What next for James Bond?

Will 007 emerge from the rubble of No Time to Die?

I’ve always said that Bond is the one franchise that is wholly devoted to living in denial. Denial that a supporting actor can be a good guy in one film, then the main villain in the next. Plots could be regularly repeated, but with the cunning twist of swapping sea for space. That’s before you get to the man himself; where he can be Sean Connery one minute, Timothy Dalton the next. The audience don’t care about continuity in a traditional sense. They’re just there to be swept away on an adventure, where the protagonist is magic. He can fly, drive, pilot any machine, is smarter than any villain, and has the cunning to defeat any henchman.

With all that being said. Just how do you get around the fact that he’s dead? Well, the final words of the last end credit card, “James Bond will return”, confirm that they intend to do just that. There have been many theories from fans about how this can be achieved, with some suggesting that he will be saved by the nanobot contamination - which will somehow rebuild his destroyed body, and have him emerge as a new person (which would be stupid). Though Barbara Broccoli has said that we will be looking at a “reboot”, which seems the most sensible option.

Also, don’t get me started on the “code name” shit. “You are now ‘James Bond’, you must visit the grave of a woman James Bond 2 loved and married for five minutes”.

Though it was the “reboot” that got us into this trouble in the first place, as it was wholly unnecessary to begin with. Why not just adapt Casino Royale to feature the canon Bond, why be so slavish to the text? I understand that it was the one book that “got away”, and that they finally had the rights, but to tear up the entire franchise just to make this story, seemed stupid. Replace the “new and wild” Bond, with an experienced one, and nothing would change in that film. I understand that Bond has always been a zeitgeist magpie, but jumping on the reboot bandwagon always felt like a strange decision.

It also lead to lots of issues with legacy characters, vehicles, gadgets, etc. later on down the line. The DB5, for instance, won in a card game in Casino Royale. Great. Then in Skyfall, it’s suddenly the car from Goldfinger. Why? Why would Bond get his own car fitted with gadgets? Especially this Bond? Then you come to the big “I am Blofeld” reveal in Spectre. He may as well say, “I am Colin Pork-Pie” for all the impact it would have. Then to compound that issue, they have to invent the Austin Powers/Dr. Evil plot of Bond and Blofeld somehow being related, which could have all been avoided by simply setting these films within the canon.

The Craig era, while obviously highly successful, was just not fun. That’s the hard truth. No one is sitting around on Boxing Day, while stuffed full of pudding, to watch Spectre. They have none of the “magic”, none of the charm. They’re just depressing character pieces that feel like you’re trying to talk him down from a ledge. In five films, Daniel Craig doesn’t ski, scuba dive, jump out of a plane (Ok, he does in QoS, but it’s shit), or perform any kind of amazing stunt. It’s all done at walking pace, and all just unmemorable. Even Casino Royale (by far his best film), collapses like a bad soufflé when Le Chiffre dies. Never mind the fact that the promise it gives us at the end of the film that Bond is now BOND, falls to the wayside as there’s more opportunity to have this hero mope around and be continually “haunted by his past”.

While No Time to Die got some of the elements right, there can be no doubt that ultimately, it just bums you out, and also can’t decide if it’s a “reboot” or canon, with the main love theme being stolen from OHMSS, bafflingly - that’s before you even get into Bond and M having a chat while the OMHSS theme peels out in the background, for no reason whatsoever.

So what’s next?

It’ll be rebooted again, but if it were up to me, I just wouldn’t explain anything. Bond is built on denial. Bring the new actor in. Send him on a mission. End the mission. There’s no need to give him a moody backstory, or family crisis. No need to have him affected by killing someone. If he needs to sit in a shower and cry after each “hit”, he should probably just quit, and go work for an estate agent instead.

He needs to be fun. It’s what’s been lacking since Die Another Day - yes, I appreciate that film is quite bad, but Pierce Brosnan is by no means the problem. He elevates it with his fun persona. I’m not talking half hitman, half Ken Dodd, but at least have him smile and be suave again. Watch Goldeneye if unsure, that is the perfect Bond performance - half Roger, half Sean, with a sprinkling of Tim.

We also need to bring back bookended adventures. You don’t need a running plot like you’re show-running a tedious TV show. Bond starts at A, ends at Z. There’s no haunted hangover of despair.

The M, Moneypenny and Tanner “Mystery Incorporated” also has to stop. It’s like going to see your boyfriend/girlfriend and their housemates just won’t fuck off and give you space. You’ve bought a ticket to see James Bond, not “James Bond and co”. In much the same way that Matt Reeves took Batman back to his “detective” roots, Bond needs to go back to being a lone wolf, and meeting helpful contacts around the world - maybe don’t kill of Felix Leiter, eh?

The music. The music needs to change. Go back to the Barry school. Choose a composer you feel best suits (as you did with David Arnold), and sign them up for a few films, while also handing them control of what comes out. That way they can co-write the song with your chosen flavour of the month, and then weave that motif/theme into their score, and make the whole thing feel coherent. Make it a workshop, rather than guest host of the week thing. Also use the fucking theme. It’s like they’re embarrassed by it. It’s one of the coolest themes in movie history, and in No Time to Die it only played once or twice. Just makes no sense at all.

Finally. Get back to a film every two years. I assume you’re going to sign up someone who is relatively “un-busy” for the main part, so use this to your advantage. Get a film out every two years, use the momentum of starting again, put some fire underneath it, and build, build, build.

Speaking for Bond fans everywhere, I can tell you that it’s a proper drag waiting six years for a new film, so pull your fucking finger out.

Also, stop putting things in the 007 Store that cost hundreds of pounds, and think about why you let the 60th anniversary go by without doing anything, and seeming so passive and un-bothered about it. It was really annoying.

I appreciate this has turned into a rant, but the message here is “DO MORE BOND”, and make it pure again, stop putting massive unwieldly dumplings in soup. People just wanted the soup.