The argument for or against the whole supporting cast/scoobie crew is a bit schizoid (and the producers likely ran through every iteration of it themselves over the decades): on the one hand they’re not necessary; we can have a perfectly good Bond film without superfluous/traditional ritual scenes.
On the other they helped pad out the Bond world with familiar faces - and became hugely helpful once they had to recast 007. The scenes at SIS HQ in OHMSS (and up to a point those at the wedding) go a long way to show this is ‘our’ James Bond, the same guy we’ve been following since DR NO.
Perversely, the same crew did the same trick again two years later for Connery and helped to establish the implied idea OHMSS never happened. And another two years after that M and Moneypenny lend Moore a hand coming on board. For a series running such a long time these characters (hardly more than ‘elements’ really) turned out quite helpful.
One downside of this is the misguided superstition they were so important, so central to the series you couldn’t do without them. The other is the problem that, when the time comes you’ve got to recast them and the longer you delay the inevitable the harder it becomes, see Bernhard Lee and Lois Maxwell. You run into all kinds of problems (like giving Moneypenny an ‘assistant’ that could have been Moore’s daughter) until you’ve actually turned them indispensable.
Gradually bringing Q and Moneypenny back for the Craig run seemed like the right thing at the time - but I’d argue it wasn’t inevitable; no more than bringing back the blasted DB5. Have just the usual faceless tech people support and be done with it. Use the personalised gun and micro beacon without explanation. And Harris could just as well have been 009 without a need to name her and put her into M’s anteroom.
As has been said, James Bond’s MI6 crew is helpful to bring familiarity to the audience and a sense of Bond’s normal day-to-day relationships with his co-workers. They’re a good starting point to begin each film’s journey. They are NOT, however, needed–or certainly wanted–to help Bond throughout the film essentially babysitting or questioning him with every little controversial decision he makes, which happened WAAAAAAAAY too many times in the Daniel Craig films. If Bond needs/gets help, it needs to happen from his allies in the respective films, NOT the MI6 crew.
Also, the Craig films did not give us anywhere near enough of those interesting or eccentric other characters with his allies, Bond girls, henchmen, or even villains. After Casino Royale, you could argue the only interesting characters outside the MI6 crew are Kincaid, Raoul Silva, Severine, Hinx, Lucia Sciarra, and Paloma. Shoot, Bond films from the '60s through the '80s had that many interesting characters in just ONE film.
Hopefully, this is one vital area Amazon can greatly improve on from the most recent EON series of films.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that if the films had been more direct adaptations of Fleming, the series would have ended before all of his work was used. “James Bond” has succeeded and continues to succeed despite him.
Definitely true. Fleming’s books were successful before the films - but nowhere near as much. And they are overall an acquired taste, uneven in quality and almost entirely without humour. Having them adapted 1:1 to the screen would have ended the series likely after FROM RUSSIA; at the latest after THE SPY.
This is what largely also debunks that favourite of many fans, a modern ‘faithful’ adaptation of the originals, possibly as streaming series. This would have a hard time connecting with audiences and perhaps not even get beyond Casino Royale. To say nothing of the travel-and-racism tales Live and Let Die, Diamonds are Forever and You Only Live Twice, books where the mission at times takes the backseat to travelogue and over great stretches little of interest happens. Try to sell this to our second-screen consumerism environment.
And I can only add my pet peeve: Why should anyone want a faithful (really meaning: literal) adaptation of any novel?
If I want the novel I will read it.
A movie should adapt the novel for the strenghths and necessities of the audiovisual medium, not be an excuse to spare the audience the „exhausting“ act of reading.
It’s the equivalent of going to the theatre. I don‘t want to see a straight rendering of a play, I want to see what the cast and the director make of it.
From the outset it needs to be said I completely respect Fleming’s foundation. I do think the better films resemble the general outline of his books more closely. I’m referring to the likes of FRWL, TB, OHMSS and even CR2006. But even those injected the cinematic flair that made Bond the global phenomenon that it is.
For example, in Fleming’s Thunderball we have “the last patient, a reformed drunk, called back from the entrance, “See you later, Irrigator!‘’ Somebody laughed.” Bond gets the line in the film. By the time Fleming wrote YOLT he had Bond quipping a lot more, which no doubt was influenced by the success of the films.
The interesting word is “despite” the creator. If it had been written as “beyond” then the answer is true. But “despite” indicates that the whole thing was flawed, only to be saved by the films. Which for me is Fiction. Yes, a lot of Fleming was pitched, and yes, at some moment original plots run out. And yes, EON bolted on some things to the character that led to his longevity, but somewhere in there, is still a great deal of the original creation. (IMHO it’s lazy analysis when some say that the literary character is without humour. No - EON added ‘their’ humour rather than ‘all’)
I’m going with Fiction as the pedant in me can’t get “beyond” the wording of the question, “despite” its intent…
I believe if there had been literal adaptations only they would have been less successful films and the series had ended because the mass appeal needed to sustain the films just had not been there.
I’m going to quibble again with “universally acknowledged” just because most of the world probably doesn’t know who Ian Fleming was (sorry) and many of those who do tend to rattle on about going “back to Fleming” and tut-tutting the liberties the films have taken.
However if you’re asking whether it’s a universally applicable truism to say there isn’t a film in the series that wouldn’t have been seriously hobbled by adhering strictly to the novel it was based on, I absolutely agree. As noted, the chief contribution to the film series was humor, thanks to Connery and Young, which besides making the films fun to watch also made it harder to criticise the plots for being patently ridiculous. The humor said, “we know this is nuts, but isn’t it awesome?” whereas a totally straight-faced approach would’ve relegated the films to the likes of “Earth vs The Flying Saucers.”
More than that, though, the changes the early films made to Fleming were almost always improvements. FRWL’s decision to change SMERSH to SPECTRE elevated the film beyond standard East vs West spy plots to bolster SPECTRE’s threat as a shadow agency playing both sides against each other, and the screenplay’s showdown between Bond and Grant on the train beats Fleming’s hoary “saved by an object in my coat pocket” trope all hollow. Goldfinger’s plot to set off a bomb in Fort Knox is a thousand times more plausible than Fleming’s scheme to somehow remove all the gold, while also tapping into atomic age paranoia. The structure of OHMSS is also improved, and so on. Maybe Doctor No skipped the octopus scene for budgetary reasons, but including it would’ve ensured we’d only be able to catch the film now on “Mystery Science Theater” airings, and even the Moonraker “Bondola” scene would seem credible compared to having Bond work a blow torch with his teeth. Not to mention how hard it is to imagine how Fleming-Bond’s jingoistic, racist, misogynist diatribes could’ve made it onto a screen even in DW Griffith’s day, let alone the late 20th century.
So does everyone agree the films are better off for not sticking strictly to Fleming? No. But should they agree? Absolutely.
Most likely because they connected deeply with the plot, and when watching a film, they focus on plot above all else.
For people with a more formalist bent, the interest will be in how the formal elements of the medium, whether it be novel or film, are used to tell the story.
Question: I wanted to ask you who Seton I. Miller was or is. He worked a lot with you early on.
Howard Hawks: He was a boy at Yale with my brother who sent me some stuff that he wrote. I worked a lot with junior writers that I thought were good, because they’re so easy to work with, because I’m gonna change it anyway.
True - but wanting the same plot, beat by beat, in a movie when I already have read it in the book is like ordering the same thing in two restaurants and being outraged when it does not taste the same.
Agreed. But I know that at least in my case, I underestimate the appeal of plot to people, as well as the distaste for/discomfort with changes in plot.
For me, story is nice, but the way it is told, and the complexities of the telling are what pull me in, and keep me returning.
I would categorize those as not even plot, but rather incidents, which a viewer may like variety among, but is a little more conservative when it comes to plot.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that there are good reasons for those who dismiss the James Bond film series on either/both presentational or thematic grounds.
Of course true. It’s perfectly possible for people not to feel entertained*, intrigued or otherwise fascinated by Bond. Even Bond’s relative cineaste merits are largely limited to how well - or not - the films iterate their small number of plots over a very long time. Other genre fare may be more rewarding for scholarly scrutiny.
My neighbour, a lawyer himself and a casual fan, recently asked me how I came to be so involved with the series. He claimed I was the only person he knew who actually had read the Woodward books on US policy, the international relations/foreign affairs tomes and those on political extremism/terrorism/espionage and related topics. Didn’t I feel stupid following this ‘Mickey Mouse’ depiction of a fantasy spy?
The argument for Bond is that, away from the consumerist message to ‘Buy this bling! Buy that garb!’, on a very basic level the Bond series is a mirror - granted, a distorted carnival mirror - of our times and customs. A cross section of the 20th and 21st centuries subconscious dreamscapes, the basic values we consider worthy, the conflicts and pressures on the human condition. Some of it depicted directly on the screen, a lot of it present in the drama behind the curtain and wings of the stage. Historians and archaeologists of future generations may find a rich potential in these portraits of a dying age.
But it’s perfectly valid to refute Bond as silly and the machinations around the making and breaking of Bond as inconsequential and whimsical in the greater scheme of things. There are certainly entertainments with deeper resonance, reflections on the human condition that don’t eat away on the soul and moral fabric. There is no definite benchmark on the ‘value’ of a cultural pastime other than our personal investment.
*Because that’s what it is, entertainment. Not a documentary, not a role model, no deeper message involved than in those stories humans told each other around the camp fire since the dawn of time.