I think the Russians can be mentioned, so can the war. Contras was mentioned in LTK, the conflict in Korea was the backdrop for DAD. What a Bond movie can't do is making a movie about the war or making Putin and Russia the villains.
The Russian state were routinely secondary antagonists in many Bond instalmenrs or pretty much essentially the primary antagonists in some (even if the actual villain schemes were put into motion by especially corrupt or unhinged Russian officials like Gen. Orlov going behind the backs of their superiors and rivals, except perhaps with "FYEO").
There's no controversy or unfair demonisation at all with a fictionalized, exaggerated version of the Wagner Group as topical Russian bad guys (you could even make them a re-imagined version of the Janus organisation, updated somewhat after their mid 1990s GoldenEye appearance, with no Alec Trevelyan).
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
It's an idea but what would be the stakes in terms of geopolitics from a Western point of view considering you can't directly involve a specific country in the main villain's scheme ?
I'd like Bond 26 to be a genuine spy thriller like FRWL, FYEO and TLD. That's why I think although you can't directly involve a country, you can make the main villain a traitor towards his own side, like Rosa Klebb or Koskov.
Rosa Klebb was ultimately loyal to SPECTRE, but although Koskov was corrupt and giving Soviet rivals like Pushkin the runaround, his scheme was also furthering Russian interests in Afghanistan with his access granted to hightech NATO weapons (while enriching himself and his Soviet Army cronies).
Ourumov assumed he was furthering Russia's interests broadly, despite chronically backstabbing his comrades and superiors (with him on top as a Putin type dictator figure with the backing of the Janus organisaton, though Trevelyan likely had other longterm plans to further detabilise Russia and rest of the world). The Russian state in GoldenEye was antagonistic with its lack of accountability and being too opaque between military branches (letting a giant criminal cabal like Janus to fester so badly in the wake of an apparent chemical weapon facility heist).
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
Wire magazine has written about Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg's plans to build a complex for himself on his private Hawaiian island. The building complex will have all luxuries, underground bunkers and tunnels between buildings and food and energy supplies to function in isolation for a very long time. The workers who are building the place has to sign contracts to keep quiet about the island complex that cost about 270 million dollars.
A technology expert named Douglas Rushkoff was paid a sum comparable to half of a years wages at his job as an university professor to talk to a group of people representing multi-billionairs. They asked questions like: what should we do when civilization collapses? What region is the safest when the climate crisis strikes - Alaska or New Zealand? What should I do to make sure my private security forces remain in my control after the collapse?
I think this is an up-to-date type of villain and lair. Imagine a tech-billionair with his own luxury hideaway and bunker in NZ. Making this sort of place isn't criminal or even world-threatening in itself, but what if the filthy rich builder knows a collapse is coming because he's planning it or at least doing something that is a threat to our world? A future collapse of civilization, multi-billionairs with too much money and power isolating themselves from the rest of us are very topical issues that people care about. Going this route could be a great theme for Bond26.
Don't forget Whitaker is already supposed to provide hightech weapons thanks to the state funds he has officially been given.
Koskov doesn't hesitate to use his own government's money to buy big quantities of opium from the Mujahideen and then spread it within the US drug market. If such a scandal is revealed, the diplomatic tensions between the two countries will probably increase significantly. He doesn't really care about his country's fate. Only his personal benefits and reputation stake, and winning the conflict in Afghanistan is not a matter of patriotism.
Today the Israelis killed the deputy leader of Hamas using a drone. The obvious question to ask when drones can be used to assassinate particular targets is the role of the 00-agents is: Are they becoming outdated? I think this is a question that should be raised in future Bond movies. The drones are also sometimes autonomous, choosing targets based on programming and facial recognition software. A scene where Bond is being hunted by a killer drone could be an exciting scene where Bond has to use his intelligence and quick reactions to survive.
Sp was supposed to deal with this matter, but some people from EON thought it would be a good idea to have the climax focus on the family relationship between Bond and Blofeld instead. We could have got a genuine spy thriller with this Nine Eyes concept which deserved to be developed.
I just saw a news item on TV where a car ended up in the freezing cold Oslo fjord: Luckily the two passengers got out and onto the car roof. Even more luckily a sauna boat was nearby. Those boats are slow and a car with an open window probably sinks fast, but the boat got there just in time as the car sank. The saved passengers were immediately sent into the heated sauna.
