I like the idea of the PTS being a big action sequence with Blofeld breaking out of jail. I was thinking about who could help break him out and how. I'm not sure at the moment how this is achieved but at the end of the PTS the guy who broke him out will pull his mask off and shout 'Where is she? Where have you taken her?!' The guy of course is Bond, who has been forced to break Blofeld out of jail in exchange for the kidnapped Madeleine.
If DC is done then I rather they forget about SPECTRE for a few films and then finally break Blofeld out of jail later on with a diff actor and then carry on as usual - over time we won't care about needing Waltz back for continuity sake and we all get a well needed break from this whole forced linked Quantum / SPECTRE organization from the current era
Seems a good idea. I'm sure Blofeld will return but they can recast the role and not link him to Craig era Bond.
If DC is done then I rather they forget about SPECTRE for a few films and then finally break Blofeld out of jail later on with a diff actor and then carry on as usual - over time we won't care about needing Waltz back for continuity sake and we all get a well needed break from this whole forced linked Quantum / SPECTRE organization from the current era
Seems a good idea. I'm sure Blofeld will return but they can recast the role and not link him to Craig era Bond.
Good idea! New Bond. New Blofeld. Pretend like all the foster brother stuff never happened.
If DC is done then I rather they forget about SPECTRE for a few films and then finally break Blofeld out of jail later on with a diff actor and then carry on as usual - over time we won't care about needing Waltz back for continuity sake and we all get a well needed break from this whole forced linked Quantum / SPECTRE organization from the current era
Seems a good idea. I'm sure Blofeld will return but they can recast the role and not link him to Craig era Bond.
Good idea! New Bond. New Blofeld. Pretend like all the foster brother stuff never happened.
Works for me. However if Craig comes back for one more I'd like to see Waltz back as Blofeld and the SPECTRE story continued but with a return to a bit more reality (for a Bond film at least) and most important.....a really good script. Message for EON: Bond films now seem to attract talented directors, now go out and pay some really good screenwriters to put together a great script for one of these directors to make. I'm ready to...gasp...sign a deal with the devil, Quentin Tarantino X-( because one thing that guy can do is write a helluva movie script. There I did it...open up that nasty can of worms again
If DC is done then I rather they forget about SPECTRE for a few films and then finally break Blofeld out of jail later on with a diff actor and then carry on as usual - over time we won't care about needing Waltz back for continuity sake and we all get a well needed break from this whole forced linked Quantum / SPECTRE organization from the current era
Seems a good idea. I'm sure Blofeld will return but they can recast the role and not link him to Craig era Bond.
Good idea! New Bond. New Blofeld. Pretend like all the foster brother stuff never happened.
Yeah. As much as I love Waltz as an actor, the writing of his Blofeld left a lot to be desired, and it's best to leave the Craig era as an experiment that didn't quite pay off, and start afresh with a new Bond and new Blofeld.
Crazy to think that in one film, we are introduced to SPECTRE, introduced to Blofeld, see how he got a scar while Bond is an ageing agent who quits the service just as Blofeld gets arrested. What a way to blow an opportunity to bring back the main antagonist of Bond's professional and personal life!
Film: Tomorrow Never Dies | Girl: Teresa di Vicenzo | Villain: Max Zorin | Car: Aston Martin Volante | Novel: You Only Live Twice | Bond: Sir Sean Connery
Do we really need Spectre to return? I was fine with Quantum as the new-age Spectre. I miss the stand-alone Bond adventures with singular villains. Skyfall was Craig's only Stand alone film before Spectre tried to them together.
Sorry if I'm being a bit too philosophical but...we all have our preferences; stand-alone adventures, direct sequels, grittier, more humor, less humor, stick to the formula, re-boot, soft re-boot and on and on. What it all comes down to is the execution. SPECTRE was for many a welcome return to more classic Bond....but while not a failure, wasn't a great film. Bottom line is, create a good script, hire a competent director who has a real feel and understanding for the material and either get DC back or find the right replacement along with a top flight villain and all will be good. There's no excuse to screw up a Bond film.......
I'd like SPECTRE in future Bond films, but I'd also like more Goldfingers, Scaramangas, Kristatoses and Carvers; missions that don't require too much backstory (Bond lost a lover in his past, maybe a sly reference to visiting a location from the previous film, etc.) But at the end of the day, HowardB is right: get a good script and get a good director.
