The first 5 Bonds hit the sweet spot of giving continuity without getting bogged down by it: I would be very happy for more of that.
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No to everything everywhere all at once being connected. There can be a lose kind of common theme, but let’s not overdo it. Whenever we need to introduce an artificial ‘reveal’ to retrospectively fit things together, we took a wrong turn. It’s either a bigger tale from the start - or not at all.
Also no to chase prestige directors and awards. We make a Bond film now, not in three or four years. And we make do with what we have, not what we could maybe get somewhere down the road if we just indulge director X.
So it’s ‘which part of ‘No’ do we have to elaborate on’ this time?
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No.
But I know. Won‘t happen. The Craig era created a template which had great ideas but also terrible ones, and the most terrible ones (they brought in MONEY) will be used as an argument for continuing in that vein:
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M, Q and Moneypenny will be cast with known actors who will be Bond‘s surrogate family and get lots of scenes
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Bond will remain haunted by his past and going rogue all the time
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Prestige directors will be catered to and that includes waiting for them (even until they are not prestige anymore).
Although quite frankly: is there any suitable director left one should really wait for, except Steven Spielberg? A good director is perfectly fine for Bond. There won‘t be any Oscars anyway, BB, so stop dreaming.
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I highlighted “wait for directors” - not that I entirely agree or believe it, but I do think the ship has sailed for the old cycle of the “every other year” production line. If that is what everyone truly wants (including EON), then we will end up with “Jack Ryan on Prime!”
As the line between prestige/streaming TV and the cinema disintegrates entirely, what will differentiate cinema will be the fact that the timeline is elongated, so that each delivery is an event, so that each delivery is the result of a creative team bringing something to the table that they truly believe is new or unique.
I’ll offer a (extreme to be fair) contrast to set my stall - and this isn’t about whether or not one likes these films (personally watch a few if any of them):
Batman - a storyline that one could argue is a little played out (not unlike Bond, I’d offer) is able to reinvent itself. New directors, new writers, new casting, a willingness to wedge out a new angle (Joker musical WTF). They all make money, they do grab as much attention as is possible these days, and are very much a “big-screen” event.
Marvel on the other hand, churning out content on a regular basis that the exhaustion and unoriginality now more akin to a T-shirt that never reaches the laundry basket. I sense ennui amongst all but the most hardcore of comic book fan.
Or you have (cinematic) Star Wars, caught between stretching their wings or ultimately reverting to the safety net of “well, they’re all kind of related and someone somewhere is building a Death Star.”
I don’t know where the series goes next (to be successful, not to please us) but every other year with the same writers and directors (or director type) will be the shortest route to TV.
Which is maybe where it should go…???
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I have "re imagined " the first question. Time the releases to the newest Omega watch release, luxury car brand, new flavoured very expensive Vodka.
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Well, the two year rhythm would still be far from Marvelesque two to three a year. But I agree: that ship has sailed, and maybe with 25 films it is otherwise played out and needs some kind of other enticement.
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The problem is that good, old-fashioned metteurs-en-scene such as Guy Hamilton, Lewis Gilbert, and John Glen don’t exist anymore. The production line that generated them has been replaced by film schools.
So the choice reduces down either a director with no history of making a film on the Bond scale, or a director (of at least some repute) with some track record, who will be attempting to prove themselves and demonstrate their vision.
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That really is a detriment to cinema.
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Or perhaps they still exist - they just work in TV and streaming, where they can add the responsibility, reward, and freedom, of also being a showrunning. Look at directors such as Stephen Hopkins and Danny Cannon, who worked in film and then transitioned to TV.
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Chad Stahelski is the person who springs to mind as someone who did significant work in film, and then graduated to the director’s chair. He follows in the tradition of Wyler, Wilder, Mankiewicz, Huston, Sturges, Leisen, Lean, La Cava, Tashlin, and others.
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Um, as much as I enjoyed the Wicks, to name Stahelski in the same sentence as those cinema giants is such a big stretch I never thought you would dare to mention.
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I named him as an example of someone who started in a modest film function, and then assumed the director’s chair with aplomb. Will he continue to produce significant work? Who knows. Even my list contains a few burnouts.
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September 28.
You’re still in the frame - therefore accountable when it goes wrong - for deciding what to pick from the bones of the 2006-2021 films and haul into a new Bond series, for homages there must be. It is both the lore and the law. Whether it works is totally immaterial. As, you will come to discover working for these people, are you.
Today’s choosingtons:
- If s/he has to return, Q is a younger character of tech/geek nature rather than more evidently ex-military.
- Moneypenny is a retired field agent and more of a pal than a yearner.
- London and the U.K. feature prominently as locations overall, and for more than scenes at HQ.
- How does ‘no’ sound? Sounds good to me. It be no, it do be. Do be do be no.
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voters
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We all have to agree: this five film series has been predictably following the Zeitgeist, with a secretary being a field agent and not instantly smitten with that protein-shake devouring gym addict, a tech freak who is young (because old people just don’t know how to use the internet or firewalls) and London being the center of the new Brexit empire.
