The Problem With Bond 22
Odd Jobbies
Posts: 26MI6 Agent
Bond 22 is going to be a far more difficult movie than CR to get right.
CR is about the EVENTS that, by the stories end, have placed the Bond character on a particularly ruthless and vengeful path. However the next Bond story must show how he IS our Bond 'en route to revenge' (and no, that shouldn't be the title).
There's lots of talk about how we see Bond 'form' in CR. Don't get me wrong, CR is a resounding triumph that gets better with each viewing, but we DON'T see Bond 'form'. In fact we see him 'de-form' (no Daniel Craig jokes here please). We see him start as a 'Pre-Bond' cocky young geezer having fun overseas, but in danger of getting out of his depth (which is exactly what he does by getting emotionally involved with Vesper). By the end he's broken somewhere inside - his confidence in his own judgement fractured; as M says '...you don't trust anyone now...’ Truth is he can no longer even trust himself - he can take nothing for granted - welcome to being a spy Mr Bond.
In terms of seeing the ‘Bond we know’, there are merely glimpses along the way – denoted only once or twice by David Arnold’s use of the Bond theme. These are hints at what is to come, not in this film, but in the next. The ‘epilogue’ scene at the end is almost a pre-credit sequence for Bond 22 – a clever subversion of the formula.
So by the end of CR we certainly now know how he became this complicated enigma whom has lost-himself in his job to escape a tragic past. But if they are to build on this and DC to become iconic by showing us how he IS Bond, rather than a man who going through the turmoil that will make him Bond, then they still have it all to play for. Thus far he's turned in a great performance as a man 'becoming' Bond and I believe DC could become the most fleming'esue and therefore (for me) the greatest Bond of all. But that’s only half the battle – first they need a great writer and a great director, or they risk a huge anti-climax.
The first thing to get right is to understand what Bond 22 is really about. CR was a love story - this gave DC and Martin Campbell an angle to find Bond's 'inner-life' - to explore what is making him tick. In Bond 22, instead of love being the angle, its death and revenge - via this they'll have to explore his inner-life and motivation - a greater challenge, but potentially more rewarding in this genre - more Bondian. If they take an easier route – hire cheaper talent who think Bond 22 is ‘back-to-the-old-routine’ of clichés and spectacle, then the result will not sit happily with CR and be a step down. Post CR Bond films are no longer about the usual formula; they are about Bond himself (as were the books). If the producers fail to see the significance of the franchise's new axis, then they’ll surely screw it up.
Finding the right Director for this is a real challenge. Anyone new to the franchise and worth their salt will not sign up until seeing a script. If they again use a love story then the good directors will turn it down as a desperate bid to repeat CR. If they continue the emotional arch of CR (developing Bond via revenge - the cold-comfort he finds through the murder of his enemies), then it better be a good script. If the Director doesn't think it is, or doesn't feel he’s up to it, then again he’ll pass - who wants to ****-up this fantastic new Bond! So if they don’t invest in a great and risky script about Bond’s relationship with death and revenge – getting to know himself, Eon will find it hard to nail a good filmmaker.
There main problem is the same as usual; that they need a director good with violence, brutality and action, but maintaining a mass/family audience (even Scosese finds it hard to do both). But for this particular chapter its even more so, as these themes should be the main thread of Bond 22 - a relentless movement towards the centre of the organization responsible for Vesper's death. It replaces the love-story of CR being the axis of the film. But, the director must also be great with finding character via violence - good with imagery, dialogue and subtexts.
Eon have often made the mistake of choosing a director who does one but not the other: Apted can do dialogue but not action; John Glen does fair action, but his dialogue may as well appear in speech bubbles above the actors. Personally, and just for this chapter, i'd sacrifice the 12A cert. This would attract a far higher calibre of writer and dierctor (it wouldn't seem such an 'Impossible Mission')
Good luck to them... As a guide:
They'll want Chris Nolan (unavailable).
Roger Mitchell is a compromise.
Jonathan Glazer: dream choice - why are they not begging him, along with the 'Sexy Beast' writing team!!!
Tarantino has the chops, but they won't trust him with a 12A cert.
