So much for this elaborate plan. A Flash Gordon discussion… 
Wonder what would have been the outcome if you tried this with CR67.
In case you intend to: I’ll be out of town on Thursday and Friday (going to see Macca in Paris), so please save that one for later 
December 4.
Oh Lordy, it’s only three weeks to Christmas. Mrs Jim’ll be at me with the Christmas card list again, and I expect the usual lecture not to include rhymes based on recipients’ surnames; the Tuckers haven’t spoken to us for years. Although that’s a win, tbh.
Anyway, to distract myself from the onset of the annual shock of the cost of stamps, let’s see who’s behind today’s little window on the Badvent Calendar! If it’s Flash Gordon, I’m incinerating it.
But no! Look who it is! It’s Magical Flying Car Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! Hello Chitty! Merry Christmas Chitty! Happy 60th Anniversary Chitty! etc,
On the basis that “going back to Fleming” includes Chitty raises the possibility that they give Bond not just an invisible car but a flying one (whyever not, Scaramanga had one 50 years ago). Obviously everything that the morally dubious and colossally drunk Ian Fleming produced is at least worth considering before the well runs bone dry, so today’s question is extruded…
The real Bond* had no gadgets - or at least none worth mentioning. A sawn-off revolver, a taped grip on his Beretta, a gunmetal cigarette case and a Ronson lighter, that’s about it. Fleming mentioned odd stuff in the Aston DB3 and huge Colts in the Bentley - but they never serve any purpose.**
But there was an element of gadgetry in the books and it established a fantastical element of its own: the submersible periscope in the Russian embassy, No’s dragon-tank-buggy, the retrofitted supercharger that cost Bond the warrant for the Bentley, the shooting book of Grant and the poisoned shoes of Klebb. Bond even got a little bit of that with his steelcapped/hidden dagger escape shoes.
So yes, I think that’s an important ingredient in the Bond world. The films just turned it up to 25.
*That’s of course the literary one.
** Tailing the Rolls Bond should have been able to do without that Homer thingy.
As ashamed (or not) as I am to admit it - the CAR was one of the big draws when I was introduced to the entertaining world of licenses to kill. So every car which came without extra was a let down.
It just does not have to be (hopefully not, please, please!) an Aston Martin.
And no fracking Tesla either!
Mrs Jim is making all sorts of post-watershed gurgling wants-a-baby noises looking at the pictures of that new Jaguar concept, I have* to admit.
*don’t actually have to admit this.
Wrong is right is brilliant!
Without gadgets, there’s little to separate Bond from the Bournes of the world, and whenever another spy film uses gadgets, the audience thinks “they borrowed/stole that from Bond.” I say play to your strengths and use everything in the arsenal (figuratively and literally). We’ve already seen that “realism” in Bond films is still unrealistic, so you might as well double down on the wild stuff.
Also, do you know who would look great in a flying car? Buster Crabbe…
I’m for gadgets.
But (knew that was coming) I would like to ensure there’s care and creativity in how they’re used. When gadgets just start appearing as a solution to everything, then any sense of drama is gone. Take MR - the wrist gun is introduced, used, exits stage left, and then returns at the climax. It works.
On the other hand, the same film has a gondola that suddenly appears, a watch that just so happens to be explosive, a cigarette case that happens to cracks safes. They just appear, probably because the writer or director just couldn’t be bothered. For me, these don’t work.
I love the LALD Rolex (went out and bought one; no, not an MI6 one!). Sure, the buzzsaw is a cheat, but the watch has been introduced to the audience and has appeared throughout the film, sometimes working, sometimes failing, a moment for a chuckle ("I’m tempted to test that theory right now’) and sometimes to dramatic effect (the whole “Butter hook” interrogation). That, like the FRWL suitcase, the GF Aston, is a gadget with a point that adds to the action and the suspense.
Bond is not Bourne because done right, as DavidM pointed out, they make this whole shebang something more. Unfortunately done badly and we’re Flint or The Man From Uncle, and they’re better at that than us.
Gadgets Yes, but handled with care.
Care, absolutely.
But I would argue that surprise gadgets work very well, too.
When you introduce a gadget at the beginning you know it will be used. That is fine, of course, and if done right (the attaché case in FRWL) it creates suspense whether Bond will be able to use it to his advantage. But if you know in advance about it, it has a slightly lesser effect (on me, at least).
I enjoy it when Bond just has lots of surprises up his sleave(s) because I already suspect Q has outfitted him with many thingees.
Of course, these should be of use in an unexpected way.
Gadgets need not even work to achieve some desired effect. Take Bond’s Colt in his car; in Fleming’s text he never actually shoots the thing.* Moonraker ramps up the tension, Bond watches Drax and Krebs tossing Gala on the backseat and chases after the Merc. On the motorway he puts on racing goggles, flattens the windscreen, draws the gun from the holster under the dash and throws it on the seat beside him. Use of the Colt, a major shootout, is imminent.
Nothing happens.
