Where does Bond go after Craig?

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  • Posts: 3,333
    “We always go back to Fleming”, Barbara Broccoli once remarked, when addressing problems in writing the films. Whichever way they decide to go, let's hope Barbara Broccoli is true to her word and it's back to Fleming once again as the source material.

    It's worth remembering that there's still some more unseen and unpublished James Bond material that can be mined. Take Anthony Horowitz as an example who read the original manuscript for a short story called "Trigger Finger" that had never been published before, and there's more. Ian Fleming had also written five story outlines for a television series that was never made. Plus there's plenty of unused material from his existing novels that can also be used. For me, the deconstruction of Bond has now run its course and needs to get back to telling a straightforward Bond on a mission story without the personal grudge weighing it down. Strip away the Scooby Gang, which is a clear nod to the IMF Mission Force, and allow Bond to be his own man again without the emotional props and Craig's baggage that'll only impede the next actor's take on Bond. Also, get back to making the Bond movies more of a spectacular event with real stunts rather than clever CGI. If they can find an actor, such as Henry Cavill, who is willing and able to perform most of his stunts then all the better for it. Yes, I realise Cruise wouldn't allow Cavill to do the actual HALO jump in Fallout, but he was allowed to do most of the other stunts in the movie. It's worth noting that Craig wasn't saddled with Brosnan's Bond trappings (apart from Judi Dench) and neither should the next actor going forward.
  • You could make a really tense thriller Bond film with some of the pulpier setpieces left to mine from the books: the underwater infiltration of an island guarded by frenzied barracudas (bonus points if they work in the pirate treasure angle), the deadly obstacle-course of a mad genius with a giant squid (I think it could be pulled off well, if done carefully!), and have a deranged homicidial henchman who is extra deadly on a full moon (since they didn’t use that detail for the filmic Red Grant). Hell you could even retrofit all the Dreamy Pines stuff from The Spy Who Loved Me into a killer PTS; what a great reveal of a new Bond actor that would make for, knocking at the door, illuminated by a lighting flash to save the day from some creepy henchmen. I’d love to see all those killer sequences, which were probably deemed too pulpy to work, thrown into one wild, even horror-tinged, Bond movie.
  • ThunderfingerThunderfinger Das Boot Hill
    Posts: 45,489
    You could make a really tense thriller Bond film with some of the pulpier setpieces left to mine from the books: the underwater infiltration of an island guarded by frenzied barracudas (bonus points if they work in the pirate treasure angle), the deadly obstacle-course of a mad genius with a giant squid (I think it could be pulled off well, if done carefully!), and have a deranged homicidial henchman who is extra deadly on a full moon (since they didn’t use that detail for the filmic Red Grant). Hell you could even retrofit all the Dreamy Pines stuff from The Spy Who Loved Me into a killer PTS; what a great reveal of a new Bond actor that would make for, knocking at the door, illuminated by a lighting flash to save the day from some creepy henchmen. I’d love to see all those killer sequences, which were probably deemed too pulpy to work, thrown into one wild, even horror-tinged, Bond movie.

    Yes to all of that. Get Fassbender, and name it THE HILDEBRAND RARITY.
  • Posts: 1,545
    Great to all that except, even for Fleming, wasn't the The Hildebrand Rarity INTENTIONALLY meant to sound like the title of a drawing room detective mystery ? In other words, it does not sound like the title of a thriller, because is was meant to sound like something else, and it WAS something else. So...I don't recommend using that as a title. A film could very well include a scene where events transpire much as they did in the story in print, within a longer film. The character could even name his story which he tells to Bond, "The Hildebrand Rarity."
  • Posts: 12,506
    I think the new actor could be announced next year on the 60th Anniversary is my bet! Babs said they will discuss next year and rightly so.
  • DrinmanDrinman New York
    Posts: 40
    I know this has been stated a million times but can we please just have a traditional mission.
  • Drinman wrote: »
    I know this has been stated a million times but can we please just have a traditional mission.

    This. Although I do wonder if the films have gone so far down the emotional-stakes-and-personal-revenge route that it might be impossible to pull back now.