Film: Tomorrow Never Dies | Girl: Teresa di Vicenzo | Villain: Max Zorin | Car: Aston Martin Volante | Novel: You Only Live Twice | Bond: Sir Sean Connery
It would be nice to get Bond back in the water, we haven't seen a good diving scene in quite a while! In the original books Bond was very comftable in the sea.
We could see Bond swimming undetected to a villains lair rescuing a fellow agent and then some survival escape and evasion. It would be great to see Bond using his training to survive without being caught by the villains tracking teams. Q could provide diving and survival gadgets in a field kit provided to bond in a type of bug out bag! -{ maybe the omega SMP 300 on a steel bracelet not a nato strap will be the next watch. Good dive watch pedigree! -{ -{
Bond hasn't dived in a long time. Neither has he wore a uniform or taken part in a raid. I miss this. all these elements can be used in one PTS!
Bond leads an SBS raid against an island fortress/oil tanker/ enormous luxury yacht to save a fellow 00- agent. The agent is saved, obviously. But he has been brainwashed by SPECTRE, leading to a TMWTGG plot later in the movie.
Bond hasn't dived in a long time. Neither has he wore a uniform or taken part in a raid. I miss this. all these elements can be used in one PTS!
Bond leads an SBS raid against an island fortress/oil tanker/ enormous luxury yacht to save a fellow 00- agent. The agent is saved, obviously. But he has been brainwashed by SPECTRE, leading to a TMWTGG plot later in the movie.
Sounds good to me.... but leading up to that I would like to see some cool cloak and dagger espionage (and a brutal hand to hand fights, maybe an assasination and a smaller scale shootout, and some gratuitous sex). -{
Could they make a remake of LALD? It could be a modernized version of the book, like they did with Casino Royale. It also has a big diving scene in it.
I think it would be great to have a straight forward Bond film with no psycho analyzing or peeking into the childhood of Bond. It worked great in Skyfall but its getting a bit tedious now. Tomorrow Never Dies was really the last straight forward Bond film I think.
I think it would be great to have a straight forward Bond film with no psycho analyzing or peeking into the childhood of Bond. It worked great in Skyfall but its getting a bit tedious now. Tomorrow Never Dies was really the last straight forward Bond film I think.
I am not sure why EON doesn't get Frederick Forsythe or Brad Thor to do the next screen treatment. I am sure that both would have enough clout with the studios to do this. EON is out of ideas.
"And if I told you that I'm from the Ministry of Defence?" James Bond - The Property of a Lady
Completely agree that we need another few straight forward Bond films, drop hints here and there to SPECTRE. If not, then the writers need to figure out a way to get Bond back into the service.
I'm thinking do something like Die Hard With a Vengeance; have Blofeld play some sort of game with Bond, demanding he is bought back out of retirement to play this mental and physical game of death with him.
I don't know about Brad Thor, but Forsyth has criticised Bond in the past and at nearly 80 is unlikely to get involved.
okay. Why not an adaptation of a Bill Granger or Donald Hamilton story?
Again, I'm unfamiliar with Granger but have read all of Hamilton http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/46144/the-60s-james-bond-rivals-1-matt-helm/ and I don't believe his plots are usable in a James Bond context, as the styles are quite distinct (the films of his work all but abandoned the books' plots).
My Bond 25 treatment starts as a vaguely hinted at follow up to SPECTRE. Blofeld is in custody, and Bond is retired. The pre title sequence is the hijacking of a pair of warheads as the Royal Navy is transporting them out of Scotland. (Post Brexit, Scotland secedes from the UK, and the Trident program is scrapped.)
Post title sequence, intelligence suggests the new villain is ex SPECTRE. The Minister of Defense reads M the riot act because they are now in hot water with NATO, and he's kept other intelligence agencies in the dark as to SPECTRE's existence. He urges M to recover the nukes before this blows up in their faces.
M goes to question Blofeld, but he will only talk to Bond. M is forced to lure him back to MI-6 on temporary assignment with the condition that there will be no field work. So Bond visits Blofeld in prison to get info, Hannibal Lecter style.
