they already did introduce "another James Bond" in Casino Royale
.,,and...
the characters death wont prevent there being new films made after the character becomes Public Domain. Much like Sherlock Holmes, we can expect instead multiple competing versions of the character, each contradicting the other.
Anyways, I would like to see the film where Mathilde Bond becomes a double-oh. She seemed mighty cool under pressure during the car chase, so she might have inherited a few useful character traits from her daddy. Maybe she's like Wolverine's daughter from Logan? thats an angle no-one's discussed yet, even though we were anticipating a Logan influence well before the film was due for its original release.
So you think the plan is to wait about twenty years for the girl to get old enough to be a secret agent? And how does that fit with BB's very clear statement that Bond will always be a British male?
Do you think the plan when the movie Logan was made was to never again use the characters Wolverine and professor X again?
No, the only thing that makes sense is the timeline approach. CraigBond was a separate timeline, more or less intended from the start to be self-contained from 00-status to his death. The first timeline was from DN to DAF, the second from CR to NTTD. The only question is if Bond26 is a third timeline or a continuation of the first. In other words: James Bond in Bond26 hasn't lost Vesper, but did he lose Tracy?
am I the "you" you're posing your questions to @Number24 ?
since I managed to start a new page, @Dodge101 ' s theory about Mathilde Bond has dropped behind, the questions may be intended for dodge. anyway...
So you think the plan is to wait about twenty years for the girl to get old enough to be a secret agent? And how does that fit with BB's very clear statement that Bond will always be a British male?
no of course not but I am now suddenly more interested in the future adventures of Mathilde Bond than who ever is cast as Bond26 and how they explain the character is still alive. And Barbara Brocolli said James Bond would always be a British male, she didnt say anything about Mathilde Bond. These could be some fresh interesting stories.
Do you think the plan when the movie Logan was made was to never again use the characters Wolverine and Professor X again?
I know youre not really into the comic book movies, but this is complicated yet more or less true. After a certain point the X-Men movies went back in time to show us the team's early years, in a slightly altered timeline. So Logan was the final chronological appearance of Wolverine and Professor X, the rights holders who made that series of films have not brought them back to life, and now never will. That parts actually simple.
The complication: rights to the X-Men have since been sold from Fox to Disney, and the characters will now be integrated into to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We don't quite know how they will do that, if they will reboot the characters from scratch, or come up with some more complicated explanation, or just ignore the issue and tell new stories.
Precedent is what they've done with the Hulk and SpiderMan , both of whom had earlier movies made by rival studios. SpiderMan in particular they made about a decade younger, but did not bother with an origin story at all. When re-introduced in Civil War we just assume he had the same origin story we already saw twice before with two different actors, yet otherwise everything else seems a bit different, and since he is so young he can still meet the Green Goblin again for the first time if they ever choose to re-tell that story. This'd be the smart way to do bond26, pick and choose which elements to keep, yet make the character younger and just ignore the contradictions.
Speculation is the X-Men are probably going to be reintroduced via the big timeline reset from EndGame , which is a bit of pseudo-scifi technobabble that really allows them a blank slate to cast new actors and re-tell old stories once again. But much too scifi to be applicable to James Bond no matter how many gadgets there are, so we shouldnt compare Bond's situation to however they will rationalize Wolverine and Professor X's suddenly getting better.
Dodge101, as the end titles said James Bond Will Return. There's no doubt about that, even if NTTD flopped completely at the box office which it hasn't. Reboot is only one of the options available to intelligent filmmakers, or even Eon. Bond is, as you said, a fictional character and they can go anywhere with him.
Yes I can appreciate that the end titles say Bond will return but doesn't it bother people that the ending of NTTD shows Bond being blown up and some fans want to convince themselves that Bond was not blown up purely based on the camera movement of that scene!! ..it's ridiculous in my opinion. Fans are clutching at straws in the hope that Bond somehow survived being blown up.
As a fan I will be totally and utterly disappointed if Eon find a way to bring James Bond back to life because as far as I'm concerned, NTTD showed him saying his goodbyes to the woman he loved and then being blown up by the missiles from the navy ship. What is Eon going to do? pretend it was some kind of dream event or an out of body event to explain why Bond did not die in the missile strike?
I don’t think anyone is trying to convince themselves Bond survives but merely say it’s a possibility. At this point no one can say Bond is definitively dead any more than they can say he’s definitively alive. They’re not the writers or producers on the next film. What they can say is it’s possible. Why does this bother you so much personally?
We don't know what Eon are going to do. There are a number of possibilities which we fans can only speculate about until more information comes our way.
It's not a personal thing but it bothers me that the movie makers make a scene in such graphic detail where it gives the viewers no choice but to think the obvious and then along comes fans who say it's possible he survived!!! How, just how? Bombs are raining down all around him, he's in the open exposed, nothing to protect him or so we are led to believe and then in the movies end credits we are told Bond will return!!!. Just exactly what is Eon playing at? Are they going to say that Bond went back down where he came the split second we see the bombs exploding before him and thus he and the missile silo miraculously survives the aerial bombardment or are they going to have that his EMP watch somehow saves him, preventing the bombs from exploding around him or it creates so kind of protection shield around him.
When I watch a movie, I am not immune to the fact that a lot of what we see is not possible but to make the movie watchable there needs to be some aspect of realism otherwise people will give it a bad rating causing others to not watch it. A good example is the early Arnold Schwarzenegger movies where for years his movies were ridiculed because he would be seen firing heavy machine guns killing everyone insight but yet those firing back at him with similar weapons never hit him or even come close to doing damage to him. His movie Commando is a case in point, the classic scene where his in a garden firing an LMG killing everyone, whilst he himself is surrounded by by guys firing automatic weapons at him and nothing hits him. Is NTTD going to suffer the same, bombs raining down upon him, the scene shows a procession of bombs exploding in front of him as the next one gets closer and closer and then the screen goes blank leading us to believe that the next one was right on top of him.
