That will likely always be the mass appeal of Bond and was part of both Dalton’s time (at least in Daylights for the locations) and Craig’s. Gadgets and one liners were toned down, but still present. But I think the audience also wants some depth to the character.
One of the reasons I think Marvel succeeded (at least until Endgame) was there was some depth to the characters. I don’t mean to suggest that we were getting Olivier quality performances but most of the lead characters were more than two dimensional heroes.
I would agree that we don’t need a replay of either Dalton or Craig. But that is also true of the other Bond actors (including Sir Roger).
Some very good points and I don’t disagree. But for me these elements have never had their moment in the films. So here is hoping it comes up. Maybe the next time CNN is reporting an attack on MI6, Bond is having a drink with Tanner or eating some scrambled eggs made for him by May. For what it’s worth, I tend to think of her modernized as his land-lady that has an almost grandmotherly soft spot for him and makes him breakfast once or twice a week (or maybe that was in a continuation novel and I forgot).
To each his own. There was plenty of humour (and well written humour IMHO) but also personal conflict between lead characters, concern for family, and I think the worry was well played and had depth. Compare that to the Batman of the 90s and I think they compare well.
This is actually an intriguing notion. Bond could be played as, if not exactly miserable at least somewhat depressed in his “down time,” haunted by his conscience over his kills and those he’s failed to save, chafing at the paperwork part of his job, maybe drinking a bit too much and deliberately engaging in dangerous pastimes to get an adrenaline rush. Then he’s handed an assignment and comes alive, revelling in the constant danger that makes the sex better, the food tastier and the sights and sounds of his world more colorful and savored. Then we could maybe move beyond the traditional “floating on a raft with the hot chick” ending to show him back in the old gray office, Moneypenny dropping a stack of forms to fill out related to his adventure. Or returning to his empty apartment with no one to welcome him home but his bourbon.
He’d be sort of a bipolar blend between sad sack Craig Bond and life-of-the-party Connery/Moore Bond. Hell I wouldn’t even mind if the “private life” stuff was black-and-white and the mission stuff was in color.
The Craig years made this impossible because Bond’s missions WERE his private life: old loves, embittered half-brothers, etc. There was never a break from the misery. I could get into a Bond whose private life is a complete train wreck but who really – and only – comes to full life when he’s got a job to do. Shoot at me, poison me, just please don’t send me home.
Count me in as someone who wants a mix of old and new in the series. I feel like Bond has played WAY too much on family themes in the DC years. I feel like with the family themes we really have ruined a chance to give May and Charmian Bond a sense of family for Bond. Instead we got a hypocritical M and two forced family subplots. It really wasn’t fun, we were simply told to feel bad for everyone. This was at its worst when the characters (particularly M and Blofeld) didn’t deserve it, due to poor writing. It’s time for a change, and different themes for the next Bond.
May and Charmian could bring some fresh looks at Bond’s life. It’s how EON uses them, that will make them memorable. Bringing new characters could help give Bond new energy, it’s always been proven.
Well, if we’re going to talk about what we’d REALLY like, I’d like them to stop making the films. But that tends to be a conversation ender on a forum like this, for obvious reasons.
The series is at an awkward crossroads. We’ve already exsanguinated any sense of fun or frivolity, so continuing in that trend would not only be no fun, but also no “bold change” from the now-established routine. On the other hand, there’s enough movies doing now what Bond used to do – from M:I to Marvel with still others between – that for Bond to do go back to old-school fun and games now would make him just a face in the crowd. So if you can’t be the opposite of Classic Bond because we just had 20 years of that, and if you can’t go back to the old days of OTT adventure and fun because the market is already flooded with that, then what’s left? I concede my proposed meld of the two would be awkward and maybe unworkable, but the alternative, IMHO, is to wait a decade or so and see if a time rolls around where one approach or the other can seem “fresh” again just by having been away for a while. Which, come to think of it, may be the actual plan…
I do want new films, of course. But right now it would really be most difficult to decide which way to go.
A decade from now, I don’t think there will be M:I movies any more, however, and even Marvel will have run its course. FF will also be done. And the DC universe will have been shut down, too.
Yes, my crystal ball says: Bond will have the market for himself.
Probably both are typical for that decade, CR for the reasons you pointed out, SP for taking the private life angle, wrapped up in a not wholly successful huge budget blanket.
Agree this is probably what they’re doing. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The fresh approach now could be the interim approach. Give an actor one film each and see what works. Elba gets one, Hiddleston gets one, Hardy gets one.
“You forgot the first rule of media, Elliot… Give the people what they want!”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, SF would’ve been the perfect way to end the series. More so than any closure NTTD might (I say might) contain within its four walls.