Turns out the main baddie (Kladivo) is the only member of SPECTRE to be disavowed, and the attempt to assassinate him was a failure. Maybe Blofeld is even a little frightened of him. The only person Blofeld can think of who might know his whereabouts is his sister in Moscow.
008 is assigned to go to the Bolshoi Ballet to make contact with her. But because NATO is nervous about the missing nukes, he will be working with the CIA. Enter Felix Leiter. Bond is to accompany them and quarterback the meet remotely from a satellite MI-6 office.
Once at the ballet, it's your typical, Bondian formal event... everyone sipping Champagne in black tie. Except for Bond, who's stuck in a control room on a headset. 008 and Felix wait for the curtain to make contact with the sister, but everything goes to hell when Kladivo's men descend on the performance. They abduct the sister right off the stage and riddle the place with gunfire. It's chaos as 008 and Felix leap into a counter attack to rescue her.
Bond listens helplessly as 008 is killed and Felix is forced to pursue the baddies alone. Field restriction be damned, he bolts from the office, and joins Felix in the fray. After a lengthy and destructive car chase through Moscow, Bond and Leiter manage to take down a few henchmen and recover the sister. They take her to a local MI-6 safe house to question her. She had no idea about the nukes, but her brother is scheduled to meet with potential business parters in St. Petersburg in two days. Bond reassures her she's safe and assigns a team of agents to guard her.
This is where it goes from Craig era follow up back to episodic Bond. Back at MI-6, he is fully reinstated by M, given his assignment, and sent to Q-Branch for gadgets. Bond and Leiter are off to St. Petersburg to track Kladivo and learn what he's up to. Turns out the Russian government has brokered this meeting for Kladivo. Bond moves closer and deploys wireless audio transmitters from Q to listen in on the meeting. Turns out the potential business partners are Iranian militants who want to buy the stolen nukes from Kladivo.
The next fifteen minutes is a tension building three pronged abduction sequence. Shift change at Wakefield Prison... we recognize some of the new guards as Kladivo's men from the pre-title sequence. Vans with tinted windows surround the sister's safe house. Kladivo dispatches some of his men to patrol the woods near the meeting. The guards protecting the sister are taken down, and she is tossed into a van that speeds off. The baddies stage a massive prison break where they toss a bag over Blofeld's head and make off with him. Bond is discovered and subdued by a henchman in the forest.
Bond wakes up in Kladivo's lair, where he is forced to sit down to dinner (Dr. No style). Blofeld and the sister are also there, and Kladivo's evil plot becomes clear.
He intends to sell the nukes to the Iranians and frame Blofeld as the architect of the sale. The threat of a nuclear Iran will force the US to war, and SPECTRE will be exposed to a global super power that will stop at nothing to neutralize them as a threat. Kladivo gets his revenge on Blofeld, and he stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars on war profiteering and counter intelligence.
Bond has to escape and call in the calvary to stop the sale and take down Kladivo. Also the recovery of Blofeld presents a lot of fun opportunities. Bond is forced to keep him alive in the chaotic firefight in Act III.
Ultimately the raid is successful. Nukes are recovered, Kladivo is killed, and the sister is saved. However, in all the madness Blofeld manages to escape. The ending brings the franchise back to formula and sets up potential encounters with Blofeld in the future.
Next time the villains have an elaborate remote complex or underground bunker, don't let it get destroyed by a lazy, inexplicable blow everything up fuel valve - have it instead get demolished by a traditional pitched battle between hundreds of extras for goodness sake!
Lone sabotage by Bond and a female compatriot is getting old and stupid (and in GoldenEye the plot contrivance of the Cuban dish complex taken down by sole sabotage was salvaged by the humour and tension of Boris fiddling with the exploding pen followed up by the antagonistic chemistry between 007 and 006).
