James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

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cdnchris
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Re: Spectre (Sam Mendes, 2015)

#401 Post by cdnchris » Wed Feb 24, 2016 2:09 pm

Agreed. I'm sure Craig has aired doubts to family and friends, but he hasn't said anything official and if the producers came to him with not only money, but a way for him to get other passion projects going I'm sure he'd do it (like Connery).

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Big Ben
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James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#402 Post by Big Ben » Sun Jul 09, 2017 11:53 pm


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Re: New Films in Production, v.2

#403 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Jul 10, 2017 3:24 pm

Hopefully this means Sam Mendes returns too. And I'm guessing it would be the final one for both of them.

Surprised Adele signed on so quick too, isn't she having voice problems?

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Re: New Films in Production, v.2

#404 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Tue Jul 11, 2017 11:11 am

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Hopefully this means Sam Mendes returns too. And I'm guessing it would be the final one for both of them.

Surprised Adele signed on so quick too, isn't she having voice problems?
Christopher Nolan apparently?

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Ribs
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Re: New Films in Production, v.2

#405 Post by Ribs » Tue Jul 11, 2017 11:24 am

Isn't Nolan locked in to WB, who literally only care about prestige projects from him and Eastwood exclusively as one of their cores like Lego or DC? I wasn't under the impression that WB was one of the studios acticely involved in the Bond distribution chat (I think it'll probably be Sony again but Fox is very interested). I think it won't be Mendes either, but back to a weird other choice like Tamahori was (or maybe, if the Foreigner does well enough to free him from movie jail, they'd bring Campbell back?)

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Brian C
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Re: New Films in Production, v.2

#406 Post by Brian C » Tue Jul 11, 2017 1:30 pm

Kenneth Branagh would probably be available.

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Re: New Films in Production, v.2

#407 Post by MoonlitKnight » Wed Jul 12, 2017 12:48 am

It would frankly feel weird to potentially bring back Blofeld (the only Bond villain to not die at the end of the previous film -- in both the 1.0 and this 2.0 incarnation) and/or Madeline (the only Bond heroine with whom 007 genuinely falls in love to not die at the end of the previous film) without Craig. I can't but feel they need to bring closure to one - if not both - of these narratives before giving the role to another actor.

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James Bond 25 (Not Lynne Ramsay, 2019)

#408 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Jul 24, 2017 11:51 pm

It's finally official, Daniel Craig is coming back as James Bond. This, the 25th installment in the series (and without a director officially attached), will land in theaters November 2019.


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Re: New Films in Production, v.2

#410 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Jul 26, 2017 3:14 pm

I would really prefer that Villeneuve not get pulled any further into the studio franchise swamp than he already has with Blade Runner and Dune; he's made some of the best mid-budget, original studio features of the last several years (including one that may have spawned a franchise of its own), so let's just let him keep doing that, please.

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#411 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Wed Aug 16, 2017 10:31 am

Craig finally confirmed he's returning to the role on Colbert last night.

Werewolf by Night

Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#412 Post by Werewolf by Night » Wed Aug 16, 2017 10:43 am

Every Bond actor should get a chance to play the character as far older than Fleming intended.

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#413 Post by MoonlitKnight » Fri Aug 18, 2017 12:41 pm

Werewolf by Night wrote:Every Bond actor should get a chance to play the character as far older than Fleming intended.
Given that Moore arguably overstayed his welcome in the role (he might've enjoyed a slightly better reputation had he stuck to his guns and called it quits after "For Your Eyes Only"), why not? I think perhaps every actor cast in the role should receive a maximum 5-movie deal.

I still don't understand all the praise "Skyfall" gets in spite of the fact it has the exact same basic premise as "GoldenEye" (i.e. a former MI-6 agent is left for dead in a past mission only to re-emerge years later to exact revenge on both MI-6 and Bond himself), while "Spectre"- which I preferred, though still not as good as "Casino Royale" - is still met with general indifference. :-s

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#414 Post by knives » Fri Aug 18, 2017 12:58 pm

Deakins is better than van Hoytema.

