A No Time To Die novelisation could expand upon Bond’s quiet life in Jamaica - his movements immediately after Matera, and his return journey to London on the freighter.
I have the book but believe the movie is by far superior. Moonraker is best enjoyed as a big screen spectacle rather than a piece of literature. Convoluted explanations weaken the magic in this instance.
But the novel has Bond’s space walk!
And no winking pigeon.
And no Jaws’ girlfriend.
I’m just thinking to myself, quite often When a new bond movie came out, the original Fleming novel with the same name would be re issued with the cover depicting the movie poster.
I noticed that they did the same with casino royale in 2006, I wonder how many movie goers who were not actual book fans bought the book expecting it to be the novel of the film?
I’m yet to reach Gardner’s Licence to Kill on my re-read, but I don’t really consider that or even his Goldeneye adaption pure canon to the timeline he started in Licence Renewed. I’d be more comfortable skipping over those and sticking to his original stories. Which is what Brokenclaw does anyway, continuing on from Win, Lose or Die.
There are a times where he is desperately trying hard to tie the movie novels in with his and the IF continuity, so the line by Felix In LTK about bond being married once, is missing.
In Goldeneye, Zukovskye’s line about the Walther ppk Is changed to “that particular brand of weapon” as the gardener bond No longer used the ppk etc
I always found that sentence very desperate to get everything right with his own books, but that was nothing compared to how he tries to explain in LtK that Felix is being mauled by a life-threatening fish for the second time in his life, while actually for that movie just that scene was taken from the Fleming LALD book and was not used for the movie version of LALD.
Another problem was,in his books he was now captain James bond, and suddenly commander again In goldeneye, without an explanation!
The end of COLD is very awkward,as he Is obviously trying to tie his novels In with the movies developments as it ends with him being taken to see the new M.
This doesn’t sit well with goldeneye,as It is established that M and bonds first meeting is after his assignment In Monaco.
Here’s a possible controversial opinion: the following Bond media should have gotten novelizations: Roald Dahl writing a YOLT book, someone from EA for NightFire, Bruce Feirstein or Raymond Benson for Everything or Nothing, and John Logan for Skyfall. These Bond adventures deserved to be in print as well. They would have worked well as books.
Why would that be controversial? I’d have loved all of that.
Sorry, I was copying and pasting my thoughts from another blog. Raymond Benson has done video game novels after Bond. Bruce Feirstein would work best with his material and we could have gotten another Adult Bond novel in the 6 year gap.
Of all of your options I would’ve been most interested in this. Particularly if the chosen author doubled down on the game being in strict Brosnan continuity. Meaning fleshing out the events after Die Another Day and what happened with Jinx.
I’d love a Skyfall novelization.
For that matter, it wouldn’t be the worst idea to have some original novels set in the Craigverse. There are a LOT of gaps in the chronology between films that could be fleshed out - particularly the gap between QOS and Skyfall.
If IFP could get their act together, it would make the agonizingly long wait between films, somewhat easier to bear.
I mean…they did put out 2 books and 3 graphic novels this year…
I’m not sure this is a gap in need of filling.
The Craig films cover the significant personal developments over Bond’s life and career. It’s these developments that justify each film and distinguish Craig’s tenure from the rest. Between Quantum and Skyfall he was presumably occupied with more or less conventional missions, building his legend as M’s faithful blunt instrument. It’s not until that faith is shaken in Skyfall that we encounter a development worthy of an entry. If a story is to have Bond on a conventional mission, there’s no need for it to be Craig Bond, since he is necessarily the Bond that grows.