James Bond 25 - Speculation and Anticipation Thread*

Very well, but I for one don't buy it.

 

Can't wait to ad Bond 25 to my Bond 50

Actually that is not true, I ditched the Bond 50 for the James Bond Collection which also included Spector.

Great Blu ray set, I got for $60 on Black Friday!

 

For once I'd like to see 006, not to mention 001-005.

 

If James Bond were simply a codename, why was Roger Moore mourning George Lazenby's wife and why was Sean Connery hunting down Blofeld for vengeance?
Heck, in License To Kill Felix Leiter tells his wife that Timothy Dalton was married "long ago".

 

These being the nods I was referring.

 

There is also the scene in OHMSS were Lazenby is in his office thinking he has resigned and packed up his desk and comes across old mementos from past movies such as Honey Ryder's knife from Dr.No, Red Grant's watch from FRWL and the underwater breathing device from Thunderball. Obviously put in the film to assure audiences in 1969 that Lazenby was meant to be the same character that Sean Connery was.

 

I think the orginal concept was that from Dr.No to Die Another Day was the first era of cinema James Bond

After five films with Sean Connery that appear to run in sequence -FRWL clearly follows after Dr.No who is mentioned as being killed by Bond by Kronsteen

later in OHMSS George Lazenby's Bond 'mark 2' duly has all the memorabilia of Connery's 'mark 1' Bond from Dr.No, From Russia With Love and Thunderball in his office desk drawer...while the little guy sweeping up is whistling 'Goldfinger' theme !

Connery's Bond is out to get Blofeld with a vengeance at the much more serious toned pre-titled sequence of DAF - 'welcome to Hell Blofeld' - presumably in revenge for Tracey's death as we learn Bond has been absent for some time from M ('we do function in your absence Double O Seven') ....before that film then goes all jokey...

in LALD Roger Moore's Bond 'mark 3' introduces Rosie to Quarrell jnr - presumbably son of Quarrell from Dr.No while he already knows Felix - whom Connery's Bond first meets in Dr.No

Rog's Bond is curt with Agent XXX in TSWLM when she mentions how he was married only once, wife killed....

...then in FYEO Rog's Bond puts flowers on Tracey's grave - which has the; 'we have all the time in the world' quote plus a date of her death in 1969 - and disposes of a crippled bald headed guy with a white cat ....down a chimney

In LTK from Felix we learn that Tim Dalton's Bond 'mark 4' indeed was;
'married once...but it was a long time ago'

Pierce Brosnan's Bond 'mark 5' has no direct series continuity links in his first three films other than clearly he is Bond in a later time after the Admiral's M has retired and the po faced 'evil queen of numbers' M has blundered into the series doubting the very existence of the device named 'Goldeneye'....yeah

however in the first Cinema Bond era celebrating film; 'Die Another Day' when Brosnan's Bond visits Q we do see the Connery era rocket back thruster pack from Thunderball - which still works ! - and Rog's era fake croc mini sub from Octopussy is on the wall in the background...

while in a nod to Thunderball Pierce uses the underwater breathing device...and in an acknowledgement to Connery's Never Say Never Again rival Bond film Brosnan even has the laser beam watch !

so I feel Die Another Day with all it's salutes to Cubby and Harry's Bond films, Cubby's Bond films, even NSNA film, and Ian Fleming's books - notably the early torture of Bond sequence plus the book Bond picks up etc - is the final film of the first linked Bond cinematic era running from Connery's Dr. No to Brosnan's Die Another Day

which allows for Daniel Craig's Bond 'mark 6' to then start things afresh and become the FIRST Bond of the second cinematic era for James Bond in the very first Ian Fleming book story duly updated somewhat of 'Casino Royale' - the book Cubby and Harry were unable to use back in the early sixties

DC's Bond duly meets Felix for the first time in CR which is o.k. if it's a fresh cinema era

Not sure what old po face female M is doing there still blundering away....but whatever

however - they then screw up everything with that 1964 era Goldfinger gadget Aston Martin car with ejector seat being in Bond's own garage in Skyfall....

so for the sake of a quick laugh Bond film continuity is forgotten

and after several films they finally get back to a male M in an identical office with a new Moneypenny and Q - all of whom are fine - just need a proper return of James Bond in decent film stories with strong worthy foes now

but today's Bond continuity is a bit skewed having veered from Quantum to SPECTRE - made Blofeld his sort of step brother, brought back the gadget laden Aston Martin car Connery had - and generally confused things !

there's Wade and Purvis for you....


best just get the second cinematic era Bond ('mark 7') on straightforward missions and go into new areas minus any pointless clumsy back references to the Cubby / Harry era now long passed I feel

 

Or to remind audiences that people in general are not very good at packing up their offices when they leave.

 

I don't know, I think it would be funny during one of those chase scenes where they create a ruckus running amok through an outdoor market place, passing a table, where a couple of people are seated behind newspapers that they are reading.

Then on of them can lower the newspaper and say, "did you hear something?" and he would be Roger Moore. Then, the other would lower his paper and have some comment. The other being Sean Connery.

 

Judi Dench is meant to be a different M in the Craig films than she is in the Brosnan ones.

I think it is meant to be the Aston Martin he wins in the card game in Casino Royale. Though it is rather preposterous to think he proceeded to ask Q-Branch to modify the car to have all those gadgets.

 

Yeah, that holds with the theory that the entire film series is a story about the same guy, though we have to accept that Casino Royale was young Bond's first adventure as a "Double-O" agent.