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#415 Post by who is bobby dylan » Fri Aug 18, 2017 4:14 pm

still don't understand all the praise "Skyfall" gets in spite of the fact it has the exact same basic premise as "GoldenEye" (i.e. a former MI-6 agent is left for dead in a past mission only to re-emerge years later to exact revenge on both MI-6 and Bond himself), while "Spectre"- which I preferred, though still not as good as "Casino Royale" - is still met with general indifference.
I agree with you on Spectre vs. Skyfall. I thought Skyfall borrowed too much from The Dark Knight to diminishing returns. Spectre isn't great and has a lot of problems itself, but I enjoyed the sort of generic tone it was going after, which in my opinion sort of works for the character, rather than trying to make Bond dark.

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#416 Post by matrixschmatrix » Fri Aug 18, 2017 5:23 pm

Skyfall shares the Mi6 agent gone rogue element with Goldeneye, but the motivations for the split are different- and thus the implications of what that means are different. Alec, in Goldeneye was implicitly planning to betray them all along- thus the whole thing with the Lienz Cossacks. He had been planning to fake his death in the cold open, he was just mad at Bond personally because Bond set the timers short and got him (Trevelyan) injured in doing so. There's some Cold War ghost elements to the story, too, but it's mostly personal between Bond and an old friend who betrayed him.

Silva, on the other hand, was a loyal agent whom Bond hadn't met- his conflict is not with Bond, but with M and with Mi6 as a whole. He feels that espionage turned him into what he was, and that the cause for which he was fighting (and in service of which he was made monstrous) was a hollow one. It's thematically a pretty different feel, for all that the actual ending doesn't really follow up on the conflict (and the movie throws away all the slow character development that Craig's Bond went through over the first two movies, and makes him more brutal and callously misogynistic than ever.) I don't like the movie very much (though Knives is right that it's absolutely stunning looking, maybe the best Bond movie ever made visually) but I don't think it really has the same plot, nor the same feel as Goldeneye- particularly since Brosnan was at the time a new, freshfaced Bond, and Craig was already playing him burned out and weary.

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MoonlitKnight
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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#417 Post by MoonlitKnight » Fri Aug 18, 2017 8:10 pm

To be fair, I said premise, not plot. But "GoldenEye" was the first Bond movie I ever saw in its entirety, so that's probably why it sticks out more for me.

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#418 Post by Robespierre » Fri Aug 18, 2017 9:41 pm

What the series does best is ignore the events of the previous film so this could very well be a viable approach to the story and tone of B25. We'll just have to wait and see.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#419 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Aug 18, 2017 9:53 pm

How many Bond films don't share their premise with another Bond film, tho'?

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#420 Post by Ribs » Fri Aug 18, 2017 9:55 pm

Even the Brosnan films themselves couldn't help rehashing the James-Bond-but-evil makes a big laser satellite!

A problem the franchise has had since Goldeneye is the films are still all about reconciling James Bond with the Cold War having ended, instead of just doing straightforward interpretations on the character they've engaged in that pop psychology deconstruction take (which has only grown since Dark Knight's release).

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#421 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Aug 18, 2017 10:32 pm

Well, the first three Craig Bonds can't be deconstructing Bond since they're about Bond becoming Bond, which is technically the opposite (construction?). So unlike the Brosnans, which often tried to express a larger theoretical argument about the films themselves, the Craig Bonds are basic, old-fashioned character development, and do it better than most action films. They are probably the closest this series has ever come to having a human being at its centre.

And count me among those who think Casino Royale and Skyfall among the very best of the series.

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#422 Post by Ribs » Fri Aug 18, 2017 10:42 pm

But it's not starting from scratch - they're films absolutely wrestling with the established character as pop culture icon, oftentimes subverting and changing elements of it but absolutely informed by that. Having jokes like him not asking for it shaken not stirred in Casino Royale attest to that. And they're not really a cohesive arc as some argue - they all end with it being "well, now he's James Bond." The Cold War subtext has mostly gone away but there's still that general "do we really need a James Bond?" thread that's hung over the franchise since the Brosnan era, and Spectre absolutely continued. Spectre actually very cutely introduced that machine that drills away his feelings and memories as Waltz's torture mechanism, which I thought was a rather fun poke at the fact that this is a character that regularly has his entire history totally erased and ignored at the drop of a hat to varying degrees each film, and Craig's Bond more than any other desperately wants to lose that baggage.