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
good thing about the villains HQs I the old films is they got explored, over the course of several scenes
we the audience got to see the internal architecture, the different uses of the different rooms, some reference point to just how big the operation must be
and even though much is left unseen, what we do see stimulates the imagination to guess at what else could be going on in those other unseen rooms
starting immediately in Dr No, we saw at least a half dozen different rooms in his evil lair, and what their function was
in the Spy Who Loved Me we got both the Liparus (freighter) and Atlantis (Stromberg's offices) that served this purpose, and both were explored in depth throughout the film
in their begrudging gesture to give us back villains HQs in the last two films, all they've done is show us a quick shot of some place that looks cool, then blowed it up almost immediately and returned the action to boring old London for the climax of the film
in their begrudging gesture to give us back villains HQs in the last two films, all they've done is show us a quick shot of some place that looks cool, then blowed it up almost immediately and returned the action to boring old London for the climax of the film
Hmmm, Blofeld's lair was believable and pretty functional, with the main sin being it was lazily blown up as a throw away gag (ie. with the terribly installed fuel tanks and implied self-destruct), and we've then got a kinda tacked on London finale.
Here's my drawing of the Moroccan lair:
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
Comments
Seems a good idea. I'm sure Blofeld will return but they can recast the role and not link him to Craig era Bond.
Good idea! New Bond. New Blofeld. Pretend like all the foster brother stuff never happened.
Works for me. However if Craig comes back for one more I'd like to see Waltz back as Blofeld and the SPECTRE story continued but with a return to a bit more reality (for a Bond film at least) and most important.....a really good script. Message for EON: Bond films now seem to attract talented directors, now go out and pay some really good screenwriters to put together a great script for one of these directors to make. I'm ready to...gasp...sign a deal with the devil, Quentin Tarantino X-( because one thing that guy can do is write a helluva movie script. There I did it...open up that nasty can of worms again
I really hope that we're not going to do that with every new Bond. I'm afraid that rabbit hole was opened in 2006 and won't be closed up again.
Actor.
Yeah. As much as I love Waltz as an actor, the writing of his Blofeld left a lot to be desired, and it's best to leave the Craig era as an experiment that didn't quite pay off, and start afresh with a new Bond and new Blofeld.
Crazy to think that in one film, we are introduced to SPECTRE, introduced to Blofeld, see how he got a scar while Bond is an ageing agent who quits the service just as Blofeld gets arrested. What a way to blow an opportunity to bring back the main antagonist of Bond's professional and personal life!
We could see Bond swimming undetected to a villains lair rescuing a fellow agent and then some survival escape and evasion. It would be great to see Bond using his training to survive without being caught by the villains tracking teams. Q could provide diving and survival gadgets in a field kit provided to bond in a type of bug out bag! -{ maybe the omega SMP 300 on a steel bracelet not a nato strap will be the next watch. Good dive watch pedigree! -{ -{
Bond leads an SBS raid against an island fortress/oil tanker/ enormous luxury yacht to save a fellow 00- agent. The agent is saved, obviously. But he has been brainwashed by SPECTRE, leading to a TMWTGG plot later in the movie.
Sounds good to me.... but leading up to that I would like to see some cool cloak and dagger espionage (and a brutal hand to hand fights, maybe an assasination and a smaller scale shootout, and some gratuitous sex).
I am not sure why EON doesn't get Frederick Forsythe or Brad Thor to do the next screen treatment. I am sure that both would have enough clout with the studios to do this. EON is out of ideas.
okay. Why not an adaptation of a Bill Granger or Donald Hamilton story?
I'm thinking do something like Die Hard With a Vengeance; have Blofeld play some sort of game with Bond, demanding he is bought back out of retirement to play this mental and physical game of death with him.
Again, I'm unfamiliar with Granger but have read all of Hamilton http://www.ajb007.co.uk/topic/46144/the-60s-james-bond-rivals-1-matt-helm/ and I don't believe his plots are usable in a James Bond context, as the styles are quite distinct (the films of his work all but abandoned the books' plots).
Post title sequence, intelligence suggests the new villain is ex SPECTRE. The Minister of Defense reads M the riot act because they are now in hot water with NATO, and he's kept other intelligence agencies in the dark as to SPECTRE's existence. He urges M to recover the nukes before this blows up in their faces.
M goes to question Blofeld, but he will only talk to Bond. M is forced to lure him back to MI-6 on temporary assignment with the condition that there will be no field work. So Bond visits Blofeld in prison to get info, Hannibal Lecter style.
Turns out the main baddie (Kladivo) is the only member of SPECTRE to be disavowed, and the attempt to assassinate him was a failure. Maybe Blofeld is even a little frightened of him. The only person Blofeld can think of who might know his whereabouts is his sister in Moscow.
