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I base this vague assumption on absolutely no evidence whatsoever.
Have you seen different adaptations of Macbeth? Or any other classic where a main character dies? Just because it gets adapted again and the next version of the character starts out alive, it doesn't mean it becomes a fantasy, they're all separate versions, just as this is.
This is the story of Bond, retold again, just like it was with Hamlet or Robin Hood or Sherlock Holmes or whoever.
And just as a side note, James Bond really is a fantasy! But I know what you mean: you're talking about the genre.
For better or worse, this is kind of where Bond is at now. We got a conscious reboot with Craig as far back as 20 years ago, and look how many different comics, novels, and now video games there are of the character. We’re long past the days of the ‘original timeline’ of ‘62-02, and arguably there never was any such timeline anyway.
I suppose Bond in his cinematic form has consistent tropes (the Bond theme, gun barrel etc) which those other characters don’t quite have. But generally yeah, there’s a lot of room for reinventing the character.
I was thinking that Superman is sort of entering that realm now, with the latest movie being reasonably different in approach to all the previous ones, and yet using the Williams theme and similar title graphics. I think like the Bond theme, that kind of just is being seen as the general Superman theme now which scores lots of different versions and isn't going away.
The Saint is another one: different screen versions of the character over the years, but pretty much all using the same stick man logo and whistling theme by Charteris.
No, I've not seen that play as a movie.
But it's not a series of films based around one character is it? It's just one story. The comparison with James Bond movies doesn't really work for me.
I don't see why the number of episodes makes a difference. It’s a character adapted in a screen form more than once who dies. Even if you’ve seen it as a play it’s the same situation.
How about Robin Hood? Have you seen any different versions of that? He dies in the stories too, and his adventures are made up of different episodes. I'm sure there's other ones who have been adapted more than once.
What's Robin Hood? I dunno. Folklore made into books and movies I suppose.
They're all different to me.
I don't know what else to say on this one bud.
See, I don't watch super-hero movies. I like dramas. That's my problem.
Going back to the subject of the thread, I hope Amazon take a good look at the 'classic Bond' era of Movies (Sean and Rog), and take the elements from those films that worked. And show a Bond that enjoys his work too, ("Hilly, you old devil"). I worry that these days, a movie character will always need an inner reason to womanise and enjoy danger. I want a screen Bond that goes back to that (untrendy) male fantasy figure.
James Bond in the movies always used to be 'the man every man wanted to be'. I hope they go back to that. In the Craig era, he was often 'the man you're glad you're not'. I don't want that from a JB movie.
I don’t get how someone can’t have seen more than one version of the same material before. Romeo & Juliet isn’t about ‘multiverses’, it’s just people putting on productions of the same characters.
I know, none of this is complicated! We’re not dealing with multiverse stuff (that’s genuinely superhero and fantasy stuff - the next Bond isn’t going to jump in a portal and meet with Craig’s Bond). It’s just that this character - who’s been around for many decades - has to go on through various mediums. It’s never going to be set in the same time period, nor will he have the exact same likeness in visual media.
Stubborn fans digging in their heels 😉 I do understand not liking Bond’s death, but it’s something that was going to happen at some point in the various media this character is depicted in. Kingsley Amis had a short story planned where he was going to kill off an older Bond. I’m sure had that been done we’d have gotten a reboot of the literary Bond years down the line, and the story would be one of the many additions to the character. If anyone’s read ‘The Killing Zone’ which is an unofficially published Bond novel, Bond dies in that.
Agreed Bond 7 will get something from his predecessors.
And how old is Bond supposed to be by the time of the final Benson novel in the early-2000s?! He must be at least 70-odd. Double-0s are supposed to be over the hill at 45. And, since then of course, we've had CB and OHiMSS, which are very explicit reboots. And I'm not sure where the Bond of the Kim Sherwood books fits in (since I haven’t read them), so that's potentially a fourth literary incarnation.
So I guess you've got the Fleming timeline that was continued/expanded on by Amis, Horowitz, Faulks and Boyd (although even then you'd have contradictions in there - I'm pretty sure DMC doesn't acknowledge Colonel Sun, and it's hard seeing how it fits in with WAMTK. The Bond of Forever and A Day doesn't come across to me as a young version of the character Fleming wrote in CR. Does it matter?)
The Gardner and Benson books are sort of in a floating timeline. Very much like the earlier movies. If they're reboots they're soft ones. They have a connection to Fleming's novels, but I'm sorry, I refuse to acknowledge that Blast From The Past (which I consider on par with bad fan fiction) is a serious chapter in Bond's life. At the very least trying to fit it into any sort of timeline with Fleming creates contradictions, and like all of these example it's best just to take each story as it comes.