My questions weren't directed at you personally. I was thinking more "you members of AJB" or "if you" in the "if one" meaning.
In my opinion Bond won't be still alive in Bond26. We will see a new version of Bond from a different timeline than CraigBond, who in turn was a Bond from a different timeline than Brosnan, Dalton etc.
Trying to make up a story how Bond survived NTTD would be a serious mistake. EON has to start fresh and ignore CraigBond's tenure that has to stand alone.
What worries me for the next Bond is a comment you made in your post 'Trying to make up a story how Bond survived NTTD would be a serious mistake' in that I am concerned that Eon is going to somehow try and explain away how Bond survived because if the man is supposed to be dead, why would they have 'James Bond will return' at the end credits? it doesn't make any logical sense.
Because they're starting a new timeline with a new Bond actor. Think of the transition from DAD to CR. Bond in DAD was a veteran 00-agent. Bond in CR won his 00-agent status. A new timeline means it's the same person, but with a new version of his history. It didn't matter to CraigBond what had happened in DAD or any of the earlier Bond movies because that was a seperate and different cinematic version of Bond's life. I expect EON to start a new timeline, a new and seperate story of James Bond like they did in CR. That's what's done in many re-boots . One example is the Batman movies. In Batman Begins we see see Bruce Wayne becoming Batman so it can't be the story of the same Batman we saw in Batman Returns, Batman & Robin and all the other Batman movies made earlier. But it's still Batman.
It's a strange concept to bend your mind around and I don't blame you if you don't understand what I'm trying to say. If anyone feels they can explain it better, feel free to have a go.
and Die Another Daydid have a "James Bond Will Return" at the end didn't it, even though the next film in the series was about a completely different character also named James Bond? I think the text just means there will be another movie about a character named James Bond. After the precedent of already introducing one new character in Casino Royale, there's no guarantee that text means it will be CraigBond, or another actor attempting to play Craig's bond.
number24 said:
My questions weren't directed at you personally. I was thinking more "you members of AJB" or "if you" in the "if one" meaning.
then apologies for giving a long indepth comic book movie related response ! I know you don't really like those sort of movies and would prefer they don't come up in every discussion, Sometimes I gotta let my Geek Flag Fly.
Seriously, they may come up with a followup that explains how CraigBond secretly survived, or they may introduce yet another version of the character. Now we know for sure it was Craig's specific condition his version of the character should die, I suspect it will be the latter. And they already told the "fake death" story in SkyFall, so they probably wont want to repeat themselves so soon.
That all said, it is fun in a fan-ficky way to come up with over-elaborate explanations of how he could survive, several posters have already come up with some quite good theories, and I bet a few of these silly ideas we come up with may be better than what we ultimately get with Bond26. And, such fan-theorizing is much more fun to read than all the talk about "this ending is an assault on straight white males everywhere". I've given up reading a few threads here because of that stuff.
Well, that's the problem -- viewers do have a choice, even if you seem determined to insist they do not. That's what makes it seem a personal crusade on your part, though you're certainly not alone.
As has been dissected on this site in various threads, we don't see Bond literally killed, the screen goes white, then black, and then cuts to a distance shot. Various theories as to how Bond could be brought back have been posted.
Certainly books and movies have resurrected seemingly dead characters before, not just in the Sherlockian way that Conan Doyle brought back his creation but in the movie serials where each installment routinely ended with a seemingly impossible situation or the "obvious" death of a character, only to show, nope, that wasn't the case. The serialized, arc-style of Craig's Bond opens itself up to exactly that examination.
I was also thinking about how OHMSS shows the detonation of Piz Gloria. We see the timer on the bomb appear to just reach 0 -- but then it cuts to Blofeld and Bond reaching the top of a tower and escaping through a side door in a sequence that takes a second or two. Then it cuts back to the timer, apparently reaching 0 again. Of course, the implication was Blofeld and Bond were simultaneously escaping as the timer was counting down to 0, but rather than cut back and forth, it's literally shown out of linear sequence, which confuses some viewers the first time they see it.
My point is a narrative can be constructed any number of ways to show us something we thought we saw in a different light. For instance, someone posited if a trap door was below Bond and opened at the right moment, he could drop through it before the full force of the explosion happens. We'd already seen Saffin escape through a trap door faster than seems humanly possible. It's not impossible to believe the same for Bond.
Here's another way to look at it: the escape sequence in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Holmes, Watson, and the others are fleeing the enemy, who are firing on them. The film slows the action down, emphasizing some parts over others. Shown at full speed, the escapes and such might be incomprehensible or appear inescapable. But punctuated in this way, no matter how outlandish what we see is, it appear plausible.
So, imagine if they did the same in the next Bond film. The explosions roll in. We see their impact, but then the action slows. It's more clear where the force of the explosions are hitting. We see where debris is thrown and destruction occurs. This time, we see Bond from the side, not from behind. We can see the force of the explosions are not actually reaching him. Suddenly a trap door opens as a plume of smoke begins to obscure him. He disappears through the opening as the full force of the explosion now hits the space he was just in.
A narrow escape? Of course. We've seen it many, many times before. We saw such in thismovie, from an explosion at Vesper's tomb that miraculously didn't kill bond to a bullet that hits Bond's suit shoulder pad but somehow without striking flesh to a rock that provides barely enough cover so a car doesn't crush him. And that was just in the first half hour. To somehow think they couldn't do something similar to retcon this movie's ending -- especially with those moments where the screen purposefully goes white and then black -- seems to ignore all the other implausibles in the Bond films. And this is just one possible scenario.
