Amph 60+ Years of James Bond 007

The Gungan With the Golden Blaster. Come on.

 

The Man With the Golden Gungan works too

 

But not as well.

 

Ok...let me take a crack at this:

• Dr. No-sa
• From Otoh Gunga With Love
• GoldFloppyEar
  
• Thunderbooma
• You Only Live through sticking your tongue in a power coupling Twice.
  
• On Boss Nass' Bomdad General Service
  
• Clumsy Is Forever
• Live and Let Get Pasted
  
• The Gungan with the Golden Booma
  
• The Gungan who loved Queen Julia
  
• Ohma-D'unraker
  
• For Your Orange Eyes Only
• OctoGooberfish
• A View To A Little Bitty Accidentaes
• The Living Binklights
• Licence To a Life Debt
  
• OrangeEyes
  
• Tomorrow Never Dies Here, Only in the Core
  
• Naboo Is Not Enough
• Get Pasted Another Day
• Casino Otoh Gunga
  
• The Quantum of Sacred Place
  
• Jarfall
  
• Spectre of Representative Binks (The horror!)
  
• No Time To Get Pasted

 

The sooner they get going on a 'new' era of Bond and leave Craig behind the better. This more modern take on Bond within Craigs compartmentalised run has been depressing and unbelievably has been around for nearly 20 years now. And in that time we've only had 5 films! Killing him off was the ultimate insult.

 

I enjoyed it. I think it worked on its own terms and managed to provide a unique take on the franchise. I’d like them to try something new - I think they should take Bond back to his original era and do a period piece in the 1960’s - but I’d hardly describe the Craig era as an ‘insult.’

 

NO PERIOD PIECES PLEASE.

BOND LIVES IN THE PRESENT AND ALWAYS HAS!

Kinda what makes them special.
If you are doing a period piece and trying to be as authentic as possible with the novels do so in a tv series, do it in cartoon if you like and in-between actual 007 films.

Or read the books again. I feel like the films are a beast of their own now.

Watching the 007 films in order is like going through time viewing movie history and trends and the like.

This is why I hope the films go back to a consistent release date schedule if possible.

The Connery films were average releases of about a 1 per year.
Moores films were an average of 2 per year, same with Dalton and Brosnan.
Craig did 5 films in 15 years as the longest serving Bond for an average of 3 years per film.

I just really value the consistency I suppose. What do I know of course.

 

• Die Another Okie Day
• The Living Okie Daylights
• Moonheyblibber

 

While I think Craig's run is somewhat of a mixed bag on the whole, Casino Royale is the best entry in the franchise, and Skyfall is pretty damn good. Also, I'll No Time to Die credit for actually going through with killing him instead of some "he's officially declared dead, and goes off to live incognito" copout.

 

Bond has always reinvented itself. That’s what’s kept it alive. With endless modern spy stories on streaming and film, Bond needs to make itself distinctive again in order to survive as a theatrical experience. I think doing a run of films set in the 1960s would be attractive for an audience that’s seen everything set in the modern day. Using the aesthetic and tone of the Connery films would be different to anything out there at the moment, and would allow the franchise to move forward in a way which is distinctive from everything else on the market. Otherwise you do risk the franchise losing viewership, and potentially dying off.

 

Agreed to disagree. What does the 60s have that is worth sacrificing 60+ years of tradition.

Also then what? The 70s?

You are being to impatient cause 007 will return to the 60s and the past when time travel is invented. Duh.

You want to go back and 007 only goes forward. The world does not stop for nostalgias sake.

 

I think sticking with the formula is needlessly wedding yourself to tradition and could result in the franchise becoming stale and less distinctive (when the franchise is full of instances of tradition being broken, to great success).

Each Bond incarnation has its own distinctive style and tone. Period pieces for whoever the next Bond is wouldn’t be for nostalgias sake - it would be providing something new and distinctive when there are so many modern spy films out there. There’s very few films at the moment which are like the Connery era: the Cold War with heightened fantasy elements. They should lean into that. Then they can try something new for the next incarnation.

 

Sometimes they're more comedic, sometimes more serious , but they all have the same ingredients:
Exotic locales
Megalomaniacs
Henchmen with a gimmick
Epic chases
Gorgeous women
Fancy hardware
Action set-pieces
Quippy dialogue .

 

The (hopefully) hit theme song at the beginning of the film is a major part of what makes the Bond franchise special. It’s always different, but the film retains that specific Bond identity by having the gun barrel opening followed by the pre-credits mini-movie. The Craig films played about with this a little (though not too much), but I think going forward they’ll retain the basic concept because it works so well in giving the franchise a coherent feel. I dislike No Time to Die killing off Bond (and giving him a daughter) because it totally separates the Craig era from the major continuity, which I could still make work (kinda) using the old Marvel sliding-timescale (Spectre also messed that up, but it was so dull it was easy to ignore).

