And so did Connery, in a way. The whole thing about his made search for Blofeld at the beginning of Diamonds Are Forever was supposedly his desperate need for revenge.
Bond cancelled
- Thread starter Captain Shaw
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And so did Connery, in a way. The whole thing about his made search for Blofeld at the beginning of Diamonds Are Forever was supposedly his desperate need for revenge.
Um - that's wrong. Dalton's departure from the role coincided with Goldeneye being greenlit. During the post LTK-hiatus he was quite insistent that he was the incumbent 007 and would continue to be. He even successfully sued some British tabloids for suggesting that in the wake of LTK's disappointing US box office he was going to be fired and replaced by Pierce Brosnan.
Dalton didn't really walk away - this was all a cover to let him retain some dignity. The series was held up for 6 years by legal issues but also the fact that the studio didn't have great confidence in him as a leading man. Cobby Broccoli was adamant that Dalton was a good 007 but eventually had to yield to studio demands to axe him so that the new movie could get off the ground.
It was indeed a continuity error - in Goldeneye she accuses Bond of being a dinasaur and a favourite of her predecessor. That doesn't fly if she's the M who promoted him. She was also a bureaucrat and a 'a bean counter' whereas reboot M is pretty shrewd and ruthless.
Still my favourite M line goes to Judy, "If I want sarcasm... I'll call my children." So cool.
I'm happy for M to be a woman, I love Judy Dench, and I love the fact that she single-handedly turned M from a cameo to a principal character but even so, for continuity's sake I suppose a different actress should have played her.
I suggest we clone Sean Connery and raise that clone from birth to be Bond. We can't go wrong.
Also, Daniel Craig looks like Vladimir Putin. Thats a little too strange for me.
Also, Daniel Craig looks like Vladimir Putin. Thats a little too strange for me.
Don't get me wrong, I have no objection to M being a woman. Dame Judy is wonderful, she's a national institution.
If, and only if, any new Bond film goes back to the start and was set in the 60's then make M a man. Otherwise I'd just keep Judy.
Agreed.
And if *I* think that, then the situation must be hopeless.
seriously though. Like I said, every new Bond is a de facto reboot anyway. Even if some elements, such as M, are the same, with every new actor to play Bond comes a blank slate to do with the films as they wish.
We all know James Bond is a timelord
The next time we have a new movie he'll be played by another actor and reference some war involving time.
If the series wanted to preserve continuity and function as an actual prequel it would have to do a lot more than drop Dench. The Craig films, for example, taking place in the 2000s, while the Brosnan movies (specifically Goldeneye) taking place in the 1990s, right after the fall of the Soviet Union.
I'm happy that she was kept with the series--she's a terrific M and has fantastic chemistry (not in the romantic sense, of course) with Daniel Craig--perhaps better than between her and Brosnan, even.
Rii
Rear Admiral
To be fair, Putin is ex-KGB.
Keeping Dench as M around for the Craig reboot (I'm thinking stylistically here, for all you anal types) was an excellent choice; she's wonderful. In Quantum of Solace I think she actually has more lines than Bond does.
M (flustered): "When someone says 'we've got people everywhere', you expect it to be hyperbole! Lots of people say that. Florists use that expression. It doesn't mean that they've got somebody working for them inside the bloody room!"
But, as has been pointed out, CR is NOT a prequel to the other movies. It's a reboot. You can no more expect it to maintain continuity with them than you should expect the Christopher Nolan Batman movies to follow the Tim Burton ones.
There was a very, very loose sort of continuity with the other movies (the references to Tracy, Felix Leiter etc) but CR was a new beginning for Bond. As has been pointed out, for CR to have been a true prequel, it would have to be set during the Cold War - but it's very clearly set in the Noughties.
Dench was retained simply because the producers liked her so much. I can see how her return caused some confusion but it wasn't meant to signify that CR was a prequel to the Brosnan movies.
