But let's assume Cruise fails in cloning himself. Will he kill off Ethan Hunt? No-one says they're going to watch the new Ethan Hunt movie, do they? They go to watch Tom Cruise perform great stunts. If Cruise can't do his stunts anymore, why not go out in a blaze of fi.... why not leave in a memorable way? Then someone else becomes the lead in the franchise (Rebecca Ferguson?) while Cruise devides his time between producing the series and actually acting in other movies.
its strange Mission Impossible should now be so synonymous with one single Hollywood personality, when its the revival of a teevee series with an ensemble cast that replaced characters from season to season.
True. Sooner or later they'll be faced with a problem that's not completely different from when Connery left the Bond series for the first time, but only in the sense of the big star leaving his trademark role. As you point out MI isn't originally about one hero.
Do the Mission: Impossible! films really have that level of fan interest, though? I know people who watch them because they are big budget action movies, but I don't know anyone who is slavishly devoted to them -- and this is from someone who loves the TV series.
I picked this up from another forum [ahem! apologies] and I guess some of you will have read it in The Guardian anyway. I wasn't sure where to post it but as the article is about Bond's demise I felt it could settle in this thread quite nicely.
David Mitchell is a clever wordsmith and an intelligent comedian and commentator. He went up in my estimation when he nabbed Victoria Coren for his wife [ah, dude, so lucky...] I was heartened to read his take on NTTD as much of what he says rings true for me and because he's so much better at articulating his thoughts, he writes it much, much better than I ever could.
We'll written and thoughtful. But I'm surprised he assumes future Bond movies has to be prequels. I'm surprised he and many others don't realise or understand that a new Bond timeline started with CR and another can start in Bond26.
Yes, that does seem a bit short-sighted on his part, but knowing how his mind works comedically [wow, that's a word ! no spell check] I expect he's simply making the point to enforce his argument for comedic effect rather than approaching the subject broadly, as we do here on AJB.
I share his pain and the disturbing ending of NTTD, but I don't agree at all with his vision. Once again, when I think about Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton and Brosnan, I just don't imagine their Bond will be one day "destroyed" by a nuclear missile. I rewatched GE yesterday, and I realized how Brosnan's Bond is quite different from Craig's in almost everything. This man is not supposed to be waiting for death, simply because he wasn't written this way. Cubby would never have allowed it...
@Number24 you're right about the new timeline for Bond 26. Craig only is an iteration of the character. The death of Craig's Bond does not mean the death of Bond from a global point of view. The character existed before Craig, he will exist after...I don't understand the issue with asking the audience to forget the Craig era which is nothing but a series within the series with a beginning , a middle and an end.
James Bond at the end of the film will kill his big love or her daughter if he touches them or gets near them because of the nanites in his Blood, and no one in the film mentions the Nanites are shielded against EMPs. So, Bond has an EMP watch that kills all machines.
Am I the only one that has put two and two together? He sets the watch off, kills the nanites (the Poison) and they can all drive off into the sunset.
A plot hole even James Bond could drive through without damaging the Car.
One more thing others may have said the end of the film "James Bond Will return." Not 007, James Bond.
Asp9mmOver the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,541MI6 Agent
The EMP is just localised though. That’s why he has to hold it very close to whatever he’s using it on. The things are in his bloodstream throughout his entire body. So that wouldn’t work. Besides he’s shot up badly as well. So not such a big plot hole at all.
And James Bond is 007. They’ve never said 007 will return at the end of a film. It’s always James Bond Will Return.
I often heard many people from the global audience saying "I'm going to see the new 007 movie", which is complete nonsense considering 007 is nothing but a number that can be used for different agents while James Bond is a real identity belonging to an orphan whose origins are explicitly described in the novel OHMSS.
But the global audience seems to be much less sensitive to that point, some people even think it would be great to continue the franchise having Nomi or another character taking Bond's place, only keeping the 007 status as a legacy from the character we grew up with...
Those people deserve being banned from watching movies forever 🤣
Having just watched this on DVD for the first time since I saw this at the Cinema ,Still great film!!!!!!
