Where does Bond go after Craig?

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  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    I'm not sold on sticking to the old formula to be honest.
  • edited May 2022 Posts: 4,599
    It's also about the way the characters communicate. If you look at MI and Avengers, they communicate in a "modern way" the banter is quick fire, quick witted, taking the mikey but with warmth underneath and also on equal terms. This is a far better reflection of how new generations talk rather than the more stillted/dry one liners of Bond. Ironically, the classic Bond/Q scenes did contain this type of writing but for just one scene and then Bond goes out on his own. Of course, the issue is, such banter (ripping the micky but with warmth) is what friends do so fits in with a team dynamic rather than a lone agent. I also know that many fans would reject Bond communicating like this...But a significantly younger actor could perhaps pull off a newer, "quick fire" Bond

    PS re formula, the irony is that both MI and Avengers (we could also include ST) have bad guys who want to destroy/wreak havoc on Earth. It's not purely a "Bond thing" - they are executed in such a different way re tone/dynamic/style that we dont think "this is a Bond rip off" I never thought of Thanos as a Bond villain but his plans are very similar to previous Bond villains.
  • ImpertinentGoonImpertinentGoon Everybody needs a hobby.
    Posts: 1,351
    Not to turn this into "The problem with SPECTRE is... (Part 324)", but they had a great film about the conflict between needing the the old ways - the value they still hold - and the need to destroy the old ways to go forward in Skyfall and then they just dropped that ball in SP (or maybe with that final scene in M's office). At the end of SF, there's a new M, the old HQ has quite literally been blown up, as has - again literally - the place Bond came from, the DB5 is gone, as far as we know Bond doesn't have any personal posessions anymore. And then the next film is a muddled mess about... ..what exactly? Technology is the enemy? Our past coming to haunt us?
    It will always be a mystery to me how they kept basically the entire top level creative team and screwed that one up so badly...
  • edited May 2022 Posts: 2,750
    mtm wrote: »
    I'm not sold on sticking to the old formula to be honest.

    To each their own. Again, at risk of being overly vague, I think the key to a good Bond 26 and beyond will be doing something fresh with the substance of the stories (main plot, Bond girl, villain, Bond himself etc) while still keeping it recognisably Bondian, ideally that isn't just superficial iconography as in the Craig era. There are many ways in which it can be done though.
  • VenutiusVenutius Yorkshire
    Posts: 2,895
    DarthDimi wrote: »
    I prefer James Bond neither "rogue" nor a "team player". He is the team; he's the spy, the shooter, the fighter, the seducer, the driver and the tech guy in one. (Well, he gets his tech from Q, but still.) He's even more than that, more than the sum of his parts.
    The MI6 team-ups in recent films didn't aggrevate me as much as they did other fans, but I welcome a return to form for the all-in-one James Bond, the 007 who has earned that licence to kill and doesn't need to rely (too much) on others to execute his mission.

    Yes - all of this.

  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    Not to turn this into "The problem with SPECTRE is... (Part 324)", but they had a great film about the conflict between needing the the old ways - the value they still hold - and the need to destroy the old ways to go forward in Skyfall and then they just dropped that ball in SP (or maybe with that final scene in M's office). At the end of SF, there's a new M, the old HQ has quite literally been blown up, as has - again literally - the place Bond came from, the DB5 is gone, as far as we know Bond doesn't have any personal posessions anymore. And then the next film is a muddled mess about... ..what exactly? Technology is the enemy? Our past coming to haunt us?
    It will always be a mystery to me how they kept basically the entire top level creative team and screwed that one up so badly...