    There’s still lots to adapt from the original novels.

    Using the novel The Spy Who Loved Me as a PTS is a nice idea but legally not possible? - my understanding is that Fleming only sold the title to Eon, not the actual story, so the rights remain with the Fleming estate. Unless they’ve quietly sold those rights to Eon sometime over the years too, of course.
  • ProfJoeButcherProfJoeButcher Bless your heart
    Posts: 1,664
    Drinman wrote: »
    I know this has been stated a million times but can we please just have a traditional mission.

    Can't be said enough!

    I'd add to that, and I'm speaking as a big fan of the Craig movies, it's enough now with the paradoxical "blockbuster franchise that continually questions its own relevance" meta-theme. :))
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited September 2021 Posts: 14,861
    Drinman wrote: »
    I know this has been stated a million times but can we please just have a traditional mission.

    I'm not totally bothered about that: I think these things are often enhanced by extra stakes. It's hard to instruct them to 'go back to Fleming' and 'make it non-personal' because a great deal of Fleming got quite personal. Even the angle of him going after Oberhauser's killer in Spectre is from Fleming. He even bumps into Blofeld -his wife's killer- by accident in YOLT.

    I like the idea of taking it somewhere pulpier in style, that could be an interesting path.
  • Posts: 6,665
    They don't veer into the regular mission territory because that's where their difficulties lie.

    The mission plot of every film since CR (water resources in QOS, hacking in SF, mafia organization in SP,
    DND altering nanobots
    in NTTD) were the weakest points in all of these films. And who conjures these ideias? P&W do. That's right. They sit in front of sci-fi and tech magazines (their words) and try to conjure these plot points.
    And they suck at it. Always have.

    We need a brain to think up a non-personal interesting, real stakes, mission. We need real writers.

    Been saying this since 2002.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    Before them the villains' plans were 'start a war for newspapers' (which I admit is brilliant), 'hacking to steal money', 'sell drugs', whatever it was in TLD(!), 'sell microchips' etc. etc. I'm not really seeing the problem.
    And SF wasn't about 'hacking': it was a revenge plot- the objective was M and to embarrass MI6. SP was about intruding into everyone's lives through surveillance, not just a mafia organisation. Let's not be reductive to make points.
  • Posts: 6,665
    Point being, you don't start a spy story by choosing a generic tech/financial/political plot and then flourishing it with personal vendetta issues, because that's cliché as hell. What's this, a Segall/Bronson film? You find subjects that are relevant and interest you, and you build on them until they're interesting by themselves, like Fleming did, sometimes for a boring effect (Goldfinger is up there with Moby Dick on boring exposition). Nuking the treasure reserve to inflate the price of gold was the brilliant part, as was starting a war for newspapers in TND. We need to find these angles. And I don't think P&W know how to do that. And you're right, @mtm, the problem wasn't on the subject's relevance, the problem was that they made them secondary to a personal angle storyline, when they should've been front and center, and better developed.

    But maybe I'm being reductive, and P&W are good at their job, after all, they have proven their worth countless times. Now I know I'm being sarcastic.

    Better writing for Bond films would save them all from disturbed productions. Point in case, CR still is the better film. Why? Because the source material was good.

    Get good writers, because they have the rest of the crew nailed.

  • Posts: 1,545
    Univex wrote: »
    Point being, you don't start a spy story by choosing a generic tech/financial/political plot and then flourishing it with personal vendetta issues, because that's cliché as hell. What's this, a Segall/Bronson film? You find subjects that are relevant and interest you, and you build on them until they're interesting by themselves, like Fleming did, sometimes for a boring effect (Goldfinger is up there with Moby Dick on boring exposition). Nuking the treasure reserve to inflate the price of gold was the brilliant part, as was starting a war for newspapers in TND. We need to find these angles. And I don't think P&W know how to do that. And you're right, @mtm, the problem wasn't on the subject's relevance, the problem was that they made them secondary to a personal angle storyline, when they should've been front and center, and better developed.

    But maybe I'm being reductive, and P&W are good at their job, after all, they have proven their worth countless times. Now I know I'm being sarcastic.

    Better writing for Bond films would save them all from disturbed productions. Point in case, CR still is the better film. Why? Because the source material was good.

    Get good writers, because they have the rest of the crew nailed.

    Starting a war to increase media revenue ? (Not so much newspapers anymore) That goes back years and years. Perhaps not starting the war, but certainly encouraging it and fanning the flames and laying blame on the perceived enemy, etc. Goes back at least to the days of Hearst Newspapers vs. Pulitzer and the Spanish-American War.
    Everything old is new again. There is nothing new under the sun. The old truisms and sayings -- some THOUSANDS of years old -- became truisms and sayings for good reason.
    Want a plot ? Even an outlandish, crazy, ridiculous spectacle of a plot ? Look to history.
    Quite agree, though, that new writers should help. Some new folks got in on NTTD, apparently to good effect, even if only to polish and add.
  • Posts: 6,665
    Since62 wrote: »
    Univex wrote: »
    Point being, you don't start a spy story by choosing a generic tech/financial/political plot and then flourishing it with personal vendetta issues, because that's cliché as hell. What's this, a Segall/Bronson film? You find subjects that are relevant and interest you, and you build on them until they're interesting by themselves, like Fleming did, sometimes for a boring effect (Goldfinger is up there with Moby Dick on boring exposition). Nuking the treasure reserve to inflate the price of gold was the brilliant part, as was starting a war for newspapers in TND. We need to find these angles. And I don't think P&W know how to do that. And you're right, @mtm, the problem wasn't on the subject's relevance, the problem was that they made them secondary to a personal angle storyline, when they should've been front and center, and better developed.

    But maybe I'm being reductive, and P&W are good at their job, after all, they have proven their worth countless times. Now I know I'm being sarcastic.

    Better writing for Bond films would save them all from disturbed productions. Point in case, CR still is the better film. Why? Because the source material was good.

    Get good writers, because they have the rest of the crew nailed.

    Starting a war to increase media revenue ? (Not so much newspapers anymore) That goes back years and years. Perhaps not starting the war, but certainly encouraging it and fanning the flames and laying blame on the perceived enemy, etc. Goes back at least to the days of Hearst Newspapers vs. Pulitzer and the Spanish-American War.
    Everything old is new again. There is nothing new under the sun. The old truisms and sayings -- some THOUSANDS of years old -- became truisms and sayings for good reason.
    Want a plot ? Even an outlandish, crazy, ridiculous spectacle of a plot ? Look to history.
    Quite agree, though, that new writers should help. Some new folks got in on NTTD, apparently to good effect, even if only to polish and add.

    I agree. But we must endeavour to choose wisely, imitate the greats, as they say, not the same old poor cliché.

    If it's not broken, don't fix it... but... it's broken, like an old record is sometimes broken, playing the same old tune, to oblivion.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited September 2021 Posts: 14,861
    Univex wrote: »
    Point being, you don't start a spy story by choosing a generic tech/financial/political plot and then flourishing it with personal vendetta issues, because that's cliché as hell.

    Good thing they didn't then. Skyfall is clearly designed to be a story about M. Right from the start when it was Peter Morgan's Once Upon A Spy it was about M's KGB ex-lover and his son blackmailing M, then when it was Nothing Is Forever Silva was a bomber, again trying to take revenge on M. Saying that they started with the tech plot is just something you've imagined rather than based in fact.
    The 'Bond being killed and coming back to MI6' plot comes from YOLT & TMWTGG... what they (together with Mendes) did is try to shape the story, where they want the characters to go, and then fill the plot in with the hacking stuff, which seems the right way to do it to me. The hacking is not the point of the story.

    I'm not keen on people casually saying that people are terrible at their job when they get their facts wrong about what those people do, and even that other people are just as responsible for the job they're being blamed for.
    Univex wrote: »
    What's this, a Segall/Bronson film? You find subjects that are relevant and interest you, and you build on them until they're interesting by themselves, like Fleming did, sometimes for a boring effect (Goldfinger is up there with Moby Dick on boring exposition). Nuking the treasure reserve to inflate the price of gold was the brilliant part, as was starting a war for newspapers in TND. We need to find these angles. And I don't think P&W know how to do that. And you're right, @mtm, the problem wasn't on the subject's relevance, the problem was that they made them secondary to a personal angle storyline, when they should've been front and center, and better developed.

    No, the story is what's important. Do people remember OHMSS as the one where Bond falls in love and gets married, losing his wife to the evil villain's revenge attack, or do they remember it as the one where Blofeld releases some foot & mouth?
    You can't have one without the other, but I think most people would say the story of that one is more important than the plot elements which allowed it to happen.

    Trying to stick in a personal angle as a sort of supplementary thing which isn't part of the story and secondary to the plot leads to stuff like the Paris Carver storyline in TND: a bit half-hearted and unconvincing, and ultimately redundant.
    Univex wrote: »
    But maybe I'm being reductive, and P&W are good at their job, after all, they have proven their worth countless times. Now I know I'm being sarcastic.

    Good writing is not being sarcastic in the written word as it depends on a tone of voice to work ;)
    Univex wrote: »
    Better writing for Bond films would save them all from disturbed productions. Point in case, CR still is the better film. Why? Because the source material was good.

    Get good writers, because they have the rest of the crew nailed.

    If it were that easy every film would be brilliant.

  • Posts: 6,665
    My god, @mtm, you are absolutely right on every account. Well done.

    I'm not being sarcastic, mind you, I'm just saying what you so desperately want to hear. Fear not, I'll continue my policy of not engaging you in conversation. It's very tiresome. You are very tiresome.

    I'm sure you'll compulsively reply. Bear in mind I won't be here to read you.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited September 2021 Posts: 14,861
    Wow, some people really can't take to be proved wrong and have to lash out at others' personalities and get personal in response- trying to paint them as 'compulsive' if they reply, ironically whilst compulsively replying. Very strange.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited September 2021 Posts: 14,861
    Since62 wrote: »
    Univex wrote: »
    Point being, you don't start a spy story by choosing a generic tech/financial/political plot and then flourishing it with personal vendetta issues, because that's cliché as hell. What's this, a Segall/Bronson film? You find subjects that are relevant and interest you, and you build on them until they're interesting by themselves, like Fleming did, sometimes for a boring effect (Goldfinger is up there with Moby Dick on boring exposition). Nuking the treasure reserve to inflate the price of gold was the brilliant part, as was starting a war for newspapers in TND. We need to find these angles. And I don't think P&W know how to do that. And you're right, @mtm, the problem wasn't on the subject's relevance, the problem was that they made them secondary to a personal angle storyline, when they should've been front and center, and better developed.

    But maybe I'm being reductive, and P&W are good at their job, after all, they have proven their worth countless times. Now I know I'm being sarcastic.

    Better writing for Bond films would save them all from disturbed productions. Point in case, CR still is the better film. Why? Because the source material was good.

    Get good writers, because they have the rest of the crew nailed.

    Starting a war to increase media revenue ? (Not so much newspapers anymore) That goes back years and years. Perhaps not starting the war, but certainly encouraging it and fanning the flames and laying blame on the perceived enemy, etc. Goes back at least to the days of Hearst Newspapers vs. Pulitzer and the Spanish-American War.

    Yeah I still think it's a brilliant plot and says a lot about our current situation; it seems fanciful but, as you say, is based in historical fact. I'd quite like to see a Bond film go there again, maybe in a slightly more realistic way.

