Eh, we don’t need Blofeld anymore. I’m sure some shenanigans could occur to bring Felix back too.
I think we do need Blofeld… but just the hands and cat for a while. Build him up again and make him that shadowy sinister presence before bringing him out in the open with a definitive performance. I think killing Bond gives them a free hand bringing him back… and without the foster brother shenanigans! I loved NTTD and the Craig era now has to be a self contained bubble so all bets are off… exciting!
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For Bond 7 a very loose continuity could work. It’s not as if there will be left much to continue in a reboot-BOND 26 anyway. But you could let the villain (or his lieutenant) escape and pick up again two or three films later without making it all one enormous evil scheme. Leave a little doubt about Bond’s victory every now and then.
If we’re honest the series is already a manufacture of remakes, taking the parts and putting them together again with just enough variety to avoid the term. Whether an overt remake would make the cut under these circumstances seems unlikely, Does anybody remember the shot-by-shot remake of PSYCHO? Me neither…
The core problem, as I see it, is that the series’ claim of ‘five minutes into the future’ stems from a time when the future was actually an exciting place; scientific progress and economic growth were promising a brave new world for audiences.
Today, we know that the future will bring enormous changes and uncertainties. Economy and environment are both stressed beyond repair and no matter how we respond to this situation, it’s going to be a significantly different future for coming generations.
We tend to view such facts - if we accept them - as something concerning those nebulous people belonging to ‘future generations’. But actually a lot of us are feeling the consequences already, be that Londoners wading through knee deep waters, Chinese people barely escaping underground tunnels or Germans hit by devastating flash floods. This is already a reality - the future promises more of it.
So BOND 26 has the added task of depicting a world struggling with collapse as shiny and exciting and worth taking up the fight to save this world. Since we’re planning to sell the flick around the globe it’s probably not an option to just ignore reality altogether.
On the other hand, Bond never was about reality. Universal Exports may seem to reside somewhere close to Westminster - but actually it’s right around the corner of The Shire and Mordor. Where reality is a flexible concept and may be stretched by whatever the story demands.
Still, BOND 26 will be a balancing act.
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Blofeld the character has been treated miserably by EON over the years. Too strong? Okay, mishandled over the years. Multiple (mis)castings, including twice for one film (YOLT) - and no, I am firmly NOT in the camp that Pleasance is a great Blofeld. Multiple looks (some with hair, some without), multiple personalities (Gray I would imagine being a terrific dinner party guest), and not one, but two underwhelming demises.
Have already said in this thread that I’d double-down and go with a fully fleshed out Blofeld, and damn those who would accuse us of copying Batman and the Joker. I mean, we were copying everyone else before there was anyone else to copy!
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I would give Spectre and Blofeld and the clandestine organisations a little rest for a while and go back to what we didn’t have at all throughout the Craig era: mad megalomaniacal billionaires - god knows we have plenty of them running around in the real world now. One of them owns MGM!
The concept of Stromberg, Hugo Drax, Goldfinger or Max Zorin coming up with some mad plot to kill millions of people really doesn’t feel as old hat as it did in post 9/11 2006. Quite the opposite in fact.
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I was working my way up from the most recent post when I saw yours. I had similar thoughts about the next movie. The first few chapters of TMWTGG seem like a natural place for the next movie to start. We haven’t seen that material used on the screen yet and I do like your idea of working the nanobots.
I just haven’t worked out how the the filmmakers resolve the relationships between Bond, Madeleine and Mathilde ( are Madeleine and Mathilde already dead due to some act of God before Bond returns? Do the filmmakers go back to OMHSS and have Bond and Madeleine marry but then kill her and Madeleine off (which seems just too cruel, even for a Bond plot) ?
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I promise if they don’t execute a slick/clever opening for 26 I’m gonna be the guy in the audience going, “I dON’t GeT iT, diDUnT hE dIE iN tHU lASt OnE?”
I understand my limitations and I’m here to learn.
I think I have my thoughts together on this. Many Bond fans need to be sold on the idea that the end of NTTD works. Oddly though (and challengingly for EON), that can’t actually take place till the intro to 26. Fans may be willing to buy in to the NTTD ending (I’m one of them) but only if the beginning of 26 makes it work (an that could be done in a number of ways, not necessarily in the sike, he’s sill alive way).
So, strangely for EON and for us, we won’t know if the end of the last movie works until the next one comes out.
Or… I’m really tired and have just stated the obvious.