    That's a good observation. I guess part of the issue is the old ways had only actually returned to the series in Skyfall after sitting CR and QoS out.
    Just on a design basis look at the funky new version of MI6 and their office that we got for QoS, never to be seen again.
  • edited May 2022 Posts: 2,750
    I really hope they don't try to redesign MI6 in the same way they did in QOS. The weird interface system looked like something out of Star Trek and the whole place looked like an Apple store. M's office especially should have a sense of familiarity and even an insular quality to it as this is where top secret information is discussed and given. Even as early as the Moore era the fact that several people were in the room betrays that sense of espionage and the covert nature of the 00 section. In QOS that part of the MI6 building seems to have so many people wandering around (Tanner, Bond and M also just blurting out information as they 'walk and talk' along the hallway) and the actual room looks more like a lab than an office. Even in GE the big room with the satellite screen and various office workers looked a bit more dark and 'shadowy' (ie. covert) compared to the cold, flat look of MI6 in QOS.
  • edited May 2022 Posts: 4,599
    Trouble is, if you were making, from scratch, a modern movie about a 21st century, MI6 agent, it simply would never look like a Bond movie. Many of the things which us traditional fans love are IMHO, the things preventing it from being engaging. Co-incedence , this morning I revisited an interview with McQuarrie and he states "it's all about engagement." Are young movie fans engaged with Bond and other characters ? I'm not sure. Ironic that I think Avengers does a better job at providing superheroes that engage with us rather than Bond
  • CraigMooreOHMSSCraigMooreOHMSS Dublin, Ireland
    Posts: 8,009
    To be fair to the Moore era though, it was almost always the same faces in the briefing room and they were all very high ranking Government officials. MI6 in the Craig era always struck me as more like MI5 has been presented in media over the years - full of civil servants and admin staff in what could be any office anywhere. We never really saw that sort of thing before, even in the Brosnan era, save for maybe sequences set in Q-Branch.
  • edited May 2022 Posts: 2,750
    To be fair to the Moore era though, it was almost always the same faces in the briefing room and they were all very high ranking Government officials. MI6 in the Craig era always struck me as more like MI5 has been presented in media over the years - full of civil servants and admin staff in what could be any office anywhere. We never really saw that sort of thing before, even in the Brosnan era, save for maybe sequences set in Q-Branch.

    True, but I always preferred the one on one briefings between Bond and M from the first two Connery films. It just gave more of a sense that the mission Bond was about to go on was top secret, for his eyes only as it were. I think by TMWTGG and TSWLM they brought more faces into the room to give the sense that the 'stakes are now raised' and these other important Government officials, even the head of the KGB, had to be there.

    I think to the filmmakers at the time making MI6 this ultra modern, densely populated building in QOS made sense, but it's a case where what would be 'realistic' doesn't work in a film. In this universe, Bond is an agent who works on top secret assignments. That feeling has to evoked through the cinematography and set design. Perhaps they could lean into it in Bond 26/have a contrast between one part of the MI6 building (colder, more open, more densely populated etc.) and the upper floors/M's office (darker, warmer, more insular).
  • sandbagger1sandbagger1 Sussex
    Posts: 686
    Skyfall engaged audiences because it was good, Spectre lost audiences because it wasn't. NTTD had very mixed word of mouth. All this proves is that if you make a really good Bond film you'll find an audience, and if you don't...
  • ImpertinentGoonImpertinentGoon Everybody needs a hobby.
    Posts: 1,351
    Skyfall engaged audiences because it was good, Spectre lost audiences because it wasn't. NTTD had very mixed word of mouth. All this proves is that if you make a really good Bond film you'll find an audience, and if you don't...

    True.

    007HallY wrote: »
    To be fair to the Moore era though, it was almost always the same faces in the briefing room and they were all very high ranking Government officials. MI6 in the Craig era always struck me as more like MI5 has been presented in media over the years - full of civil servants and admin staff in what could be any office anywhere. We never really saw that sort of thing before, even in the Brosnan era, save for maybe sequences set in Q-Branch.

    True, but I always preferred the one on one briefings between Bond and M from the first two Connery films. It just gave more of a sense that the mission Bond was about to go on was top secret, for his eyes only as it were. I think by TMWTGG and TSWLM they brought more faces into the room to give the sense that the 'stakes are now raised' and these other important Government officials, even the head of the KGB, had to be there.

    I think to the filmmakers at the time making MI6 this ultra modern, densely populated building in QOS made sense, but it's a case where what would be 'realistic' doesn't work in a film. In this universe, Bond is an agent who works on top secret assignments. That feeling has to evoked through the cinematography and set design. Perhaps they could lean into it in Bond 26/have a contrast between one part of the MI6 building (colder, more open, more densely populated etc.) and the upper floors/M's office (darker, warmer, more insular).

    I am constantly struggling between wanting Bond films to more accurately portray how someone like Bond would fare in the modern MI6/intelligence world and accepting that that wouldn’t really be Fleming‘s Bond anymore. It’s a hard balance to strike. The Denbigh plot in SP would have been a great way to explore that and it didn’t work, so what do I know.
  • edited May 2022 Posts: 2,750
    I am constantly struggling between wanting Bond films to more accurately portray how someone like Bond would fare in the modern MI6/intelligence world and accepting that that wouldn’t really be Fleming‘s Bond anymore. It’s a hard balance to strike. The Denbigh plot in SP would have been a great way to explore that and it didn’t work, so what do I know.