    I think it's perfectly fine to want the villain's plot to be original and engaging: I'm sure we all want every part of these films to be brilliant.
  • Posts: 9,731
    A trilogy from Nolan starring tom Hardy as 007

    Film 1 a remake of Ohmss called All the time in the world
    Film 2 A reworking of Live and let die and You only live twice called Shatterhand
    Film 3 a reworking of the man with the golden gun called Risico

    its going to be amazing
  • Posts: 9,731
    You could make a really tense thriller Bond film with some of the pulpier setpieces left to mine from the books: the underwater infiltration of an island guarded by frenzied barracudas (bonus points if they work in the pirate treasure angle), the deadly obstacle-course of a mad genius with a giant squid (I think it could be pulled off well, if done carefully!), and have a deranged homicidial henchman who is extra deadly on a full moon (since they didn’t use that detail for the filmic Red Grant). Hell you could even retrofit all the Dreamy Pines stuff from The Spy Who Loved Me into a killer PTS; what a great reveal of a new Bond actor that would make for, knocking at the door, illuminated by a lighting flash to save the day from some creepy henchmen. I’d love to see all those killer sequences, which were probably deemed too pulpy to work, thrown into one wild, even horror-tinged, Bond movie.

    Yes to all of that. Get Fassbender, and name it THE HILDEBRAND RARITY.

    that would also be nice
  • Drinman wrote: »
    I know this has been stated a million times but can we please just have a traditional mission.

    This. Although I do wonder if the films have gone so far down the emotional-stakes-and-personal-revenge route that it might be impossible to pull back now.

    There’s still lots to adapt from the original novels.

    Using the novel The Spy Who Loved Me as a PTS is a nice idea but legally not possible? - my understanding is that Fleming only sold the title to Eon, not the actual story, so the rights remain with the Fleming estate. Unless they’ve quietly sold those rights to Eon sometime over the years too, of course.

    By the looks of it some of the untapped Fleming material makes an appearance in NTTD. I will find out for myself tomorrow night.
  • Posts: 1,545
    Apparently, too many people snicker at the mere thought of a character's name being "Shatterhand." I think it's cool, and I think the joking reference -- to someone lacking toilet paper at a crucial moment, apparently -- is a weak one. Then again, use of the "a" as the vowel in the operative 4-letter body-function word is less common in my neck of the woods. Perhaps elsewhere it is awfully obvious.

    I know it was referenced in OP, but I still think "The Property of a Lady" can be a good title. (I've expressed previously that "The Hildebrand Rarity" sounds like a mystery wherein the detective explains the solution to others sitting about a parlor, and that's why it fits Fleming's quiet, limited-scope short story, but not a big adventure.) Hitchcock explained MacGuffins well, and Tarantino used one well -- the suitcase with glowing SOMETHING of value inside it, though we never find out just what -- in Pulp Fiction. There have been others used well many times. So, for TPOAL, the Property need not be identified. Not that a Bond film should be anything but a spectacular thriller, so it might be more of a subplot item for a Bond film ? (As it was in OP)
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    Risico007 wrote: »
    A trilogy from Nolan starring tom Hardy as 007

    Film 1 a remake of Ohmss called All the time in the world
    Film 2 A reworking of Live and let die and You only live twice called Shatterhand
    Film 3 a reworking of the man with the golden gun called Risico

    its going to be amazing

    The TMWTGG film does feel like a missed opportunity in many ways, with Bond coming up against the world's greatest assassin, and yet not really having a duel against him or even having a plot involving an assassination as its focus. I could be open to a remake of that.
  • FatherValentineFatherValentine England
    Posts: 737
    In all truth, the films adapted the novels so loosely in most cases that many of the books could be re-adapted, and as long as the characters' names and settings were changed most people probably wouldn't know.

    Changing Mr Big's booty from pirate treasure to some other form of ancient treasure, for example, could be the start of another adventure (or even just keep the pirate treasure given it's not mentioned in the film). A station chief gets assassinated or goes missing and Bond is sent to investigate (ala Dr No) would be another. Bond gets sent on a diplomatic mission and then happens upon a supervillian... the whole Diamonds Are Forever Spang business... definitely the MWTGG hitman plot etc. All of these could work. It's not like there isn't repetition in Bond films anyway.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    In all truth, the films adapted the novels so loosely in most cases that many of the books could be re-adapted, and as long as the characters' names and settings were changed most people probably wouldn't know.

