Then Brosnan takes off the VR helmet from DAD:
“Well…that was weird.”
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Agreed. Casino Royale and the Craig era as a whole is known and loved by its fans for being edgy. The black and white sequence, revising the gun barrel, “do I look like I give a damn?”, etc.
I really like the idea of ending the Craig era with Bond ignorant of who he is, but finding a note that may trigger memories or lead him to answers. I’m talking about an extended epilogue here, kind of like Bond meeting Q and driving off with Madeline in SPECTRE. It wouldn’t be a plot line the film devotes any real length to.
Yes, the story always goes on. But in those brief moments before the credits roll, Vesper, Solange, Mathis, Fields and M…he’s free of that mental burden. He’s a blank canvass that can be moulded by the next actor.
Hell, we can even imagine Craig’s Bond chose to “stay dead” upon remembering his past, just like Mallory said in Skyfall. But we won’t see it. Bond #7 would just walk through the door and start afresh.
Bond 25 can absolutely be an explosive film with sword fights with Blofeld and explosions galore. But an ending such as this would be poignant and make you care for Bond as a character. And I think that’s what one of the main goals of the Craig era has been. But who knows? It’s fun to talk about in any case.
I mentioned I would do something like this in the previous forums with the James Bond storyline continuing on from the novels You Only Live Twice in Bond 25 and The Man With The Golden Gun at the start of Bond 26. Daniel Craig’s run hasn’t been the normal 007 tenure, so why have it end similarly to the other 007s either? This would further make Craig’s run unique.
For Bond 25, I would have Irma Bunt break Ernst Stavro Blofeld out of prison. M calls Craig’s Bond up to his office. But instead of sending him after the SPECTRE leader, M instead sends him on a higher priority mission which turns out to be SPECTRE-backed after all (as in the Shatterhand scenario from the novel). Eventually Bond comes across Blofeld in Japan. They fight and Bond succumbs to injury and amnesia after (possibly) killing his arch-nemesis. Bunt captures 007, but just when she’s about to kill him, she realizes his mental condition and spares his life. She then helps him up, puts her arm around the confused agent and tells him it’s okay. She can help him and that she’s got big plans for him. She and Bond then walk away from the camera and cue the credits. Craig’s tenure ends unforgettably. You can even put at the end “James Bond will return?”
For Bond 26, we now have a new 007 actor. At the beginning of the PTS he shows up (after like a year) at MI6 and everyone is surprised yet worried about him because he looks like 007, but he’s not acting like 007. He gets sent up to M’s office where he soon tries to assassinate him but fails due to M’s quick thinking with the glass shield. As the brainwashed Bond collapses, M shouts to Moneypenny to get Dr. James Molony and tells Bill Tanner that he plans on getting Bond straightened out and sending him back after SPECTRE. The camera then cuts to a closeup of the unconscious Bond as M says in the background something like “If Molony can get him right, he’ll take the bastards down once and for all or they’ll kill him. 007 wouldn’t want it any other way.” Cue the title sequence. The rest of the film has 007 tracking down the SPECTRE leader(s). And Bond #7’s tenure begins unforgettably as well. Plus we finally get shown on screen two of the best sequences in Bond novel history. Everybody wins.
Having Blofeld plant a device in Bond’s head to control him would not mean the finale in London did not have to happen. Blofeld could have waited to use this particular control gadget, thinking it’s too early to do so now - and too risky for Bond to question his behaviour so soon after the procedure.
And during the London finish Blofeld feels too sure of himself anyway, a character flaw that has always plagued him.
It would mean that Blofeld sacrificed having control of the whole of British Intelligence, via C, in order to have control of Bond, who only has oversight of whatever mission he happens to be on.
I think that whatever way you look at it, it’s a poor trade off, making Blofeld look like an idiot.
Well, he must have suspected that Bond has contacted others about Denbigh, M already was suspicious, so it would have been reasonable of Blofeld not to press on, with investigations surely coming.
And to have a 00-agent, even better his hated step-brother as an asset without him knowing about it, would be even more delicious to him. And since nobody can actually expect Spectre to dissolve after the finale of the film, Blofeld must always have another backdoor plan. And to use 007 is pretty sinisterly perfect.
Denbigh was a goner from the go, everybody could see it. Christ, he looked like that guy Moriarty on the telly…
And fell to his death, which made me laugh out loud. Voldemort pushed Moriarty to his death - and all of English literature exploded.
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Maybe things didn’t go exactly as planned (helicopter crash etc.) but Blofeld had to act that way. He has bigger fish to fry and knew that he’d regain control of British Intelligence, anyway. He just couldn’t let them know that he’s inside their best man’s head.
The sacrifice was necessary. Flight 007… the Coventry people… Bond Air is go…
That said, I’m not particularly fond of the whole idea.
