Quantum's Future Schemes (SPOILERS)
Colonel Shatner
Chavtastic Bristol, BritainPosts: 574MI6 Agent
Some people are whinging about Quantum of Solace's storyline (or lack there of) even though there is a reasonably meaty storyline in the movie, with Bond following up a sinister tendril representing a faceless criminal group in Casino Royale then finding the monstrous, multi-tenticled body of Quantum proper in Quantum of Solace, with many more tendrils leading off everywhere.
I find it amusing when Domomic Greene was not killed at Bond's hand, but yet again, like Le Chiffre before him, was killed for his failures in quite a sadistic and unusual way by Quantum enforcers. They're ruthless about dealing with operatives that fail and get compromised, even with somebody as high standing as Dominic Greene, let alone middle men like Le Chiffre (what happened to Greene Planet as a corporation?).
With Bond causing so much damage by finishing off two of Quantum's major money making operations in a row, while nearly getting Mr. White on one occasion, and shutting down one successful method of turning enemy operatives to their cause, it is very likely they'll formulate a special scheme dedicated to getting rid of James Bond for good, like SPECTRE/SMERSH did in both renditions of FRWL. MI6 as a organization is much more of a target (than it already is in the 00s) with a Quantum operation feasibly more devastating than the Cigar Woman's attack.
Quantum could send its top men and women after James Bond, with most of them being ex-special forces, with others having unusual talents or unique forms of weaponry (like Jaws and Oddjob, but less comic book campy).
I find it amusing when Domomic Greene was not killed at Bond's hand, but yet again, like Le Chiffre before him, was killed for his failures in quite a sadistic and unusual way by Quantum enforcers. They're ruthless about dealing with operatives that fail and get compromised, even with somebody as high standing as Dominic Greene, let alone middle men like Le Chiffre (what happened to Greene Planet as a corporation?).
With Bond causing so much damage by finishing off two of Quantum's major money making operations in a row, while nearly getting Mr. White on one occasion, and shutting down one successful method of turning enemy operatives to their cause, it is very likely they'll formulate a special scheme dedicated to getting rid of James Bond for good, like SPECTRE/SMERSH did in both renditions of FRWL. MI6 as a organization is much more of a target (than it already is in the 00s) with a Quantum operation feasibly more devastating than the Cigar Woman's attack.
Quantum could send its top men and women after James Bond, with most of them being ex-special forces, with others having unusual talents or unique forms of weaponry (like Jaws and Oddjob, but less comic book campy).
'Alright guard, begin the unnecessarily slow moving dipping mechanism...'
Comments
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
I like some of Quantum's eccentric killers to be more along the lines of Anton Chigurh from No Country For Old Men instead of Nick Nack.
It would be good if a future Bond movie has a Deus-Ex homage where a captured Bond wakes up inside a Quantum prison cell, escapes it, then finds a way out of the big Quantum complex: he finds the exit and learns that it is the other side of the restricted doorway he saw earlier in MI5's headquaters!
I was spooked by Tim Piggot-Smith's smarmy character (I have to see the film again to see if he was at the Austian theatre with Mr. White and Greene) who seemed to be stonewalling M almost to the point of calling her a paranoiac when informed of Quantum.
I liked the contract on Bond idea better. The best asassins in the world should be sent after Bond. One of them should have a backstory like Red Grant in FRWL (a serial killer who works for an is shielded by Quantum)
The danger with this, is that it will draw comparisons to the first Bourne movie from lazy critics. Bourne fought off specialist assassins one after the other in that film.
It would be silly if MI6 the headquarters had a Quantum lair built in the sublevels, without M knowing about it, that would be too stupid. And MI5 is mostly seperate from MI6 anyway and it would be a shock without getting too silly.
So far James Bond is mainly coming against Quantum's proxy forces and allies instead of Quantum proper, but considering the mayhem Bond is causing to Quantum's schemes, they're going to direct more resources against Bond and MI6 in the next movie.
To avoid being too much like the Bourne movies, James Bond 23 could have a Quantum scheme that is a combination of the SPECTRE schemes from From Russia With Love and Thunderball, with Quantum wanting to steal a unique MacGuffin from a secure facility in China that would give it a strategic advantage over all the world's natiions, using James Bond as a useful pawn to get it and then be disposed of. Mr. White inducts Bond into the scheme, with Quantum employing sophisticated gadgets and vehicles in the operation.