Im a lot cooler about the ending,, what we see seen on screen could easily be survived by the James bond character the only death is a metaphorical death of the Denial Crag Bond.
So how could the James bond character survive?
He was standing on a blast proof structure which the missiles entered through the open doors
bond was hit a an indirect secondary blast which blow him free.
Asp9mmOver the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,541MI6 Agent
edited December 2021
“Could easily have survived”. Really🤣. The first few missiles we see take him out were followed up by dozens more seconds later. No way could he have survived. Even given the magic of film lunacy with people surviving catastrophic deaths, this one isn’t one of them.
The fact that people continue to be in denial, actually trying to rationalize Bond surviving that blast after seeing a missile literally vaporize him, after Craig, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson all emphatically stating that the plan was to have him die all along just highlights how flawed a concept it is and why the filmmakers should have just steered clear of that gimmick in the first place. I can't help but wonder if, as has been often rumored, this is why Danny Boyle left the project over "creative differences".
Personally, I'm relieved Craig's "I'm moody and miserable and have perpetual trust issues and can never find happiness" iteration has been finally killed off. Good riddance. During his watch I've had to endure the death of Mathis, the death of M, the death of Blofeld, the death of Leiter, the dismantling of SPECTRE (after waiting decades to reclaim the rights no less), the dumbing of replacement M and Bond's own serial resignations from the service. Hopefully EON has gotten this out of their system and next time we'll get someone who doesn't place himself above the role and is actually capable of having a little bit of fun with it.
While I think the chances of Craig (or Bond in this timeline) returning are slim, no one knows at this point what will happen next. No one's in denial. The producers have simply left enough wiggle room in the ending to make it possible, in much the same way Connery's bullet-ridden corpse in You Only Live Twice seemingly made it impossible he survived. (And that film never even bothered to offer an explanation other than it was a hoax).
I wouldn't take anything anyone at Eon or even Craig are saying right now as the gospel for any number of reasons, not the least of it being that these people are literally paid to lie to us one way or the other. They can always change their mind later, too. The only thing for certain is that any decisions about the next Bond film will be about commerce, not art.
So, let's look at the situation. Despite the pandemic, the film did surprisingly strong box office. No doubt, it would have done better had times been different (and had they not bungled getting it out sooner). They had a big gimmick on top of Craig's popularity as Bond: The end of the character. It's the sort of thing even people who don't like Bond might pay to see. What's the only thing that might top it? The return of Craig to the role.
Here's the business side of things: The Craig Bond films have set the bar significantly higher than in decades. They haven't done this sort of business since the 1960s. Expectations for the next Bond movie will be incredibly high, not just from audiences but from investors. A new Bond actor brings with him significant expectations for film performance -- that's going to be a lot of pressure for anyone in the role, even an established action star. And by taking so long to produce No Time to Die (as well as the four-year gap between Quantum of Solace and Skyfall), Eon missed a fair amount of potential revenue. If two more Bond films have been produced during those times, at a conservative estimate of $750 million in tickets sales for each, that's another $1.5 billion in revenue.
Two or three years from now, assuming the gang that can't shoot straight drags its feet, the parties involved may decide one more trip to the well is necessary. Throw enough money at Craig and he might change his tune, especially if his career is in a slump. Even if it isn't, he might have cooled off and realize he's not getting any younger, and if they roll up a dump truck to his mansion and drop tens of millions on his lawn, why not. The ending of No Time to Die makes it possible to go that route. If we'd seen Bond rendered limb from limb, I'd feel differently. But we see a screen go white, then black, then a distance shot. It can be done.
Craig lobbied for his tenure to end with Bond's death from almost the start. We saw Bond getting vaporised at the end of NTTD, not at the end of the PTS. This is clearly not a "Bond is dead" gimmick in the style of FRWL, TB or YOLT. I think it's not unreasonable to say believing Craig will return as James Bond is being in denial.