Agreed, my preference would be to ignore and forget the events of SP, but the return of Craig makes that unlikely. I like DC well enough as a Bond, but I’m pretty much over this arc.
It is telling though, isn’t it? At no time, in spite of having had multiple good chances to do away with Bond at point blank range, he never once does. What does that suggest? That Blofeld had had other plans…
Or somebody doesn’t know how to write.
But we won’t go there…
Not killing Bond when they have the chance is a well established trope of the classic Bond movie and Spectre was partially mooted as a return to some of those tropes. I’d guess this was nothing more elaborate than a return to formula.
Although much of Bond’s writing and dialogue has been leagues better than anything that came before, the overall planning/plotting has left much to be desired, with abandoned arcs and plot holes galore. I wouldn’t blame Haggis, or Logan as much as the Hollywood habit of having a bevy of writers do re-drafts, try to Dr and make changes to please all the various egos and demographics - too many chefs.
Given this i wouldn’t credit Eon with having planned this out so far as Spectre having a trick ending to be later explained. If it transpires that way it’ll be a desperate retrofit.
You are all having a decent crack at retrofitting it yourselves and i think with hindsight i’d trust CBN to do a better job at resolving the plot holes than Eon.
I’d prefer they leave Spectre’s anticlimax as is - best forgotten - and carry on the arc with an adaptation of YOLT; having the tragic epilogue of OHMSS as the pre-titles of Bond 25; the opening scene of TMWTGG as the pre-titles of Bond 26 with a new Bond… But you poor chaps have heard me plug that plan for a year or 2 now, so maybe i should put a cork in it 
It would, of course, be retrofitting the huge compromise of an ending that SPECTRE had. But in a clumsy way that would be appropriate for the retrofitting of CR, QOS and SF into the whole strategy of Blofeld.
I certainly would rather have them start with a fresh idea and just, you know, shrugging off that failure of SPECTRE´s finale.
But if they wanted to do it, I would believe it. Blofeld knew that his whole scheme of Nine Eyes was on the verge of being exposed. So it did not make any sense to go through with it now. He must have expected that the government would come after him.
So what better way than to plant an asset in the government that nobody expected: 007.
The hated stepbrother had to be good for something.
Giving Blofeld an extraordinarily complicated and ingenious plan to plant a drive-by-wire remote controlled Bond inside SIS also is a bit familiar when we look at the centre part of SKYFALL where Silva let himself be captured just to break out and wreak havoc on the Lego-HQ.
And really, what would killing M achieve? Simply that another Whitehall aborigine would be boosted onto the top floor and business as usual. If Bond is to kill anybody of consequence it would have to be the Queen, or the Pope. Blofeld’s half baked plan to get numerous intelligence agencies under his control was as far as it went. Having an - unwitting - killer at his disposal for him wouldn’t even figure on his diary, even if it was Bond.
Cr and QOS wasn’t retrofitting, they just changed a name now they could use it without being sued, that stuff makes sense in the context of CR, QOS and SPECTRE and tbh I liked Spectres London finale, so I’d rather they didn’t change another films ending retroactively based on subjective opinion.
Skyfall’s connection though…the only Skyfall plot connection I bough was M leaving a video in her will that reveals that, although she made Bond let it go, she never did stopped looking at that case from the start of Bond’s career, so passed the case to Bond in the event of her death.
Sure it would. Remember Blofenhauser has spent millions on computers and volcanoes and Nehru jackets – and years of his life – for the express purpose of causing personal stress for brother James. He says so himself.
This is what we get in the era of “this time it’s personal.” Sure the world is at risk, but how does it affect 007?
The difference here being that the personal stress for Bond culminated in his little Marathon Man remake by PlayStation proxy.
The stress for Bond after killing some Whatshisname inside the sclerotic heart of Britain would be quickly over, the deed likely hushed up so not even a headline would add to Blofeld’s amusement. The whole purpose of Spectre, the organisation, is that Blofeld orders redshirts-a-dozen at Goons-R-Us for such work.
But of course you are right, the whole personal angle thingy comes apart at the seams, that’s why it would best be ignored. If anything, they could have pulled such a stunt if they had left Denbigh out of SPECTRE and had the kill-M plan instead at the end of it, minus explanation in any direction so that SPECTRE ended with Bond suddenly shooting M…cliffhanger.
Well, having Bond kill the Prime Minister, for example, and exposing the whole Service as unable to control their own people would be fun for Blofeld. Maybe he plans to put his own people in charge of the Service. Bond could be a useful idiot for him then.
Now that I like!
To be honest, I get the distinct impression Mendes ended SP the way he did because he knew he was done. And as an “auteur” he had to give “his” Bond a proper ending.
Meh.