The unseen missions - ever wonder?
Bond fan from Oz
Posts: 88MI6 Agent
First of all I searched if this topic already existed; found nothing.
Does anyone ever wonder about Bond's missions we haven't seen?
For example, he was certainly off on other assignments between the GE PTS, and the actual start of the film 9 years later.
After a mission, Bond would either rest for a couple of days, or get back to work the next day. He wouldn't want to idly stay at home, and neither would M.
Does anyone ever wonder about Bond's missions we haven't seen?
For example, he was certainly off on other assignments between the GE PTS, and the actual start of the film 9 years later.
After a mission, Bond would either rest for a couple of days, or get back to work the next day. He wouldn't want to idly stay at home, and neither would M.
Comments
Fleming tells us that in between missions Bond is bored and restless. Filling his day and with reading and commenting on mundane intelligence reports. He 'sharpens the saw' by being "thrown around by that damned Commando chap" and the firing range. It's then that he tends to drink too much and sink into maudlin depression. I love the idea of missions we don't see and treasure the occasional references to them and would love 25 to give us a snippet in the PTS.
Bond's missions between missions might make for a good 6 episode miniseries.
Smaller scale stuff, more dialog, less running around.
Sorta like the 1954 Casino Royale, or the proposed tv series that got turned into FYEO.
It would only work if Craig did it. The tone would be so different, audiences would not connect the two versions if it were anybody else. Just tell him, CraigDude, if you want to take four years off between movies, then you will have to do a six-episode miniseries halfway in between.
I bet you MooreBond did spend all that time between missions doing his reading, like a good boy. How else does he fill braincells with trivia about rare plants on the Tiperare? If he was in my class at high school everybody would have hated him. CraigBond on the other hand does not read. We saw how he productively uses his leisure time at the beginning of Skyfall.
The circle opens up to:
Bond is in the Central Perk Cafe in New York. He's ordered a coffee, which Gunther serves him. Also present are Sandy Frinck, Tyler Endicott, Tommy and Sharon Rowland, and Jackie Childs.
Seated nearby at a table, having lunch, are an attractive young couple, whose names are Jack Dawson and Rose Dewitt Bukater. They are talking about this upcoming cruise they are about to take soon, on a luxury liner headed for Southampton.
Seated at another table are another couple named Pumpkin and Honey Bunny. They are talking about starting a family, since they went straight.
Gunther has made some new Friends.
Suddenly, in burst C.W. Moss' grandson, Thomas Gabriel's illegitimate daughter, Poppy Adams' twin sister, Penny, and Debbie Ocean. They all pull out guns and are determined to rob the place. Debbie yells at the top of her voice,
"DON'T ANYBODY MOVE, IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIVES!!!"
HOWEVER
In burst Frank Regan, Luke Hobbs, J.T. Lancer, Marge Gunderson, Judy Hicks and Jack Travern. It turns out they had them under surveillance for some time, and were waiting for them to make their move. Bond JUST HAPPENS TO BE their inside contact.
The authorities enter and arrest the would-be perpetrators. Bond walks up to his fellow law enforcers. Frank says, "Good work, James."
They are about to be led away, when Debbie says, without skipping a beat,
"What if we could give you Cipher??"
The law enforcement officials are VERY INTERESTED indeed.
ROLL OPENING CREDITS
You know it would be cool if Pumpkin and HoneyBunny were in the background of more diner sequences in more films.
Caractacus, I know you know movies but do you know movies?
Titanic I do know, but against my will, same with The Matrix actually. Did not retain their characters' names over the long run.
I'm quite sure I have no idea what The Fate of the Furious is
Everything after Tokyo Drift sucks.
filled with fun and laughs. -{ they don't make a lot
Of sense, but they are crazy
Yeah, but except it isn't even. A well planned-out epic story of how Bond tracks down and defeats Quantum (or if they want, call it Spectre) over several movies, and develops his character, gets over Vesper, etc etc., COULD have been great. But instead we got something completely different (Skyfall) forced within what turned out to be a retroactive trilogy, and the Austin Powers half-brother bullshit in Spectre, which retroactively takes away the whole "more serious" approach set up before it.
Edit: And yet I still love the Craig era. But in my view they threw away so much potential...
"- That is something to be afraid of."
"- That is something to be afraid of."
I think you are right in as much as It would/could have been good instead of a clumsy half arsed Retcon. I choose to ignore it and not let it tarnish the preceeding 3.
M: "Jealous husbands, outraged chefs, humiliated tailors . . . the list is endless."
DN - Bond's Baretta jammed during his last mission so the change to the Walther. In the novels the Baretta jams in FRWL and Bond gets the Walther PPK at the start of DN but as the books are filmed out of sequence we can only guess at the previous mission.
LALD - the Rome assignment where he acquired Miss Caruso
TSWLM - what was he doing in Berngarten
MR - returning from Lagos were presumably he was on a mission
GE - as already pointed out must have had a few missions in the 9 years before encountering 006 again
TND - his time in Zurich when he met Paris
CR/QOS to SF - when he went from rookie 00 to hard bitten almost burned out veteran
-{
Also in Dr No (film) in M's office we find out he's been a 00 for 10 years.
"Do you expect me to talk? "No Mister Bond I expect you to die"
presumably there was an unseen ConneryBond version of the Casino Royale caper, that'd account for a few days, but ten years is a long long time.
especially since he was averaging one epic adventure per year in those days, too.
"Do you expect me to talk? "No Mister Bond I expect you to die"
I gotta dig out my copy of Pearson's 007 Biography. He does describe several missions preceding Casino Royale, written as 10pg mini-adventures. The two kills that earned Bond 00 status were during WWII, so even in the books' timeline there's at least seven years worth of missions preceding the first Fleming volume.
That's something that people missed about the Casino Royale novel when the 2006 film came out. They thought that because the film showed Bond on his first mission that the novel also showed Bond on his first mission. And EON used it being the first novel as an excuse to make the film into an origin story. It really messed up the film for me. I think that one of those earlier unseen missions would have been a better origin story.
(...as long as they don't involve previously unmentioned foster brothers).