Does that mean they're going to do something like this? Not likely. But not impossible, either.
I understand what your saying about timeline but I see it differently to you. I am going to be talking about the movies here, not the books nor referencing the books. Dr. No came out in 1962, therefore it would stand to reason and could be argued that this is James Bond first outing as a secret agent and thus us the viewers are being exposed to a young rookie agent. Thus as the years go by and more movies are made, us the viewers are seeing the agent's experiences grow and his personality grow. The personality changes could be explained away by having different actors playing the part because lets be real, we cannot expect the same actor to play the character for the rest of their acting life. Also, as the years progress, so does the changes in clothing, cars, guns and gadgets. Some become more extravagant and others more technically complex as better technology becomes available as each year progresses. To me each movie is a continuation of the previous due to the fact that each movie takes advantage of the new things that are available in that year. Q branch proves this because with each movie, Q branches gadgets uses the latest technology and this occurs with each new movie.
So in my eyes, the timeline has been continuous right from 1962 to the present day where in 1962 Bond was a young agent leading to the present day where he is an old agent coming to the end of his time as a secret agent. NTTD has given viewers the perception that Bond has been killed. If that is the case then the time line is dead and the only way Eon can create another Bond movie is by revisiting a certain time in history and creating a Bond movie there because remember, Bond is supposed to be dead which means as the years go by, Eon cannot make a new Bond movie using the latest gadgets because the man is supposed to be dead and if they want us to believe he is dead, Eon can only make a movie that shows a timeline of Bonds past because he is supposed to be dead. Which means anything they show has to fit with that time line, cars of that era, technology of that era used for the Q branch gadgets and so on.
Of course everything I've written will be total trash if us fans are shown Bond survived.
I'm afraid you didn't understand the concept of reboot. What happened from CR06 to NTTD is independent from the rest of the series. You have to consider the Craig era as a series within the series, with a beginning, a middle and an end.
Tracy doesn't even exist here while she's probably the most important female character in Fleming's work and in the original series (she is even mentioned in TSWLM, FYEO and LTK).
I think it would be very selfish from Broccoli and Craig to make the latest Bond the one who opened the door with CR06 and who closed it with NTTD. I don't want to imagine when I watch the movies with Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton and Brosnan that this guy on screen will be vaporized by a nuclear missile one day. It's just not the way I see Bond. These are different iterations of the character and the fact Craig's one eventually dies doesn't mean at all the others will know the same doom. I say it again, I only identify with heroes who live on, that's why I never liked Craig's Bond in terms of mythological journey.
What's the problem with asking the audience to forget what has been done from 2006 to 2021 and to reset their mind to welcome a new version of Bond which is not supposed to be linked with Craig's ? The character existed before Red Grant's look-alike got the part, he will exist after, no matter what happened in NTTD, otherwise it would mean for almost 60 years, we've benn watching movies with missing elements, and I don't want that. I like this idea that we are not supposed to know anything about what happens to the character in the future, only focusing on the current mission.
Michael G. Wilson once said, and I can't remember exactly when, that he saw the Bond films as "a series of series". Make of that what you want, but his words carry some weight.
Also, in the final Bale Batman film (spoilers follow) he gives up being Batman and moves to another country, with another person taking up his mantle (whether he's specifically called Batman or not we don't know). That is unequivocally presented as the end of this version of Bruce Wayne being Batman.
And then a couple of years later there's a new film with a new guy playing Bruce Wayne, who is Batman again and in this version of the character never gave it up - this time he meets Superman. The two films share various personnel like writers, producers etc. In the next film he even shares a theme tune with another, much older version of Batman. Audiences were fine with all of this and understood what was going on. Bond is dead, long live Bond.
I still struggle with the ending and his death, but I'm starting to get over it.
I may apply the Blackadder concept to it now. Not nice seeing him die at the end of every series, but in the following series, he's still Edmund Blackadder and still just as fun.
My initial reaction when I saw NTTD for the first time was - "WHHHHAAAAAAAATTTTT?????? you can't kill Bond!!!" but having watched it again I'm perfectly ok with it. I don't believe there is any 'sense' to make of it, no connections, no hidden plot lines or links to Bonds past or future. Craig's Bond films have links through them and can be seen as a continuation of his story but there have been links and nods with previous Bond's too ie Timothy Dalton's films.
I've never ever, even for a moment, thought that there's a timeline running through Connery to Craig and beyond. Bond is a fictional character, writers can do what they like with the character. Depending on your world view or beliefs, movies & books may be the only places where death doesn't need to be permanent.
I say, great job; whilst the last 5 films haven't been flawless, overall they have left the Bond franchise in a great place and I'm both happy and looking forward to whatever comes next.
My name has changed! I’m no longer dufus......now I’m DB6
Reading many of the comments since my own, the issue of Bond allegedly being killed in NTTD has me perplexed. It is being claimed or if you want, argued that Craig's time as Bond is not a continuation from Brosnan but a independent series of it's own. If this is so then what about all the other Bonds? Would people have been happy if Connery was killed at the end of his time as Bond and then comes along Moore as the new Bond who he himself is killed off and then comes along Dalton who gets killed off and so on and so on with each actor when their time as Bond comes to an end because if people are happy to say it's OK for Craig to be killed off because it was a series with a series, is it not fair to say that all the other actors that played Bond where doing so in their own series within a series? and if so, why were they not killed off?
OR is it the consensus that Sean Connery all the way through to Pierce Brosnan was a continuation of Bond but it then split off into a separate series when Daniel Craig was made Bond or is it that each actor that played Bond did so in their own series, in the same manner that members are saying happened with Craig?
