No Time to Die (007)

Looks really great. I'll be seeing it in the theater for sure especially since this will be the end of the Daniel Craig era.

He's been a great Bond in my opinion.

Absolutely. IMHO, Craig and Connery are the best.

Craig and Connery are excellent but I have a soft spot for the sleazy suaveness of Roger Moore. He's my favorite.


Shame Craig's era is coming to an end. His films have been really good and he's a fantastic bond.

However, the one I really miss for some odd reason is Timothy Dalton. I thought he did a good job and needed a shot at more films.

Same here

+1 with everything you wrote.

Moore's Bonds also include my favortie theme songs, although the entire "The Living Daylights" (Dalton) soundtrack is good.

Don't get me started on Craig's Bond films....

He was indeed quite good as Bond but the fundamental problem was that mainstream audiences were not ready for a dark and serious Bond back in the late 80's so his two films did very poorly at the box office and the franchise took a subsequent 6 year break.

A woman 00.

People been calling for an African American to play 007 or a woman to play 007.

Looks like someone going to get what they have been asking for.

They gave Bond a 00 partner who is African and a woman.

I don't have any problem with it as long as it's not 007.

007 is written in the book as Caucasian.

All the other 00s can be martian for all I care as long as 007 James Bond stays true to it's literary character.

Moore certainly had that intangible on-screen gravitas as Bond but the films themselves haven't really aged well in my opinion due to the tongue-in-cheek vibe in many of the scenes. By today's standards they seem a bit campy.

It's possible that can happen but ultimately it all comes down to box office performance. If the producers cast a woman or another minority as Bond and the film flops, I guarantee you that the producers will re-evaluate. If the film ends up making a ton of money then their decision will be fully vindicated.

Forgot:

LGBT community has also been calling for Bond to be gay and to be played by a gay actor.

Oh... I actually thought the next Bond would be the new one. Very pleased to see that we get one more Craig.

Some of the scenes settings in the trailer look identical to scenes from Craig's previous 4 Bond films.

Sad to see Craig go, but it’s a pretty intense set of movies to make. They really stepped it up with his movies. The Connery movies are still fun due to the 60’s-ness of them, but Craig is definitely my favorite Bond. He’ll be a very hard act to follow.

That was my reaction when I first heard that suggestion several months ago. But then I got to thinking and decided that not only could it work, but it could be very useful and easily explained without making it a pc thing. Let me preface it by saying I stole it from "Casino Royale". But not the one starring Daniel Craig.

The scene:
Idris Elba (since that seems to be the most common name floated in the proposition) enters M's outer office and Moneypenny says, "Good morning, agent Smythe (or whatever). He's (or whatever) waiting for you. Go right in."
Agent Smythe enters the inner office and M stands and walks over, shakes his hand and says, "Good morning, 007." Smythe looks confused and says, "Sir?" M tells him to sit down and says, "What I'm about to tell you has the highest security. Only a few people in The Service know it."
"One hundred and xx years ago, during the Boer War, there was a spy who was absolutely amazing. Whatever the task, whatever the odds, he succeeded. (Insert some incredible mission here, preferably including Winston Churchill). A little over a decade later he once again was our most valuable agent during The Great War, as it was then known. He even recommended against the operation that became the Gallipoli fiasco. That agent's name was James Bond.
"When WWII broke out Churchill remembered this remarkable agent and sought him out. Unfortunately Bond declined the invitation, saying that time had worn heavily on him and he felt he would not be up to the task. So Churchill offered him a position as the controller of a special SOE squad, which he would personally train and oversee, to which he agreed. Sometimes these agents would work in teams, sometimes individually helping out local resistance fighters. At first they were referred to as "Bond's Boys", but that eventually evolved to just "Bond's". An unexpected side benefit of so many Bonds was that the Germans were completely confused by it all. Even more so when "Bond" kept showing up, no matter how many times they thought they'd captured one.
"After the war ended it was recognized by The Service that the seeming immortality of "Bond" could be a useful tool in the espionage intensive Cold War, and one of my predecessors suggested continuing the practice. He realized though that having multiple "Bonds" would not escape the Soviet Union's notice for long and so he decided to have just one. And as that one was...shall we say...unable to continue, the agent with the most distinguished service record would take on the mantle. And now that's you."

