This is not a true statement. There are numerous references and callbacks to previous films included throughout the pre-Daniel Craig films.
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Warner bros announce superhero films through 2020
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This is not a true statement. There are numerous references and callbacks to previous films included throughout the pre-Daniel Craig films.
Most those characters are not front centre major players in their Universes.
As for someone like Bruce Banner first Hulk film is not part of the MCU and at least Norton was only in one film right at the start of it. Recasting someone like Batman after Affleck has been in BvS, SS, JL and also set to be in Flash by all reports and this is before we even get a solo film of Affleck, really seems like a missed chance.
You know there's a clear difference.
I know that...
all i'm saying is I wish they wouldn't do it, rather than they shouldn't do it. It does add more fuel to the fire that is WB's handling of the DCEU
In my mere mortal opinion.
I was kind of amazed when I first realized how many references there were back to earlier movies there were in the Bond serie. I think they even referred to his wife or fiance, I can't remember which she was, who was killed even after one or two actor changes.
What footage, specifically? Footage that's unambiguously referencing those films' unique characters and events, or more generic stock footage? Because lots of movies and shows have used stock footage from different continuities.
Of course not, but sometimes you just have to accept the fact that you can't always get what you want (though I'm led to understand that if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need). Things that are less than optimal or desirable can and do happen, and we just have to make the best of them when they do.
After all, Ben Affleck isn't a slave. Your desire or Warner Bros.' desire to avoid seeing Batman recast doesn't outweigh his right to make decisions about his own life and career. If he decides to leave, that's his business.
It's called the willing suspension of disbelief for a reason. There are countless things in fiction that can break the illusion for you if you choose to let them -- like, say, the fact that you're watching it on a big flat screen on a wall and that the picture keeps changing from one angle to another and that there's music playing that the characters can't hear. As an audience member, you choose to ignore the signs of artifice in order to buy into the fantasy that the events are real. That's your end of the bargain. Sure, it's always preferable if the illusion is as invisible as possible, but sometimes circumstances dictate otherwise and you just have to be forgiving and choose to play along.
I think there are many things about the DCEU that undermine its "reality" far more than a recasting would. Like the totally incoherent, illogical, and self-contradictory plotting in BvS. (For instance, if Batman has bugged the bad guys' truck with a tracer he can track from the Batcave, why the hell does he chase after them at close range so they can shoot at him?????)
Exactly. Batman has been appearing in feature films for the past 74 years, so he's been recast many times -- Lewis Wilson, Robert Lowery, Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Kevin Conroy, Christian Bale, Ben Affleck, Will Arnett. Inevitably he will be recast again, and the real-world reasons why an actor might move on or be replaced outweigh the imaginary pretense of continuity.
Outside of Wonder Woman, I don't think the DCEU has any integrity to speak of. But what you or I may want to be the case is irrelevant, because we can't force reality to conform to our wishes. If it happens, it happens, and nothing we say here will have any effect on it whatsoever. So why even argue about it?
There certainly have been film series in the past that have recast their leads whenever it was convenient, or conversely had the same actor play a different role in each film. For instance, one Frankenstein film had Bela Lugosi as Ygor, Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Monster, and Evelyn Ankers as Elsa Frankenstein, and the next had Lugosi as the Monster, Chaney as the Wolf Man, and Ilona Massey as Elsa. And that was also a sequel to The Wolf Man, which had Chaney as the title character, Lugosi as a gypsy werewolf, and Ankers as the love interest. And Lionel Atwill played five different characters in five consecutive Frankenstein films. The Japanese Godzilla and other kaiju films did the same thing, having the same lead actors return in movie after movie, but always as different characters. The only performers who reprised the same role were the guys in the rubber monster suits. It's just the old repertory tradition of live theater. Actors could change or swap roles for any number of reasons, and the audience just accepted it because it was normal.
Of course it's a true statement.
In three consecutive films (You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever), Blofeld is played by different actors. In the middle of those, he fails to recognise Bond, despite them having met in the previous film, which isn't referenced. Despite OHMSS' emotional ending, DAF incredibly makes no mention of Tracy's death, despite the plot again having 007 hunt down Blofeld. DAF's Blofeld, Charles Gray, appeared in YOLT as a totally different character.