Apologies to those who feel I am going on a bit about this but as a fan I always thought the Bond movies was a continuation from one actor to the next, never ever did it enter my mind it could be anything different and it was only till I read this particular thread about Craig's time as Bond being a separate timeline to that of the other Bonds, it's messed with my mind which has disturbed me and as such it's got me asking questions after questions.
We are supposed to use a bit of suspension of disbelief. Obviously the Bond that fought Dr No in 1962 (or even the one who played cards with Le Chiffre ten years or so earlier in the books) cannot be the same man who parasailed very unconvincingly over ice in "Die Another Day" in 2002, but we are meant to have swallowed our sense of logic for decades and just enjoy the stories.
In 2006 we are supposed to believe that the story starts again. A young (well, younger) Bond is promoted to 007 in a contemporary world and goes off to play cards with Le Chiffre. Once again, we are supposed to suspend disbelief and consider that Judi Dench is not the same M who gave Pierce Brosnan his orders.
What happens next, we don't know and won't for a while. I'm pretty sure, though, that once again we will have to use a bit of suspension of disbelief.
Edit: I've said this before, and will no doubt say it again. James Bond is no longer a fictional character but has become a mythical character. Stories about him have been told for nearly 70 years and will go on being told for at least 70 more. Continuity and chronology have become secondary to the creation and enjoyment of stories about him, as with Sherlock Holmes and many others.
There's nothing wrong with asking the questions you ask. Every Bond actor from Connery to Brosnan play the same person with the same memories. When Lazenby's Bond wants to retire he has objects from Connery's movies in his desk drawer. Moore's Bond cuts agent Tripple X when she menrion's Tracy's death. Leiter says Bond was married a long time ago in LTK. In the Q scene in DAD er see objects from many earlier movies including the show with the knife in FRWL.They all play experienced agents. If one of them died it would have been the end of that timeline. Let's say Bond fell off the cargo net hanging from the plane in TLD and died. Then it would be the end of the Bond Connery, Lazenby, Moore and Dalton played.
In CR Bond is new in the 00-section. He really is 007, but his story is told in a new and different way. His death is the end of the timeline that started in CR and doesn't apply to any of the earlier movies. The producers messed up the timeline a bit with keeping the same actress as M and using elements like the DB5 with the ejector seat, but he doesn't share the memories and experienced of the previous Bonds.
The last part of your post is probably where my problem lies trying to understand the timeline thing, that fact that in CR the character of M was still being played by Judi Dench which to me i saw as a continuation on from Brosnan and the use of the DB5, again another continuation from the other Bond movies. I do believe if neither had been used during Craig's time as Bond then it would have been easier for me to understand the timeline thing.
You're right about that. The timeline theory is the generally accepted way to look at continuity in Bond movies, but it's not watertight. I guess these things happen because of lazy writing, wanting to refer to older movies to get cheers (and sold tickets) in the cinemas and the fact that Just Dench is such a great actress.
Whether we like it or not, we're living in a world of frequent reboots and increased attention to continuity. The comic book film has been rewriting the playbook for action cinema ever since the Nolan-Bat films and Marvel movies supplanted the Bourne series. Audiences have become conditioned to this and have accepted it. They won't have any problem accepting a new James Bond in a new timeline, not after Batman and Spider-Man have kept popping up with new series, faces, and continuities.
The Bond films had, into the Brosnan era, maintained a floating continuity, where any possible timeline was elastic and vague (LTK could make a reference back to OHMSS that was understood by the film's characters--unlike the Craig films, where Bond has no realization of the historic significance of his Aston Martin). But after modern prestige TV began emphasizing personal arcs and story arcs, film franchises followed suit, and floating continuity became an anachronism. Instead of having a character's serialized adventures stretch across decades, a character's franchise was self-contained and lasted only as long as the same actor (or actor and director, as with the Nolan bat-films) remained onboard. After they left and ended the series, the corporate rights holder waited a few years to restart with a clean sweep and new creative staff.
Like the modern superhero, Bond is less a myth than a well-known intellectual property. "Reboot" is another word for "repackage," a product relaunch featuring a familiar product. The ending of NTTD is less a mythic ending than the ending for a series within a multi-series franchise. The endings of King Arthur and Robin Hood were mythic because they were apocalyptic--they not only killed the characters but their worlds. Not only King Arthur but the Round Table and its Knights perished; the Merry Men broke apart and King John triumphed. Imagine a Bond film where not only Bond and Leiter died but also M and Moneypenny, as part of the destruction of the secret service.
NTTD by contrast leaves you with a comparitively feel-good ending that only applies to Craig's version of Bond. It generously ends the Craig series and hands over the Bond franchise to the next actor by eliminating the hold-overs of the Craig era, starting with Craig himself. Now that Craig's Bond is extinct, the series can relegate his child and "wife" to an extinct timeline and series. The same goes for the botched version of Blofeld. And Felix has always been reincarnated by wildly different actors.
Before Craig the Bond films were one series and one franchise. After Craig they're one franchise with multiple series, in the same way as Batman or Spider-Man. That's how movies work now, for better or worse.
I'm a bit puzzled by that: it's made quite clear that Bond is becoming 007 for the first time at the beginning of CR isn't it? That this is the first time (this) Bond is getting a DB5... we see him get it.
I get that Dench's presence muddles that slightly; but Q's disappeared, there's no Moneypenny anymore- the clues are there that this isn't the same situation as before.
Comments
all interesting ideas, @Dodge101
but...
they already did introduce "another James Bond" in Casino Royale
.,,and...
the characters death wont prevent there being new films made after the character becomes Public Domain. Much like Sherlock Holmes, we can expect instead multiple competing versions of the character, each contradicting the other.
