Love to hear your reviews, particularly GHOST PROTOCOL.
Sometimes it feels like Bond is always one failure away from disappearing forever. Others it feels like if the next reboot fails to land then weāll get another in less time than it took to get No Time To Die into cinemas. The reboot cycle is in such a weird place right now.
When it comes down to it the pandemic is one of those events that changes everything and so far no one has quite figured out what a post-pandemic blockbuster looks like. Because of the delays weāre still on films that went into production before or during the pandemic. This year nostalgia doesnāt seem to be carrying things like it used to and the next trend has yet to emerged. They also need to figure out what a leading man looks like in the current age. Craig perfectly captured what audiences wanted from Bond in the mid 2000ās and they need to nail it again with the Bond of the 2020ās.
I actually think they producers were smart to wait for the dust to settle. Cinema is about to enter a whole new era and you need to know what that looks like lest Bond become a relic of the past.
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This has been a constant thorn in the side of the Bond franchise for decades now. EON constantly wrings their hands about whether Bond is still relevant or not (they outright ask the question in most of the films they make these days), yet the audiences keep coming out to show them that Bond is as popular now as heās ever been. It seems like in every era, thereās a large contingent that wants to write Bond off as being past his sell by date or being somehow irrelevant for the times he currently finds himself in, and he keeps coming back stronger than ever. And now with a production partner in Amazon that quite literally has bottomless pockets, I truly donāt understand where all of this doubt is coming from these days, and this is coming from someone who thought the last two films were absolute trash.
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Just because Amazon is loaded that doesnāt mean they will give EON everything they need or want.
Especially after Amazonās extremely costly disasters with THE RINGS OF POWER and CITADEL.
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Of course it doesnāt, but it also means that they are an entity whose entire existence isnāt going to be in continual jeopardy like MGM has been for decades now. EON made it work under those circumstances, so surely they can handle working with a production partner that is financially secure.
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Iām sure they can handle it. But this business is now at a crossroads. And the hiatus might be a lot longer than expected.
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The Bond franchise always seems to operate at some form of a crossroads, even though I know youāre talking about the film industry at large rather than just Bond. Even EON constantly seems to doubt their own product, asking in each film here recently whether or not Bond is even still relevant. Box office returns would seem to suggest otherwise, but if fans on message boards are even asking the question these days, maybe Bond has reached his sell by date. But, if the industry changes in drastic ways after this current crisis, it will probably result in the need for much smaller budgets and reconfigured expectations about what āsuccessā looks like, most likely in the form of lower returns for films. But, cinema will adjust to this and, along with it, Bond will adjust to it. Bond may end up looking different, but heāll endure. And who knows, maybe the form it takes on the other side will end up being something more akin to what Fleming initially intended, with smaller scale adventures and less globe trotting and world domination plots. Maybe this happens on the big screen or maybe it eventually finds its way to a streaming platform, or a situation that involves a bit of both, but a the end of the day, as the end of each film says āJames Bond will returnā.
As for a long hiatus, there are worse things that could happen for Bond. It will only build up demand for the next one, and put appropriate distance between the next film and the decision to kill James Bond in the previous installment, which quite possibly one of the dumbest moves in cinema history.
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I honestly havenāt been following this conversation nor the one in the MI thread so Iām not posting this trying to prove a point of any kind, but I thought these numbers would be of interest.
All numbers adjusted for inflation
Source: 007Dossier
Worldwide box office:
Skyfall $1,344,869,262
Thunderball $1,249,741,029
Goldfinger $1,123,302,252
Spectre $1,024,506,714
Live and Let Die $1,015,994,676
You Only Live Twice $931,565,964
The Spy Who Loved Me $852,968,495
Casino Royale $821,236,689
Moonraker $807,604,140
Diamonds Are Forever $798,544,000
Quantum of Solace $776,579,669
No Time to Die $760,008,036
From Russia With Love $718,871,824
Die Another Day $669,407,072
Goldeneye $652,056,302
On Her Majestyās Secret Service $622,936,349
The World is Not Enough $605,349,529
For Your Eyes Only $599,010,238
Tomorrow Never Dies $589,747,484
Dr No $549,914,188
Octopussy $524,853,163
The Man with the Golden Gun $505,782,067
The Living Daylights $469,251,254
A View to a Kill $395,473,797
License to Kill $351,126,420
Return on Investment (profit):
Dr No 5857%
Goldfinger 4063%
From Russia With Love 3845%
Live and Let Die 2211%
Diamonds Are Forever 1511%
Thunderball 1469%
The Man with the Golden Gun 1294%
The Spy Who Loved Me 1224%
You Only Live Twice 1075%
On Her Majestyās Secret Service 925%
For Your Eyes Only 598%
Octopussy 582%
Moonraker 578%
Goldeneye 494%
Casino Royale 483%
A View to a Kill 409%
The Living Daylights 378%
Skyfall 376%
License to Kill 272%
Tomorrow Never Dies 209%
Die Another Day 204%
Spectre 182%
The World is Not Enough 168%
Quantum of Solace 167%
No Time to Die 116%
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Right now itās coming from seeing other reliable brands underperform or fail at the box office. Itās not just Bond, every blockbuster franchise is on unstable footing right now.