From a story-telling perspective, the “reboot” is complete when 007 walks through the red leather door and so therefore, having “gone home again” the natural narrative arc is complete.
At a meta level, the series is also complete with its most “arthouse” effort (Mendes balancing some traditional series elements with a sheen of staring-out-the-window subtext), it’s as “deep” as a blockbuster is going to get. More so than Nolan’s Batman trilogy where any depth is just a mirage of love for the filmmaker.
SP proved that SF couldn’t, and needn’t, be replicated - there the attempts at depth and the traditional elements fumble around getting in each other’s way, to the extent that with all the talk of “these films are not Bonds anymore”, the one that so desperately wanted to meld it all back together fell the furthest short.
Over the years on these I’ve been the harshest on DAD and SP. The only shock for me is that I’ve not mellowed at all. I’ll watch TMWTGG five times in a row before reaching for either of those.
That would be a good argument if the series valued art over commerce, but as the ultimate goal of each entry is to outdo all the previous ones at the box office, there’s unlikely to ever be a decision to end the series because the story is “complete.” With profit as the goal, there’s no such thing as going out on top, because how do you know you can’t make even more money the next time out? And you can’t very well go out when you’re not on top, because how would that look?
I agree with you SF would have been a good end point, but I’d take NTTD, too. Frankly I was ready to end with DAD because I saw it as proof there was no gas left in the tank, but I’m glad they didn’t go out on that note. But anyway, as long as there’s currency that could potentially make its way to the pockets of Eon and its studio partner du jour, these things will never end, completed arcs be damned.
I’d argue this could also be interpreted as just a sliding scale for “Awful.” What seemed like the “worst Bond” when looking back from say 1980 to the beginning may no longer seem so bad from the vantage point of 2023 because newer, worse stuff has been added.
For instance, I hate pictures of myself and always have. If I see a picture of me soon after it’s taken, I’m upset by it. But if I see the same image 5 or 10 years, later, I think, “I shouldn’t have been so hard on myself. I looked okay back then. It’s NOW that I look terrible!”
I always loved Moonraker, but it took a lot of people a long time to embrace it. I think that’s partly because in 1979, its “threat” was immediate: it was a step too far, a wrong turn that would ruin everything, and since it was a huge financial success, it meant all we’d ever get going forward would be still more goofy, OTT foolishness. Only none of that came true and 40+ years later we can look back and appreciate MR for its virtues, knowing it was in many ways a one-time foray into all-out sci-fi. It’s not an active threat any more.
I think we all come a new Bond entry, or era, with our own ideas and wishlists regarding what a Bond film “should” be, and to the extent they fail us, we resent the most recent disappointments the harshest. But looking back from the distance of many years, it’s easier to appreciate older entries for what they were as opposed to what we’d wanted them to be. And the fact that we know with hindsight that they did NOT derail the series or “ruin everything,” and the fact that they are no longer bearing the weight of the huge expectations we bring after a two-, three- or five-year wait to see a new Bond, lets us judge them more charitably.
For a series now as old as this one is, nostalgia can be important but also be weight for the franchise. All of us come to this within our own timeframe (I’m a proud Class of '73 with LALD), but at that moment, the sense of the past is just one more challenge for the filmmakers to meet - we want it fresh but we want it to feel like it felt. It’s an impossible task to be fair, the proportions always out-of-whack for someone.
Take one era’s bookends for example - GE a comforting return, feeling like it had never been away. Yet by DAD, drenched in the past, the whole thing (especially with time) feels worn and impotent.
I don’t envy EON. I fully understand “Come on - let’s get on with it - can’t be waiting all this time” but the challenge is getting on with what, exactly? The same old? As NTTD proved, you can’t out-OHMSS…
This is an interesting take on SF, which I partly agree with in hindsight. In 2012, however, this would have seemed like an unacceptable conclusion. CraigBond was finally where audiences and fans wanted him to be. Denying us a sequel would have felt criminal, and would have been financially irresponsible given SF’s box office.
In terms of a final film, I could see the next picture working well as a one-off series finale. Eon would make good on their promise that James Bond would return after CB’s death and finish the franchise in familar territory. Regardless of the overall tone they choose, Bond could be left in the arms of a Mary Goodnight as Fleming left him.
It could at once heighten the impact of NTTD as the final epic story (whereas the final film would seem more an epilouge), but also make its ending feel less jarring. While I’ve warmed up to Bond’s demise, it would not sit right with me as the end to cinematic Bond.
Of course, this absolutely won’t happen, and I fear they will attempt an overlong CraigBond-esque arc.