail.
Now that it is a considerable number of years since that, all those with vested interests in the character, and some fans, want a return. You have been tasked with devising some ideas for this, probably because you’re cheap.
Obviously, given that everything about “James Bond” was set in stone by these five films and at no other point in time, you have to make decisions about how much the new series will reference / adhere to the ideas of that vintage series that started way, way back in 2006. That’s the blueprint, but how much will cross over?
Today’s choices
- Bond is blond
- Bond’s predominant stamping ground outside the UK is Italy, for some reason
- Bond is as fond of beer and whisky as he is of martinis
- None of these, thank you very much
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voters
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Who can imagine Bond to be anything but blond? It’s a sacrilege to change that. The only way to go are faithful remakes, taking place in the correct era (00‘s) which was such a sly insider joke because otherwise Bond would not be a 00-agent but a 20-agent, and that would just disgust his fanbase (the one club).
Also, Bond must remain short, so that during exhibitions of his wardrobe one can still wonder why it looks like badly washed and shrunken before one realizes that every man Bond encounters is bigger than him. Downsizing was such a revolutionary film, and it starred Jason Bourne. Dammit, these Bond producers were so easteredgy.
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