I agree with TonyDP. EON fought for the rights for use of SPECTRE for many years, only to squander it on two movies. They should've stayed with Quantum for the rest of Craig's tenure and let Bond7 re-introduce SPECTRE.
in the half hour Bond was exploring the villains headquarters. did anybody notice if there was a fridge? cuz I saw this other movie once where the character survived an atomic explosion by hiding in a fridge.
number twofour said:
EON fought for the rights for use of SPECTRE for many years, only to squander it on two movies.
they did squander it, and Blofeld. But maybe their goal wasnt so much to get the rights to the words SPECTRE and Blofeld, I think their main priority was to stop somebody else from making a rival James Bond movie.
Asp9mmOver the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,541MI6 Agent
Of course it's unreasonable if we don’t actually know anything. Unless someone on this board is Barbara Broccoli, Daniel Craig, or Michael G. Wilson and has signed an ironclad contact that Bond is dead and Craig will never return, nobody here knows. It’s all just speculation, no matter how sure people are of themselves or how often they say it or how many join in on the chorus. Not too long ago, there were people just as sure Bond and Blofeld did not know each other in childhood or that Blofeld would be the one who wins in the end.
We know Craig has said many times he won't play Bond anymore. We also know missiles exploded on Bond at the end of the movie. That's knowing something. It's not completely impossible Craig'll return as Bond, but it's highly unlikely. So unlikely I find it reasonable to call beliving Craig will return to the role denial.
Absolutely. Blofeld made it his life’s purpose to ruin Bond, which he does ably. Bond loses the three women he cares about the most, two to death and one to his apparent own, lives for years in loneliness, is denied a family, orphans his own child, and commits suicide. Meanwhile, if Bond is dead, as you say, everything just marches on without him.
Comments
But let's assume Cruise fails in cloning himself. Will he kill off Ethan Hunt? No-one says they're going to watch the new Ethan Hunt movie, do they? They go to watch Tom Cruise perform great stunts. If Cruise can't do his stunts anymore, why not go out in a blaze of fi.... why not leave in a memorable way? Then someone else becomes the lead in the franchise (Rebecca Ferguson?) while Cruise devides his time between producing the series and actually acting in other movies.
its strange Mission Impossible should now be so synonymous with one single Hollywood personality, when its the revival of a teevee series with an ensemble cast that replaced characters from season to season.
True. Sooner or later they'll be faced with a problem that's not completely different from when Connery left the Bond series for the first time, but only in the sense of the big star leaving his trademark role. As you point out MI isn't originally about one hero.
I just realised the flaw in my theory that Bond26 will start a third timeline for James Bond. You only live twice.
Do the Mission: Impossible! films really have that level of fan interest, though? I know people who watch them because they are big budget action movies, but I don't know anyone who is slavishly devoted to them -- and this is from someone who loves the TV series.
I agree.
I picked this up from another forum [ahem! apologies] and I guess some of you will have read it in The Guardian anyway. I wasn't sure where to post it but as the article is about Bond's demise I felt it could settle in this thread quite nicely.
David Mitchell is a clever wordsmith and an intelligent comedian and commentator. He went up in my estimation when he nabbed Victoria Coren for his wife [ah, dude, so lucky...] I was heartened to read his take on NTTD as much of what he says rings true for me and because he's so much better at articulating his thoughts, he writes it much, much better than I ever could.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/10/ah-mr-bond-i-was-expecting-you-to-entertain-me
We'll written and thoughtful. But I'm surprised he assumes future Bond movies has to be prequels. I'm surprised he and many others don't realise or understand that a new Bond timeline started with CR and another can start in Bond26.
Yes, that does seem a bit short-sighted on his part, but knowing how his mind works comedically [wow, that's a word ! no spell check] I expect he's simply making the point to enforce his argument for comedic effect rather than approaching the subject broadly, as we do here on AJB.
I share his pain and the disturbing ending of NTTD, but I don't agree at all with his vision. Once again, when I think about Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton and Brosnan, I just don't imagine their Bond will be one day "destroyed" by a nuclear missile. I rewatched GE yesterday, and I realized how Brosnan's Bond is quite different from Craig's in almost everything. This man is not supposed to be waiting for death, simply because he wasn't written this way. Cubby would never have allowed it...
