I see it this way: Bond is the veteran which invented the playing field.
Now he looks at the imitators playing on it and picks from them what he likes, showing them again and again how it is done.
I see it this way: Bond is the veteran which invented the playing field.
Now he looks at the imitators playing on it and picks from them what he likes, showing them again and again how it is done.
Thatāll always be the conundrum. In the 60ās Bond was the biggest franchise on the planet, it was the one others wanted to be and spawned countless imitators. But by the end of the decade people where questioning itās relevance. If thereās one thing thatāll guarantee irrelevance itās refusal to change so the franchise had to evolve but where do you go? Taking inspiration from emerging was certainly one way to go and given that Bond has been making hits for 5 decades means that the approach clearly worked. And the other franchises still want to be Bond.
Right now nostalgia everyone seems to be looking to their own past for inspiration.
Vanya is spot-on. Copying/taking inspiration/ripping off pick-your-descriptor, is only an issue when you donāt do it as well. And for this franchise, itās only been a talking point when the knock-off is clearly inferior.
To be fair, aside from one sequence, TMWTGG is nowhere near a kung-fu flick, yet because overall itās⦠er⦠a little below the standard gradeā¦itās easy to throw that criticism at it. MR is a more obvious example of bandwagon-jumping yet because it is very popular film, itās doesnāt get the same-level of criticism that hits TMWTGG.
I do love LTK, but yep, I hear that the Joel Silver-wannabe leaves it more than a little rudderless. On the other hand, OP, so clearly inspired by Indiana Jones, escapes that harshness of the rip-off tag, because it chugs along quite nicely as an homage, both in story, spirit, and to be honest, pacing. Iād say John Glen out JJād, JJ Abrams on that scoreā¦
They do. And to most of the general public, Bond is still the gold standard.
How many times did you hear: āOh, thatās just like itās from a MI movie!ā or Star Wars, or Harry Potter or Avengers or Bourne or whatever? Never. If thereās some crazy new invention on TV, some breathtaking stunt or a really stylish and expensive new gadget, everyone will immediately say āNow, thatās a James Bond thing!ā
Iād argue that Star Wars and Marvel probably also have that brand recognition. But Bond has a different style from the other 2.
Todayās Bond piece from The Guardian collects some suggestions for the rebootā¦
The most probable - and best - part from the article:
Plausible though these ideas are, Cumming argues, āall that might take up a lot of unnecessary screen time. The producers could just as well make no reference to what happened at the end of No Time To Die and introduce a new James Bond to a new generation. Audiences wonāt care how or why 007 has come back into their lives as long as the script is entertaining and Barbara Broccoli has cast the right actor to play him. Bond is like Hamlet or Sherlock Holmes. Heās eternal.ā
God, the rest of those ideas are horrible.
Iām shifting this across threads as I think thereās an interesting conversation to be had with regards to the characterisation of the next Bond. The consensus seems to be a lighter tone for the next film but how do you reconcile that in the Bond character, someone who is a professional and licensed killer?
The Roger Moore āhe kills but doesnāt like itā is one way to take it, recognise that there are people who needs to be killed and that he has to be the one to do it. Another quote I love is from TLD āStuff my orders! I only kill professionalsā which helps establish clear lines that he wonāt cross.
Another approach would be to consciously take down the kill count of the next film. Have fewer instances of Bond indiscriminately machine gunning armies of henchmen and more non-lethal take-downs. Then when the kills do come you really make them count.
This is where I thought there was too much in Tomorrow Never Dies. Sure, there are more killings in YOLT, TSWLM, and Moonraker, but they were large scale cartoonish battles. Thereās something coldly violent about the ones in TND, especially the machine gunning done on both sides. AVTAK had this too but itās cause for May Day to switch sides. TND everyone just goes about their business afterward. Carver orders his wifeās death without even confronting her. And yet Kaufmanās death had the right tone, āIām just a professional doing a job.ā
Whereas in CR the quote āmade you feel it, did he?ā instructs the audience what to expect. We feel each death, so we have empathy for Vesperās reaction to it.