Stephan Frears could potentially go the Apted route (uninterested in the action), but they should take him if they can get him.
Paul McGuigan could finally get his shot at it.
John Maybury, who worked with DC on the amazing 'Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon' and the so-so 'The Jacket' is an outside possibility who could make the best or worst Bond ever (I’d suggest it would be the best, since ‘Love Is The Devil’ stunningly portrays how love is tragic and is the flipside of violence – perfect for Bond 22).
Obviously my money's on Martin Campbell getting back in the ring after a much needed rest - he'd certainly deliver the goods.
Perhaps even harder to get right this time round will be the script. CR had Fleming and Haggis on board. As I’ve said, developing Bond's character in Bond 22 will be harder than CR as it should be via revenge rather than love. The story isn't tricky - they've got the terrorism funding - spectre-like syndicate to have fun with and drive the plot, and the theme of revenge to motivate Bond. It's the dialogue this will pass or fail on. Also how Bond is allowed to react to and enjoy violence, given Eon will want a 12A. Takes some pretty elegant writing so lets hope they hire the equal of Haggis, or Haggis himself. And a Director who enjoys good dialogue, like Tarantino, Frears, or Glazer involved early enough to infuence the script.
To summarise, the Bond makers usually have only the plot and Bond's iconography to play with.
In CR they had a 'theme': Love and trust. This makes it easier to humanize your characters.
In Bond 22 they have the theme of revenge. Not so easy to humanize the characters via revenge and it could fall into 2-dimensional cliché. But in the hands of the right director and writer, revenge can be just as powerful a devise to explore character as love - see Shakespeare! Unfortunately he's unavailable, however, I’m going at a bargain rate
CR is about the EVENTS that, by the stories end, have placed the Bond character on a particularly ruthless and vengeful path. However the next Bond story must show how he IS our Bond 'en route to revenge' (and no, that shouldn't be the title).
There's lots of talk about how we see Bond 'form' in CR. Don't get me wrong, CR is a resounding triumph that gets better with each viewing, but we DON'T see Bond 'form'. In fact we see him 'de-form' (no Daniel Craig jokes here please). We see him start as a 'Pre-Bond' cocky young geezer having fun overseas, but in danger of getting out of his depth (which is exactly what he does by getting emotionally involved with Vesper). By the end he's broken somewhere inside - his confidence in his own judgement fractured; as M says '...you don't trust anyone now...’ Truth is he can no longer even trust himself - he can take nothing for granted - welcome to being a spy Mr Bond.
In terms of seeing the ‘Bond we know’, there are merely glimpses along the way – denoted only once or twice by David Arnold’s use of the Bond theme. These are hints at what is to come, not in this film, but in the next. The ‘epilogue’ scene at the end is almost a pre-credit sequence for Bond 22 – a clever subversion of the formula.
So by the end of CR we certainly now know how he became this complicated enigma whom has lost-himself in his job to escape a tragic past. But if they are to build on this and DC to become iconic by showing us how he IS Bond, rather than a man who going through the turmoil that will make him Bond, then they still have it all to play for. Thus far he's turned in a great performance as a man 'becoming' Bond and I believe DC could become the most fleming'esue and therefore (for me) the greatest Bond of all. But that’s only half the battle – first they need a great writer and a great director, or they risk a huge anti-climax.
The first thing to get right is to understand what Bond 22 is really about. CR was a love story - this gave DC and Martin Campbell an angle to find Bond's 'inner-life' - to explore what is making him tick. In Bond 22, instead of love being the angle, its death and revenge - via this they'll have to explore his inner-life and motivation - a greater challenge, but potentially more rewarding in this genre - more Bondian. If they take an easier route – hire cheaper talent who think Bond 22 is ‘back-to-the-old-routine’ of clichés and spectacle, then the result will not sit happily with CR and be a step down. Post CR Bond films are no longer about the usual formula; they are about Bond himself (as were the books). If the producers fail to see the significance of the franchise's new axis, then they’ll surely screw it up.