@Number24 you're right about the new timeline for Bond 26. Craig only is an iteration of the character. The death of Craig's Bond does not mean the death of Bond from a global point of view. The character existed before Craig, he will exist after...I don't understand the issue with asking the audience to forget the Craig era which is nothing but a series within the series with a beginning , a middle and an end.
Why do some people seem to block with that ?
James Bond at the end of the film will kill his big love or her daughter if he touches them or gets near them because of the nanites in his Blood, and no one in the film mentions the Nanites are shielded against EMPs. So, Bond has an EMP watch that kills all machines.
Am I the only one that has put two and two together? He sets the watch off, kills the nanites (the Poison) and they can all drive off into the sunset.
A plot hole even James Bond could drive through without damaging the Car.
One more thing others may have said the end of the film "James Bond Will return." Not 007, James Bond.
The EMP is just localised though. That’s why he has to hold it very close to whatever he’s using it on. The things are in his bloodstream throughout his entire body. So that wouldn’t work. Besides he’s shot up badly as well. So not such a big plot hole at all.
And James Bond is 007. They’ve never said 007 will return at the end of a film. It’s always James Bond Will Return.
I often heard many people from the global audience saying "I'm going to see the new 007 movie", which is complete nonsense considering 007 is nothing but a number that can be used for different agents while James Bond is a real identity belonging to an orphan whose origins are explicitly described in the novel OHMSS.
But the global audience seems to be much less sensitive to that point, some people even think it would be great to continue the franchise having Nomi or another character taking Bond's place, only keeping the 007 status as a legacy from the character we grew up with...
Those people deserve being banned from watching movies forever 🤣
I think JB survived, they facked his funeral and his wake so that his enemies will believe he is dead.
Having just watched this on DVD for the first time since I saw this at the Cinema ,Still great film!!!!!!
Im a lot cooler about the ending,, what we see seen on screen could easily be survived by the James bond character the only death is a metaphorical death of the Denial Crag Bond.
So how could the James bond character survive?
He was standing on a blast proof structure which the missiles entered through the open doors
bond was hit a an indirect secondary blast which blow him free.
“Could easily have survived”. Really🤣. The first few missiles we see take him out were followed up by dozens more seconds later. No way could he have survived. Even given the magic of film lunacy with people surviving catastrophic deaths, this one isn’t one of them.
The fact that people continue to be in denial, actually trying to rationalize Bond surviving that blast after seeing a missile literally vaporize him, after Craig, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson all emphatically stating that the plan was to have him die all along just highlights how flawed a concept it is and why the filmmakers should have just steered clear of that gimmick in the first place. I can't help but wonder if, as has been often rumored, this is why Danny Boyle left the project over "creative differences".
Personally, I'm relieved Craig's "I'm moody and miserable and have perpetual trust issues and can never find happiness" iteration has been finally killed off. Good riddance. During his watch I've had to endure the death of Mathis, the death of M, the death of Blofeld, the death of Leiter, the dismantling of SPECTRE (after waiting decades to reclaim the rights no less), the dumbing of replacement M and Bond's own serial resignations from the service. Hopefully EON has gotten this out of their system and next time we'll get someone who doesn't place himself above the role and is actually capable of having a little bit of fun with it.
While I think the chances of Craig (or Bond in this timeline) returning are slim, no one knows at this point what will happen next. No one's in denial. The producers have simply left enough wiggle room in the ending to make it possible, in much the same way Connery's bullet-ridden corpse in You Only Live Twice seemingly made it impossible he survived. (And that film never even bothered to offer an explanation other than it was a hoax).
I wouldn't take anything anyone at Eon or even Craig are saying right now as the gospel for any number of reasons, not the least of it being that these people are literally paid to lie to us one way or the other. They can always change their mind later, too. The only thing for certain is that any decisions about the next Bond film will be about commerce, not art.