Anyways, I would like to see the film where Mathilde Bond becomes a double-oh. She seemed mighty cool under pressure during the car chase, so she might have inherited a few useful character traits from her daddy. Maybe she's like Wolverine's daughter from Logan? thats an angle no-one's discussed yet, even though we were anticipating a Logan influence well before the film was due for its original release.
So you think the plan is to wait about twenty years for the girl to get old enough to be a secret agent? And how does that fit with BB's very clear statement that Bond will always be a British male?
Do you think the plan when the movie Logan was made was to never again use the characters Wolverine and professor X again?
No, the only thing that makes sense is the timeline approach. CraigBond was a separate timeline, more or less intended from the start to be self-contained from 00-status to his death. The first timeline was from DN to DAF, the second from CR to NTTD. The only question is if Bond26 is a third timeline or a continuation of the first. In other words: James Bond in Bond26 hasn't lost Vesper, but did he lose Tracy?
am I the "you" you're posing your questions to @Number24 ?
since I managed to start a new page, @Dodge101 ' s theory about Mathilde Bond has dropped behind, the questions may be intended for dodge. anyway...
So you think the plan is to wait about twenty years for the girl to get old enough to be a secret agent? And how does that fit with BB's very clear statement that Bond will always be a British male?
no of course not but I am now suddenly more interested in the future adventures of Mathilde Bond than who ever is cast as Bond26 and how they explain the character is still alive. And Barbara Brocolli said James Bond would always be a British male, she didnt say anything about Mathilde Bond. These could be some fresh interesting stories.
Do you think the plan when the movie Logan was made was to never again use the characters Wolverine and Professor X again?
I know youre not really into the comic book movies, but this is complicated yet more or less true. After a certain point the X-Men movies went back in time to show us the team's early years, in a slightly altered timeline. So Logan was the final chronological appearance of Wolverine and Professor X, the rights holders who made that series of films have not brought them back to life, and now never will. That parts actually simple.
The complication: rights to the X-Men have since been sold from Fox to Disney, and the characters will now be integrated into to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We don't quite know how they will do that, if they will reboot the characters from scratch, or come up with some more complicated explanation, or just ignore the issue and tell new stories.
Precedent is what they've done with the Hulk and SpiderMan , both of whom had earlier movies made by rival studios. SpiderMan in particular they made about a decade younger, but did not bother with an origin story at all. When re-introduced in Civil War we just assume he had the same origin story we already saw twice before with two different actors, yet otherwise everything else seems a bit different, and since he is so young he can still meet the Green Goblin again for the first time if they ever choose to re-tell that story. This'd be the smart way to do bond26, pick and choose which elements to keep, yet make the character younger and just ignore the contradictions.
Speculation is the X-Men are probably going to be reintroduced via the big timeline reset from EndGame , which is a bit of pseudo-scifi technobabble that really allows them a blank slate to cast new actors and re-tell old stories once again. But much too scifi to be applicable to James Bond no matter how many gadgets there are, so we shouldnt compare Bond's situation to however they will rationalize Wolverine and Professor X's suddenly getting better.
Dodge101, as the end titles said James Bond Will Return. There's no doubt about that, even if NTTD flopped completely at the box office which it hasn't. Reboot is only one of the options available to intelligent filmmakers, or even Eon. Bond is, as you said, a fictional character and they can go anywhere with him.
Yes I can appreciate that the end titles say Bond will return but doesn't it bother people that the ending of NTTD shows Bond being blown up and some fans want to convince themselves that Bond was not blown up purely based on the camera movement of that scene!! ..it's ridiculous in my opinion. Fans are clutching at straws in the hope that Bond somehow survived being blown up.
As a fan I will be totally and utterly disappointed if Eon find a way to bring James Bond back to life because as far as I'm concerned, NTTD showed him saying his goodbyes to the woman he loved and then being blown up by the missiles from the navy ship. What is Eon going to do? pretend it was some kind of dream event or an out of body event to explain why Bond did not die in the missile strike?
I don’t think anyone is trying to convince themselves Bond survives but merely say it’s a possibility. At this point no one can say Bond is definitively dead any more than they can say he’s definitively alive. They’re not the writers or producers on the next film. What they can say is it’s possible. Why does this bother you so much personally?
We don't know what Eon are going to do. There are a number of possibilities which we fans can only speculate about until more information comes our way.
It's not a personal thing but it bothers me that the movie makers make a scene in such graphic detail where it gives the viewers no choice but to think the obvious and then along comes fans who say it's possible he survived!!! How, just how? Bombs are raining down all around him, he's in the open exposed, nothing to protect him or so we are led to believe and then in the movies end credits we are told Bond will return!!!. Just exactly what is Eon playing at? Are they going to say that Bond went back down where he came the split second we see the bombs exploding before him and thus he and the missile silo miraculously survives the aerial bombardment or are they going to have that his EMP watch somehow saves him, preventing the bombs from exploding around him or it creates so kind of protection shield around him.
When I watch a movie, I am not immune to the fact that a lot of what we see is not possible but to make the movie watchable there needs to be some aspect of realism otherwise people will give it a bad rating causing others to not watch it. A good example is the early Arnold Schwarzenegger movies where for years his movies were ridiculed because he would be seen firing heavy machine guns killing everyone insight but yet those firing back at him with similar weapons never hit him or even come close to doing damage to him. His movie Commando is a case in point, the classic scene where his in a garden firing an LMG killing everyone, whilst he himself is surrounded by by guys firing automatic weapons at him and nothing hits him. Is NTTD going to suffer the same, bombs raining down upon him, the scene shows a procession of bombs exploding in front of him as the next one gets closer and closer and then the screen goes blank leading us to believe that the next one was right on top of him.