I've been hoping for a car chase in a cold, icy and snow-covered city for years now, possibly also involving snowmobiles. What if a chase in for example Helsinki ended with Bond defeating the henchmen, but the car ended up in the cold sea water? Bond gets himself and the Bond girl out of the car and on the roof, and just as the car sinks a sauna boat reaches them, saves the pair and they go into the steaming sauna. Maybe Bond makes quip along the lines of "Out of the ice rink and into the frying pan" or "Out of the ice water and into the fire". The scene could even be the end of a PTS!
The Aston Martin DBX would be the perfect car for this scene. It's a robust 4WD car that fits the cold conditions.
If Koskov was a typical traitor because of a side grift and corruption, the same would've applied to many or most other Party officials, KGB spies, and Soviet Army officers (including even Puskin) by the mid to late 80s (when the Soviet Empire was rapidly dying).
While Gorbachev was a relatively principled moderate who aimed at good relations with the US, the Soviet Union at its bedrock to the end was still a highly brutal, xenophobic, and paranoid regime; would many Soviet citizens care about crooked Soviet officials peddling drugs to the decadant West? And Koskov's mutual beef with Pushkin was an inter department power struggle in a dysfunctional, unaccountable dictatorship (accusations of treachery and corruption are a useful tool for clamping down on regime henchmen like Koskov getting out their own lane).
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
Koskov is a traitor "plotwise". Maibaum and Wilson couldn't deal with the internal divisions you refer to when they developed their story because keeping the audience aware of the stakes would have been too difficult with such convolutions. The screenwriters' challenge was to find the perfect balance between depicting Soviet Russia from a western point of view and avoiding manicheism about it, especially with Glasnost. The antagonism Koskov/Pushkin was a relevant way to do that. Koskov's profile was obviously not unique within the military staff or any other official branch, but the plot just focuses on one single instance. And I think it works very well considering the global context back then.
I'm watching season 3 of Fargo, and it comes highly reccomended. I just saw a scene where a character has a monologue that would be perfect for a spy thriller type Bond movie:
All of Russia, hundreds of years, millions the tsar killed, then it was Lenin, then Stalin. Ten thousand, twenty thousand, but here you have, like, what? Malls … few dead Indians. Twenty million Russian died fighting Hitler. Twenty million. I see from your face that you can’t even imagine that. The pogroms, the starvation, twenty million more. (Cencored by me. The line is historically correct, but highly upsetting). That’s why the snow falls white, To hide the blood.
I don't wish to quibble with the writer's analogy, but the line about snow falling white is nonsense. He should say 'the snow falls deep' as only a significant amount of white snowfall will hide a red blood stain.
I say make Andrew Bond the villain. Bond has to fight his father. Sounds like an idea that BB would go for. Then you can cast Christian Bale as the villain.
"Fun" fact: Only two countries allow deep sea mining as of today. One is Nauru, a Pacific country so poor it sells its UN votes to the highest bidder and housing refugees for Australia is their biggest source of income. The other country is Norway. I feel so proud ........ 😖
According to Wikipedia they have a capital. But Nauru is the third smallest country in the world, so maybe we're talking about the village or district where most of the administration is.
Nauru is also the fattest country in the world. It used to be (and I guess in some places this is still the case) that poverty meant not having enough food. Now it can mean not having healthy food.
Once again i campaign for Emma Watson in a Bond movie! I'd like to see her as the science director to a suspicious CEO or maybe working for an NGO. Smart, pretty and wholesome as her image is. In the promotion and in the first reel she's set up to be a possible ally to Bond or even a Bond girl. Then suddenly we see the man we thought was the villain isn't, but it's Emma Watson's character who's behind it all! Smart, sure. But evil, twisted and sexy. I think it would be a good move for both the Bond movies and her career.
(I think this image is made by AI)
Mr MartiniThat nice house in the sky.Posts: 2,709MI6 Agent
A little bit. But I don't think EON should stop having plot twists where a woman Bond thought was on his side is the villain just because it was done once back in the 90's. It's certainly much more innovative than revealing that the male leader of a company who M and Bond thought was the villain actually is the villain! 😁
There are also several differences between Elektra King and my idea.
I think that could work, and certainly no issue with that twist in relation to TWINE as by the time the next film comes out it will be almost 30 years since TWINE!😮
Comments
There's nothing that even Q Branch could do for a Lada.
I think the Russians can be mentioned, so can the war. Contras was mentioned in LTK, the conflict in Korea was the backdrop for DAD. What a Bond movie can't do is making a movie about the war or making Putin and Russia the villains.
The Russian state were routinely secondary antagonists in many Bond instalmenrs or pretty much essentially the primary antagonists in some (even if the actual villain schemes were put into motion by especially corrupt or unhinged Russian officials like Gen. Orlov going behind the backs of their superiors and rivals, except perhaps with "FYEO").