Bond is apparently so far behind the Mercedes he doesn’t notice Drax slowing down or Krebs’ acrobat stunt. The next thing Bond does notice is the paper roll smashing him off the road.
A gadget needn’t be the solution to a scene, a way out like the dart gun in MOONRAKER. It can dodge audience expectations, it can increase the suspense or come entirely out of thin air. THE SPY brilliantly started with a completely unexpected ticker tape watch, continued with a ski stick gun (that’s probably not hugely more accurate than a handgun might have been in the situation) and ended its pts with an ordinary parachute (apart from the design; the design is what made this a gadget) in an unforeseen context.
*Bond travels with no less than three guns in Casino Royale; not a single one is of any use other than to tear his cover to shreds - but that was already the case before he arrived at Royale.
December 5
It’s World Soil Day! As one gets older, this takes on a more unnerving meaning. Ah, another day passes and one routinely opens a little window on a tatty calendar to commemorate that the day will never come back; it’s done and that’s that. Merry Christmas, yeah, wha’evs.
Meanwhile, back at the plot, I wonder who’s behind the little window/door/flap thing on the Badvent Calendar for today? Shall we look? Shall we? I can barely contain myself, which regrettably brings us right back to World Soil Day.
Why, it’s The Concept of Going Back to Fleming! Hello, The Concept of Going Back to Fleming! Merry Christmas, The Concept of Going Back to Fleming!
There is a school of thought, albeit not a very good school, that if they really meant this, and to distinguish the launch of a new lead actor, it should (not could; should) mean period pieces and the books adapted verbatim. The advent of better CGI for sets and whatnot would make this less expensive than it has previously threatened to be. However, this tends to side-step the point that Bond and others express views given tham by an syphilitic old drunk into whose mind such attitudes were “educated” just after WWI, and Bond has a servant.
Oh, hard, sometimes it’s the bit I look forward to, others it’s like someone changed the channel.
The clearest path back would be to do what EON has always done: take what they like, discard the rest.
Almost like that calendar. With nothing left and plenty to reimagine (invent/steal/fill with whatever).
On second thought: maybe don’t go back at all. The mindset of the 50‘s (rather 30’s) is already coming back anyway.
“Period” Bond or “true-to-the-books-Bond” is IMHO a better idea to throw about than an actual plan to follow and execute. One could make an argument that the very existence of the character was to act as an escape from the drudgery of 50/60s England and it’s This Sporting Life, Room at the Top, kitchen-sink aesthetic. So therefore, why would we go back in time to ‘rerun’ the very time that the series was trying to provide an escape from?
EON got it right in keeping things in the present, and as hard as this is to say, also got it right in dumping considerable amounts of source material, some of which without the Fleming name attached would be as execrable as many of my posts.
Which is kind of apt, as I find reading DAF about as much fun as using an outside toilet in the middle of the night, circa East London in the 60s and early 70s, and I can’t recall the last time anyone remodeled their house and said “let’s move the toilet to the bottom of the garden”
This one’s hard for me as none of the answers are a perfect fit.
I don’t think it would be necessary to work the racism of the novels into a period piece screen adaptation. Arguably, it wasn’t even necessary for Fleming to keep stopping the action to wander off into assorted racist rants even back in the day, but to the extent it happened it was usually an interior monologue on Bond’s part, anyway. If anything, I think the bigger concern for a 21st century retelling of a 50s/60s tale would be the temptation to overcompensate as I feel Horowitz did in “Trigger Mortis,” making Bond into an anachronistic paragon of progressivism. Best to just stick to the 50s cars and clothes and Cold War themes and leave the racial politics out of it.
I went with “Fleming didn’t write period pieces” because no, telling stories set in the 50s is not what anyone means when they say “Go back to Fleming.” That said, approaching Bond as a period piece may be the only gimmick left that would get my attention. I feel like the well’s been pretty much plumbed dry at this point. We’ve gone fully into “let’s have fun, no matter how goofy things get” and more recently we’ve gone fully into “Let’s not have any fun and furthermore disavow any times we might have foolishly had fun in the past.” I’m not sure what’s left to explore in terms of tone.
One of the arguments for always living “in the moment” with Bond has been the ability to keep him on the cutting edge of technology, but now that amazing gadgets are a part of everyday life for the common man, we’re almost at the point where the technology is a hindrance and not a help, as witness that troublesome little earpiece that turns Bond into a “team player” at best and a flesh-and-blood drone at worst (“Go left, go right. He’s in front of you, shoot him”). For most of his screen career, Bond had one foot in tomorrow, but to be honest tomorrow looks less interesting all the time.
I would love to see faithful adaptations of the novels in the spirit of the Jeremy Brett Holmes series, but realistically that would almost have to happen on the small screen, and at this point probably as a streaming series. That would require a major paradigm shift for the property and there’s no indication Eon would ever entertain the idea, especially now that it’s obvious Bond is, for them, basically a revenue generator to fund projects they’re more interested in pursuing. The money to be made from theatrical releases will probably keep Bond a cinemas-first property for good. Or maybe not, given the way the industry’s been going, but anyway for the foreseeable future I don’t see them sacrificing the golden goose.