Finding the right Director for this is a real challenge. Anyone new to the franchise and worth their salt will not sign up until seeing a script. If they again use a love story then the good directors will turn it down as a desperate bid to repeat CR. If they continue the emotional arch of CR (developing Bond via revenge - the cold-comfort he finds through the murder of his enemies), then it better be a good script. If the Director doesn't think it is, or doesn't feel he’s up to it, then again he’ll pass - who wants to ****-up this fantastic new Bond! So if they don’t invest in a great and risky script about Bond’s relationship with death and revenge – getting to know himself, Eon will find it hard to nail a good filmmaker.
There main problem is the same as usual; that they need a director good with violence, brutality and action, but maintaining a mass/family audience (even Scosese finds it hard to do both). But for this particular chapter its even more so, as these themes should be the main thread of Bond 22 - a relentless movement towards the centre of the organization responsible for Vesper's death. It replaces the love-story of CR being the axis of the film. But, the director must also be great with finding character via violence - good with imagery, dialogue and subtexts.
Eon have often made the mistake of choosing a director who does one but not the other: Apted can do dialogue but not action; John Glen does fair action, but his dialogue may as well appear in speech bubbles above the actors. Personally, and just for this chapter, i'd sacrifice the 12A cert. This would attract a far higher calibre of writer and dierctor (it wouldn't seem such an 'Impossible Mission')
Good luck to them... As a guide:
They'll want Chris Nolan (unavailable).
Roger Mitchell is a compromise.
Jonathan Glazer: dream choice - why are they not begging him, along with the 'Sexy Beast' writing team!!!
Tarantino has the chops, but they won't trust him with a 12A cert.
Stephan Frears could potentially go the Apted route (uninterested in the action), but they should take him if they can get him.
Paul McGuigan could finally get his shot at it.
John Maybury, who worked with DC on the amazing 'Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon' and the so-so 'The Jacket' is an outside possibility who could make the best or worst Bond ever (I’d suggest it would be the best, since ‘Love Is The Devil’ stunningly portrays how love is tragic and is the flipside of violence – perfect for Bond 22).
Obviously my money's on Martin Campbell getting back in the ring after a much needed rest - he'd certainly deliver the goods.
Perhaps even harder to get right this time round will be the script. CR had Fleming and Haggis on board. As I’ve said, developing Bond's character in Bond 22 will be harder than CR as it should be via revenge rather than love. The story isn't tricky - they've got the terrorism funding - spectre-like syndicate to have fun with and drive the plot, and the theme of revenge to motivate Bond. It's the dialogue this will pass or fail on. Also how Bond is allowed to react to and enjoy violence, given Eon will want a 12A. Takes some pretty elegant writing so lets hope they hire the equal of Haggis, or Haggis himself. And a Director who enjoys good dialogue, like Tarantino, Frears, or Glazer involved early enough to infuence the script.
To summarise, the Bond makers usually have only the plot and Bond's iconography to play with.
In CR they had a 'theme': Love and trust. This makes it easier to humanize your characters.
In Bond 22 they have the theme of revenge. Not so easy to humanize the characters via revenge and it could fall into 2-dimensional cliché. But in the hands of the right director and writer, revenge can be just as powerful a devise to explore character as love - see Shakespeare! Unfortunately he's unavailable, however, I’m going at a bargain rate
Comments
I don't think they will bother making the next film continue on from CR in anyway, in fact I don't think they should. The films have never had any real chronology, except for the odd reference here and there, and CR just proves that because it tells the story of Bond starting out, but it is not a prequal. The bond films aren't one big long story, they are just lots of seperate stories in no particular order, about the same character.
At least that's what I think, do you agree?
Certainly that's how the film series has manifested, but not, i imagine, by design. The books work very much in sequence, but instead of deviating from this on purpose, i think the producers simply raped the whole series for each film, under pressure to make it bigger than the previous one. This soon left them in the odd position of having used up all titles and many ideas, but without having really followed any one book faithfully. By taking only Fleming's titles, names, plots and ideas ad'hock, they soon lost the truth of the character the books were about in the first place.
But to the point, i believe, from the noise that Eon are making that they really do intend to create a character development arch, as well a possibly a plot arch through the next film or two. I think this is the only route left to them, but a good one - to return to the nature of the source material and how that material revolves around the development and partual desintegration of Bond.
