Reporting For Duty
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Categories
What does Gen Z want in the next Bond?
M16_Cart
Craig fanboy?
For the franchise to live forever, it depends on the young blood. It's not about me and what I want. The franchise needs a Bond that will appeal to people under age 20.
Fans like me will watch every Bond movie that comes out, but for the younger audience, they may not yet be invested in it.
I know a lot of people on here are older, but maybe you have kids/neices/nephews who are into it. I'm curious on how they feel about it.
Fans like me will watch every Bond movie that comes out, but for the younger audience, they may not yet be invested in it.
I know a lot of people on here are older, but maybe you have kids/neices/nephews who are into it. I'm curious on how they feel about it.
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
for me, there must be a cool girl, a car chase, some jokes and a trouble that 007 need to resolve before the credits.
Younger people tend to be on social media platforms, big platforms with smaller communities inside of it, rather than message boards.
Why do people think that younger viewers need to see a person near their own age in a role in order to identify with it?
For myself, when I was a kid I much preferred watching Steve McQueen in "The Great Escape", "The Magnificent Seven" or "Nevada Smith" to watching some kid my one age in a Disney movie
I had no trouble relating to adult Steve McQueen, because I wanted to be like him (as he seemed on screen) rather than be like another kid, which I already was
This. For me it was McQueen, Bogart and Cagney. I'm not so sure age is that important to the younger generation going to movies. Downey, Cruise, and Keanu are all well into their fifties and HUGE box office draws in popular franchises.
They won't care as long as the new Bond carries himself with confidence , can kick ass and is also fallible.
Yes, you nailed it with me as well. As a teenage Bond fan in the '80s, I looked up to Connery, Lazenby and Moore as my action guys. Moore was obviously aging, but he was Bond, so it was okay. If you were cool, you were cool, age wasn't a factor and I had a lot of movie heroes who weren't necessarily of my generation.
This also reminds me of the situation around 2002 before DAD was released and Vin Diesel had that XxX movie coming out and he put Bond down saying kids can't identify with a hero who wears a suit. So which film did better business and which series is still going on with the guy in the suit?
Besides, if you let Gen Z cast a film, they may select some influencer or TikTok star.
Bond can't be forcing himself on women in a barn anymore, but the rest of the character works well. Just make sure the action and aesthetics are stylistically fresh (NTTD did this very well) and you'll have us coming back for more. We're not THAT hard to please.
To be honest, whatever interactions I have with anyone under 20 (family etc.) about culture and what's relevant is about stuff like Stranger Things, 'Running Up That Hill' by Kate Bush, mullets (I have a 16 year old cousin who is obsessed with getting her hair styled like this), Euphoria, how cool VHS looks... Heck, I've talked with a few about old books even I hadn't read. Most of them find Instagram 'influencers' to be con artists or vapid (it's more a millennial thing to be attracted to these types of people). Now, is this because there's something deeper going on here? That Gen Z kids can't remember a time before 9/11, domestic terrorism, recessions etc. and want to subconsciously escape to a time before that? Seems questionable as I don't believe many people 16-18 have particularly starry eyed nostalgia for things like Reaganism, the AIDS epidemic, Thatcher etc. Is it because Stranger Things/Euphoria captured the zeitgeist by being about younger characters? Ok, then where does that leave Bond? He's not inherently a youthful character and it's doubtful whether a 'young Bond' approach will work narratively. Is it simply because Tik Tok/various forms of social media are able to take these little 'splices' of nostalgia, package them in trendy videos and introduce them to masses of younger viewers? I mean, maybe, maybe not. Is it just that they want something different in general? Something that they can connect with?
My point is, I'm not sure if there's any magic formula for getting this audience. Sure, we could have a Bond song more in line with the 80s ballads, or perhaps more in the vein of a Kate Bush song (actually this would be rather good, especially with how dreary and 'modern' the last two songs were). The next Bond girl could dress in 80s style clothes and have a mullet (seems a terrible idea truth be told). Maybe the next Bond film will simply be more escapist, which I'm fine with broadly... ultimately I think the best way forward is not to try and capture this demographic but try to come up a fresh approach for the next Bond film overall. Don't simply bow to audiences and make something in the style of the new Top Gun, but don't be blind to being different from the previous instalments either. Ultimately, fresh ideas, attention to story detail, trying new things, while understanding what makes Bond a character and the films/books so enjoyable might be better than chasing the Gen Z crowd with superficial tricks.
We are at the tale end of the requel phase in Hollywood and I don’t think the bond producers would do a final Bond vs Blofeld film bringing back say Dalton for his third film ala Force awakens Halloween 2018 and to a lesser extent Texas Chainsaw 2022
So what else is there for the Producers to look into
Honestly I don’t know there seems to be a mixture of
80’s love (see it chapter 1 and stranger things)
Requel’s (see the examples above)
Multiverse films
and if we look at The Batman an action film that has elements of horror and Mob film
Honestly I could see the spangled Mob showing up and showing a younger bond but not the origins of him with an assassin trying to kill 007 that is half usual henchmen and half Michael myers
Trust me I would love either an 80’s period piece (with yes doing the theme song)
Or a Requel with either Dalton or Brosnan coming back
(Or Deaging Lazenby lol)
But I think that is to far fetched for 007
I don’t mind the winks, I think Bond franchise is rather more restrained than others for that. It’s almost certainly because I saw NTTD before OHMSS but I didn’t even those callbacks. For 1. It’s a 50+ year old film
that’s 2. the least well known of the franchise, so casual audiences aren’t going to know and why not reintroduce those things. But I agree with everything else, as an older Gen Z who had just a hint of Brosnan but for whom Craig is really the only Bond they’ve ever known, I want directors that are going to add their mark, for better or worse. I want the autere-ish sensibilities with a bit of Brosnan charm.
Nice ! You must be a superb bartender, by the way