But let‘s think outside of the box for once.
Are there no female secretaries anymore? And aren‘t they happy to see an attractive guy flirting with them when they have to endure the old windbag who is their boss stuffing his pipe and whining about Blades not being the club he used to know all day long?
Let‘s make Moneypenny a woman who likes Bond because he embodies her secret fantasies! You know, all the male fans can sympathize with that.
And Q, why not make him a veteran who actually developed and built useful and life saving stuff long before the internet was made available to post meal and cat photos?
I know, that might be too daring and edgy - but in these days you have to shock to be noticed.
And M… unfortunately, they have dragged out the development and release of these films so the perfect candidate for Bond has aged out of the role. But why not cast Idris Elba as a fitter, more charismatic and cooler M? That way we could already believe that Bond is too afraid of him to go rogue again.
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I think, for better or worse, that the two-year cycle of James Bond films is gone. The films now apparently are too big and too exhausting to make–in front of, and behind, the camera–and Barbara Broccoli clearly is not excited about making them any more. 
(Though I don’t see how they are any bigger or more exhausting comparatively speaking than during Cubby’s era.)
No, the best we can hope for now–and which I think is perfectly reasonable–is a three-year gap between films. One year to draft a script and make location plans, one year to film, and a one-year break to recharge the batteries. But whether we can get back to even a three-year cycle who knows. And at the moment, I’m not holding my breath for it.
And like you said about Barbara chasing after “prestige directors”, it’s all for nothing. She’ll never get the insiders’ accolades she obviously yearns for with the Bond films. The best she can hope for is a music or special effects award. If Casino Royale can’t get nominated for an Oscar, then nothing else the Bond team comes up with will. The more she tries for it though, the more she’s doomed to follow in Sisyphus’ footsteps of him pushing the rock up the mountain only to have it roll back down just before it reaches the top.
Barbara should just forget going for accolades and instead concentrate on making good, entertaining films. The 007 fans and public will reward her with their praise and pocketbooks–and, ultimately, that is more important and enduring than critics and insiders’ plaudits and approval.
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Not happy about any of today’s choices - but I suppose Moneypenny being not just a capable personal assistant but also armed and - if push comes to shove - able to defend M’s bureau is probably the most logical option. She’s got to have a high security clearance and needs to have proven her usability. Not with lots of gunplay but actual intelligence work.
I’d think of somebody who’d otherwise have grown into station head or section chief; she just chose to keep closer at home and was too valuable to waste her talents - while not being a specialist in any particular field - on the statistical analysis of movements or military-industrial complex output.
So M’s PA she became.
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I’m fine with the idea of Moneypenny being a former field agent. It might even make sense to have her be a sort of half-secretary/half bodyguard to M. Then again, that would mean engineering some scenes where she and M are in peril, and at this point I’m not interested in perpetuating the trend of having the “office crew” play an enlarged role. M, Q and Moneypenny show up only long enough to say, “Hello Bond, here’s your mission, Goodbye.”
Go ahead and give her a backstory as a field agent, but it should be as incidental as the backstory Lois imagined where 'penny and Bond had enjoyed a past dalliance. I don’t really care about Moneypenny’s history any more than I care about the history of whoever it is on the other end of that bleeding gunbarrel at the start of the films.
Neither does Young Q, if SF is anything to go by.
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Not necessarily some scenes - one scene would be quite enough…
But definitely going easy on the backstory; we needn’t hear about it for a few films - or not at all. Fleming’s secretarial characters all seemed to belong to the same WRENS/WVS pool that just got stuck in the machine. Nowadays audiences would simply assume some similar tale. If they thought about it at all. If it’s not important to the story it’s not worth telling.
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My honest opinion is that it doesn’t matter at all what the background of M, Q and Moneypenny is, I want them at the beginning of the film, the first fifteen minutes or so and beyond completely out of the story and the film, at most to provide Bond with extra gadgets or information halfway through the story, but that’s it! No further developed characters that take up too much screen time and do so more and more per film.
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“No” sounds good to me.
From GF onwards the series has inevitably turned inwards for characters for Bond to interact with, and along the way completely wasted the opportunity for interesting relationships with others, including source material creations that have been underserved (Tiger, Leiter, maybe even Draco).
SF is IMHO worthy of the accolades (and box office) that came its way, but ultimately it writes a check with the reintroduction of MI6 that is paid off ad nauseum in the films that followed. QoS and CR both benefitted from their absence and frankly proving that they are nothing more than passengers in this whole thing. Regardless of how you feel about the “dumpster” moment, Mathis is a character of more gravitas and interest then another mindless MI6 interaction.
I’m not against them in totality - LLewelyn and SC in GF I wouldn’t lose for the world, and Moneypenny is a useful plot device in OHMSS (unlike say in LTK). But even within that entry, M’s exasperated dismissal of Q is something I’m entirely fine with when it comes to the overall.
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