My questions weren't directed at you personally. I was thinking more "you members of AJB" or "if you" in the "if one" meaning.
In my opinion Bond won't be still alive in Bond26. We will see a new version of Bond from a different timeline than CraigBond, who in turn was a Bond from a different timeline than Brosnan, Dalton etc.
Trying to make up a story how Bond survived NTTD would be a serious mistake. EON has to start fresh and ignore CraigBond's tenure that has to stand alone.
What worries me for the next Bond is a comment you made in your post 'Trying to make up a story how Bond survived NTTD would be a serious mistake' in that I am concerned that Eon is going to somehow try and explain away how Bond survived because if the man is supposed to be dead, why would they have 'James Bond will return' at the end credits? it doesn't make any logical sense.
Because they're starting a new timeline with a new Bond actor. Think of the transition from DAD to CR. Bond in DAD was a veteran 00-agent. Bond in CR won his 00-agent status. A new timeline means it's the same person, but with a new version of his history. It didn't matter to CraigBond what had happened in DAD or any of the earlier Bond movies because that was a seperate and different cinematic version of Bond's life. I expect EON to start a new timeline, a new and seperate story of James Bond like they did in CR. That's what's done in many re-boots . One example is the Batman movies. In Batman Begins we see see Bruce Wayne becoming Batman so it can't be the story of the same Batman we saw in Batman Returns, Batman & Robin and all the other Batman movies made earlier. But it's still Batman.
It's a strange concept to bend your mind around and I don't blame you if you don't understand what I'm trying to say. If anyone feels they can explain it better, feel free to have a go.
and Die Another Day did have a "James Bond Will Return" at the end didn't it, even though the next film in the series was about a completely different character also named James Bond? I think the text just means there will be another movie about a character named James Bond. After the precedent of already introducing one new character in Casino Royale, there's no guarantee that text means it will be CraigBond, or another actor attempting to play Craig's bond.
number24 said:
My questions weren't directed at you personally. I was thinking more "you members of AJB" or "if you" in the "if one" meaning.
then apologies for giving a long indepth comic book movie related response ! I know you don't really like those sort of movies and would prefer they don't come up in every discussion, Sometimes I gotta let my Geek Flag Fly.
Seriously, they may come up with a followup that explains how CraigBond secretly survived, or they may introduce yet another version of the character. Now we know for sure it was Craig's specific condition his version of the character should die, I suspect it will be the latter. And they already told the "fake death" story in SkyFall, so they probably wont want to repeat themselves so soon.
That all said, it is fun in a fan-ficky way to come up with over-elaborate explanations of how he could survive, several posters have already come up with some quite good theories, and I bet a few of these silly ideas we come up with may be better than what we ultimately get with Bond26. And, such fan-theorizing is much more fun to read than all the talk about "this ending is an assault on straight white males everywhere". I've given up reading a few threads here because of that stuff.
Well, that's the problem -- viewers do have a choice, even if you seem determined to insist they do not. That's what makes it seem a personal crusade on your part, though you're certainly not alone.
As has been dissected on this site in various threads, we don't see Bond literally killed, the screen goes white, then black, and then cuts to a distance shot. Various theories as to how Bond could be brought back have been posted.
Certainly books and movies have resurrected seemingly dead characters before, not just in the Sherlockian way that Conan Doyle brought back his creation but in the movie serials where each installment routinely ended with a seemingly impossible situation or the "obvious" death of a character, only to show, nope, that wasn't the case. The serialized, arc-style of Craig's Bond opens itself up to exactly that examination.
I was also thinking about how OHMSS shows the detonation of Piz Gloria. We see the timer on the bomb appear to just reach 0 -- but then it cuts to Blofeld and Bond reaching the top of a tower and escaping through a side door in a sequence that takes a second or two. Then it cuts back to the timer, apparently reaching 0 again. Of course, the implication was Blofeld and Bond were simultaneously escaping as the timer was counting down to 0, but rather than cut back and forth, it's literally shown out of linear sequence, which confuses some viewers the first time they see it.
My point is a narrative can be constructed any number of ways to show us something we thought we saw in a different light. For instance, someone posited if a trap door was below Bond and opened at the right moment, he could drop through it before the full force of the explosion happens. We'd already seen Saffin escape through a trap door faster than seems humanly possible. It's not impossible to believe the same for Bond.
Here's another way to look at it: the escape sequence in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Holmes, Watson, and the others are fleeing the enemy, who are firing on them. The film slows the action down, emphasizing some parts over others. Shown at full speed, the escapes and such might be incomprehensible or appear inescapable. But punctuated in this way, no matter how outlandish what we see is, it appear plausible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJjZxFhNCso&ab_channel=TrailerCrunch
So, imagine if they did the same in the next Bond film. The explosions roll in. We see their impact, but then the action slows. It's more clear where the force of the explosions are hitting. We see where debris is thrown and destruction occurs. This time, we see Bond from the side, not from behind. We can see the force of the explosions are not actually reaching him. Suddenly a trap door opens as a plume of smoke begins to obscure him. He disappears through the opening as the full force of the explosion now hits the space he was just in.
A narrow escape? Of course. We've seen it many, many times before. We saw such in this movie, from an explosion at Vesper's tomb that miraculously didn't kill bond to a bullet that hits Bond's suit shoulder pad but somehow without striking flesh to a rock that provides barely enough cover so a car doesn't crush him. And that was just in the first half hour. To somehow think they couldn't do something similar to retcon this movie's ending -- especially with those moments where the screen purposefully goes white and then black -- seems to ignore all the other implausibles in the Bond films. And this is just one possible scenario.
Does that mean they're going to do something like this? Not likely. But not impossible, either.
I like some comic book movies. I watched Spiderman: Homecoming last night and I enjoyed most of it.
