The new 007
- Thread starter joberg
- Start date
Prop Collector
Sr Member
Will this Bond also be a p***y?
According to the director and others in the room; this guy gave a tremendous audition
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Tom cruise won't allow it, as he "is" the next iteration of James Bond
Solo4114
Master Member
I'm intrigued on a few bases.
1. Will they FINALLY adopt the "It's a codename"/Dread Pirate Roberts approach that this franchise should really have by now (especially considering the last film)? It'd make transitions between eras and actors much easier.
2. What direction will a new director take Bond? I thoroughly enjoyed Casino Royale as a more grounded, less "whiz-bang gadgets are the story" Bond, disliked Quantum of Solace for the mess of editing that it was, liked Skyfall quite a bit, and then thought the whole thing shifted into a dour, generic affair with Spectre and No Time to Die, Dr. Jones. I didn't mind that Bond was more grounded, more gritty, etc. I thought that by Skyfall, they'd found a good balance of elements. But the last two...meh. They just...bored me. Maybe it was the color timing, maybe it was something else, but it just felt bland.
3. Whom will they cast in the role, and what will that person bring to the performance? Craig, I thought, was good and seemed to be enjoying himself in the first three films. By the later films...I dunno. He just didn't seem to be having any fun. And maybe that's what put me off to them. I liked Craig in the role, to be clear, but by the end he just seemed ready to be done with it all.
Anyway, fingers crossed that the franchise can find a balance between grittiness without the stupid quips and over-reliance on gadgetry on the one hand, and fun on the other. At least let the actors have fun.
1. Will they FINALLY adopt the "It's a codename"/Dread Pirate Roberts approach that this franchise should really have by now (especially considering the last film)? It'd make transitions between eras and actors much easier.
2. What direction will a new director take Bond? I thoroughly enjoyed Casino Royale as a more grounded, less "whiz-bang gadgets are the story" Bond, disliked Quantum of Solace for the mess of editing that it was, liked Skyfall quite a bit, and then thought the whole thing shifted into a dour, generic affair with Spectre and No Time to Die, Dr. Jones. I didn't mind that Bond was more grounded, more gritty, etc. I thought that by Skyfall, they'd found a good balance of elements. But the last two...meh. They just...bored me. Maybe it was the color timing, maybe it was something else, but it just felt bland.
3. Whom will they cast in the role, and what will that person bring to the performance? Craig, I thought, was good and seemed to be enjoying himself in the first three films. By the later films...I dunno. He just didn't seem to be having any fun. And maybe that's what put me off to them. I liked Craig in the role, to be clear, but by the end he just seemed ready to be done with it all.
Anyway, fingers crossed that the franchise can find a balance between grittiness without the stupid quips and over-reliance on gadgetry on the one hand, and fun on the other. At least let the actors have fun.
As much as I like Henry Cavill, he's a bit too famous already, and perhaps too old? he's already older than Craig was in Casino Royal. They should aim for Mid-thirties at most, playing older to match Bond's experience (he rose to Commander after all before joining it the MI6). But this would allow more films and not have a repeat of Casino/Quantum new fresh Bond directly to older "old dog new tricks" Bond in Skyfall.
Agreed that a bit more levity wouldn't hurt... And by all that's holy
I'm not in favour of the code name idea, however. Bond is Bond, born of Andrew and Monique Bond, English father and Swiss mother. I'd rather we keep just switching actors and explore new adventures, no need to tidy up the timeline. Heck, let's go back to the Cold War perhaps? Could be fun.
As a matter of fact, I really wish they would adopt the Bond model for Marvel, just continue and recast iconic characters like Iron Man, Cap and the OG Avengers if Downey and Evans are gone for good. I would even dare to say I'd like to see the same done with Indy... I'd rather see a new actor, in older style fun adventures than old Harrison in "modern" storytelling adventures... Sean Connery is still iconic as Bond, no-one will take that away from him or Ford.
Agreed that a bit more levity wouldn't hurt... And by all that's holy
I'm not in favour of the code name idea, however. Bond is Bond, born of Andrew and Monique Bond, English father and Swiss mother. I'd rather we keep just switching actors and explore new adventures, no need to tidy up the timeline. Heck, let's go back to the Cold War perhaps? Could be fun.
As a matter of fact, I really wish they would adopt the Bond model for Marvel, just continue and recast iconic characters like Iron Man, Cap and the OG Avengers if Downey and Evans are gone for good. I would even dare to say I'd like to see the same done with Indy... I'd rather see a new actor, in older style fun adventures than old Harrison in "modern" storytelling adventures... Sean Connery is still iconic as Bond, no-one will take that away from him or Ford.
I'm glad he lost to Daniel Craig because those movies were not Bond movies. They need to get back to goofy villains, awesome gadgets, cool cars, and trying to get the girl (or all the girls).
I'm always up to see another Bond movie (despite some real stinkers) but one thing the filmmakers really should be certain of and it's not tie their films to the actor. That's what they wound up doing with Craig and those movies became dreadfully cumbersome melodramas rather than fun films. That's all they need to be, and I'd really love to see a fun Bond movie again.
On another note, I do think Bond should be a bit of an unknown and someone 36-44 years of age, or thereabouts. Bond has always been written as an older character. You don't get many movies from them but I think one really ought not to (and that's me being a big Moore Bond fan).
On another note, I do think Bond should be a bit of an unknown and someone 36-44 years of age, or thereabouts. Bond has always been written as an older character. You don't get many movies from them but I think one really ought not to (and that's me being a big Moore Bond fan).