008 is assigned to go to the Bolshoi Ballet to make contact with her. But because NATO is nervous about the missing nukes, he will be working with the CIA. Enter Felix Leiter. Bond is to accompany them and quarterback the meet remotely from a satellite MI-6 office.
Once at the ballet, it's your typical, Bondian formal event... everyone sipping Champagne in black tie. Except for Bond, who's stuck in a control room on a headset. 008 and Felix wait for the curtain to make contact with the sister, but everything goes to hell when Kladivo's men descend on the performance. They abduct the sister right off the stage and riddle the place with gunfire. It's chaos as 008 and Felix leap into a counter attack to rescue her.
Bond listens helplessly as 008 is killed and Felix is forced to pursue the baddies alone. Field restriction be damned, he bolts from the office, and joins Felix in the fray. After a lengthy and destructive car chase through Moscow, Bond and Leiter manage to take down a few henchmen and recover the sister. They take her to a local MI-6 safe house to question her. She had no idea about the nukes, but her brother is scheduled to meet with potential business parters in St. Petersburg in two days. Bond reassures her she's safe and assigns a team of agents to guard her.
This is where it goes from Craig era follow up back to episodic Bond. Back at MI-6, he is fully reinstated by M, given his assignment, and sent to Q-Branch for gadgets. Bond and Leiter are off to St. Petersburg to track Kladivo and learn what he's up to. Turns out the Russian government has brokered this meeting for Kladivo. Bond moves closer and deploys wireless audio transmitters from Q to listen in on the meeting. Turns out the potential business partners are Iranian militants who want to buy the stolen nukes from Kladivo.
The next fifteen minutes is a tension building three pronged abduction sequence. Shift change at Wakefield Prison... we recognize some of the new guards as Kladivo's men from the pre-title sequence. Vans with tinted windows surround the sister's safe house. Kladivo dispatches some of his men to patrol the woods near the meeting. The guards protecting the sister are taken down, and she is tossed into a van that speeds off. The baddies stage a massive prison break where they toss a bag over Blofeld's head and make off with him. Bond is discovered and subdued by a henchman in the forest.
Bond wakes up in Kladivo's lair, where he is forced to sit down to dinner (Dr. No style). Blofeld and the sister are also there, and Kladivo's evil plot becomes clear.
He intends to sell the nukes to the Iranians and frame Blofeld as the architect of the sale. The threat of a nuclear Iran will force the US to war, and SPECTRE will be exposed to a global super power that will stop at nothing to neutralize them as a threat. Kladivo gets his revenge on Blofeld, and he stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars on war profiteering and counter intelligence.
Bond has to escape and call in the calvary to stop the sale and take down Kladivo. Also the recovery of Blofeld presents a lot of fun opportunities. Bond is forced to keep him alive in the chaotic firefight in Act III.
Ultimately the raid is successful. Nukes are recovered, Kladivo is killed, and the sister is saved. However, in all the madness Blofeld manages to escape. The ending brings the franchise back to formula and sets up potential encounters with Blofeld in the future.
Hear hear!
Lone sabotage by Bond and a female compatriot is getting old and stupid (and in GoldenEye the plot contrivance of the Cuban dish complex taken down by sole sabotage was salvaged by the humour and tension of Boris fiddling with the exploding pen followed up by the antagonistic chemistry between 007 and 006).
we the audience got to see the internal architecture, the different uses of the different rooms, some reference point to just how big the operation must be
and even though much is left unseen, what we do see stimulates the imagination to guess at what else could be going on in those other unseen rooms
starting immediately in Dr No, we saw at least a half dozen different rooms in his evil lair, and what their function was
in the Spy Who Loved Me we got both the Liparus (freighter) and Atlantis (Stromberg's offices) that served this purpose, and both were explored in depth throughout the film
in their begrudging gesture to give us back villains HQs in the last two films, all they've done is show us a quick shot of some place that looks cool, then blowed it up almost immediately and returned the action to boring old London for the climax of the film
Hmmm, Blofeld's lair was believable and pretty functional, with the main sin being it was lazily blown up as a throw away gag (ie. with the terribly installed fuel tanks and implied self-destruct), and we've then got a kinda tacked on London finale.
Here's my drawing of the Moroccan lair: