So pleased that, as with many topics here, that we are (hopefully in the truest sense) going back to Fleming.
Back in 2003 with the 50th Anniversary of the publication of CR, we did a “Seven days of 007” bit and I did day 003 (naturally) with my take on CR and addressed the character.
A few about here and even those outside CBn also read it and, kindly, retrospectively told me it gave a blueprint for where to go from the beginning. An outline/guideline if you will. Maybe somewhere someone at Eon caught note. I never got a call or a check.
I’ll dig it up. At the time I wrote it, DAD had come out and Brosnan was Bond and had been asked back. Word was just surfacing that Eon had gotten the rights back for CR but it hadn’t been confirmed.
As to all of the above, I concur that CR could have been both the reboot we got (Fab) but yet could, done differently, a great swan song for Brosnan.
Losing Tracy definitely is the bigger tragedy for Bond. Given, though, that the original run of films did not feature Vesper, putting Casino Royale at the end of the franchise as opposed to the beginning gives them a chance to reposition her as a second chance for Bond, which isn’t really something that we see come up again in the original run after Tracy’s death. She shows up, they get married, and then Blofeld murders her and then, after some very brief lip service to those events at the beginning of the next film, we’re back to a couple of decades of Bond being a serial womanizer and wise cracking his way through each adventure.
Tack Casino Royale on to the end of that run of films with a seasoned actor like Brosnan, and have him on the verge of retirement (“a relic of the Cold War”) sent out to conduct some easy business: win a poker game. Over the course of it, he falls in love with Vesper, causing some reflection on his experience with Tracy and maybe wanting a second try at that kind of life on his way out of the door. It would also be a way of giving the franchise something that never really had, which was dealing with the fallout of the ending of OHMSS instead of all but pretending that it never actually happened.
CR could absolutely work as a final story and serve as a bookend. A serious man who opens his heart once again only to be burned and reverts to his cold ways. He ends the way he started. The Connery and Moore films didn’t adapt the Fleming novels in sequence, so the precedent was already there for reworking things.
Have Jack Wade replace Felix Leiter to give more emotional relevance considering his prior roles in GE and TND. Have Valentin’s organisation as one of the backers of the casino where the game is played.
Perhaps the tournament is viewed by MI6 as a more routine mission after the trauma of North Korea, with still some concerns about what that experience did to him. CR Bond seriously contemplated quitting just as his career was beginning, which is why it can easily apply to a weary man near the end of his career. I think there was a great premise.
Makes sense. Part of the fun of DAF (novel) is Fleming/Bond’s contempt for all things American (an attitude that gets turned inside out 15 years later, when Blofeld sniffs “Your pitiful little island hasn’t even been threatened"). Sic Transit Gloria
Craig Bond was created in 2006–a post-millennial hero–and could never be the polished gentleman in the tux, who can double as a street brawler. By 2006, the world had learned that the polished gentleman never, ever does his own dirty work. Connery tried to bring it off, and was most successful in DAF when he stopped trying, Moore went far with it in TMWTGG, but was redirected, and then simultaneously acted and winked at the role for the rest of his tenure (doing so beautifully).
Dalton was our moody rogue, and Brosnan was pervy as we recently established (thank you @Stbernard). And so we arrive at Craig, where the polished gentleman establishment takes the soccer hooligan, trains him, dresses him up, and sets him loose (until his wiring malfunctions in SP).
Amazon would have to make Bond 26 a period piece to accomplish this.
To be clear, I do not want to see an origin story for Bond, in any shape or form. It’s an absolutely terrible idea and one that Cubby was canny enough to shoot down more than once when proposed in his lifetime. It’s disheartening that the Broccolineage were drawn back to it in the absence of Dad’s guidance, and the only thing that kept CR from giving us a wet-behind-the-ears newbie Bond was the casting of an almost-40-year-old Craig. I really hope Amazon resists whatever curious temptation the notion of a 20-something raw recruit Bond seems to hold for producer-types, and indeed it’s the one approach that would guarantee I sit out the next entry. I’m already on the fence as it is: one good thing about NTTD is that it gives me the perfect jumping off point, if I want to take it.
One other name I was a long time curious how he‘d have fared is Michael Fassbender. Nine years younger than Craig he might have been the better fit for the ‘starting out as rookie‘ nonsense. I suppose some creative decisions would have had to be made differently - even now 20 years later Fassbender is incredibly fit and defined but nowhere near as bulked up. He‘s still a wiry guy worlds apart from a bouncer physique.
Obviously, the tabloids would have had another field day with his German-Irish ancestry, so depending on who’s calling the shots that could have provided similarly nasty coverage. Not that the rags would have needed an excuse to tear into whoever they deem fair game…
However, after seeing Fassbender now in various roles ranging from light to serious to bizarre I somehow miss the particular je ne sais quoi that I think Bond would need. Fassbender is an enormously gifted guy, no doubt about that. Comparing BLACK BAG with The Agency there‘s not a second where I think I watch the same guy - but there’s also not a second where I think of Bond.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t have watched Fassbender in CASINO ROYALE or any other Bond film. Maybe his career simply took him in a direction where a Bond vibe didn’t come in handy. I‘d be indeed interested to hear his thoughts about it, if that ever can be made part of a profile, podcast or interview.
That first X-Men prequel with him as young Magneto also seemed to heavily sell him as Marvel’s X-Men answer to Bond. I remember in the aftermath to QOS some fans championed him as replacement in case Craig wouldn’t return (which some hoped for).
I could have imagined Fassbender as Bond starting in CR - but he would probably have been a really dangerous one, with lots of fiendishly aggressive undertones and many more subtle layers of sardonic pleasure in deception. (“The Agency” did offer Fassbender lots of those qualities.) In contrast, CraigBond was quite easy to grasp and clear-cut.
The first half of X-men First Class, when he still isn’t Magneto, it realy remind me of a kind of Thunderball look and vipe, I don’t know why exactly, but it did.
I’ve been thinking about it for a bit, and it reminds me of the opening scene from Thunderball, where he meets the “widow” in that big, fancy house. Connery also wears a gray suit, and of course, both films were filmed in widescreen Panavision. Maybe that’s the association I have with it.