So, let's look at the situation. Despite the pandemic, the film did surprisingly strong box office. No doubt, it would have done better had times been different (and had they not bungled getting it out sooner). They had a big gimmick on top of Craig's popularity as Bond: The end of the character. It's the sort of thing even people who don't like Bond might pay to see. What's the only thing that might top it? The return of Craig to the role.
Here's the business side of things: The Craig Bond films have set the bar significantly higher than in decades. They haven't done this sort of business since the 1960s. Expectations for the next Bond movie will be incredibly high, not just from audiences but from investors. A new Bond actor brings with him significant expectations for film performance -- that's going to be a lot of pressure for anyone in the role, even an established action star. And by taking so long to produce No Time to Die (as well as the four-year gap between Quantum of Solace and Skyfall), Eon missed a fair amount of potential revenue. If two more Bond films have been produced during those times, at a conservative estimate of $750 million in tickets sales for each, that's another $1.5 billion in revenue.
Two or three years from now, assuming the gang that can't shoot straight drags its feet, the parties involved may decide one more trip to the well is necessary. Throw enough money at Craig and he might change his tune, especially if his career is in a slump. Even if it isn't, he might have cooled off and realize he's not getting any younger, and if they roll up a dump truck to his mansion and drop tens of millions on his lawn, why not. The ending of No Time to Die makes it possible to go that route. If we'd seen Bond rendered limb from limb, I'd feel differently. But we see a screen go white, then black, then a distance shot. It can be done.
Tony, for that second paragraph, I believe I'd like to buy you a drink.
Craig lobbied for his tenure to end with Bond's death from almost the start. We saw Bond getting vaporised at the end of NTTD, not at the end of the PTS. This is clearly not a "Bond is dead" gimmick in the style of FRWL, TB or YOLT. I think it's not unreasonable to say believing Craig will return as James Bond is being in denial.
I agree with TonyDP. EON fought for the rights for use of SPECTRE for many years, only to squander it on two movies. They should've stayed with Quantum for the rest of Craig's tenure and let Bond7 re-introduce SPECTRE.
Hopefully they won’t give the next Bond actor too much power. Come in do your job i.e. act and then promote the flick with proper enthusiasm.
in the half hour Bond was exploring the villains headquarters. did anybody notice if there was a fridge? cuz I saw this other movie once where the character survived an atomic explosion by hiding in a fridge.
number twofour said:
EON fought for the rights for use of SPECTRE for many years, only to squander it on two movies.
they did squander it, and Blofeld. But maybe their goal wasnt so much to get the rights to the words SPECTRE and Blofeld, I think their main priority was to stop somebody else from making a rival James Bond movie.
Yeah. I forgot about the fridge-factor. OK. He could survive then. I take it back.
Is this what they call fridge logic? Fridge Logic - TV Tropes 😁
Of course it's unreasonable if we don’t actually know anything. Unless someone on this board is Barbara Broccoli, Daniel Craig, or Michael G. Wilson and has signed an ironclad contact that Bond is dead and Craig will never return, nobody here knows. It’s all just speculation, no matter how sure people are of themselves or how often they say it or how many join in on the chorus. Not too long ago, there were people just as sure Bond and Blofeld did not know each other in childhood or that Blofeld would be the one who wins in the end.
Bond dies and the UK and MI6 matches on. Blofeld dies and SPECTRE is destroyed. And yet you say Bond lost and Blofeld won?
We know Craig has said many times he won't play Bond anymore. We also know missiles exploded on Bond at the end of the movie. That's knowing something. It's not completely impossible Craig'll return as Bond, but it's highly unlikely. So unlikely I find it reasonable to call beliving Craig will return to the role denial.
Absolutely. Blofeld made it his life’s purpose to ruin Bond, which he does ably. Bond loses the three women he cares about the most, two to death and one to his apparent own, lives for years in loneliness, is denied a family, orphans his own child, and commits suicide. Meanwhile, if Bond is dead, as you say, everything just marches on without him.
They flirted with this with Jeremy Renner in M:I 4 - there was a notion he was being groomed to take over for Cruise, which didn't happen.
Poor Renner, keeps getting called up for spy franchises and then benched.
I mean...