A book-faithful, period-set Moonraker would be good, but it won’t happen because part of the Bond franchise’s funding comes from product placement, and that’s more difficult in things set in the past.

I think you may have misread AndyLGR’s post - he didn’t describe the whole Craig era as an insult, he said that [NTTD] killing him off was the ultimate insult. Not the same thing.

 

Yeah, but he seemed to be saying that the entire era has been not worthwhile, with the death being the final insult in a long line of them. That’s how I read it at least.

 

The era started well with Casino Royale agreed and I did enjoy Skyfall. But looking back on it all now I don't like is the depressing way in much of it was handled, Bonds out of the service, Bonds a bit moody and does he even get many missions at all? I find the vast majority of it has no re-watch value, unlike the other Bond movies and I think instead of being a trendsetter it was following other franchises like Bourne, Batman or even Avengers. I get that they needed to do something different, but to kill him off means I have no desire to watch NTTD again and that alone renders his series of films just not enjoyable. I just feel they had nowhere else to go with it given the way in which the films were presented, they couldn't have repeated the ending of Spectre so the only way out was to kill him.

I'd also like to see some films set in an earlier era to shake it up a bit. It would also return us to an era where computers and mobile phones aren't the easy solution for things. A proper spy movie even. But I get the pros and cons for keeping Bond moving forward too. Its certainly going to be interesting to see what comes next and I also hope we get films more regularly.

 

Agree with the first two, hard pass on the latter...

 

The most reliable Bond site, IMO, basically confirming that there's no news: Nothing To See Here

Other thoughts on recent discussions in here:

My favorite Bond actor now is Daniel Craig, and some of his movies are my favorite Bond movies overall. However, I don't disagree with the idea of getting a little lighter with future movies. But not too much... a return to the cheesiness of some of the Brosnan and Moore movies wouldn't be a good idea, I think. Going too far that way with Brosnan was part of what led to the reboot with Casino Royale in the first place.

I do also think it would be good for future movies to not be as tied together in continuity as what ended up being the case with the Craig movies. Overall, I liked it there (with some parts being exceptions), but they should probably avoid that in the future... partially so they don't have to redo the origin story again as if this were a new Batman actor / series, for example. They could just go back to standalone stories, with each new Bond actor simply being a new actor playing the role.

On the "period pieces", idea, though: I don't like that. All Bond movies have basically been set in the current day of when they were made, with current world events either inspiring or at least being a backdrop to the stories. It works best that way for Bond, and it's not a very restrictive rule at all IMO.

 

I always felt they were set slightly in the future, they were always on the cutting-edge of technology etc.

 

I just figured it was the cool stuff our tax dollars pay for, but we don't know about yet.

 

Casino Royale is probably a more complete experience but out of all the Craig movies Skyfall feels the most like a Bond movie to me

 

How about a James Bond film set in the distant future, on a faraway planet, or maybe a moon in our system? Could alien beings perhaps be part of the conflict? Yes. Flying saucers? Yes. An Aston Martin flying saucer with lots of extra features? Of course. Alien Bond girls? Indeed.

 

I don't know the ages of people in here of their experiences of Bond, but its easy to look back and say Moore was too cheesy or too comedic even, but those films are pure popcorn entertainment, big movie events of their day and big movie events when they eventually came out on home video or had their TV premiere. Its easy now to forget how successful a lot of the films were back in the 60's and 70's and to a lesser degree in to the 80's..

The question is though would that formula work for modern cinema audiences? Maybe. Maybe not. Possibly James Bond as we know it (in the form of Connery and Moore) has had its day and we'll never see films like that again. But I think theres a medium ground (which Dalton achieved IMO) that can still give a solid action thriller. Craig was good in the role, but I think the films lost the entertainment factor and even some originality that the majority of the series has too and for me the homages back to the old films were cheap reminders of days gone by and unnecessary. I can see why they changed things up given what was happening in the world, but mainly I think the reception of DAD had more to do with that decision to change - in particular the final half of the film with the invisible car, the surfing CGI and the massive laser ending. Plus I believe they were being swayed by the origin films like Batman and Spiderman that had come out too.

The reason I think a period piece could work is that it changes the franchise up again, maybe freshens it up and theres no need to do another origin at all. But again if that first film doesn't work with audiences then they've painted themselves into a corner with the era. I remember hearing an interview with Michael Praed (Robin of Sherwood in the 80's TV show), he said he auditioned for Bond and they pitched The Living Daylights as being set in the 50's. So its something they've thought about in the past, so who knows.

 

Personally I found The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to be the best Bond movie yet this millenium. Hope they do something in that style when they restart, don't need to be set in the past but with a similar feeling.