Of course, you could alternatively argue that it proves that James Bond is merely a codename and that Daniel Craig's incarnation was Pierce Brosnan's successor - but let's not go there!
Jesus Christ, outside of loose continuity (such as the Tracy thing, or Leiter mentioning that "he was married, once" in Licence to Kill, or the throwback to On Her Majesty's Secret Service in The World is Not Enough ("family motto"), every new Bond is essentially a reboot. He's a dude who chases foreign spies and terrorists across the globe. Unless you think the James Bond who was battling a media mogul in Tomorrow Never Dies was the same guy as the dude trying to abort the theft of Fort Knox in Goldfinger. For the most part, they're self-contained stories, and any attempt to tie them together in some sort of contiguous storyline is pointless, I feel.
Although I do agree with Hermiod that, if the series is ever rebooted to a '60s period piece, M should be a man -- there's no way a woman in 1963 Britain would have been running the Secret Service.
(Granted, there's no way a guy could dress up as a bat and fight crime and keep his secret identity hidden, but cut me some slack, here.)
Although I do agree with Hermiod that, if the series is ever rebooted to a '60s period piece, M should be a man -- there's no way a woman in 1963 Britain would have been running the Secret Service.
(Granted, there's no way a guy could dress up as a bat and fight crime and keep his secret identity hidden, but cut me some slack, here.
)
Well it looks like Craig is going to star in another Bond video game this year.
Wonder if he'll finish his Bond tenure in a video game just like Brosnan?
Wonder if he'll finish his Bond tenure in a video game just like Brosnan?
MeanJoePhaser
Admiral
They should do some Simpsons thing, how Maggie was always born 2 years before. Characters stay the same ages. Events move forward in time.
Where suddenly Goldfinger happened in the 2000's. Refilm some scenes. In fact, the next movie could just be a summary of the first 6 or so movies, told in flashback via Bond having a conversation with someone he kills at the end.
Where suddenly Goldfinger happened in the 2000's. Refilm some scenes. In fact, the next movie could just be a summary of the first 6 or so movies, told in flashback via Bond having a conversation with someone he kills at the end.
I agree that each new movie a reboot to a certain extent. You can't imagine that Timothy Dalton's grim assassin was the same person as Roger Moore's eyebrow-wagging dirty old man. And Bond would have to have an elixir of youth to start of life as Connery in the 1960s and look like Brosnan in the 1990s.
But pre-Craig each incarnation of Bond was meant to be an experienced spy with a history. I always take the view that Brosnan's 007 DID take on Goldfinger - but he used 1990s (or 80s) technology when doing so and cracked jokes about Take That or New Kids on the Block, rather than the Beatles. That's how I reconcile things like the references to Tracy or the glimpses of the old gadgets etc in Die ANother Day.
CR was the first time that Bond didn't have a past as a 00 agent. It's much more of a reboot than any of the previous Bond debuts.
I hope not, but the parallels are astonishing- even down to the details of the game. Written by Fierstein, 3rd person, focusing on cover and melee and driving, hiring a singer to voice the girl as well as sing the song... all just like Everything Or Nothing.
Let's hope the game's at least as good as EoN, which was surprisingly good considering what the did with the format, and not a suckfest like FRWL...
And lets not forget that Felix keeps changing race as well as face, I guess. In the next movie I'm expecting him to be played by a chinese woman.
Never mind who is the best Bond, Dench is by far the best M. It's annoying that we still have no Monnypenny though - it's as if they thought they'd have too many women if they included her.
Samantha Bond was no Lois Maxwell but she was pretty cool. Maxwell said that Fleming liked her portrayal so much that he was going to write a story where Moneypenny saves Bond's life but he died before anything was written. Mind you he was probably just saying that in the hope of securing a shag, but it would have been cool.
I blame SPECTRE! They are the ones behind bankrupting MGM!
Now that's a conspiracy theory I can get behind . . . .
