Agreed. But my statement was about nobody being able to be Bond now.
And Connery was great to work with until TB‘s success made fame horrible for him and EON decided not to make him participate in their success. A mistake they corrected with Craig, maybe a bit too much.
I’m re-watching NTTD. I think I get why Eon can’t do another one anytime soon. They jumped the shark with NTTD. Not in the ridiculous sense, although the ending was ridiculous. In the stakes sense. Once you bring in wife, daughter, a smart virus that can kill the family and most of the world, and lastly kill off the hero at the end… there’s really no place left to go. You have to hard reset, and that years later, or the new film will seem small and pedestrian in comparison.
I hope Babs, DC, and the rest of the car load of clowns are pleased with themselves. The shame of it is it’s a pretty cracking good movie till the end, even if the plot was overwrought. But, as Bond said at the end, they blew it all to “excrement”. Maybe in 5-10 we’ll get a good one and someone will have learned their lesson.
I just turned it off right after Bond puts Madeline and daughter in the boat. Just can’t do the end.
It’s not really how it reads, though.
You say:
Which, to me, means that you don’t think there’s an actor currently working right now who could successfully pull off the part if EON were actively casting right now. And, if that guy doesn’t exist now, he won’t in 5 years time when presumably we might finally be underway with something to do with a new film. Of course nobody can be Bond now. There’s no script, there’s no direction, there’s nothing there for a guy to do other than sit around waiting for EON to move on the next film. There are plenty of qualified actors who could easily play the part right now, but, for right now, there’s no part to play.
The laundry list of issues and “qualifications” the next guy must have are no doubt questions and problems that faced EON at the time of the casting of the previous Bonds, yet they found someone that fit the bill each time (with the only possible exception being Lazenby, but given it was the first recast, a bit of slack is granted, I think). Outside of that, they’ve done well with the casting of the character, even plucking someone from as seemingly as far out of left field as one could possibly get in Craig, yet it turned out to be a rousing success. They’ll get it right again, even if some of us will find fault with the choice.
“No, sadly no — no truth to those rumors,”
If it does not work out now that everything is wide open, it won’t happen at all.
Have they even agreed on the basic terms and conditions - the everything-or-nothing-balance - yet? This Road to Vermilion-Oblivion thingy to me suggests neither side is yet willing to compromise, so they just tread water with something Amazon can gnaw on while nothing of consequence happens. This state of affairs will likely persist until a significant change of heart occurs.
The quote is from this interview originally. It’s more of a passing reference than The Hollywood Reporter or Deadline would have you believe. The second half of the sentence makes it clearer that he’s referring to having been doing no work whilst the strikes have been happening - and given his PGA union membership is credited and he hosts conversations with other directors for the DGA, odds are he is WGA as well.
He could well make Bond 26, and if it was any opportunity for it, it’s now, but the strikes will have meant no-one has done any work, which does include interviewing for work and auditioning (small detail people seem to have forgotten about this line of work…)
I agree. If they wanted to make a film they would. I get how they could feel like that after investing so much into the Craig era. NTTD wraps up that arc almost too well, and I think it’s a question of how long it takes for them to feel refreshed and excited about starting a new story over a sustained period of time. As a fan I want a movie now, but I can definitely see things through that other lens.
Since there is no crowded marketplace in the foreseeable future, a Bond film - or many in the following years - could be easily the event that draws people in.
Unless EON is still sorting out the deal details with MGM/Amazon one has to conclude that a clear desire to move forward does not seem to be there. The amount of spare time since the crafting of NTTD would have allowed for strategizing and conceptualizing.
Sometimes I get the feeling that EON hugely overestimates the impact of Craig as Bond, as if the mass audience needed decades to be able to digest another actor in that role.
Two years would have sufficed for me.
From a business point of view the entire Bond architecture has changed with Amazon’s takeover of MGM. For the first time in decades the partner studio isn’t economically challenged, isn’t in danger of collapsing under its own creative vacuum. But this new partner is also easily able to sit out any power struggles and impose its own vision on the production if they so desire. A tricky situation and I’m undecided if this massive change of power sits yet comfortable with the family business that 007 effectively is.
