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My girlfriend gave me the Penny Dreadful series for Christmas a couple years ago. Taking my sweet time getting through it, but yes it's great. Dalton and Eva Green are amazing. Reminds me a bit of classic Hammer horror, so I love it!
Indeed Tim should have had a 3rd film in '91/'92.
I think his unfilmed B17 probably would have put him in a more proper Bondian adventure.............even with the robots!
Dalton’s 2 films were brilliant. But the script for his 3rd sounded awful. It had Terminator style robots and a CyBorg!
Well I just want to say that TLD, for the most of it, is one of the greatest Bond films ever. If that's not a proper Bond adventure, I don't know what is.
You want Sope Dirisu as Bond, that’s your choice. But you have said that you like the fact that his casting would “piss off the very staid, stick-in-the-mud, Bond by numbers crowd too” as you put it. You can say what you want about Adkins, which was hyperbolic to say the least, but as least I am not putting him forward as my favourite for childish reasons.
And that is without mentioning the elephant in the room, regarding Sope Dirisu.
He'll be bald. And he's creepy as hell :)
I don’t really agree with that to be honest, either you’re faithful to Fleming or you’re not. I think the producers, and in fact all producers of movies, realise that an adherence to the spirit of the book being adapted is rarely the same as total slavishness to every word, which is why only one of the Bond actors so far really gets close to fitting every part of the character (and even he had an accent which slipped into the north occasionally).
Yeah, even the bar fight in LTK is weirdly staged, like he has to wait for the camera to pan down to every punch he makes.
We all know from the comments of Broccoli and Wilson that black actors will be considered. They have ruled out women.
So what's the big deal here? I get people may not like the idea of a black actor as it goes against the grain and the character that was envisioned in the Fleming novels. However, we know that black actors will be considered.....Following on from that, it hardly seems controversial or 'baiting' to suggest a black actor who could do the job. In this case, Sope Dirisu.
It’s a good point: they have actually said that have they? If the producers are considering non-white actors then we can talk about them. He’s on my little list of actors who seem possible.
The suggestion itself wasn't what I was referring to when I used the word 'baiting'.
Yes, I agree. When it comes to the character of James Bond, you are either faithful to Fleming or you're not. It's no coincidence that my personal two favourite Bonds, Dalton and Connery (so obviously I'd contest the assertion you made later that there is only one, and there would have been three if Lazenby was a better actor, instead of functional) are pretty damn faithful. The rest are way below them both in that respect despite their respective entertainment values and individual strengths. But even then, I least bought that they would could have come from the same background, had the same upbringing.
And I am certainly aware of that, too. I think it was you and I that agreed that the books were essentially 'coffee table thrillers' and plotwise, yes they are. But they are very refined when it comes to who James Bond is. Nobody is advocating for total slavishness to every word, as that would be quite boring. Even the best films, almost all of which are adapted from a respective book, have never been 100% slavish to the same, often making improvements plotwise - but there is a difference between plot and character. Even then, the film and book still remain recognisable to each other. I respect that you disagree, but I remain fairly steadfast in the claim that changing the race of a main character is far, far different than changing that of a peripheral non-entity character that nobody really knew much about before the films made them what they are. I'm not saying it'll be worse, but it absolutely would be different. I've not read a convincing argument to the contrary as to why it would be 'no different' and why the Shaft comparison holds no water.
Not yet, at least.
But, to flip the coin for a minute - it is just fiction, and as I said to @Denbigh both today and previously when we chatted about this, it is an inevitability that we'll get a black Bond, and most people won't care as long as they get their usual tropes and entertainment. Most of the clamouring for a black Bond comes from that area, after all. And there is room to show lots of contrast with the source character and his prejudices that were carried over from his creator, and do something different. It won't be anything resembling Ian Fleming's James Bond, but it would be an interesting elseworld's take on the character, just like some of the other less accurate takes have been to varying degrees of creative success. It would be interesting to see what it would be like after the Craig era and its "old ways are the best" theme being rather bluntly displayed.
I'm about to start watching Gangs Of London, so I'll keep an eye on Sope Dirisu and see what he's made of. I haven't seen him in anything yet.
Sope is a far more intriguing candidate than Timothée Chalamet.
I think Craig is probably it.
Then I think Bond is going to go the way of the Tarzan film franchise, which more or less ended with Mike Henry. Afterwards there was television, cartoons and occasionally someone will come along and produce a new Tarzan film every 20 years or so. Some like GREYSTOKE are reasonably successful and attempt to be faithful to the original character. Other films end up forgotten.
Perhaps after Bond goes public domain, someone will come along and produce another version of CR? They might even find someone who is a dead ringer for Hoagy Carmichael. By then the Hoagy Carmichael look might be back in style.
I do often wonder just how long Bond as a series, in its current form, can keep going for.
With the longer gaps here to stay it seems to be winding down. I do have a feeling NTTD may be it until the characters becomes public domain. Hopefully that's not the case and Barbara and Michael are planning the follow up as we speak.
I think he looks very handsome and striking, and in his showreel it looks like he can carry himself in that Bond way to me. I need to watch something where he’s in the lead though.
I don’t think the character will ever go public domain as the name is a registered trademark. I don’t fully understand all that stuff, but while Casino Royale might well go public domain no one could make an adaptation featuring James Bond as Danjaq own it.
Colin Salmon does look Bondian, or at least did in his prime, far more than any Black actor mentioned here nowadays.
True. Including his voice.
I’m not sure about that. But he’d already been Robinson anyhow.
IMO he is a Bondian chap. But not suitable for the title role of Bond himself.