Felix Leiter is played by different actors across the series, with only one actor playing him twice (before Jeffrey Wright). In The Living Daylights, he's pretty much a contemporary of Bond age-wise, but in Licence to Kill they re-hired the actor from Live and Let Die, who is closer to Roger Moore's age.
Several actors including Joe Don Baker and Maud Adams, appear in different films as different characters.
Bond, M and Moneypenny get younger every few years, but Q ages in real time right up until Desmond Lwellyn's death.
Yes, of course the series was not totally devoid of continuity - Tracy is referenced in For Your Eyes Only and less directly in LTK. The same Russian general appears in a few Moore movies. Lazenby takes a stroll down memory lane recalling the events from before OHMSS (a clear effort to establish for the audience that he's the same character as Connery, somewhat undermined by the fourth-wall-breaking "this never happened to the other fellow" line at the start of the movie). Continuity certainly began to tighten up in the Brosnan era, but hat was reflective of modern audiences, who could re-watch films over and over more than 1960s audiences. But the Realist never said it didn't have any continuity, just that it wasn't particularly continuity-heavy, and his statement is absolutely correct.
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Tracy continuity was the centerpiece of the prologue of For Your Eyes Only (1981), as Bond not only visits her grave, but kills Blofeld (the man half-responsible for her murder, which the headstone marks as having occurred in 1969--the year of the movie's release, so the passing of that much time was officially established) in the conclusion of the prologue.
..and for anyone believing actor re-casting as a mark against continuity, that is an utterly false belief. If any character gets a fresh face, one can hope its a strong, logical choice. Some superhero adaptations leap out of the gates with horrible, wrongheaded casting, such as Garfield as Parker/Spider-Man, Keaton as Batman, and some TV casting choices. The DCEU has not failed in its casting choices yet, which is record other franchises cannot claim.
^I wrongly said that she’d been referenced in YOLT, which was an obvious impossibility as that film preceded her appearance. Edited to say FYEO, which I meant to say.
Recasting does not necessarily count for continuity breaking but when you have Blofeld played firstly as a Dr Evil prototype by Donald Pleasance, then a suave heavy American like Telly Savalas and then a camp English Charles Grey across 3 films, it does not make for particularly good continuity.
Recasting does not necessarily count for continuity breaking but when you have Blofeld played firstly as a Dr Evil prototype by Donald Pleasance, then a suave heavy American like Telly Savalas and then a camp English Charles Grey across 3 films, it does not make for particularly good continuity.
What footage is that?
The thing is, though... with something like Bond or Doctor Who or Marvel Comics or Frankenstein, nobody's expecting the audience to believe it's a genuine, consistent reality. It's an extended exercise in fantasy and mythology. So continuity references are not meant to say "This is a realistic, consistent history and you can fill in the right answers to pass a test." They're just meant to evoke a feeling of recognition in the audience, to be Easter eggs or evocative leitmotifs. To convey the idea that the different works are conceptually linked even if they don't quite mesh on a strictly literal level. That's why Marvel is constantly referring back to events in 1960s or 1970s comics as if they happened just 5-7 years ago or less. That's why Bond films do much the same with their continuity nods within an otherwise shifting continuity. It's not meant to be a literally consistent reality, it's meant to be a mythology with recurring motifs and internal rhymes. The casting doesn't matter in Bond films, because the characters are archetypes and the stories are formulas.
Continuity is just one tool in the creative kit, one of multiple means to the end of telling an entertaining story. In some works, it's a fairly central concern, but in others, depending on the style and approach and goals, it's just a grace note, at best.
At some point in the future every single one of these superheroes you are seeing on screen from Marvel and DC are going to be recast because ..
A.) Actors will either get too old, die, demand too much money or choose not to continue playing those parts
B.) Studios will not stop a popular franchise just because of roles needing to be recast. James Bond is the perfect example of this.
A.) Actors will either get too old, die, demand too much money or choose not to continue playing those parts
B.) Studios will not stop a popular franchise just because of roles needing to be recast. James Bond is the perfect example of this.