This would make it possible to cast whomever the producers want as Bond, regardless of race, gender, or nationality. Many of the British Empire's former colonies still have emotional ties, and Bond could be recruited from any of them. It would also explain Connery-Lazenby-Moore-Connery-Moore-Dalton-Brosnan-Craig...they've all been that "next man up". AND it would allow any kind of transitional send-off. "Bond" could go out in a blaze of glory (which is how I think they should start it if they did this, because it would lead to a real OH SH*T moment when "Bond" dies in the opening action sequence), or he could be the one to say, "Good morning, 007" when Smythe enters M's office and they explain that he's simply retired. So many possibilities.

And besides, they've already moved way beyond the books.



By today's standards only the most recent don't seem campy. Not to worry, though. In ten or twenty years they will.



At the risk of being called homophobic (and getting this moved to PWEC), then all straight characters should be played by straight actors.
Many gay actors, over the years, have played very non-gay characters. Rock Hudson immediately springs to mind. David Hyde Pierce (whose character of "Niles Crane" was insanely in love with Jane Leeves's "Daphne") and Dan Butler (whose character of "Bulldog" was insanely in lust with...well...nearly every female character on the show, EVER) were both on the show "Frazier", and Hyde Pierce won four Emmys for it.
I'm all for equality, but equality that doesn't go both ways is NOT equal.

That can work, vonBaur, if they reboot the 007 Franchise again.

But I am a Bond purist.

I read all the Fleming's books and the non Fleming's books, some of those were awful.

vonBaur,

I had the same idea as you years ago when they rebooted things with Judi Dench and John Cleese. If Q and M were just a title and when Daniel Craig had come on he was "new" just getting his 00 status and license to kill, why not make the name "James Bond" be a title rather than a name and that way anyone can play him. Your idea was much more elaborate with the backstory I like that. We should get together and pen a Bond movie haha.

Then again, like NoFlyBoy, it would totally go against the purity of the literary source.

v6,
boNes

Like I said, bones, most of my storyline comes from the late 1960's Casino Royale. It was the only Bond title that Cubby Broccoli did not have the movie rights to (I forget why). Whoever did have the rights decided to make a psychedelic "late 60's" spoof. There were actually four "James Bonds"; David Niven as the retired WWI original, a forgettable minor character representing a Connery-esque present-day Bond who only appeared briefly at the beginning and the end, Peter O'Toole as a civilian recruited to pretend to be Bond in the Baccarat game with leSchiff (played by Orson Welles), and (believe it or not) Woody Allen as Niven/Bond's nephew Jamie. It's worth seeing for a laugh, but definitely NOT your typical Bond film.

If it were down to me, I'd break the franchise up into two threads.

First thread would be the current film series. Let it grow and evolve, and changes can be made to basic concepts, so long as the core audience isn't needlessly alienated, and the films make money. The series has not been afraid to follow trends in the past, from dabbling in Blaxploitation, to jumping on the ol' Star Wars bandwagon, and has recovered each time.

For the second thread, i'd sign a deal with Netflix (or HBO or whoever) and make a series, with production values about level with Narcos or something of that nature. Call it James Bond: Classic, James Bond: Origins, or JB:007, or whatever. Each novel would be covered in sequence as published, as a self-contained movie or 2-3 part episodes, and adapted more or less as if the text of the novels were the rough draft, right down to the time period. So, you'd get Casino Royale in 1953-ish, in France, followed by Live and Let Die in '54. The short stories could be combined with a little writing cleverness, and The Spy Who Loved me could probably be dropped. Matthew Lewis is your Bond, Colin Firth is your M, Anna Chancellor is your Moneypenny. Could work.