I'd say CR wasn't about a completely different character also named James Bond. It's (roughly) the same character, but it's a new version of his life.
I understand what your saying about timeline but I see it differently to you. I am going to be talking about the movies here, not the books nor referencing the books. Dr. No came out in 1962, therefore it would stand to reason and could be argued that this is James Bond first outing as a secret agent and thus us the viewers are being exposed to a young rookie agent. Thus as the years go by and more movies are made, us the viewers are seeing the agent's experiences grow and his personality grow. The personality changes could be explained away by having different actors playing the part because lets be real, we cannot expect the same actor to play the character for the rest of their acting life. Also, as the years progress, so does the changes in clothing, cars, guns and gadgets. Some become more extravagant and others more technically complex as better technology becomes available as each year progresses. To me each movie is a continuation of the previous due to the fact that each movie takes advantage of the new things that are available in that year. Q branch proves this because with each movie, Q branches gadgets uses the latest technology and this occurs with each new movie.
So in my eyes, the timeline has been continuous right from 1962 to the present day where in 1962 Bond was a young agent leading to the present day where he is an old agent coming to the end of his time as a secret agent. NTTD has given viewers the perception that Bond has been killed. If that is the case then the time line is dead and the only way Eon can create another Bond movie is by revisiting a certain time in history and creating a Bond movie there because remember, Bond is supposed to be dead which means as the years go by, Eon cannot make a new Bond movie using the latest gadgets because the man is supposed to be dead and if they want us to believe he is dead, Eon can only make a movie that shows a timeline of Bonds past because he is supposed to be dead. Which means anything they show has to fit with that time line, cars of that era, technology of that era used for the Q branch gadgets and so on.
Of course everything I've written will be total trash if us fans are shown Bond survived.
Then how do you explain James Bond becoming a 00-agent in CR?
I'm afraid you didn't understand the concept of reboot. What happened from CR06 to NTTD is independent from the rest of the series. You have to consider the Craig era as a series within the series, with a beginning, a middle and an end.
Tracy doesn't even exist here while she's probably the most important female character in Fleming's work and in the original series (she is even mentioned in TSWLM, FYEO and LTK).
I think it would be very selfish from Broccoli and Craig to make the latest Bond the one who opened the door with CR06 and who closed it with NTTD. I don't want to imagine when I watch the movies with Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton and Brosnan that this guy on screen will be vaporized by a nuclear missile one day. It's just not the way I see Bond. These are different iterations of the character and the fact Craig's one eventually dies doesn't mean at all the others will know the same doom. I say it again, I only identify with heroes who live on, that's why I never liked Craig's Bond in terms of mythological journey.
What's the problem with asking the audience to forget what has been done from 2006 to 2021 and to reset their mind to welcome a new version of Bond which is not supposed to be linked with Craig's ? The character existed before Red Grant's look-alike got the part, he will exist after, no matter what happened in NTTD, otherwise it would mean for almost 60 years, we've benn watching movies with missing elements, and I don't want that. I like this idea that we are not supposed to know anything about what happens to the character in the future, only focusing on the current mission.
Michael G. Wilson once said, and I can't remember exactly when, that he saw the Bond films as "a series of series". Make of that what you want, but his words carry some weight.
Also, in the final Bale Batman film (spoilers follow) he gives up being Batman and moves to another country, with another person taking up his mantle (whether he's specifically called Batman or not we don't know). That is unequivocally presented as the end of this version of Bruce Wayne being Batman.
And then a couple of years later there's a new film with a new guy playing Bruce Wayne, who is Batman again and in this version of the character never gave it up - this time he meets Superman. The two films share various personnel like writers, producers etc. In the next film he even shares a theme tune with another, much older version of Batman. Audiences were fine with all of this and understood what was going on. Bond is dead, long live Bond.
Bond is dead - long live Bond!
I still struggle with the ending and his death, but I'm starting to get over it.
I may apply the Blackadder concept to it now. Not nice seeing him die at the end of every series, but in the following series, he's still Edmund Blackadder and still just as fun.
My initial reaction when I saw NTTD for the first time was - "WHHHHAAAAAAAATTTTT?????? you can't kill Bond!!!" but having watched it again I'm perfectly ok with it. I don't believe there is any 'sense' to make of it, no connections, no hidden plot lines or links to Bonds past or future. Craig's Bond films have links through them and can be seen as a continuation of his story but there have been links and nods with previous Bond's too ie Timothy Dalton's films.
I've never ever, even for a moment, thought that there's a timeline running through Connery to Craig and beyond. Bond is a fictional character, writers can do what they like with the character. Depending on your world view or beliefs, movies & books may be the only places where death doesn't need to be permanent.
I say, great job; whilst the last 5 films haven't been flawless, overall they have left the Bond franchise in a great place and I'm both happy and looking forward to whatever comes next.
Reading many of the comments since my own, the issue of Bond allegedly being killed in NTTD has me perplexed. It is being claimed or if you want, argued that Craig's time as Bond is not a continuation from Brosnan but a independent series of it's own. If this is so then what about all the other Bonds? Would people have been happy if Connery was killed at the end of his time as Bond and then comes along Moore as the new Bond who he himself is killed off and then comes along Dalton who gets killed off and so on and so on with each actor when their time as Bond comes to an end because if people are happy to say it's OK for Craig to be killed off because it was a series with a series, is it not fair to say that all the other actors that played Bond where doing so in their own series within a series? and if so, why were they not killed off?
OR is it the consensus that Sean Connery all the way through to Pierce Brosnan was a continuation of Bond but it then split off into a separate series when Daniel Craig was made Bond or is it that each actor that played Bond did so in their own series, in the same manner that members are saying happened with Craig?
