Soliciting Fan Thoughts on EON

Greetings. I am making an academic presentation at a conference about 007 and its fandom. I would like to hear your opinions about how EON has treated James Bond fans. Do you think they have provided enough support? Not enough support? Or has EON provided too much fanservice to the detriment of the Bond franchise? Your responses can include thoughts about all aspects of Bond from the movies to the merchandising. Thanks!!!!

Comments

  • Gassy ManGassy Man USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent
    I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. I've never had any direct dealings with the company. In terms of marketing their product, they seem on par with other movie studios, which is to say producing fairly shallow big budget spectacles that make a lot of money, in part through a blitz of advertising and promotion. In terms of the direction of the series, I felt they lost their way for about 25 years before finding it again, briefly, with the Daniel Craig films, the first of which, Casino Royale, was the best Bond film since the 1960s. It's really the only one in that period of time that seemed to make more than a formulaic effort at telling a story. After that, they seemed to squander both the talent and the momentum of that first film to different degrees, though the box office receipts suggest they gained fans. I wish Michael Wilson would stay out of the movies, that they'd find better writers, directors, and composers, and that they didn't bungle the actual production so much by playing musical chairs with studios and with talent so that it takes up to four years to actually make a movie. But they're in the business of making money, not in trying to please every movie-goer, including those of us likely to see the movie even if it's middle-of-the-road. The films are what they are, and in some ways still more impressive than a lot that makes it to screens today, and outside of drumming up interest to sell tickets, I don't think the studio feels much responsibility at all in servicing the fans. That makes them pretty typical.
  • Charmed & DangerousCharmed & Dangerous Posts: 7,358MI6 Agent
    Hello BrianR, welcome to AJB.

    Can you give us a little more insight into the context of your presentation? "007 and its fandom" is a pretty broad and well documented subject. Who is your audience - film students?

    I think most of us won't have a strong opinion on how "EON has treated its fans" other than appreciating that they have a fairly difficult job, as you can't please all the people all of the time. EON is in business to make money, and the market for Bond films is wide-ranging - not just to please die-hard fans but to make films which will receive the widest audience. In this respect, they usually do a solid job against some tough competition, respecting the character of Bond and the constraints around that character for the most part. In terms of how they otherwise 'treat' fans, it's pretty much as GassyMan has said. Our major source of frustration is the length of time between theatrical releases.

    Have you seen 'Everything or Nothing: the untold story of 007'?
    "How was your lamb?" "Skewered. One sympathises."
  • zaphod99zaphod99 Posts: 1,415MI6 Agent
    I feel that for the most part they (at least in their current form) are lazy and at best mediocre filmmakers. Agree with GM that apart from CR which was both bold and risky not least of which for casting against type) they are are fairly dull safe pair of hands. And yes Michael Wilson please no more cameos. I would like to see ownership and control go elsewhere or have additional/alternative offering ( it's a great shame that when this has happened in the past the results were very poor) I would like more creativity, generosity and flair in the DVD offerings. I think they treat fans very poorly.
    Of that of which we cannot speak we must pass over in silence- Ludwig Wittgenstein.
  • superadosuperado Regent's Park West (CaliforniaPosts: 2,651MI6 Agent
    The fact that the producers will go to lengths to include Flemingesque elements that are often obscure for the casual fans, tells me that they do care for the fans. And if not the original Fleming elements, they will then allude to Bond’s cinematic traditions that are just as old beyond the average age of the modern Bond film viewer.

    Yes, they are out there to make as much money as they can, but translating those elements I mentioned to the screen that only the top ten percentile of fans would recognize, vs. substituting those things with some filler sequences to chalk up screen time shows that they're not always out to make a quick buck.

    CR is a great example, having its source material 50 years removed, and we get the attempted poisoning to represent the gun-disguised-as-cane assassination attempt in the casino, as well as that expansive sequence of the Miami airport bomber to represent the couple of inept Bulgar bombers from the novel. Then in the end is that operative with an eye-patch glass lens, just like in the book; most people wouldn’t have gotten that little detail that was meant for only the most ardent fans.
    "...the purposeful slant of his striding figure looked dangerous, as if he was making quickly for something bad that was happening further down the street." -SMERSH on 007 dossier photo, Ch. 6 FRWL.....
  • BrianRSheridanBrianRSheridan Posts: 7MI6 Agent
    edited April 2017
    It is actually a comparison between the fandoms of Star Trek and James Bond, both franchises that are 50 years old.

    Actual interaction with EON isn't required. It is the fandoms perceptions of how they are treated. I read comments here about complaints that EON does little to attract new fans to the franchise like ST or Star Wars does.

    So I'm looking to hear opinions.

    Thanks,
    Brian
  • BrianRSheridanBrianRSheridan Posts: 7MI6 Agent
    Hello BrianR, welcome to AJB.

    Can you give us a little more insight into the context of your presentation? "007 and its fandom" is a pretty broad and well documented subject. Who is your audience - film students?

    I think most of us won't have a strong opinion on how "EON has treated its fans" other than appreciating that they have a fairly difficult job, as you can't please all the people all of the time. EON is in business to make money, and the market for Bond films is wide-ranging - not just to please die-hard fans but to make films which will receive the widest audience. In this respect, they usually do a solid job against some tough competition, respecting the character of Bond and the constraints around that character for the most part. In terms of how they otherwise 'treat' fans, it's pretty much as GassyMan has said. Our major source of frustration is the length of time between theatrical releases.

    Have you seen 'Everything or Nothing: the untold story of 007'?