I have my doubts if holding out for BOND 26 will make it easier for people to (better) accept the ending of NO TIME TO DIE - you either can or you can’t since it’s quite clear how the ending is meant to be taken. Final like the coffin lid closes.
If that’s just not possible for us to accept - and reaction shows for some it just isn’t - then no amount of trickery is going to make us swallow the pill. The facts of death are final after all. Maybe it’s this very thing that upsets people so much in the first place, that there’s no going back to the statu quo ante. And that it’s intentionally so.
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REBOOT
A soft reboot is coming. We’ve seen the last of the official MGM/UA Bond and now we’re getting Amazon Studios Bond.
It’s over. It’s all over.
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Definitely don’t kill them off, it feels needlessly cruel and mean spirited. After SPECTRE I thought that Madeline’s death was inevitable but the filmmakers found a more interesting solution and I’d prefer to continue with that theme. The trope of ‘women in fridges’ is overplayed needs to be dialed back significantly.
For Bond 26 they would represent Bond’s motivation, he goes along with the villains manipulation as it’s his only chance of seeing them again. Maybe building up to a bittersweet conclusion?
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I don’t see them reopening any of it or continuing anything from this.
Slate clean. Carte Blanche.
Oh no…
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So go all in on reinvention it the first film then pretend that one film didn’t happen?
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Something I was thinking, which could work now following Craig’s send off, is whether doing “one-off”, self contained films with actors having a single go could work… Hugh Jackman in a '60’s set Bond, Idris Elba in a film with Bond coming out of retirement (or somethingmore original), Henry Cavil in a big, over the top Bond extravaganza… and then, in 15 years a new actor rebooting the series for a 5 or 6 film tenure.
It would solve the problem of how the next Bond picks up after NTTD, would allow Eon to flex their creativity, get some actors who’d make great Bond’s to have a go without committing to 5 or so films, and then eventually when a new actor comes in for a long tenure there would be no NTTD “baggage”.
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I´d like to see a reboot with a younger Bond - not on his first mission or earning his 00-status, but like DR.NO just in the earlier stage of his career.
And with the Craig era having used almost everything of the nostalgic past, move forward and imagine Bond as if Fleming wrote the first novel today. Invent a new Mi6-situation and characters, think of new villains and don’t name one of them Blofeld. Just… move forward.
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“Everyone needs a hobby.”
“So what’s yours?”
“Resurrection.”
James Bond will return.
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This is exactly what I want as well. I don’t understand the talk here about Madeline and Mathilde, etc. That story is over. Done. There will be no trickery in 26. Simply a reboot, be it hard, soft, chewy in the middle. Whatever.
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I think this is the most likely scenario for Bond 26.
I like Carte Blanche…
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This is where I like the amnesia story. A different Bond wakes up in the beach with no memory. It’s the end of a big battle, but has damaged our victorious hero .
In this way, a Bond movie opens at the end of a mission. Maybe it’s the Japanese fishing village, maybe not. But no pregnant Kissy Suzuki. He’s a veteran agent. He’s brainwashed and sent to kill M (not played by Ralph Fiennes.) But the office is obviously M’s. Bond passes all the security, retinal scans, fingerprints, etc. That’s how we learn this is Bond. There’s some clever use of the gunbarrel, M survives, Bond is subdued, detained. Opening title credits roll.
Throughout the film we learn about this Bond as he learns about his past. No Madeleine, but maybe Tracy (like in FYEO or LTK) are in his past. A Bond who has sacrificed. There have been other missions. MI6 investigates. We learn who the enemy is and their plan. No SPECTRE, no Blofeld. Perhaps Spang brothers, just something we’ve never seen onscreen before. As Bond discovers who he is and what happened to him, he seeks vengeance. Like Lazenby, Connery, Brosnan and Dalton all did in their final films. Bond and MI6 defeat the baddies. New MI6 cast, new Felix Leiter, so we know it’s a different universe. A different take in the character we all know and love. One can imagine these are the stories Madeleine tells Mathilde but there are no references to them in this universe. It could even be done with Idris Elba (he’s too old for the part, but I like the one off idea. Besides, that kind of happened from 1969 to 1973.) I’d be okay with Tarantino directing this one, and this one only.
But I’d much prefer to see the pitch CJF has for Bond 26. A new Bond for a new world. A new time.
Plenty of potential titles could be used: License Renewed, The Undertaker’s Wind, Carte Blanche, The Property of a Lady should the villain turn out to be female (just not Nena Blofeld. Let that storyline die.) Nobody Dies Forever …
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