You've got Carte Blanche, which from what I remember is explicitly a new thing - Bond gets a specific date of birth and adjusted background, now being an Afghanistan veteran.
Then you've got OHiMSS where you get a further adjusted background/age for Bond, now being in his early to mid-30s and in 2023. Another fresh start.
Not read Sherwood so can't say if that's another one.
Oh, and we've also got a bunch of new wonderful books to come from IFP in the following years. Where does this Q spin-off factor into that? Or this YA thing with an old Bond teaching kids? No idea.
We've also got Young Bond. Do any of us legitimately see this as the childhood adventures of Fleming's character? Seems unlikely to me.
Meanwhile, we've got First Light coming out in the video game world. Another fresh start with a younger Bond and adjusted background.
The films have explicitly rebooted Bond once in 2006 and given that version of the character an entire life onscreen. Presumably now he'll be born again.
You've got a whole other medium to consider with comics too. Not my area though.
So yeah, lots of Bond stories there with different avenues to explore the character. That's what's great about the character - he's never been confined to one time period and has this ability to be reimagined in different eras as the man we know.
Fleming's was, basically, a floating timeline too. Bond remained in his mid to late-30s for the duration of the series (despite it taking place over a decade), and I seem to remember details about Bond's backstory, that had been established previously, were retconned later. But, like you said, it really doesn’t matter.
I mean, the point I'm making is, you could easily make the argument that this is also the stuff of science fiction or fantasy. A 'floating timeline' even sounds like something out of Dr. Who, but that's the way the Bond series (both on film, and in print) has functioned for most of its existence. And it came, simply, from Fleming's desire to keep Bond forever tied to the present, rather than having to age and die with his original era.
It's the same thing when it comes to the various versions of Bond and all these different continuities/universes/timelines or whatever you want to call them. It simply allows different writers to tell their own story and write their own version of the Bond character without being constrained by what came before (Bond's death is obviously a big constraint).
But we all have to have some kind of opinion on when something becomes silly in a Bond film. For some, it's the pigeon, or the Tarzan yell, or the brakes on the cop car with salt corrosion. . .
Well, I'm allowed to think killing Bond off, and then saying he's not dead in the same movie is daft. Yes, you've all laid out some very valid arguments for what you see as my idiotic hypocrisy. And yet, killing James Bond of remains, for me, the biggest monumental miss-step of the entire series.
And, as I always say. Brozza sniffed the shoe.
Yes, and I think it's one of those silly questions that'll never be answered: when was Fleming's Bond born? It can range from 1918 to 1921 going from his books, and you'd still find fundamental contradictions. That's not even counting whatever John Pearson said in his Bond biography.
Incidentally that's another 'timeline' - although I must admit I've never read it. From what I understand though it makes clear that Fleming's books are in fact sensationalised novels based on the real James Bond. So it adds this extra layer to Fleming that's quite fundamental. People also forget that Fleming himself mentioned that too in Bond's obituary, although I must say that some readers conveniently ignore it (I do, I think it's daft). Honestly, to me that's far more of a Russian doll and convoluted than the concept of Bond being rebooted after NTTD. But it shows you just how much weirdness and oddities Bond has in literature alone. It's all part of the weird and interesting, albeit different lives these sorts of characters have. It's just part of dealing with a character like Bond.
Agreed. As pointed out there are already many different versions of this character anyway. You can't really get away from it after a point.
Again, I can understand some people not liking the idea of Bond dying - to them it's a cardinal sin that should not be broken in a Bond adventure. I very much understand how that can taint the film for some in the short term, or lead them to go on forums and pretend they can't understand the very basic concept of a new movie, or how this will be so confusing to viewers it'll damage Bond films forever. It all comes down to how they think the decision was so wrong. In reality it won't matter. Personally, my preference is that Bond should always survive and ideally go off with the girl at the end of the film, although even that preference got shattered by the wonderful endings of CR and SF. I'm sure I have other preferences which will be reevaluated with further Bond movies (if rumours are to be believed we may well get a young Bond in the navy in Bond 26... maybe anyway. I don't think that'd work, but if it's a great Bond film, I may well change my tune).
As I always say, there aren't any rules here. There's no Gospel of Fleming or James Bond to defer to, and the series would likely be very different from that very first film if such documents were adhered to (we likely wouldn't have had Connery or his take on the character, for instance). Any storyteller can do what they see creatively fit for the character in their new work.
I wouldn't mind seeing the climbing accident dramatized, because we haven't seen it before unlike Batman, which seemed to show it in every other movie.
I don't know that I want to see a rebooted Vesper or Tracy, because both of those actresses were iconic and kind of irreplaceable.
On another level, I can just imagine they won't bother. It's probably easier just to tell the story they're telling. Obviously we have First Light which highlights the death of Bond's parents and adds to it, and it's certainly not uncharted territory.