There's no controversy or unfair demonisation at all with a fictionalized, exaggerated version of the Wagner Group as topical Russian bad guys (you could even make them a re-imagined version of the Janus organisation, updated somewhat after their mid 1990s GoldenEye appearance, with no Alec Trevelyan).
I've "always" said a security/mercenary organization would be a great enemy for Bond. A lightly disguised Wagner Group could work if done right.
It's an idea but what would be the stakes in terms of geopolitics from a Western point of view considering you can't directly involve a specific country in the main villain's scheme ?
In that case it EvilSecCorps would be an apolitical company without strong ties to any country, like so many villain organisations in Bond movies.
I'd like Bond 26 to be a genuine spy thriller like FRWL, FYEO and TLD. That's why I think although you can't directly involve a country, you can make the main villain a traitor towards his own side, like Rosa Klebb or Koskov.
Rosa Klebb was ultimately loyal to SPECTRE, but although Koskov was corrupt and giving Soviet rivals like Pushkin the runaround, his scheme was also furthering Russian interests in Afghanistan with his access granted to hightech NATO weapons (while enriching himself and his Soviet Army cronies).
Ourumov assumed he was furthering Russia's interests broadly, despite chronically backstabbing his comrades and superiors (with him on top as a Putin type dictator figure with the backing of the Janus organisaton, though Trevelyan likely had other longterm plans to further detabilise Russia and rest of the world). The Russian state in GoldenEye was antagonistic with its lack of accountability and being too opaque between military branches (letting a giant criminal cabal like Janus to fester so badly in the wake of an apparent chemical weapon facility heist).
Wire magazine has written about Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg's plans to build a complex for himself on his private Hawaiian island. The building complex will have all luxuries, underground bunkers and tunnels between buildings and food and energy supplies to function in isolation for a very long time. The workers who are building the place has to sign contracts to keep quiet about the island complex that cost about 270 million dollars.
A technology expert named Douglas Rushkoff was paid a sum comparable to half of a years wages at his job as an university professor to talk to a group of people representing multi-billionairs. They asked questions like: what should we do when civilization collapses? What region is the safest when the climate crisis strikes - Alaska or New Zealand? What should I do to make sure my private security forces remain in my control after the collapse?
I think this is an up-to-date type of villain and lair. Imagine a tech-billionair with his own luxury hideaway and bunker in NZ. Making this sort of place isn't criminal or even world-threatening in itself, but what if the filthy rich builder knows a collapse is coming because he's planning it or at least doing something that is a threat to our world? A future collapse of civilization, multi-billionairs with too much money and power isolating themselves from the rest of us are very topical issues that people care about. Going this route could be a great theme for Bond26.
Tech billionaire and dystophian Peter Thiel has plans to make himself such a building complex in NZ.
Mark Zuckerbergs planned survivalist hideaway on Hawaii.
Vivos Europa One in Germany will be an invitation only, five star, underground survival complex, similar to an underground cruise ship for the elite.
Hmmm ...
Don't forget Whitaker is already supposed to provide hightech weapons thanks to the state funds he has officially been given.
Koskov doesn't hesitate to use his own government's money to buy big quantities of opium from the Mujahideen and then spread it within the US drug market. If such a scandal is revealed, the diplomatic tensions between the two countries will probably increase significantly. He doesn't really care about his country's fate. Only his personal benefits and reputation stake, and winning the conflict in Afghanistan is not a matter of patriotism.
I think he can be seen as a traitor.
Today the Israelis killed the deputy leader of Hamas using a drone. The obvious question to ask when drones can be used to assassinate particular targets is the role of the 00-agents is: Are they becoming outdated? I think this is a question that should be raised in future Bond movies. The drones are also sometimes autonomous, choosing targets based on programming and facial recognition software. A scene where Bond is being hunted by a killer drone could be an exciting scene where Bond has to use his intelligence and quick reactions to survive.
Sp was supposed to deal with this matter, but some people from EON thought it would be a good idea to have the climax focus on the family relationship between Bond and Blofeld instead. We could have got a genuine spy thriller with this Nine Eyes concept which deserved to be developed.
A missed oportunity.
I just saw a news item on TV where a car ended up in the freezing cold Oslo fjord: Luckily the two passengers got out and onto the car roof. Even more luckily a sauna boat was nearby. Those boats are slow and a car with an open window probably sinks fast, but the boat got there just in time as the car sank. The saved passengers were immediately sent into the heated sauna.