Darth Lars
Master Member
Then by that definition, Roger Moore was unqualified in two ways: too well-known for The Saint, and three years older than Sean Connery.
. . . and that's how they ended up with a 57yo actor playing Bond at the end of his run.
Moore was too old. He was 45 when he started. He made a pretty good Bond but it was always in spite of his age, not because of it.
Connery himself once said that the role belongs on a guy in his early 30s.
As for Moore's pre-existing fame, his 'Saint' character was similar enough to Bond that it was sort of an exception. Chris Pratt and Ryan Reynolds both have pre-existing fame today and it would not be doing them any favors if they tried to play Bond.
Bond was originally written older, and he wasn't originally Scottish, and he was a bit of a sexual assaulter too. The character has been tweaked over time.
I think the demands of action movies really favor a younger guy. Not only for filming it but for making it believable. (They can use doubles & CGI face swaps to have Harrison Ford do literally any stunt today. So what? His age is still wrecking Indy#5's plausibility.) IMO older age is less of a distraction when it's a book because your imagination fills in the action to look like you think it should.
The Daniel Craig storylines spent most of the era reminding us that Bond was over the hill. I think they've done more than enough of that lately. IMO it's time to swing back the other way and get somebody who is decidedly in his physical prime.
The actor playing the role inevitably affects the scripts, especially after the first movie. That's always the case. They didn't write 'Raiders' specifically for Harrison but the Indy character was increasingly tailored to him as the series progressed.
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Darth Lars
Master Member
Nobody with any influence has suggested any of those two, right. RIGHT?
Nah, I just picked their names out of the air. They both have pre-existing personas from other roles that don't align with Bond.
I can't imagine either of them being seriously considered for it.
Prop Collector
Sr Member
James Bond should be a period film. Today anyone with a phone has more interesting gadgets than James Bond ever had. That would also "excuse" his womanizing ways for modern audiences.
VanPersie
Well-Known Member
Bond suffers a lot now, because there’s not much in the world that can capture what Bond used to.
What I mean is, that in the 60’s for example, seeing these wonderful far off lands like Japan, was a big draw. These days, a great many people can simply YouTube it all, fly to these places etc. The magic of seeing it is gone.
What I mean is, that in the 60’s for example, seeing these wonderful far off lands like Japan, was a big draw. These days, a great many people can simply YouTube it all, fly to these places etc. The magic of seeing it is gone.
Solo4114
Master Member
Eh, I think that time is passed, really. Sure, the old school 60s Bond films were a blast to watch, especially for the first time, but that material has been mined out completely, and I think modern audiences just aren't gonna buy it.
Even in the 60s, Bond movies became formulaic. How many of them end with a commando raid on a villain's remote-yet-impossibly-well-defended lair? You've got the undersea battle in Thunderball (always a fav of mine), then the ninja raid in You Only Live Twice, the commando raid on the mountaintop fortress in OHMSS, the attack on the oil rig in Diamonds Are Forever, etc., etc., etc. The evil plan in You Only Live Twice gets lifted and stuck underwater for The Spy Who Loved Me (as does the commando attack at the end), and then shot into space for Moonraker.
Personally, I prefer the literary version of Bond over the increasingly-goofy stock character that Bond became in the 60s-80s.
The Brosnan era was this weird attempt to mesh literary, more serious elements with the goofy over-the-top stuff, and it ended with the worst example of that: Die Another Day. That movie whipsaws back and forth between tough, gritty, "Bond relies on his own wits to survive" realism, aaaaaaaallll the way over to quip-a-minute-plus-INVISIBLE-CAR!!! and windsurfing to escape an avalanche. And while I love the first half of that film, the back end of it...oof.
All that said, I think the Bond films became a little too divorced from that stuff by the time we got to Craig's films, especially the last two. It was weird that Casino Royale starts with him as a pre-00 agent, Quantum of Solace takes place IMMEDIATELY after Casino Royale, and then....we're launched to the end of Bond's career in Skyfall. I liked Skyfall, but that was jarring. And then Spectre and No Time to Die just feel like movies in another series entirely, except for the literal references back to the prior films. They feel incredibly different and generic.
But a lot of that, I think, has more to do with the fact that the James Bond character and model is a thing of its time. Not merely in terms of the setting of that time, but also in terms of the world in which audiences experienced it. We live in a world where there's been over 60 years of James Bond films. They tried the whole "Let's set a Bond-like film in the 60s and see how it goes" thing with The Man from UNCLE, which was a reasonably entertaining film, but even then felt...I dunno...generic? Done before? Like nothing special?
A big part of the problem is that the world in which we live just works fundamentally differently from the world of "James Bond" as we've known the character, and so rooting that character into the modern world is increasingly difficult while also trying to maintain some semblance of what's come before so it doesn't just feel like "Sneaky McSpyguy vs. The Alliance of Odd Bad Guys."
I'm not sure that's accomplished by just trying to repeat the past. Although, I do think they need to make Bond movies fun again. I want to see Bond kind of taking some form of enjoyment from his work, instead of spending the last 3-4 movies going "I'm retired. I'm out of the game. I hate my job. But every time I think I'm out they pull me back in..." Yawn. No thanks.
What makes the Bond character interesting in the book is that he's in conflict with himself. He hates the killing aspect of his job, but he also loves the thrill of living on the edge. Seeing some of that thrill again would make the films much more interesting.
Whomever takes on the role has to be willing to wear the famous terrycloth onesie…
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