I just think it's about time they do a film where the operating interest isn't just "let's dive into why we like James Bond." But considering it'll be the 25th film and probably Craig's last and if rumors are to be believed maybe even the Broccolis' last they may feel the need for another somewhat indulgent victory lap a la Bond 20.

(I greatly admire all the Craig films, but I'm somebody who's legit sobbed at the end of Diamonds are Forever so I'm possibly a little bit forgiving)

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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#423 Post by Big Ben » Fri Aug 18, 2017 11:01 pm

Bond is also struggling in some capacity to not appear a certain way to modern audiences. The original Fleming novels were incredibly sexist for instance. While they have removed a lot of that certain aspects of the James Bond are very much tied to the past. Speaking personally I'd like to see a new film looking at past Bond and examining what made him great and what did not and applying that to a film. I realize Craig's Bond films are significantly more self aware than the butt slapping Sean Connery days but I don't think a coat of fresh paint would do any harm. I realize that might not be a popular opinion but I love Bond films and would like to see them survive.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#424 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Aug 18, 2017 11:15 pm

Ribs wrote:But it's not starting from scratch - they're films absolutely wrestling with the established character as pop culture icon, oftentimes subverting and changing elements of it but absolutely informed by that. Having jokes like him not asking for it shaken not stirred in Casino Royale attest to that. And they're not really a cohesive arc as some argue - they all end with it being "well, now he's James Bond." The Cold War subtext has mostly gone away but there's still that general "do we really need a James Bond?" thread that's hung over the franchise since the Brosnan era, and Spectre absolutely continued. Spectre actually very cutely introduced that machine that drills away his feelings and memories as Waltz's torture mechanism, which I thought was a rather fun poke at the fact that this is a character that regularly has his entire history totally erased and ignored at the drop of a hat to varying degrees each film, and Craig's Bond more than any other desperately wants to lose that baggage.
The references amount mainly to a few cheeky in-jokes. Nothing substantial. Otherwise, there is no questioning whether Bond is relevant because, well, that would be absurd to do at the very start of his career, before he's James Bond. It would be absurd for any movie to question its own premise for existing. With a younger Bond coming into his own a couple decades after the end of the cold war, the films seem largely unaware of all that and content to remain so.

Each film ends with him being more James Bond than when he started, until everything caps off in Spectre with Moneypenny, the traditional M, and the M16 office all in place, and with Bond having destroyed the last towering remnant of his past and resolved his mother issues (introduced in Casino Royale in Vesper Lynd's dressing down on the train, and resolved against its funhouse-mirror complement in Silva) allowing him to be fully the Bond we know/knew.

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Ribs
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Re: James Bond Franchise (1962-∞)

#425 Post by Ribs » Fri Aug 18, 2017 11:37 pm

I disagree. The characters themselves aren't questioning if Bond is relevant, but it's the situation of the films themselves and how the character is presented - which, as is beyond their control, will always be informed by and in conversation with the previous iterations of the character. Obviously Casino Royale - the book and the film - is, from beginning to end, entirely building to that final(ish) line, "the bitch is dead," which codifies James Bond as the vaguely sexist, deeply afraid of feeling brute that Fleming imagined him. The act of constructing to reach that point where we watch the film and understand how he as a character gets there and that we understand how this brings him to become James Bond and earn his theme tune as the film ends is itself an act of deconstruction, attempting to reconcile this as a key stepping stone for the character as we've seen him in every film before it; there's not really much of a way to really build new ideas on top of properties like James Bond or Batman, but merely to repurpose and call into question those that are already there. I don't think this is a take on the character that was created by the Brosnan era - to greater or lesser degrees, Bond is being deconstructed as pop icon as soon as You Only Live Twice, but not every film from that point on felt the need to address that issue as a driving focus.

And, again, this is totally a semantics point, but for me personally there's absolutely no way to view Casino Royale - Quantum of Solace - Skyfall as anything resembling a cohesive arc for the character. I get it, that at the end he's finally become the classic every-Bond, unburdened by his history, but I think that's exactly what the ending of Casino Royale tries to establish in more radical, less gaudy fashion. I love Skyfall dearly, I think I agree it does explore very similar terrain to Goldeneye but the crucial difference of Javier Bardem's character not really resembling Bond whatsoever in style or appearance completely changes the context of what any of it means.

(Your post confused me for a moment as you used the wrong film's name, Spectre in place of Skyfall)

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