Apologies to those who feel I am going on a bit about this but as a fan I always thought the Bond movies was a continuation from one actor to the next, never ever did it enter my mind it could be anything different and it was only till I read this particular thread about Craig's time as Bond being a separate timeline to that of the other Bonds, it's messed with my mind which has disturbed me and as such it's got me asking questions after questions.
We are supposed to use a bit of suspension of disbelief. Obviously the Bond that fought Dr No in 1962 (or even the one who played cards with Le Chiffre ten years or so earlier in the books) cannot be the same man who parasailed very unconvincingly over ice in "Die Another Day" in 2002, but we are meant to have swallowed our sense of logic for decades and just enjoy the stories.
In 2006 we are supposed to believe that the story starts again. A young (well, younger) Bond is promoted to 007 in a contemporary world and goes off to play cards with Le Chiffre. Once again, we are supposed to suspend disbelief and consider that Judi Dench is not the same M who gave Pierce Brosnan his orders.
What happens next, we don't know and won't for a while. I'm pretty sure, though, that once again we will have to use a bit of suspension of disbelief.
Edit: I've said this before, and will no doubt say it again. James Bond is no longer a fictional character but has become a mythical character. Stories about him have been told for nearly 70 years and will go on being told for at least 70 more. Continuity and chronology have become secondary to the creation and enjoyment of stories about him, as with Sherlock Holmes and many others.
There's nothing wrong with asking the questions you ask. Every Bond actor from Connery to Brosnan play the same person with the same memories. When Lazenby's Bond wants to retire he has objects from Connery's movies in his desk drawer. Moore's Bond cuts agent Tripple X when she menrion's Tracy's death. Leiter says Bond was married a long time ago in LTK. In the Q scene in DAD er see objects from many earlier movies including the show with the knife in FRWL.They all play experienced agents. If one of them died it would have been the end of that timeline. Let's say Bond fell off the cargo net hanging from the plane in TLD and died. Then it would be the end of the Bond Connery, Lazenby, Moore and Dalton played.
In CR Bond is new in the 00-section. He really is 007, but his story is told in a new and different way. His death is the end of the timeline that started in CR and doesn't apply to any of the earlier movies. The producers messed up the timeline a bit with keeping the same actress as M and using elements like the DB5 with the ejector seat, but he doesn't share the memories and experienced of the previous Bonds.
The last part of your post is probably where my problem lies trying to understand the timeline thing, that fact that in CR the character of M was still being played by Judi Dench which to me i saw as a continuation on from Brosnan and the use of the DB5, again another continuation from the other Bond movies. I do believe if neither had been used during Craig's time as Bond then it would have been easier for me to understand the timeline thing.
You're right about that. The timeline theory is the generally accepted way to look at continuity in Bond movies, but it's not watertight. I guess these things happen because of lazy writing, wanting to refer to older movies to get cheers (and sold tickets) in the cinemas and the fact that Just Dench is such a great actress.
@Dodge101 watch Casino Royale again.
The dialog states several times Bond has just been promoted to double-oh.
The precredits is a flashback to his First Two Kills, which earned him the recent promotion.
Might as well since its Craig's best film, the only one where I'm not second-guessing the filmmakers as I watch it.
Whether we like it or not, we're living in a world of frequent reboots and increased attention to continuity. The comic book film has been rewriting the playbook for action cinema ever since the Nolan-Bat films and Marvel movies supplanted the Bourne series. Audiences have become conditioned to this and have accepted it. They won't have any problem accepting a new James Bond in a new timeline, not after Batman and Spider-Man have kept popping up with new series, faces, and continuities.
The Bond films had, into the Brosnan era, maintained a floating continuity, where any possible timeline was elastic and vague (LTK could make a reference back to OHMSS that was understood by the film's characters--unlike the Craig films, where Bond has no realization of the historic significance of his Aston Martin). But after modern prestige TV began emphasizing personal arcs and story arcs, film franchises followed suit, and floating continuity became an anachronism. Instead of having a character's serialized adventures stretch across decades, a character's franchise was self-contained and lasted only as long as the same actor (or actor and director, as with the Nolan bat-films) remained onboard. After they left and ended the series, the corporate rights holder waited a few years to restart with a clean sweep and new creative staff.
Like the modern superhero, Bond is less a myth than a well-known intellectual property. "Reboot" is another word for "repackage," a product relaunch featuring a familiar product. The ending of NTTD is less a mythic ending than the ending for a series within a multi-series franchise. The endings of King Arthur and Robin Hood were mythic because they were apocalyptic--they not only killed the characters but their worlds. Not only King Arthur but the Round Table and its Knights perished; the Merry Men broke apart and King John triumphed. Imagine a Bond film where not only Bond and Leiter died but also M and Moneypenny, as part of the destruction of the secret service.
NTTD by contrast leaves you with a comparitively feel-good ending that only applies to Craig's version of Bond. It generously ends the Craig series and hands over the Bond franchise to the next actor by eliminating the hold-overs of the Craig era, starting with Craig himself. Now that Craig's Bond is extinct, the series can relegate his child and "wife" to an extinct timeline and series. The same goes for the botched version of Blofeld. And Felix has always been reincarnated by wildly different actors.
Before Craig the Bond films were one series and one franchise. After Craig they're one franchise with multiple series, in the same way as Batman or Spider-Man. That's how movies work now, for better or worse.
I'm a bit puzzled by that: it's made quite clear that Bond is becoming 007 for the first time at the beginning of CR isn't it? That this is the first time (this) Bond is getting a DB5... we see him get it.
I get that Dench's presence muddles that slightly; but Q's disappeared, there's no Moneypenny anymore- the clues are there that this isn't the same situation as before.