Plot themes for future films
Number24
NorwayPosts: 22,433MI6 Agent
This is a thread for posting ideas for issues/problems that can be the nuculus of a Bond film. What!, you may think. Bond movies aren`t issue movies! Bond movies are escapism and fantasy, not social-issue-of-the-week TV movies . Right you are. But GE is about the end of the cold war and the fall of The Soviet Union. LTK is about the rise of latin american drug lords. TND is about the manipulative power of monopolized mass media. Bond should allways be escapism, but it helps if the villan has an intersting agenda. Here are a few of my own ideas:
-The rising power of private seurity firms/mercenary armies. Novadays the people who guard banks, heads of states, oil wells, military bases, IT companies, research facilities and even Inteligence agency headquarters are not policemen or soldiers in national armies. They work
for private companies. Even a lot of the fighting in wars is done by private companies. Imagine a company that is a mix of Blackwater, Halliburton and the firm that guards your office building at night. Now imagine that company is evil, perhaps controlled by Quantum...
- The new frontier in the north. The ice caps are melting. This opens up new trade routes in the north-west passage past Canada and Alaska
and the north-east passage north of Russia. New, shorter shiplanes between Europe, America and Asia. Also, natural resources in the Artic region become much easier to access. Rare and valuable metals and energy resources are more er less up for grabs. Just this winter Norway found two major oil fields in the Barents sea and the Russian Stockman gas field is huge! What if the villan joined this race, perhaps playing world powers like Russia, USA and Norway
) to get his cold hands on the prize? Not to mention - won`t a snowmobile chase in a Bond move be awsome!
Any other ideas ?
-The rising power of private seurity firms/mercenary armies. Novadays the people who guard banks, heads of states, oil wells, military bases, IT companies, research facilities and even Inteligence agency headquarters are not policemen or soldiers in national armies. They work
for private companies. Even a lot of the fighting in wars is done by private companies. Imagine a company that is a mix of Blackwater, Halliburton and the firm that guards your office building at night. Now imagine that company is evil, perhaps controlled by Quantum...
- The new frontier in the north. The ice caps are melting. This opens up new trade routes in the north-west passage past Canada and Alaska
and the north-east passage north of Russia. New, shorter shiplanes between Europe, America and Asia. Also, natural resources in the Artic region become much easier to access. Rare and valuable metals and energy resources are more er less up for grabs. Just this winter Norway found two major oil fields in the Barents sea and the Russian Stockman gas field is huge! What if the villan joined this race, perhaps playing world powers like Russia, USA and Norway
) to get his cold hands on the prize? Not to mention - won`t a snowmobile chase in a Bond move be awsome!Any other ideas ?
Comments
I like the private security firm idea, seeing as Quantum seems to be comprised by numerous influential people it would be cool to see the head, have control of this massive legitimate armed force. We might even get a good old fashioned climactic battle, but a little more realistic naturally.
As for my ideas:
- Cyber-terrorism and black-hat hacking could make a really contemporary and threatening issue. I know some of that stuff is covered in GE but that really wasn't the main focus, plus this time it would be more than a bank job. Quantum could be threatening to hack MI6, CIA, FBI, British, American government and corporate mainframes with the threat of either stealing secrets for sale, extortion etc. or to simply release them all publicly ensuring the worlds greatest powers lose their entire database, not to mention to compromise every mission, every agent and every bit of secret research of these nations. This makes the stakes especially high for Bond, with his identity at risk, without it being another vendetta of sorts.
- The great revolutions of the people. The villain (once again, possibly Quantum) could want to use the political upheaval in the world to their advantage to seize weakened nations and secure assets, such as was attempted in Bolivia with the water, for their cause. Examples being the nations involved in the Arab Spring revolutions and others like them, Russia under Putin at the present time is very volatile and has a beautifully Bond feel to it or the villain could even try to destabilise Western society at it's heart, America, while it is weakened. Launching systematic strikes against the government and exploiting the disillusioned and aggressive masses as legitimisation.
These next two are bare-bones issues that could be dealt with rather than themes I have thought up a plot for:
- The treat of bio-warfare. Sorta came and went with OHMSS, but it's still very relevant. The recent weaponising of the Bird Flu... need I say more.
- A militarized and aggressive new North Korean government. If we learned anything from DAD it's that North Korea has possibilities in Bond and now with the sudden change in leadership the stability of the country is now even more uncertain than it was before.
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"I should spend the money quickly, Commander Bond," he said.
Then he turn away from the table and walked swiftly out of the room.
It has to be said that Julian Assange really is a Bond villain. Not the main one imo, but the sort that a Craig or Dalton Bond is assigned to protect and oversee in the shady, first third of a Living Daylights-style movie, a sort of creepy character not without some redeeming features but whom Bond has to reluctantly rub along with, to protect against Russian forces who want him offed or something.
MI 4 is an example of a film which is really very Bondian but imo a bit hollow. To me it illustrates the perils of a Bond film doing its usual thing these days. What's more, with places in Iran and N Korea, the Bond guys can't go out there and film, I know you can subsitute but it's not the same, esp as we all know it's really Clacton on Sea or some place.
The problem with stuff like bird flu is that it isn't very cinematic, you can't show it and so really you get the same sort of set up and action as with any other Bond film, potentially.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
-Casino Royale, Ian Fleming
Gold prices have gone through the roof in recent years so it would make sense. I even read an artical recently about an American company who are salvaging a wreck off scotland which they think contains gold.
This story ide sent my mind ra .... strolling. An organisation like this would need a powerfull computer to store and process the information. This computer would need to be cooled, powered and secret. Why not solve those problems inn one stroke? They could hide this super computer under a glacier. The glacier would hide and cool it, the computer wouldn`t show up on a satelite images showing heat. The computer would have to be in the rock directly under the glacier, otherwise the glascier would melt away or the glacier would scrape away the computer. The power source would be a hydroplant running on the melting water from the glacier. Building thepower plant would have been a good way to hide the construction of the computer room. The computer room would b a classic Ken Adam-style set, obviously. Destroying the dam would also be a dramatic way of disabeling the computer. Infiltrating the computer room could be done by ropng down a crack in the glacier andinto a service tunnel under it. I have imagined a fight inside a glacier involving ropes, ice axes and the spiked shoes they use (the name ecapes me) when walking on glaciers.
This makes two things very clear: one - All the snow and winter around here is getting to me. Two - I have far too much free time.
Villain's Plan for the next one. :007)
But here is an example of how China can be a plot theme:
The villan should be a business tycoon, the richest man in China with close contacts in politics. He is also secretly the Dragon Head of the largest triad inthe world. As a part of the initiation cermony of the triads the new member wows to "Overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming." Quing being the last dynasty on the Imperial throne of China and Ming the dynasty before them. The Quing were Manshurian and not Han-Chinese. Unlike most triad members, the villan takes this seriously and literally. He believes he is a direct decendant of the Ming emperors and wants to use his power to take control of China with himself at the head. To do this he has to control or dispose of the current leadership and destabilize China to discredt the current regime and create a "need" for a Strong Man. Payoffs, assasinations, terrorism, border disputes etc. would be masterminded to meet his goal. Bond will have to stop this of cource, probably together with a beautiful Chinese woman.