Will be going to the theater for this one. One of the few movies that has come out lately that I will actually be looking forward to seeing too.


Wheels

I thought they were campy by the '90's lol. Still, Moore was my favourite Bond as he was the one i grew up with.

I may be wrong on this, but in this film, I believe it begins with Bond being retired. The actress playing the 00 may be 007, but it's because he has left the service and she is his replacement.

She is most certainly NOT the new James Bond. The character of Bond may one day be played by a transgender humpback whale, but I suspect it won't happen until Barbara Brocolli is no longer at the helm.

I didn't know this.

Oh man did I crush hard on Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith), the third of my childhood sweethearts (#1 Audrey Hepburn in the jungle plays with animals movie, #2 Ellie Walker [Elinor Donahue] the pharmacist). Kelly wins as she had that sexy 'chicks with guns' thing going, also Karate/Judo.

As an avid watcher of Charlie's Angels in the day, I don't remember this scene at all (not that I would know who Remington Steele was yet).

Remington Steele?

That's Timothy Dalton in a 1979 Season 4 episode of Charlie's Angels.

One of the 6 episodes Farrah was in after she quit the show a the end of the first season, breaking her 5 year contract commitment to the series.

As part of her being released early from her contract, she was required to return for 6 episodes.

Dalton play a To Catch A Thief type cat burglar and the Angels have to stop him from stealing a priceless diamond.

In the episode during the series' opening trademark briefing by Charlie over the speaker, he also mentioned the guy is like a James Bondian person.

Who would had thought Dalton will play Bond 8 years later.

What I meant was that I wouldn't have known it was Remington Steele because that character didn't exist yet.

Wrong Bond. Brosnan played RS, not Dalton.

Dalton also played the Errol Flynn-esque actor/Nazi spy in "The Rocketeer" after playing Bond, which was a fun tie-in. And he did "miss Hollywood".

Not sure how you got Remington Steele out of a clip of Timothy Dalton in an episode of Charlie's Angels.

Remington Steele was played by Pierce Brosnan.

Oh boy...don't I feel like a real dumbass.

Apologies...don't post drunk [metaphorically] on C pointers.

Time to revisit...

Brosnan was the worst bond in my opinion, but I loved him in Remington Steele. Maybe my prejudice is based of him being typecast as the PI--his humor and faux debonnaire behavior was far less sincere than Roger Moore who at least did not try and downplay who he was.

Brosnan was only good in Goldeneye, a script that was written for Dalton by Michael France, same guy who wrote the screenplay to Cliffhanger.

Tomorrow Never Dies was his best Bond film out of the remaining other 3 he starred in.

Why did the Bond producers never used Michael France again is beyond me.

After Tomorrow Never Dies was written by a different screenwriter, the 6 Bond films following it, 2 for Brosnan and 4 for Craig, were written by the same team of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade.

I think that's the reason why the Craig films, except for Casino Royale, are so tiring and repetitive.

Brosnan was a good Bond, unfortunately for him, he came in at a time when they were trying to reinvent the character and gave him horrible movies. Goldeneye was pretty good, but most were just plain crap.

After mainstream audiences rejected the dark and serious Timothy Dalton Bond, the producers really saw no choice but to go back to the tongue in cheek, less serious Bond when they hired Brosnan.

Fact is tho.. The best bond movie was True Lies....


Oh. Wait

I liked Timothy Dalton.

I think he is better than Moore, Brosnan and Craig.

Moore only had 2 good films: The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only.

Brosnan only had 1 good film: Goldeneye.

Craig also only had 1 good film: Casino Royale.

I also think the BEST Bond are still Connery and Lazenby.

Lazenby would have stuck around for more films but he bad-mouthed the producers a lot so he was dumped.

I'll concede that Quantum of Solace was average but Skyfall was fantastic and Spectre was very good.

+1

I also heard that his agent told him to quit because the character and role was outdated.