Also, curses on Jim for introducing the idea of a “concept” living behind an advent calendar window. Having set the precedent, I now fully expect to unwrap boxes on Christmas morning only to find the concept of gifts inside.
Fleming verbatim, that’s audiobooks. There’s a market for this, but it’s not the cinema.
If ‘going back to Fleming’ meant anything beyond a soundbite today it would probably be to capture the spirit of Fleming*. But defining that spirit isn’t so easy. It cannot really be the casual racism; most people don’t care for it, millions of audiences never complained about the absence of vile, outdated views and depictions (even though there was some of it liberally sprinkled over the films that was simply ‘accepted’ at the time). So that cannot be the core attraction of the man.
Perhaps they should go back to before Fleming, the way he did himself when the war was over and he remembered his puberty lecture - Buchan, Rohmer, Sapper, later Ambler and probably Wheatley and Cheyney - and updated the theme with his own background and experiences.
Their heroes, while severely dated and often pompously up their own with snobbery, usually had some things in common: endurance, a general dislike for injustice and a working moral compass as well as a terrier’s tenacity to keep on fighting even when the chips are down and the odds against.
It should be possible to adapt these qualities to today’s demands and give them to a government troubleshooter whose main purpose isn’t necessarily killing - but who can and will do it if necessary. That was, after all, the way Fleming used to handle it. Only very rarely was Bond called to eliminate an individual on the page. The nature of his missions though was such one would reasonably expect severe adversity.
*Shouldn’t be all that hard, just follow the smell of booze and cigarettes…
And yet he did (along with Chandler, Hammett, MacDonald, among others). It was just that his “period” was his contemporary moment (which can be a difficult genre to master).
December 6
As an increasingly aged bolus of “pop” “stars” possessed of awe-inspiring tax avoidance schemes have been wont to “sing”, “It’s Christmas time / There’s no need to be afraid.”
How wrong they are. The Novichok eggnogg game, the having to be interested in anyone other than myself, the running out of emaciated orphans to hurl onto the fire, the parting with money, the music. I’m sweating already, although that might just be age, or the “thing”.
There may be a quantum of solace in tradition, however, so shall we open today’s flappy-flap-flap on the Badvent Calendar and see what’s behind it? Why, let’s.
Why, it’s A Delicatessen in Stainless Steel! Hello, A Delicatessen in Stainless Steel! Merry Christmas, A Delicatessen in Stainless Steel! Whatever the Hell you might be.
What thoughts prompt ye? Well, although For Your Eyes Only is a massively more cretinous affair than Moonraker, I suppose it’s an observable life cycle of Bond films that they hit a peak/trough of outrageousness and then crawl back into their little shell for a few years before developing the self-confidence and I-am-what-I-am-ness to go completely bonkers once again.
You Only Live Twice > OHMSS, Moonraker > For Your Eyes Only, Die Another Day > Casino Royale.
It doesn’t always have to occur on the change of the actor, but obviously we are coming up (at some point during the next ten years) to a new lead for Bond, and No Time to Die was drifting towards being very silly indeed, although if a general mass audience expect Bond films to be a bit daft, was it silly enough in tone to instigate one of these resets? Should there be less revolution, a continuation in tone, such as between Diamonds are Forever and Live and Let Die?
*with apologies for typo in one of the choices - nows/knows. Arg. Another cause to fear.
I vote for ‘REVOLUTION!!!’ (cannot do revolution with less than three exclamation marks) - but I actually struggle to nail exactly what the tone was in NO TIME TO DIE and consequently what to topple. To me that film has a peculiar nature, a Bond kitchen sink drama (with a gun under the sink), secrets kept from the partner, a guy unable to express his feelings - and when he finally does it’s a bit late really; a lost daddy who returns to his family, only to sod off to Nivana again. A tearjerker.
I keep forgetting it’s also a film with a Halloween villain, a targetable mega virus, a robot eye henchman and a video game shootout - among various other set pieces. It has all the trappings of an over-the-top Bond adventure - it just feels like the kitchen sink drama the pts threatens.
I wouldn’t welcome a return of outright silliness and self parody - and I doubt (read: don’t hope) we’ll see that. I guess I would like to keep the tone in general - minus the personal tragedy. It’s that part which, while fitting to the end of Craig’s tenure, keeps me from really enjoying NO TIME TO DIE. It’s simply a downer - and not in a good way.
What could be more bonkers than the very unsettling dream I had the other day ( I think t’was a dream )
Escalating NTTD, a nearly 60 year old Daniel Craig returns as Bond in a weird retrad of AVTAK with Zorin played by Monica Bellucci and Mayday again by Grace Jones because why not
Bond and Madays last act alliance made all the more poignant by them both having been blown to smithereens and survived.