The Craig Era has almost came full circle.

DieAnotherDay

From Casino Royale to Spectre, it almost feels like the Bond cycle is coming back on itself yet again, even after it seemed almost impossible due to the gruff nature of Daniel Craig and the realistic, gritty opening couple of movies.

Spectre's action was flat, its humour was shoddy and the arch of Blofeld was about as campy and overplayed as anything that's came before in the series. It seems evident that the Bond formula will always result in the movies going through a 'SERIOUS>CAMPY>SERIOUS>CAMPY' cycle, regardless of the cast and crew. Even though Casino Royale was initially praised for completely grounding the serious once more, with a more sober tone and a poker-faced story :v the Craig era seems to be heading for yet another 007 implosion in the near future. While I can't see anything as excessive as DAD or MR making an appearance, I definitely think a soft reboot will be required soon, once again.

Revolver66

But maybe Bond 25 will be the best Bond film yet

DieAnotherDay

Revolver66 wrote:

But maybe Bond 25 will be the best Bond film yet

) As long as it's fun then I'll be happy! I feel that's been lacking for a while now.

caractacus potts

if we want to study the patterns of history to predict the future, this will be only the third time a Bond actor has made it to his fifth film.
The two precedents being You Only Live Twice and For Your Eyes Only.
One threw out a perfectly good Fleming story and replaced it with the giant volcano set, spaceships, gadgets, and winking at the camera, after four close Fleming adaptations.
The other threw out all the giant stage sets, spaceships, spacelasers, laser cannons, submarine cars, hi-tech gondolas, indestructible henchmen, doubletaking pigeons etc, in favour of a close Fleming adaptation, after five films of little to no Fleming.

So, er, history teaches us it could go either way.

Guess we'll just have to wait and see what Boyle has in store for us.

superado

I think what's most interesting about the Craig Era is how his Bond has his own character arc and not one who was just plopped in, like the other actors, like the Bonds of RM and TD still grieving Tracy's death as experienced by GL's Bond. A big "but" however, is that it could have been perfect: The self-contained timeline of Craig's Bond does away with the continuity paradoxes common to comic book timelines, although this neat schematic was marred by the troublesome inclusions (1) of an M at Bond's genesis but who had already run the course with an older Bond; (2) same genesis paradox with the DB5, and; (3) a new Blofeld obtaining facial injuries that an older Blofeld already had when meeting an earlier Bond.

However the Craig Era ends, I have hope for the artistic doors that it opened, making it possible for the next Bond to also have his own self-contained continuity that can resume with the original novels and their timelines; I can dream, can't I?!? Imagine also adapting FYEO and OP/TLD into anthology films with self-contained segments, without having to use script-writing sleight-of-hand like what they did with FYEO (although I love the product, considering they adhered to the EON template).

And beyond that? Who knows, but creatively there is so much potential for today's audiences who are accustomed to seeing three variations of the Hulk and Spiderman in a short amount of time, as well as iterations of established franchises. Though they're setbacks in creativity, the upside is that there's better acceptance for new things in regard to the Bond universe...maybe even a faithful return to the original stories!

zaphod99

caractacus potts wrote:

if we want to study the patterns of history to predict the future, this will be only the third time a Bond actor has made it to his fifth film.
The two precedents being You Only Live Twice and For Your Eyes Only.
One threw out a perfectly good Fleming story and replaced it with the giant volcano set, spaceships, gadgets, and winking at the camera, after four close Fleming adaptations.
The other threw out all the giant stage sets, spaceships, spacelasers, laser cannons, submarine cars, hi-tech gondolas, indestructible henchmen, doubletaking pigeons etc, in favour of a close Fleming adaptation, after five films of little to no Fleming.

So, er, history teaches us it could go either way.

Guess we'll just have to wait and see what Boyle has in store for us.

Yep it's all to play for with 25. Patterns emerge after the fact and indeed 25 could go either way. My feeling and it isn't much more than that is that no one was particularly happy with how Spectre turned out, they got away with it in terms of box office but they are smart, and know they got lucky.Therefore the excesses will be avoided, the script (I hope ) will be tighter and we are in for a fine instalment, a leaner film, possibly less money to burn (literally) and a tighter focus.

Gassy Man

It's interesting because I would never have qualified any of Craig's Bonds as campy. Skyfall was dumb, derivative, and sentimental, but Spectre was no worse in terms of "camp." I'd argue that Silva was a broader and more flamboyant villain than Blofeld. The problem with Spectre, other than its miscalculations about humor (which I didn't find any worse than what Skyfall served up either) is that Mendes wants to invert everything, starting with big set piece sequences and ending with very small, intimate climaxes. He seems to think this reversal of formula is somehow reinventing the genre, but it results in his Bonds seeming anti-climactic, more evident in Spectre because the forced sentimentality of the brother issue just doesn't work.