    I suppose we've never really seen Bond 'in the office' going through his daily routine as he did in the MR novel. Nowadays the equivalent would be Bond reading PDFs on a computer and answering emails... not sure if that's great for a Bond film but I can imagine him at the shooting range like at the start of the book, and perhaps with an office of his own and an assistant to the 00's like Loelia Ponsonby. That or just have Bond making his way through the large, densely populated lower floors of MI6 to M's quieter, darker office in a separate part of the building. Again, could be interesting and really evoke how covert Bond's job is.

    Arguably, we've never had an M scene quite like the briefings from the Fleming novels either. Some of them take place very early in the morning, fog rolling outside the window, the room dark with the pool of light coming from the green lamp on the desk etc. There's just that very insular feeling that comes through reading those passages I've not truly seen in the films.
  • Posts: 1,314
    Things I want from the next film:

    1. Bond the connoisseur
    2. Bond as the best man in mi6. Capable, competent, suave, sophisticated
    3. A score that has jazz and swing.
    4. Bond escaping inescapable situations with invention, wit and balls.
    5. A villain with a clear motivation who gets a lot more screen time than the last few.
    6. The bridge scene from Moonraker
  • SIS_HQSIS_HQ At the Vauxhall Headquarters
    edited May 2022 Posts: 3,382
    Things that I want in the next film:
    1. Bring back M's military background (Major Admiral).
    2. Have Bond do spy things.
    3. Have him knocked off like in the classic films.
    4. Bond the connoisseur
    5. Bond the gambler
    6. Bond using an alias, doing disguises.
    7. Have the ending between Bond and the Bond Girl similar to Moonraker and the first pages of From Russia With Love.
    8. 00 mission briefing like in Thunderball, TWINE.
    9. A ballad-jazz theme song
    10. Skiing
    11. A villain who has a clear motivation, and also realistic plot, maybe a bit more similar to that of Argo.
    12. Realistic action scene
    13. A bond girl who is Bond's opposite, who has a sense of humor/funny, outgoing, have many friends, extrovert, and very intelligent tough that she can challenge Bond, and can be a contrary to Bond's persona of being quiet, loner and serious.
    I like a scene where she finds Bond weird, awkward and boring because her personality was different to his, and her making jokes and pranking at him, these traits will make Bond appreciate her more because of her distinct personality.
    14. Bond acting like MacGyver at some situations.
    15. Bond escaping using his wits being a survivor.
    16. A Bond Girl who bleeds and gets dirty in a fight, think of Camille.

    What I don't want to see:
    1. French Bond Girls, please get a different nationality for a change, French actresses have been many in the Craig era, all of his Bond Girls were French, time to rest from them a bit.
    2. Italy as the location, again overused.
    3. Aston Martin DB5, let the car rest for a while, how many times we saw the car got destroyed?
    4. Bond as being the only man in MI6, missions revolving around Bond himself to the point that he compromises England and MI6 because of his mission, think of Skyfall and SPECTRE.
    5. MI6 staffs acting like Scooby gang.
    6. Age gaps and lack of chemistries.
    7. Bond Girls who ends the movie clean, no injuries and wounds.
  • ImpertinentGoonImpertinentGoon Everybody needs a hobby.
    Posts: 1,351
    007HallY wrote: »
    I am constantly struggling between wanting Bond films to more accurately portray how someone like Bond would fare in the modern MI6/intelligence world and accepting that that wouldn’t really be Fleming‘s Bond anymore. It’s a hard balance to strike. The Denbigh plot in SP would have been a great way to explore that and it didn’t work, so what do I know.

    I suppose we've never really seen Bond 'in the office' going through his daily routine as he did in the MR novel. Nowadays the equivalent would be Bond reading PDFs on a computer and answering emails... not sure if that's great for a Bond film but I can imagine him at the shooting range like at the start of the book, and perhaps with an office of his own and an assistant to the 00's like Loelia Ponsonby. That or just have Bond making his way through the large, densely populated lower floors of MI6 to M's quieter, darker office in a separate part of the building. Again, could be interesting and really evoke how covert Bond's job is.

    Arguably, we've never had an M scene quite like the briefings from the Fleming novels either. Some of them take place very early in the morning, fog rolling outside the window, the room dark with the pool of light coming from the green lamp on the desk etc. There's just that very insular feeling that comes through reading those passages I've not truly seen in the films.

