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Comments
Excellent article and I have to say after 'The Night Manager', I think Hiddleston would make a good fist of Fleming's Bond.
He has the grace and elegance that Craig lacks and is certainly his equal in the acting department.
One way forward, without using a Fleming title, would be to bring 'Trigger Mortis', Horowitz's excellent continuation novel to the screen. It is set directly after Goldfinger and has all of Fleming's hallmarks but with the pace of a modern thriller.
That said, my preference would be to make 'Moonraker' first. Next to FRWL & OHMSS it is absolutely one of my favourite Flemings and would make a tremendous movie.
Yes, the more I think about it Ian Fleming's 'Moonraker' staring Tom Hiddleston set in 1955 would be perfect.
We could ditch all those tight fitting suits - go to a proper tailor and get out the Bentley. What more could any man, or woman wish for ?
Good post. Although I don't agree that DC lacks grace and elegance, he still plays the role of Fleming's Bond well. I agree that Hiddleston may play the 'uuper crust' background aspect more convincingly though. Also, I think the Tom Ford suits look good.
Hiddleston may just have the charm of Moore combined with the harder edge of Craig?
I think a lot of people forget as well that making a period piece adaptation of a Bond novel would not prevent them for making mistakes. It could in fact be a recipe for anachronisms. The BBC made some great adaptations, they also made Robin Hood.
I'm not against period pieces but I think the main film series should keep moving forward as it always has. A Netflix or HBO show with Fleming's Bond though, completely seperate from the films, would be great. Sort of a reverse of the Downey Jr and Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock scenario.
I know what you're getting at but the tailor (Kingsman used saville row suits) and the Bentley could be used in a modern film.
If you're interested, I posted my outline for a modern day adaptation of MR in the below thread. I thought that todays enivornment, all the paranoia about terrorist attacks, fit the enemy within theme quite well. So I changed the threat to Islamic Terrorism and instead of World War 2, the villain has his origins in the invasion of Iraq. My outline is the latest to be posted, I think it's on the last page
http://www.mi6community.com/index.php?p=/discussion/13322/realistic-serious-story-ideas-for-bond-25-to-be-used-by-eon-productions-ltd
I actually kept the blower bentley as his personal car though despite all the other changes. Decided that if Bond's family could afford to send him to Eton then it isn't too far fetched for him to have that car. I mean it'd be ridiculously expensive today but it could easily be explained as a family heirloom
or something.
Thanks @suavejmf.
You are so right about Hiddleston. I had exactly the same feel about him when I saw 'The Night Manager'. The qualities of charm and hard edge are so rare in one individual.
We'll have to agree to disagree about the suits but as we are going back to 1957, we'll be able to get him something really good to wear from the Row!
Thanks @thelivingroyale.
Your hypothesis is very interesting and well done and I've often thought that a similar modernisation is possible with 'Colonel Sun'.
That said, we probably all agree that the original 'Moonraker' is so superb it needs to be made in a very pure fashion.
I would love to see a faithful period adaptation. What'd excite me even more though is a period adaptation of YOLT. It's my favorite of the novels because of how unique it is, I love the melanchonic tone, seeing Bond and Blofeld at the end of their tethers, both shadows of their former selves, and it's full of really dark imagery. The garden of death, insane samurai Blofeld, etc. There's so much great stuff in there that the films have ignored, so I'd love to see it faithfully done. It could be a nice TV movie. In fact the whole Blofeld trilogy, and then TMWTGG, would make a great mini series. That's the route they should go down I think if they did a TV show.
Maybe do Moonraker as a TV movie to establish the new Bond, and then just do the whole SPECTRE saga as a series, with TMWTGG as an epilogue. Or they could just as easily do all the novels but I'd find some of them a little redundant given how well the 60s films hold up. OHMSS in particular is perfect, but you'd have to do that one again for the audience to understand YOLT.
Zorin : "I find the computer indispensable" :D
Bond should do his own thing , people should imitate *him* , not vice versa. In the 60s he kept killing people despite flower power/Nam going on , he wasn't neutered. And yes , he should smoke both cigs & cigarrs if he feels like it :P
I love the way you describe YOLT.
The movie was such a bastardisation it's fair to say that the original story remains unmade and it is, without doubt, one of the absolute gems that would benefit from such an approach.
Personally, I wouldn't see a problem with making the whole Blofeld trilogy again. Yes, OHMSS was one of the best of the movies but it was a very long time ago, it did stray a little and its aged more than say FRWL (speeded up action sequences etc..)
I also wouldn't be against including some of the continuation novels. Namely 'Trigger Mortis' and 'Colonel Sun'. They both follow Fleming's time line and are faithful to his characterisation of Bond.
I would like to see a return to 1953, but like many others here I would like to see this done via an HBO mini-series format, dramatizing all the Fleming titles as Fleming wrote them.
Leave the Eon cinematic blockbusters to the current time, as they have always been.
The very excellent MP Diaries would lend to the HBO treatment too.
The 2014 Dominic Cooper, Fleming tv mini-series I think should serve as inspiration.
The MP Diaries could be chronicled much the same way.
The Cooper, Fleming TV series, I think should open the door to more similar efforts. That's the way to do it.
The series had a fresh Bond vibe, stylish, exciting and heavily dramatized.
I'm sure most of it was a complete fabrication, extrapolated only from adventures Fleming might have experienced, but still it worked as Bondian entertainment.
The same approach would work with Weinberg's MP Diaries saga. There's room for two strong female leads in Kate Westbrook and MP herself, with a dashing new Bond actor moving in and out of the narrative.
MP Diaries is a good yarn. Weinberg spun a good story. I think it would translate well to the mini-series screen
As for the Fleming works, I think a careful respectful approach would be needed, but it sure would be fun to see these stories brought to life in a quality mini-series.
I think the trick is to go lower budget, with strong emphasis on character and story rather than big-budget action. And don't try and compete with the '60s cinema classics.
Downscale the OHMSS ski sequences etc. There is no point in trying to outdue what Hunt did in 1969. And the underwater stuff in Fleming's TB is nowhere near as fullscale, as what Terrence Young did at the height of Bondmania anyway.
As for the modern films, I don't think its complicated. Babs needs to ignore Mendes post-Spectre blatherings about the need to go off in brand new directions (yawn) and get back to churning out exciting, big budget Bond-on-mission adventures with some dramatic heft but not to the extent that both Forster and Mendes heaped on.
Dispense with drama directors such as Mendes and Forster, and hire directors that are ready to help realize an Eon vision for Bond, as opposed to doing their own take on Bond eg another uniquely Sam Mendes film, which also happens to be a Bond film, which is kind of what we've been getting.
Thanks for the kind words @timmer.
I too found a certain sort of inspiration in the Fleming mini-series and certainly think that its fresh vibe showed a way forward that could translate into realistic HBO type adaptations of the Fleming novels and, you are one hundred percent correct, that The MP diaries would be a great vehicle to chronicle in a similar way.
Absolutely.
Many Bond fans forget how much even the movies feted as faithful adaptations deviated from the source material. The result was often to hype up the action whilst downplaying the drama. Our objective must be the reverse.
Somewhat bizarrely some posters have assumed that my proposal would involve, in some way, eon selling or sharing their screen rights. This is absolutely not the case.
My suggestion is that they themselves explore this route. It could be done in tandem with their existing big screen franchise and would only enhance the brand.
Rigidly adhering to the existing formula will always have limits.