As Dalton and others have pointed out, I agree that there is a “creative sweetspot” as to the timeline for the character returning. But I think Vanya outlines the probable answer to our speculation. The “business” of Bond will take a little time of its own to sort out and I am not one to believe that Amazon will come to the table with a “hey, EON, do whatever you think and we’ll write a check”; so there is going to be an extended period of behind-the-scenes discussions of how it’s all going to work. Do Amazon have someone like Amy Pascal ready to roll along with Babs and Mike? What asks do any of the potential partners have in coming to the table as to the entirety of the new product. I find it hard to believe that Amazon signed up for, at best, a film every other year.
Sure, EON’s current position is “Bond is for the big screen” but that doesn’t mean the new structure might not allow or demand for something else “Bond-related” to appear somewhere else.
My guess (right now, waaaaay waaaay out) is that it’s going to take a little time for all parties to figure out where everything is going. And that passage of time may well align for the creative dust to settle on NTTD.
But I do think it’s all far more complex than just announcing “the next guy.”
Bond 26 needs to be the FYEO of the 2020s. Agree or disagree with the end of NTTD, 26 needs to “come back to earth”. I want a good, old fashioned FYEO or FRWL with Cavill, Hardy, or Hiddleston. Not commenting on the likelihood of of these actors, just what I would like to see as a fan.
It’s not just you. In conversation tone comes not from the words themselves but from any number of non-verbal ques, all of which are lost when just using text.
But back to the other point, I’m hoping for more of a Goldfinger. FYEO was the prefect antidote to how over the top Moonraker was, bringing it back down to earth tonally as well as literally. While NTTD did go a little sci-fi it was also a very serious affair, right down to Bond’s fiery death. Between that and how grim the world is right now I’m in the mood for something a little more upbeat.
I would very much expect them to continue on in the deathly serious tone they’ve been trying to achieve during the Craig era. They just made a boatload of money doing it. I don’t see them changing course until the money and/or audience sentiment begins to turn drastically against the current approach.
Reminds me of something Michael G. Wilson said in the run up to Casino Royale. Die Another Day had been profitable and if all they wanted to do was to make money then they could keep doing the same but they felt they needed to change creative direction so they did.
There’s actually a lot of similarities between now and 2002. Not only have we just had a Bond’s final outing but it’s coincided with a world changing event, 9/11 and the pandemic. So if ever there was a time to find a new direction for Bond it’s now.
But what direction should that be? So far the only pattern to decern from 2021’s box office that audiences like things they like already. And since Bond is a well established brand they’ve got that covered already.
I don’t think that there is much similarity between the two situations. I seem to recall at the time that there was a pretty widely held belief that they had gone too far with DAD. It seemed that another MR-FYEO situation was most likely on the horizon, with or without Brosnan.
I don’t get that same feeling this time. They did go in a sci-fi direction with NTTD, but they still managed to keep it rooted in a reality that some of the more outlandish Bond films have been able to operate under and not end up forcing a self-correction. For all of its science-fiction tendencies, NTTD is still very much in the same style as the previous Craig films. It’s easy to see that film existing in the same universe that CR and SF exist in, but I would argue that it’s not as easy to see DAD exist in the same universe that GE exists in.
One of the things I would like to see is a move away from every plot/villan/climax in most movies nowadays being an existential threat to the whole world/universe.
Marvel has scoreboard on that. You can’t do more than Thanos. But it seems like in every film the threat is global or universal. For example, TENET is just Endgame for adults. NTTD is the same way. “If we don’t do this there will be nothing left to save.”
It’s too much now. Think of the MR novel. One villan, one rocket, one city. Let’s do that for a bit. We don’t always have to have the entire world or universe at stake.
I thought having a global threat was one of the few strengths of NTTD. After four films with comparatively low stakes (terror funding, a coup in Bolivia, a former agent out for revenge, and a surveillance system going live), it was nice for Craig to have his moment to save the planet. Where the film failed, I thought, was in conveying those stakes to the audience, but that’s an argument for a different time.
I also prefer the smaller stakes Bond films, and I’d say we’ve been pretty lucky in that department over the course of Craig’s tenure. I would guess that we’re probably in for a similar type of film for the next actor’s debut, since they usually don’t go for the “destroy the world” plot for an actor’s debut. Funny enough, OHMSS might have been the closest to having had that in an actor’s debut, with the germ warfare plot by Blofeld.
We’ve rarely had films where the world was at stake under Barbara Broccoli. Tomorrow Never Dies and No Time to Die were the closest, with Carver trying to orchestrate World War III and then Safin looking to let the Heracles virus out into the open.
Of the nine post-Dalton films, there have been the two films to feature something that could be considered a world at stake plot.