But I donāt think the question we should be asking is āis Bond still relevant,ā because of course he is. For as long as there is a secret service there will be a need for Bond and the formula is malleable enough to it can encompass a range of styles across a range of eras. That is why Bond has lasted as long as he has. The question we should be asking is āhow can the new films tap into the current zeitgeist?ā What does Bond of the 2020ās need to be?
I remember having these same discussions in the wake of DAD. There are a lot of similarities with today wherein a popular Bond had just wrapped up their tenure in the wake of a world reshaping event. The biggest difference back then was that there was a clear direction Bond needed to go, more grounded and serious. Casino Royale was exactly what the franchise needed to be at that moment in time. Right now things seem a little less clear cut. An era has just ended and no one really knows what the next one looks like.
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There are various reasons for this, of course. Marvel and DC are sputtering now due to having spent the past decade hitting the audience in the face nonstop with a firehose of content. Iām honestly surprised that didnāt happen sooner. We also have all this talk about Bond is āyour father and grandfatherās franchiseā. Itās a hell of a lot cooler to your younger audiences today than Indy is, I feel pretty confident of that. That film is struggling because itās an old hat franchise (to the supposed target demographic) with a lead actor in his 80s that hasnāt seen a sequel in 15 years (a bad one, at that) and prior to that, hadnāt had a film released since the late 80s. That would be, for Bond, the equivalent of the franchise having gone on hiatus after Licence to Kill and having remained dormant until Quantum of Solace. Younger audiences today have little to no connection to Indy because he hasnāt been in the public eye for them to latch on to him.
Bond, however, has remained in the public eye. And even when heās not front and center (i.e. hiatuses between actors tenures), the media keeps him there with all of the āWhoās going to be the next Bond?ā business.
Thatās not really the question that weāre asking, but rather the one that, for whatever reason, EON continually feels the need to ask. Itās a major part of most of the films in the current regimeās time at the helm of the franchise. EON runs some risk to the franchise by continuing to ask the question in the films, I think, because eventually, if they slip up as is the constant worry around here recently, the public may answer that question with an emphatic āNo, heās not relevantā anymore. This approach by EON is also the reason that Iām dead set against them taking Bond back to the 60s for the film franchise, as thatās quite literally EON answering their own question in the negative.
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The āold manās franchiseā-moniker derives simply from the age group which has constituted most of the audiences around the world. And all of the movies being supported by that age group have suffered at the box office, mainly because the older men are more likely to stay home since the pandemic and donāt go for repeat business anyway.
That is why it is so important to attract younger audiences constantly.
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Yes please! I love that he oozes respect for the series and itās legacy.
Itās time that he gets the offer.
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If Nolan wanted to do a period setting Bond and they had a one-off Bond before going back to the usual formula of having an actor portraying the character over a number of movies, would people be happy with that?
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Depends on the period. Depends on the actor. Depends on the game plan going forward. Someone mentioned above that starting down the road of period pieces might feel like the beginning of the end of the franchise.
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Faithful adaptations of the novels, set in the correct period, is my Bond dream project, but it will never happen. Thereās just zero gain to be had for them to take that kind of risk.
The only way I can see a path forward with that is to do it separately from the films as a limited series on Amazon, where itās clear to the audience that the regular films they love have not been replaced.
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Bond has been conceived for the here and now.
If I want to watch 60ās or 70ās or so on Bond there is plenty to choose from.
Should a Bond film now be set in the 50ās or 60ās it would definitely become a nostalgia act, a hero whose story apparently cannot be told in our times anymore.
Nolan made TENET like a Bond film (disregarding its time conceit). He could definitely take the next era into a contemporary and interesting direction.
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