I wonder though: who is struggling for power?
I believe EON would have made its terms clear, and Amazon needs to feed the content machine, especially with the crown jewels that are Bond.
And since it is widely known that nobody messes with EON they will hardly say: we want to choose the actor. They will have a seat at the table, like every studio head had, even the hostile ones.
So what could the power struggle be about, especially since the previous power struggles were also decided.
I do not understand why EON is dragging its feet when the Bond copyright expires in 6 years. You would think they would be pumping out new stuff to either a) capitalize on being the only guy in town or b) cementing their footprint in the franchise.
Some may think how could EON be more cemented after 25 movies and 60 years but the with only 5 movies in 20 years the younger crowd doesn’t see monkeying with this franchise as sacrilege. As far as they know the last Bond story was told (Craig era) and it’s time to tell a new one. I don’t think they care by who.
“The moment has been prepared for”
They’ve listed it as a trademark. That doesn’t have the same expiration date. It’s why DanJaq need credited on ANYTHING that says James Bond or 007.
In January, the hopeful dreamer in me had his fingers crossed for some kind of announcement by the end of the year. But here we are and there’s still nothing. I’m not willing to say 2024 holds anything different either, which is remarkable when you think about it. 12 months is a long time. When an announcement is made I’m sure there will be a feeling of disbelief and excitement that the ball is actually moving. Ideally when it starts moving it stays moving. A Brosnan era release schedule averaging a film every two years would be nice, but that’s probably wishful thinking.
NTTD cemented his greatness for me. Not everyone wants to see Bond presented as wounded and brooding, but I really appreciated that approach and how that extra emphasis separated him from the others. It was the Matera chase (Bond unresponsive as the goons machine gun the DB5) that resonated with me. I do believe he will be a tough act to follow, but with a generational brand like Bond the show must go on. Charm and elegance can be the order of the day, with some of the harder edge still lingering. Actors come and go - at the end of the day it’s the character that the public love.
I would say Craig has not been more beloved as Bond than Connery, Moore or even Brosnan.
Have the grosses gone up during that era? Kind of, but so have ticket prices. Has he gotten better reviews? Kind of, but that only reflects critics‘ zeitgeist-inflated opinions.
Every generation has its Bond. Craig was the last one‘s. A few years after the next guy he will be loved or disliked like every one who came before him.
Therefore it’s unnecessary to dwell on his importance.
Yes, like every Bond actors, they come and go.
Craig, his Bond, and his era were still in the honeymoon phase as of now, because he’s the current one, has the world moved on from him? Not yet, but that’s until the new Bond actor comes, sure he would be compared to the ones that came before, but that has always been the case since, and if EON succeed in getting the people’s hearts, they would accept the next Bond actor to the role, and when that happen, Craig’s Era and his Bond would get some flak from some people for its failures where the new Bond actor and his new era succeeded, think of Brosnan, back then, he’s beloved to the point where some fans treating him like their hero, now, people always look on his failures as Bond, because Craig and his era, now believed to correct everything where the previous Bond actors’ eras failed or lacked.
Craig’s tenure in the role would, in my view, been more favorably viewed had he left after SF. SP and NTTD do so much to undermine the greatness he built in his first three film that they really taint his tenure. If he only had the first three, it would be the best Bond tenure we’ve seen.
Positively agree! They should have stoped after SF.
SP & NTTD are useless and over-pretemtious. Very painful to watch, really. Pure ego-driven Craig…
I’d pass on the Brofeld angle, but I love both films and am struggling to see how other fits the bill of pretentiousness…. They’re both big, ridiculous action flicks in the greatest Bond tradition and I live for them!
Brosnan is considered more of a joke with the people I know. Do you really think NTTD did more damage to Craig than DAD did to Brosnan? No way.
Moore seems to be forgotten. Craig is firmly behind Connery from my vantage point.