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- Richard W
A brief excerpt from a blogger who talks sense:
The rest is here: http://www.blufftontoday.com/blog-post/btbarry/2011-06-17/how-im-going-save-james-bond#.Tqyo03LX9-w I would have chosen better examples from the books to prove his points, but you get the idea. Somebody, give this blogger a ton of money and make him the Producer at EON Productions."How I'm going to save James Bond" by BT Barry So the good news is they are moving ahead with another James Bond movie. The bad news, if you ask me, is that they are moving ahead with another James Bond movie. Look, I'm a fan. I've seen most of the movies and read every Bond book that the Bluffton library stocks. I get the appeal. But if Casino Royale was their attempt to make a Bond reboot, and Quantum of Solace was their admission that, yeah, we're just going to keep making the same movie over and over again, maybe it's time to do another reboot. Maybe it's time to take Bond all the way back to the beginning - the books of Ian Fleming. Here, let me show you the difference between James Bond the Ian Fleming creation and James Bond the movie franchise star. The movie James Bond will mow down a room full of enemy operatives with a machine gun before jumping away from an explosion and making some witty remark about it. The literary James Bond will smuggle himself away in the cargo bed of a truck to snap photos of the enemy operatives, then hand the film off to a double agent posing as a tobacconist in Geneva (whom he refers to only by number) in the hopes they get delivered via a hidden compartment in a routine chocolate shipment into London that the secret service checks regularly for agent communiqués in the field. The book that presents the clearest contrast in these two characters is Goldfinger. While the movie version stayed closer to the book than most of the others, it's the small differences that are the most revealing. As Goldfinger the movie opens, Bond has just finished blowing up a factory in Mexico before retiring to his room and some new sexy mama he's intending to get all James Bondy with. Instead of sealing the deal, he winds up fighting off an assassin, dispatching him via the old "fan in the bathtub" trick, before quipping, "Shocking. Positively shocking." As Goldfinger the book opens, Bond is waiting for a flight to Miami, replaying the events in Mexico in his mind. True, he did blow up a factory and fight off an assassin, but this assassin was dispatched via the old "shot in the head" trick. And it's all told in flashback, while Bond drinks a double bourbon and tries to shake off how much killing someone in cold blood has upset him. It's probably not as entertaining as a fan in the bathtub and a pun, but it's infinitely more three-dimensional and real. This is a living, breathing James Bond. In Goldfinger the movie, Bond is strapped to a sheet of gold, a laser beam inching its way towards his crotch. He famously asks, "You expect me to talk?' to which Goldfinger replies, "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die." In Goldfinger the book, Bond is strapped to a table with a buzzsaw inching its way towards his crotch and Oddjob torturing him through some form of Korean pressure-point manipulation. He simply tells Goldfinger, "Go ---- yourself," (it actually appears that way in the book) to which Goldfinger replies, "Even I am not capable of that, Mr. Bond." Again, probably not as entertaining, but closer to how someone would react in the face of impending crotch-slicing. To their credit, MGM did try to make a more "real" Bond with "Casine Royale." Daniel Craig's Bond actually felt some remorse about the people he was forced to kill in the line of duty (at least during the first act), and he doesn't have any jetpacks or invisible cars. He has a gun and his wits. It's a good start. But it doesn't fit the fact that he looks like this and the literary James Bond looks like this. And no, I'm not harping on the blonde hair thing. I'm just pointing out that Bond is referred to in the books several times as looking like Hoagie Carmichael. Not all that physically imposing, and just handsome enough to be able to operate unnoticed. He's not supposed to be ripped; he's not supposed to be a pinup. He actually looks a little old-fashioned, which brings me to how I'm going to save the James Bond franchise. At this point, they're bringing back Craig as Bond. Traditionally, a wait this long between movies would mean recasting the lead and starting off in a new direction, just as the series went more campy under Roger Moore, more action-oriented under Pierce Brosnan and more real under Daniel Craig. But is anyone really clamoring for another re-write of Bond fighting a madman bent on world conquest and getting the girl? It seems kind of played out. Why not give literary Bond a chance? Why not film the books Ian Fleming wrote during the two months a year he spent at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica? Why not finally show the exploits of a cold war-era operative working in a strange new post-World War II intelligence environment? Heck, X-Men First Class showed that it's possible to do a good period action movie. So why not literary Bond? Well, for starters, the books as written don't make for very good movies. There's a reason why, even in the early films when Fleming was still alive, they added the incredible gadgets and the huge action sequences to spice up the story. Bond books just don't translate without some embellishment. But there is an alternative to making movies. What about a Bond TV show that combines the awesome attention to periodic details of Mad Men with the race against the clock tension of 24? Just set the show in the late 40s and start with Casino Royale. The most fascinating thing about reading those books now is seeing what the world was like when the West was still dealing with the aftermath of WWII and the growing menace of the Russians. In a Bond TV show based on, and set during the time period of, the original novels, we'd experience that whole terrifying world again. When Bond first encounters the Moonraker rocket, we'll get to see through his eyes what it was to suddenly wake up to a world where nuclear war could be unleashed at any second with the push of a button (the book, rather than the movie's overt ripping-off of Star Wars, follows Bond's investigation into the first ICBM missile). When he follows Operation Thunderball to the Caribbean, we'll feel what a seasoned spy felt when domestic nuclear terrorism first raised its head as a threat to mankind. Take the way Mad Men reminds us what a fascinating world it used to be, then add international intrigue. There's no way you could screw it up. Just stick to the source material.