Itās indeed these mass killings that often donāt sit well, not even with the Fleming source. He described a guy who more or less ended up with his role because he didnāt mind shooting the opposition - as were most members of the armed forces in times of war.
Bond frowned. āItās not difficult to get a Double O if youāre prepared to kill people,ā he said. āThatās all the meaning it has. Itās nothing to be particularly proud of. Iāve got the corpses of a Japanese cipher expert in New York and a Norwegian double agent in Stockholm to thank for being a Double O. Probably quite decent people. They just got caught up in the gale of the world like that Yugoslav that Tito bumped off. Itās a confusing business; but if itās oneās profession one does what oneās told.ā
Thatās not somebody who nurses a pathological desire to kill and mow down countless enemy troops - though he will kill a specific opponent if told so. Or if he has to in the course of self defence.
Over the years Bondās readiness to kill becomes noticeably less pronounced. In Berlin he refuses to kill his KGB opposite because he judges maiming to be enough. And his plan to eliminate Scaramanga is essentially to dare him into a gunslinger duel where Bond hopes to come out on top. The ideal moment to act, when heās sitting behind Scaramanga in a car, he lets slip because he doesnāt like to kill in cold blood and doesnāt like the prospect of having to kill the driver too.
Bond isnāt a pacifist by any stretch of the imagination. But the character described by Fleming values life probably more than many contemporary characters in fiction. And sadly in real life.
For my taste, the eras of Connery, Moore and Dalton had the right approach here that would still work today.
I took a look at Bond kill count in preparation for my last post.
https://www.007museum.com/kill_in_bondfilm.htm
Interestingly GoldenEye has a higher kill count than TND, highest of any Bond film in fact. I think TND came off worse as the majority come during the climatic battle whereas GEās are spread more evenly thought the various shoot-outs.
This is probably a sign of the times. Action films of the 80ās and 90ās were very different in their approach.
Bond isnāt a pacifist by any stretch of the imagination. But the character described by Fleming values life probably more than many contemporary characters in fiction. And sadly in real life.
A great way of looking at it.
As did most special forces operatives especially in WW2. It may sometimes necessary but isnāt palatable.
Goldeneye I would lump in with the cartoonish like YOLTās big battle scenes. But it does have the machine gun sequence in the opening. And Xenia at the satellite station. Thatās probably where the kill count exceeds TNDās, but even Orumov is a little dismayed by it. With TND nobody is dismayed by it.
Late 80ās to mid 90ās was big into that. The cast of The Expendables made an entire career out of making those kind of films at the time.
Just to clarify, when I was comparing the kill counts I was talking about Bondās own kills rather than the overall body count.
But what you said about other characters react is also a good point about how the violence is presented.
Really? What are the numbers?
Itās interesting that one of the moments that always comes up as the coolest or most defining for movie Bond is the āYou had your sixā scene. That involved exactly two people, two guns and a bit of memorable dialog. Another is the battle with Grant on the Orient Express, a mano-a-mano struggle capping nearly two hours of mounting tension. Meanwhile I have NEVER heard anyone single out the machine-gunning in TND or similar bloodbaths for equal praise.
I think maybe the film that got it closest to ārightā ā and certainly the best recent example ā is Casino Royale. The messy, choatic killing in the menās room during the PTS, the battle on the stairwell thatās followed up with Bond staring at himself in the mirror as if thinking, āGood god, what AM I?ā and the tense struggle for the knife at the BodyWorks exhibit that no one else in the room knows is even happeningā¦THIS is the kind of stuff that works for Bond, and as good cinema, period. It may be ākewlā to have a hero who can wipe out foes by the score, but it does not make for engaging viewing. I can admire it on a technical level, but I donāt really care.
Perfectly put.
One would hope the-powers-that-be take note.