    Well, that’s basically one of those things. Bond nowadays wouldn’t have an office in MI6 HQ. In Fleming‘s world and time nobody officially knew MI6 existed let alone where it’s headquarters were and who worked there. Nowadays, it’s very well known where they are and at least who the Head of the SIS is. I guess they have their ways of concealing entries and exits to the building, but as far as I’m aware, most people working there just walk in through the front door. No Universal Exports cover, no elaborate phone tricks like at the beginning of TMWTGG, no plausible deniability. I’ve been banging this drum for way too long, but the one good thing about Carte Blanche by Deaver is that he re-situates Bond, M, Tanner and all the rest into a super-secret separate entity that is basically just an Operations Section with the 00s at the top, Q Section for tech and a handful of assistants and analysts for support.
  • JustJamesJustJames London
    Posts: 203
    Anglo-French (possibly Italian), Russian I think… then Judi Dench, then Italian, then French/Swiss. You get about one French Bond girl by my maths. And Bonds feelings on French women (and therefore Flemings) are known. (I am using characters nationalities rather than actresses, because then we do get to one and half, or two.)

    Penelope Cruz would be quite good.
  • Posts: 6,682
    Matt007 wrote: »
    3. A score that has jazz and swing.
    Yes.

    MI6HQ wrote: »
    3. Have him knocked off like in the classic films.
    Yes, yes!
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    edited May 2022 Posts: 14,861
    007HallY wrote: »
    I am constantly struggling between wanting Bond films to more accurately portray how someone like Bond would fare in the modern MI6/intelligence world and accepting that that wouldn’t really be Fleming‘s Bond anymore. It’s a hard balance to strike. The Denbigh plot in SP would have been a great way to explore that and it didn’t work, so what do I know.

    I suppose we've never really seen Bond 'in the office' going through his daily routine as he did in the MR novel. Nowadays the equivalent would be Bond reading PDFs on a computer and answering emails... not sure if that's great for a Bond film but I can imagine him at the shooting range like at the start of the book, and perhaps with an office of his own and an assistant to the 00's like Loelia Ponsonby. That or just have Bond making his way through the large, densely populated lower floors of MI6 to M's quieter, darker office in a separate part of the building. Again, could be interesting and really evoke how covert Bond's job is.

    Arguably, we've never had an M scene quite like the briefings from the Fleming novels either. Some of them take place very early in the morning, fog rolling outside the window, the room dark with the pool of light coming from the green lamp on the desk etc. There's just that very insular feeling that comes through reading those passages I've not truly seen in the films.

    Well, that’s basically one of those things. Bond nowadays wouldn’t have an office in MI6 HQ. In Fleming‘s world and time nobody officially knew MI6 existed let alone where it’s headquarters were and who worked there. Nowadays, it’s very well known where they are and at least who the Head of the SIS is. I guess they have their ways of concealing entries and exits to the building, but as far as I’m aware, most people working there just walk in through the front door. No Universal Exports cover, no elaborate phone tricks like at the beginning of TMWTGG, no plausible deniability. I’ve been banging this drum for way too long, but the one good thing about Carte Blanche by Deaver is that he re-situates Bond, M, Tanner and all the rest into a super-secret separate entity that is basically just an Operations Section with the 00s at the top, Q Section for tech and a handful of assistants and analysts for support.

    Yes I like all that too. I think a similar rethink of the Double O section and how Bond operates would be great. Make him deep cover, make him top secret so no one in MI6 even knows about him, have M as a sort of radical maverick who masterminds and controls this section rather than the boss of the entire service. I still think that showing M creating the Double Os and recruiting Bond wouldn't be a bad way to start. Maybe Bond even comes up with the idea somehow, I don't know.
  • sandbagger1sandbagger1 Sussex
    Posts: 686
    These radical reboots have little appeal to me. It's like Clark Kent's glasses: sure the disguise isn't realistic, but it is iconic - once you decide the basic foundation of an iconic property is silly, I think maybe you shouldn't be the one in the creative driving seat.
  • Posts: 1,545
    mattjoes wrote: »
    Matt007 wrote: »
    3. A score that has jazz and swing.
    Yes.

    MI6HQ wrote: »
    3. Have him knocked off like in the classic films.
    Yes, yes!

    "Knocked off" ? You mean, knocked out, unconscious ? "Knocked off" sounds like contract killer assassinated.
  • edited May 2022 Posts: 2,750
    007HallY wrote: »
    I am constantly struggling between wanting Bond films to more accurately portray how someone like Bond would fare in the modern MI6/intelligence world and accepting that that wouldn’t really be Fleming‘s Bond anymore. It’s a hard balance to strike. The Denbigh plot in SP would have been a great way to explore that and it didn’t work, so what do I know.

    I suppose we've never really seen Bond 'in the office' going through his daily routine as he did in the MR novel. Nowadays the equivalent would be Bond reading PDFs on a computer and answering emails... not sure if that's great for a Bond film but I can imagine him at the shooting range like at the start of the book, and perhaps with an office of his own and an assistant to the 00's like Loelia Ponsonby. That or just have Bond making his way through the large, densely populated lower floors of MI6 to M's quieter, darker office in a separate part of the building. Again, could be interesting and really evoke how covert Bond's job is.

    Arguably, we've never had an M scene quite like the briefings from the Fleming novels either. Some of them take place very early in the morning, fog rolling outside the window, the room dark with the pool of light coming from the green lamp on the desk etc. There's just that very insular feeling that comes through reading those passages I've not truly seen in the films.

    Well, that’s basically one of those things. Bond nowadays wouldn’t have an office in MI6 HQ. In Fleming‘s world and time nobody officially knew MI6 existed let alone where it’s headquarters were and who worked there. Nowadays, it’s very well known where they are and at least who the Head of the SIS is. I guess they have their ways of concealing entries and exits to the building, but as far as I’m aware, most people working there just walk in through the front door. No Universal Exports cover, no elaborate phone tricks like at the beginning of TMWTGG, no plausible deniability. I’ve been banging this drum for way too long, but the one good thing about Carte Blanche by Deaver is that he re-situates Bond, M, Tanner and all the rest into a super-secret separate entity that is basically just an Operations Section with the 00s at the top, Q Section for tech and a handful of assistants and analysts for support.

    Ah, fair enough, I get you now. That could work as a way of doing something different with the series. The idea of M, Tanner, Bond (perhaps even Loelia Ponsonby as an assistant etc) and the 00 section in general having to operate separately as this individual, generally secret entity from the rest of MI6 sounds interesting. I know there have been posters (me included) who want to see Bond's rogue qualities of the Craig era transposed onto M (a sort 'play by his own rules' type) so that could be a good way of justifying this. It could potentially add some tension to the story with the 00 section at odds with the bureaucracy of the rest of MI6. It'd also create some background for the 00 section which we've never really gotten in the films. And it'd really emphasise that idea of M/bond's briefings being more insular and covert. Good catch. Admittedly I'd blocked most of Carte Blanche from my mind so wouldn't have thought of that.
  • Jordo007Jordo007 Merseyside
    Posts: 2,483
    These radical reboots have little appeal to me. It's like Clark Kent's glasses: sure the disguise isn't realistic, but it is iconic - once you decide the basic foundation of an iconic property is silly, I think maybe you shouldn't be the one in the creative driving seat.

    Spot on mate
  • Posts: 1,314
    Generally I’d like the series to reinvent itself as a fun 2 hour thrill ride. I watched TSWLM last night. Amazing
  • mtmmtm United Kingdom
    Posts: 14,861
    Matt007 wrote: »
    Generally I’d like the series to reinvent itself as a fun 2 hour thrill ride. I watched TSWLM last night. Amazing

    Yes, I wouldn’t mind that sort of thing either. Mission Impossible Ghost/Rogue were the modern day equivalents I’d say.
  • Posts: 12,837
    @mtm I do like the idea of ditching London altogether and having Bond be deep cover and constantly on the move. Maybe M could be some sort of shadowy, Charlie’s Angels type boss, and Moneypenny could be reimagined as a handler type who gives him each mission? And Q could just have a cool new lab in whichever exotic location, I always find those variations the most fun anyway.

    I think it just has to feel very different and new, whatever they do. I’ve enjoyed the last few films a lot, but for all the stick they got from fans for deviating from the formula, I do think they seemed to be almost in reverence of that old iconography. Which was fun for the 50th in SF, but it’s probably time to create some new icons now.
  • CraigMooreOHMSSCraigMooreOHMSS Dublin, Ireland
    Posts: 8,009
    I wouldn't mind Bond receiving his assignment away from London. It'd be nice to see M out in the field - have the gag be that he's "on holiday" or something like that. Just little touches that make their relationship feel real.
  • Posts: 2,750
    Might be a bit too Mission Impossible though, no? I think changing up things in the films is fine going forward, but it still has to be true to the traditions of the series. Anyway, we've had M going into the field quite a lot during the early half of the Craig era, and it was somewhat silly then.
  • echoecho 007 in New York
    Posts: 5,921
    The series needs Bond to be more isolated and on his own, as in CR. (And I probably would have gotten rid of the dial-in to MI6 when Bond is having his heart attack.)
  • CraigMooreOHMSSCraigMooreOHMSS Dublin, Ireland
    Posts: 8,009
    007HallY wrote: »
    Might be a bit too Mission Impossible though, no?

    Not if it's only for the hand off of the assignment. Literally a couple of minutes. And it doesn't need to be a staple or anything. I always liked the scene where M visits Bond's apartment in LALD, for example. Bond being sought out rather than called in suggests urgency.
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