And when James Bond kills the Quantum operatives he is supposed to rendezvous with to hand over the MacGuffin, Quantum in response dispatches its elite mercs to capture or kill James Bond. More globe trotting and Bond finds a illicit surgeon to hide the MacGuffin in his body then wire it up to a micro-bomb. Then James Bond unexpectantly gets captured by British diplomatic staff on Quantum's payrole and is taken to a Quantum stronghold in London, deep beneath the MI5 building, where Quantum surgeons want to remove it without setting off the micro-bomb.
James Bond of course escapes captivity, destroys the Quantum complex and finishes off Quantum's presence in Great Britain. How is that for hack work? {[]
Mr Greene?
Mr White?
This could quite easily turn into Cluedo...
... or Resevoir Dogs! Wonder if there'll be a Mr Pink soon??? :-)
Le Chiffre had his sleek yacht and Mr. White had a mansion in North Italy, while Dominic Greene was a playboy always on the move (but you assumed his company had corporate offices somewhere in South America and Europe, with a few mansions and penthouses).
Since Quantum is a cabal of billionaire masterminds dedicated to world domination, you wonder if they've got paramilitary installations, I hope to see more traditional secret lairs that are very reminiscent of the secret lairs featured in 60s & 70s Bond movies.
This sounds like the most plausible scenario, realistic and not too OTT.
Imagine a typical Quantum lair to be like the Primatech Paper warehouse with the hidden underground levels from Heroes.
Drax Industries' space station and the Janus radio dish would not work in the Daniel Craig movies that are set in the 21st century with spy planes and satellites everywhere equipped with detection devices vastly superior to anything from the 1960s.
I can say Quantum could get away with a chemical weapons facility that is located deep within an exhausted African diamond mine (a homage to the GE PTS and AVTK's Zorin mines).
There's something about Quantum's set-up that intrigues me, which is hinted at in CR. When Mr White introduces Le Chiffre at the beginning, he tells Obanno that his organisation only supplies the introduction. This suggests to me that Quantum are more facilitators than a SPECTRE type world domination outfit, and in the real world (although this is only a theory) terrorist organisations must have facilitators to supply them with weaponry and access to funding and banking. Using this kind of set-up would give Bond a nebulous hydra-like enemy which could put the stories into darker and deeper territories (whilst avoiding taking a political stance).
Or Captain Scarlet!!
Quantum are doing what the CIA and KGB in the Cold War were doing, in funding terrorists and backing rogue regimes, but they're using these different factions (whether Marxists, monarchists, military autocrats, Hindu extremists or Islamists) as puppets to expand their own global influence against the other superpowers. Quantum are most likely world domination outfit like SPECTRE, a secret fraternity of billionaires masking themselves behind organized crime, terrorist groups, and political factions that seem completely unrelated to each on first glance (but M thought Quantum were out there).
A visual represenation of the trilogy has already a good theme going. They've done it with both titles by lining up the O's and placing the 7 at the end. The only other unused Fleming title I can think of that could use that same gimmick would be:
PROPERTY
___OF A LADY
____7
I can only speculate on one aspect, but perhaps the reason that Miss Moneypenny is in the employ of MI6 is for her protection from Quantum as she had previously been among their ranks and then defected. :v
Since the Bond films try to stay topical -- the whole "green" thing, for instance in Quantum of Solace -- it probably wouldn't be tough to deduce what the next "fad" would be that the films might latch onto. Read futurist publications, for instance, which have been talking for years about water being the "gold" of the 21st century for many developing and developed nations.
Perhaps the next plot will come from destabilizing currencies (in these horrible economic times) or creating a one-world government, a la the Illuminati (though that Tom Hanks film is beating it to the punch). Perhaps it will put Bond into space, not with regards to a fantastic plot to exterminate Earth but one to control it commercially and manipulate worldwide communication. None of this sounds "sexy" as the basis of a Bond film, but it's in how the plot is carried out rather than the mundaneity of its goals -- such is modern life.
Of course, the Bond films are as much about American and European product placement today as entertainment, so I'm sure locations are chosen at least in part for this purpose; nonetheless, it would be interesting to see parts of the world largely ignored by westerners in films, such as the developed middle east (soon to be home to the world's tallest building) and Asia, where the growth is phenomenal. I'm not talking about a quick shot of the outside of a skyscraper with some foreign flags or some rundown street with little smoke stacks and laundry hanging over it, but a location that is as much a part of the story as Jamaica in "Dr. No," Turkey in "From Russia with Love," Japan in "You Only Live Twice" or Switzerland in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."
EDIT: Quantum's sheme of setting up a space station as their powerbase should be more like Neuromancer than Moonraker, with Quantum wanting to control the global economy and population through a highly advanced AI hub (codenamed God). That's a good idea Gassy Man. And if Quantum could put plants in MI6 what's stopping them from putting plants in military units safeguarding NBC arsenals?