    Changing Mr Big's booty from pirate treasure to some other form of ancient treasure, for example, could be the start of another adventure (or even just keep the pirate treasure given it's not mentioned in the film). A station chief gets assassinated or goes missing and Bond is sent to investigate (ala Dr No) would be another. Bond gets sent on a diplomatic mission and then happens upon a supervillian... the whole Diamonds Are Forever Spang business... definitely the MWTGG hitman plot etc. All of these could work. It's not like there isn't repetition in Bond films anyway.

    Yeah that's a good point; you could probably change the locations (Dr No set somewhere Arctic for instance) and you'd have a basis for a new film.
  • FatherValentineFatherValentine England
    Posts: 737
    mtm wrote: »
    In all truth, the films adapted the novels so loosely in most cases that many of the books could be re-adapted, and as long as the characters' names and settings were changed most people probably wouldn't know.

    Changing Mr Big's booty from pirate treasure to some other form of ancient treasure, for example, could be the start of another adventure (or even just keep the pirate treasure given it's not mentioned in the film). A station chief gets assassinated or goes missing and Bond is sent to investigate (ala Dr No) would be another. Bond gets sent on a diplomatic mission and then happens upon a supervillian... the whole Diamonds Are Forever Spang business... definitely the MWTGG hitman plot etc. All of these could work. It's not like there isn't repetition in Bond films anyway.

    Yeah that's a good point; you could probably change the locations (Dr No set somewhere Arctic for instance) and you'd have a basis for a new film.

    Better this, I feel, than trying to imitate a Fleming plot. It's not like you couldn't use these as starting points for a bigger movie style plot with big action sequences.

    Dr No but in the arctic is a very good pitch, actually.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    I guess it is, on some level, what AVTAK was doing. DAD slightly less so probably (weird to think that AVTAK was more faithful than DAD! :D )
  • Tokoloshe2Tokoloshe2 Northern Ireland
    edited October 2021 Posts: 1,172
    Obviously NTTD leaves massive questions about if, and how, Bond continues post-Craig.

    The films have never really explored Bond's naval history and how he gained the rank of Commander. Since a reboot of some sort is necessary, the next film could explore this as a new Bond origin story. Show him as a young man in the Royal Navy pre-00 section, there could still be a villain and a plot and it all culminating in his recruitment into the Secret Service and a springboard to new adventures in what would be, indisputably, a new timeline for a new Bond actor.

    (The fact that DC is never seen in naval uniform also helps)
  • BondStuBondStu Moonraker 6
    Posts: 373
    How does Bond continue after Craig? Read on for the answer (I'm putting it in spoiler tags just in case it somehow blows some of the twists in NTTD)
    Go back to the original continuity. Make the film as if it's the next one after Die Another Day. I've always said the perfect first story for a new actor playing the role would have him go on the run, accused of a crime he didn't commit. Now is a perfect time.
    To establish this setting, we have a title sequence akin to OHMSS that includes clips from previous films. The ejection from the Aston Martin, cradling a dead Tracy in his arms, the Union Jack parachute, speeding through the snow on a Cello case - and finally the bungee jump from the dam.
    The twist is - these moments are recreated with the NEW actor. Either by refilming the moments, or digitally inserting him into the actual footage from the film.
    If we go to the "Bond is framed" storyline, there can be a courtroom scene where his defence lawyer reminds the courtroom of other moments from the previous 20 movies.
    It'll need a new cast. Q needs to go back to being a doddery old fart. We need a respected actress as M (Helen Mirren?).
    I honestly think this is the best way forward.
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    Tokoloshe2 wrote: »
    Obviously NTTD leaves massive questions about if, and how, Bond continues post-Craig.

    The films have never really explored Bond's naval history and how he gained the rank of Commander. Since a reboot of some sort is necessary, the next film could explore this as a new Bond origin story. Show him as a young man in the Royal Navy pre-00 section, there could still be a villain and a plot and it all culminating in his recruitment into the Secret Service and a springboard to new adventures in what would be, indisputably, a new timeline for a new Bond actor.

    (The fact that DC is never seen in naval uniform also helps)

    That could be pretty cool, I'd be up for that in prospect. I think there might also be some mileage in having M actually set up the double-0 section perhaps: make Bond the first of a new breed.
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