Here's the viodeo: https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/GMpypm/bil-i-oslofjorden-to-personer-hentet-opp-badstubaat
Example of sauna boat in Oslo:
I've been hoping for a car chase in a cold, icy and snow-covered city for years now, possibly also involving snowmobiles. What if a chase in for example Helsinki ended with Bond defeating the henchmen, but the car ended up in the cold sea water? Bond gets himself and the Bond girl out of the car and on the roof, and just as the car sinks a sauna boat reaches them, saves the pair and they go into the steaming sauna. Maybe Bond makes quip along the lines of "Out of the ice rink and into the frying pan" or "Out of the ice water and into the fire". The scene could even be the end of a PTS!
The Aston Martin DBX would be the perfect car for this scene. It's a robust 4WD car that fits the cold conditions.
If Koskov was a typical traitor because of a side grift and corruption, the same would've applied to many or most other Party officials, KGB spies, and Soviet Army officers (including even Puskin) by the mid to late 80s (when the Soviet Empire was rapidly dying).
While Gorbachev was a relatively principled moderate who aimed at good relations with the US, the Soviet Union at its bedrock to the end was still a highly brutal, xenophobic, and paranoid regime; would many Soviet citizens care about crooked Soviet officials peddling drugs to the decadant West? And Koskov's mutual beef with Pushkin was an inter department power struggle in a dysfunctional, unaccountable dictatorship (accusations of treachery and corruption are a useful tool for clamping down on regime henchmen like Koskov getting out their own lane).
Koskov is a traitor "plotwise". Maibaum and Wilson couldn't deal with the internal divisions you refer to when they developed their story because keeping the audience aware of the stakes would have been too difficult with such convolutions. The screenwriters' challenge was to find the perfect balance between depicting Soviet Russia from a western point of view and avoiding manicheism about it, especially with Glasnost. The antagonism Koskov/Pushkin was a relevant way to do that. Koskov's profile was obviously not unique within the military staff or any other official branch, but the plot just focuses on one single instance. And I think it works very well considering the global context back then.
Do you see my point ?
Lotus cars have a history in Bond movies and I think the new Lotus Emira would fit very well in Bond 26:
DARPA is aparently planning a flying HUMVEE. Pretty Bondian!
I'm watching season 3 of Fargo, and it comes highly reccomended. I just saw a scene where a character has a monologue that would be perfect for a spy thriller type Bond movie:
All of Russia, hundreds of years, millions the tsar killed, then it was Lenin, then Stalin. Ten thousand, twenty thousand, but here you have, like, what? Malls … few dead Indians. Twenty million Russian died fighting Hitler. Twenty million. I see from your face that you can’t even imagine that. The pogroms, the starvation, twenty million more. (Cencored by me. The line is historically correct, but highly upsetting). That’s why the snow falls white, To hide the blood.
I don't wish to quibble with the writer's analogy, but the line about snow falling white is nonsense. He should say 'the snow falls deep' as only a significant amount of white snowfall will hide a red blood stain.
It's an analogy, so some artistic license ia allowed. That said, "snow falls deep" sounds good.
I say make Andrew Bond the villain. Bond has to fight his father. Sounds like an idea that BB would go for. Then you can cast Christian Bale as the villain.
"Fun" fact: Only two countries allow deep sea mining as of today. One is Nauru, a Pacific country so poor it sells its UN votes to the highest bidder and housing refugees for Australia is their biggest source of income. The other country is Norway. I feel so proud ........ 😖
Is it right Nauru is so small it doesn't have a capital city ?
According to Wikipedia they have a capital. But Nauru is the third smallest country in the world, so maybe we're talking about the village or district where most of the administration is.
Nauru is also the fattest country in the world. It used to be (and I guess in some places this is still the case) that poverty meant not having enough food. Now it can mean not having healthy food.
Once again i campaign for Emma Watson in a Bond movie! I'd like to see her as the science director to a suspicious CEO or maybe working for an NGO. Smart, pretty and wholesome as her image is. In the promotion and in the first reel she's set up to be a possible ally to Bond or even a Bond girl. Then suddenly we see the man we thought was the villain isn't, but it's Emma Watson's character who's behind it all! Smart, sure. But evil, twisted and sexy. I think it would be a good move for both the Bond movies and her career.
(I think this image is made by AI)
Kind of like The World is Not Enough.
A little bit. But I don't think EON should stop having plot twists where a woman Bond thought was on his side is the villain just because it was done once back in the 90's. It's certainly much more innovative than revealing that the male leader of a company who M and Bond thought was the villain actually is the villain! 😁
There are also several differences between Elektra King and my idea.
I think that could work, and certainly no issue with that twist in relation to TWINE as by the time the next film comes out it will be almost 30 years since TWINE!😮