They could use YOLT and TMWTGG as insperation: after the traumour of his wife's death in OHMSS (in this case Vesper's death) and transpose the themes character arch to new stories. Certainly one of the best litterary Bond moments is his return to HQ at the start of TMWTGG after a year awol (in fact brainwashed by his enemies) and attempt to assasinate M. This hasn't been used - obviously missing from the cinematic 'light-hearted' TMWTGG.
That's my biggest fear: That CR, with it's more complicated story and emotional arc, will be a flash in the pan and that EON will say "OK -- been there, done that," and start looking for the keys to the invisible car.
But I don't think that will be the case. I get the sense from interviews with Broccoli, Wilson and Craig that CR was more than just the familiar Eon exercise of going "back-to-basics" after an over-the-top film like DAD. This is the real deal -- a transformation of the movie Bond into something more reminiscent of the literary model. Craig has said many, many times (often to howls of protest), that he wasn't interested in doing James Bond unless he could take him somewhere he hadn't been before. He's been quite passionate about that, and has something of an independent film sensibility while realizing that Bond is, after all, a mass phenomenon. And from what I gather, Broccoli and Wilson are of the same mind. Now they could certainly screw it up, but I don't think it will be because they went back to the old movie Bond. That's why I think the folks who are saying that the corny jokes, gadgets, Moneypenny and Q and the gun barrel and the myriad cliches we've come to expect after 20 films will be back next time because at the end of CR, Bond has become Bond, are going to be disappointed. Yes, Bond has become Bond, but a different Bond than the one we're used to: very talented and dedicated, certainly, but also human, with all the strengths and weaknesses that implies.
How will they look? Will he find women who remind him of Vesper? Or will he persue women who are different? If he goes for different, why not redheads and blonds? His "leading ladies" who he ends up with at the end of the films have been brunettes for ages. The last blond leading lady was Kara in TLD and Tiffany was the last redhead back in DAF!
Do you have any thoughts on this?
I agree that another raging romance would be the wrong direction. As you point out his relationships are usually superficial. It would be interesting to explore how he became so retisent to get emotionally entangled; In CR we've seen WHY he'd now be retisent, but let an actor of DC's calibre show us how its now difficult to care for another woman - more to the point, to trust another woman.
Having said that, in the books he always becomes emotionally involved, althugh to different degrees. In CR and OHMSS he's in love, but in DN, LALD, DAF it's a temporary infatuation that either ends ammicably, or is in the death throws by the beginning of the next book.
It would be great to see these 'loose ends' cross films, as they cross books in this way. One of my favourate Fleming endings for its suprise is Moonraker (Spoiler ahead)... After the villian is dispatched, Bond finds himself considering giving up his job for the affections beautiful Gala Brand as he waits for her in St James' park. However, when she arrives, she introduces Bond to her fiance and says a final farewell. Bond is left sat there, with only his next mission to look forward to.
While we're there, Moonraker is a fantastic book that bares absolutely no resemblance to the film, so why not adapt it. Then they get to employ the great bad guys - commando sleeper cell, The Werewolves!
I agree with you Odd Jobbies(a great post and development i must add) about Bond 22, and agree with HH with the Q - Moneypenny - jokes - invisible stuff - affaif (in Casino Royale, i mean in the movie they could present both or at least make references but they didn't, that must mean something) it obviously has to be a direct or at least not so direct but related continuation of CR.
I can't imaging Craig doing the sassy, shallow Bond we have seen lately (including Brosnan and Dalton), the character in the movies has lots of cliches that defines him (please see a Bond parody, they never go in the persona rather the superficial component) Craig didn't abuse about that and i'm pretty sure they could make him go that way in Bond 22.
Is hard, is more than a challenge, and now i understand why Eon scheduled for 2008 and let go the obvious 2 007.
I don't understand the problem with Campbell (CR might be his masterpiece if he is a genious or maybe because is his less pathetic movie ever) i don't get why he has those reviews... i understand Wade and Purvis used Fleming material in his previous works, but the next one must use something different: the character himself.