Yeah, I get that. For example, Die Another Day has a scene with old gadgets from the Connery era but I don’t think anyone seriously believed that Brosnan was running around in the 1960s. I personally like to think that he did do battle with Goldfinger before we first saw him in Goldeneye but that he made jokes about New Kids on the Block or Take That rather than the Beatles.
However, if you compare how Diamonds are Forever follows OHMSS with how Quantum of Solace follows Casino Royale, you can see how the series has evolved. QoS picks up hours after CR, continuing on from Bond’s final scene with Mr White, who he is now taking back for interrogation. Bond is still struggling to come to terms with Vesper’s death, drinking and not sleeping.
By contrast, DAF makes no reference whatsoever to Tracy’s death, even as Bond faces off with the character who killed her in the previous film. Connery is pretty much the same as he’s ever been (well, apart from being fatter and older). There are a few jokes near the start along the lines of ‘welcome back, we coped without you.’ Pretty much the closest to acknowledging the previous film.
It’s as if QoS had Pierce Brosnan in the lead, ignored CR and had Mr White played by a totally different actor, who had appeared in Die Another Day in a different role.
This isn’t to criticise the 007 series, but just to agree with the realist when he says it was never particularly continuity heavy.
Yeah, of course. Modern fiction tends to be more continuity-heavy. Thanks to TV reruns, home video, streaming video, trade paperback comics collections, and so forth, it's far easier these days to experience a fictional series as a unified whole rather than a series of separate episodes, and storytelling has become more unified as a result. But that's just a function of the times. In the past, when individual installments tended to be experienced more individually, continuity was more loose and impressionistic when it was bothered with at all.
^ I did acknowledge modern audiences ability to rewatch films a few posts ago.
Thanks for weighing in on my behalf, Captaindemotion. I decided I had little more to contribute to the discussion when the responses were all further arguments and examples of why recastings happen and the many times they have happened before -- all of which I know and have acknowledged, and none of which change the fact that I don't like 'em and I don't want 'em in the DCEU, which was the sum total of my point. 
^ You’re welcome.
I do like continuity in actors myself but it’s not a deal-breaker. I’ve enjoyed Affleck’s Batman even though I always thought casting an older Batman opposite a younger Superman would give them a limited shelf life and so it seems to have been. The thing I wonder is how, having emphasised across several films, that Batfleck is a grizzled veteran, they will explain it if he’s replaced by a significantly younger actor.
I do like continuity in actors myself but it’s not a deal-breaker. I’ve enjoyed Affleck’s Batman even though I always thought casting an older Batman opposite a younger Superman would give them a limited shelf life and so it seems to have been. The thing I wonder is how, having emphasised across several films, that Batfleck is a grizzled veteran, they will explain it if he’s replaced by a significantly younger actor.
Funny. It’s the same with me and Disney’s Marvel films. With the exception of Captain America: Winter Soldier I haven’t been able to watch a single one a second time! They feel like live-action cartoons to me, or those YouTube "movies" made from cutscenes from video games. To each his own. 
Some of those I have to watch for the first time first. 
Though I have never been a fan or Marvel. I like the new movies but Marvel was always a bit too silly (l know, DC might be silly too).
I can always rewatch the cw DC shows but not the movies. This "dark and gritty" thing is just annoying and when I sit down in the evening and want to watch something nice, I somehow never choose those. That's why I haven't seen Justice League also.
But even if they would change their approach completley and the new movies will be "happier", I don't know if they would work for me, because of the movies before.
Though I have never been a fan or Marvel. I like the new movies but Marvel was always a bit too silly (l know, DC might be silly too). I can always rewatch the cw DC shows but not the movies. This "dark and gritty" thing is just annoying and when I sit down in the evening and want to watch something nice, I somehow never choose those. That's why I haven't seen Justice League also.
But even if they would change their approach completley and the new movies will be "happier", I don't know if they would work for me, because of the movies before.
People can deny that there is continuity to the pre-Daniel Craig Bond films and try to downplay the meaning of the numerous references to previous films peppered throughout the series, but the reality is that those films do form a single narrative universe and were always intended to.
^ Nobody has denied that there was continuity. I’ve explicitly given instances of it in my posts. We are saying that there wasn’t particularly strict continuity. Are you only capable of seeing things in black and white?