 

I think Craig's Bond is a new character from his predecessors; his is ex-SAS (as mentioned by Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale), whereas all the others were commanders in the Royal Navy... EON more or less started on a clean slate with The Craig, intentionally so...

 

EON changed Bond's DNA for Craig. They rewrote his past, changed his character
from the inside out, dumbed him down and started him on his first mission. He's
not the same character Fleming wrote, not the same character Connery, Moore,
Lazenby and Dalton played. Craig's Bond was a repudiation and a radical
contradiction in ways both subtle and obvious to the original. He's there mainly to
do stupid things, to be insulted and excoriated by M, to keep dropping his gun and
failing to protect her. Craig's Bond films are really about M; it's so hard to run an
intelligence agency with these idiot men running around the globe screwing things
up all the time.

 

Strange some feel Judi Dench's M is meant to be a different character from Brosnan to Craig Bond films

the character appears to be totally identical - the same miserable charmless incompetent distrusting of her top agent prissy 'annoyed mummy' type who gets everything wrong, can't spot a traitor right under her nose in film after film be it Alec Trevalen, Electra King, Miranda Frost, trusts the wrong types, makes inept decisions, fails to back up Bond - as she did Silva who came back bite her ass with his remaining teeth - and is forever making silly put downs of Bond and absurd comments as she "needs to know she can trust him" - after he's saved her and everyone in film after film (yawn)...

Wade and Purvis certainly did much for women with that character....!

 

That female M character really did Dame Judi Dench no favors either - besides being a woefully inept character to play Dame Judi was given very little to work with having to do 'prissy po faced' never changing expression and forever blundering away for almost all her duration in the role - with a brief moment of better ability getting a message out when held prisoner in The World is Not Enough

had Eon really wanted to do something positive for women re the M role maybe they could have got someone like say Helen Mirren in to play a more able female M who knows, trusts and fully backs up her best agent 007 to the hilt

Eon need to make the Bond leading lady figure stronger too, a real character not just stereotypical 'really his equal' bland if attractive slimline figure full of silly put down quips and smart ass 'attitude' etc...

I do like Eve Monepenny - who has some character - plus Ralph Fiennes M, the younger Q, and current Felix ALL of whom they should retain to back up the next Bond actor who hopefully will be a taller dark haired capable figure with some considerable confidence, character, and a cool sense of wry humor - a likeable figure whom women want and men wish they were...!!

 

For that matter, why are there multiple Blofelds and multiple Felix Leiters? Are those code names as well?

 

they blew continuity badly between the consecutive films You Only Live Twice and OHMSS as Bond had of course met Ernst Blofeld at Blofeld's volcano rocket base in You Only Live Twice....but then Blofeld doesn't at first recognise him posing as Sir Hillary Bray at Piz Gloria !

even allowing for the changes of actors and re Blofeld the type - only a bald head and white cat in common ! - the characters are supposed to be the same

they could easily have got around that by making Telly Savalas' Blofeld a equally evil cousin of Ernst from the Greek American side of the Blofeld clan..as Bond discovers he has tracked down the wrong Blofeld but still stumbled upon a dastardly cunning germ warfare based plan etc...

with Telly's Blofeld only later discovering who he really is entertaining as Sir Hillary when the blonde back up agent trailing Bond is captured and tortured to death..

as for Charles Gray's mis-casting as Blofeld next in Diamonds....er well best forgotten I say

Felix changes film to film - getting older, then younger, grayer then darker, credible then inept then credible, even turning black at least twice - but he's a faceless character in the series as an individual simply a key CIA backup buddy of Bond's there to support and occasionally ride shotgun for Bond

Jack Lord, David Hedison, Bernie Casey and the current guy Jeffrey Wright are the best Felix actors I feel

 

The problem was that Peter Hunt made a fairly accurate adaptation of the book and in the novel chronology Bond and Blofeld don't meet until OHMSS and obviously YOLT is the followup book. This was the problem of them taking bits and pieces of books and using them in varying films.

I guess with Charles Gray we are meant to believe he has already undergone a lot of cosmetic work thus the different appearance given he is having people getting made up to look like him. But maybe that is clutching at straws .

Felix in the original continuity is just a bit of a non-factor for the most part. Outside of a few of the films, he doesn't really add all that much to whichever film he is appearing. Some of them are really poor as well (Diamonds and Daylights Felix) I think they got it right with Jeffrey Wright but dropped the ball by not having him in either Skyfall or Spectre though I did like Bond mentions him in Spectre so they are obviously still in some form of contact. The most jarring re-cast of Felix from film to film was the two Dalton's where in Daylights the actor looks to be about the same age as Dalton yet in LTK when Heddison came back he looks a good 15 years older.

 

Very inventive.....
My fave is ‘ Vote Nice , You Willy ! ‘

https://mobile.twitter.com/MrDavidReed/status/1192366885578432512

 

I love that there is a Ron D duolology

 

Phoebe Mary Waller-Bridge co-wrote the screenplay for the 25th James Bond film

 

They should just keep remaking Thunderball

 

Doctor Who does this frequently - having clothing or items of previous Doctors pop up - in order to firmly establish continuity. They do it a lot more in the new series. The Doctor also will make offhand comments about previous adventures.

When you think about it, there are many parallels between the two....

 

They’ve got to the point where each film tries to distil the essence of Bond at that moment into a credible action movie. Near impossible but potentially great. Craig has been ill served by the massive delay between QoS and Skyfall and now between Spectre and No Time To Die imho.

 

Thus the somewhat infamous theory that James Bond is a timelord