    Yup-seen it numerous times. I've been a HUGE Bond fan since my mother went into labor with me at the double feature of DN & FRWL. I've been on this board as "Newsman" for awhile. Thanks for your thoughts.
  • Gassy ManGassy Man USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent
    It is actually a comparison between the fandoms of Star Trek and James Bond, both franchises that are 50 years old.

    Actual interaction with EON isn't required. It is the fandoms perceptions of how they are treated. I read comments here about complaints that EON does little to attract new fans to the franchise like ST or Star Wars does.

    So I'm looking to hear opinions.

    Thanks,
    Brian
    In many ways, that feels like an apples to oranges comparison. Though both franchises are about the same age, Star Trek started as a TV series, while Bond -- with the exception of the one-off TV drama with Barry Nelson -- was always a movie series. That may seem a trivial difference, but it isn't in the sense that the Star Trek fans were largely responsible for saving the series, for a time, from cancellation and then seeing its resurrection later as film and TV series. So, the input of fans in this respect was seminal to the survival of the franchise, and the studio understood this.

    But Bond got along fine without such a grassroots effort because films don't require ratings and cancellations. To my knowledge, there's never been a fan-based push for anything significant, nor have fans generated the sort of homegrown efforts -- in the form of fanzines, fan films, and letter writing campaigns -- that Star Trek created. In addition, Eon has seen many cooks in the kitchen.

    Yes, the Broccoli family has been there to cash a lot of checks, but Saltzman and, arguably, Richard Maibaum and Terrence Young were critical to making the films viable, too. With Star Trek, a lot came from Roddenberry, at least until he lost his marbles and found the franchise essentially taken away from him by any numbers of folks.

    With Star Trek, there seemed to be a stronger sense of integrity to the franchise, at least until the more recent reboots. By this, I'm not referring to a moral issue but rather that the various series and films despite their aesthetic differences and various lapses in continuity could be taken as still being all one tapestry. With rare exception, actors weren't recast, for instance, and storylines often crossed with one another. The universe had an intact history. In this sense, not only could fans grow older with the franchise, but new fans could join and share a relatively common experience with those others.

    Things are much shakier with Bond in that different actors have played the part and many of the films seem to have no relation at all to any other, both in plot and in execution, beyond the basics of cast and character. A Bond fan could have been with the films from the beginning or joined in the early 2000s and have very different expectations of what a Bond film is, for instance, and this accounts in part for all of the diverse opinions of fans on this board and others. In this sense, the studio again really has no obligation to fans beyond the ticket (and DVD) buyers of the moment.

    Servicing the fans with nostalgia and homages could be taken at least one of two ways: A post-modern recognition that, indeed, there is a kind of "meta" umbrella of expectation among Bond fans, who now have an aural and visual language for what they expect to see (The Bond theme; him in a dinner jacket); lazy storytelling on the part of the writers, directors, and producers, who rather than come up with more unique and creative elements of their own, just look backwards to see what surface-level aesthetics they can apply to the movies.

    I tend to think it's a lot more the latter than the former, though the fad for the past 10 years of so with prequels has been, indeed, to regurgitate a lot of what we've seen before in a "retro" way. I don't think this is servicing the fans so much as just following the trends. While the film producers, I'm sure, publicly acknowledge the importance of the fans, and some or all of them may actually believe that, their behavior for at least the past 20 years suggests they're far more interested in just selling tickets to whoever will buy them than pleasing the various pockets of interested parties who know that Bond's wife was named Tracy or that he drove a DB5.
  • Gassy ManGassy Man USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent
    zaphod99 wrote:
    I feel that for the most part they (at least in their current form) are lazy and at best mediocre filmmakers. Agree with GM that apart from CR which was both bold and risky not least of which for casting against type) they are are fairly dull safe pair of hands. And yes Michael Wilson please no more cameos. I would like to see ownership and control go elsewhere or have additional/alternative offering ( it's a great shame that when this has happened in the past the results were very poor) I would like more creativity, generosity and flair in the DVD offerings. I think they treat fans very poorly.
    {[]
  • Gassy ManGassy Man USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent
    Hello BrianR, welcome to AJB.

    Can you give us a little more insight into the context of your presentation? "007 and its fandom" is a pretty broad and well documented subject. Who is your audience - film students?

    I think most of us won't have a strong opinion on how "EON has treated its fans" other than appreciating that they have a fairly difficult job, as you can't please all the people all of the time. EON is in business to make money, and the market for Bond films is wide-ranging - not just to please die-hard fans but to make films which will receive the widest audience. In this respect, they usually do a solid job against some tough competition, respecting the character of Bond and the constraints around that character for the most part. In terms of how they otherwise 'treat' fans, it's pretty much as GassyMan has said. Our major source of frustration is the length of time between theatrical releases.

    Have you seen 'Everything or Nothing: the untold story of 007'?
    {[]
  • DEFIANT 74205DEFIANT 74205 Perth, AustraliaPosts: 1,881MI6 Agent
    It is actually a comparison between the fandoms of Star Trek and James Bond, both franchises that are 50 years old.

    Actual interaction with EON isn't required. It is the fandoms perceptions of how they are treated. I read comments here about complaints that EON does little to attract new fans to the franchise like ST or Star Wars does.

    So I'm looking to hear opinions.

    Thanks,
    Brian

    You've asked a very open ended question, so I'll try my best to be as brief as possible.

    I'm a fan of both Star Trek and James Bond. In your OP, you asked if EON has provided enough support to fans of the series. Likewise, I'm guessing you're asking the same of Paramount/CBS in their treatment of Star Trek.

    The fact is though that "fans" is a very broad body of people each wanting different things. C&D was right, they can't please everybody all the time - in fact, I agree with everything in his post. EON has a very difficult job, and for the most part they have done well.

    As a "purist", though, I am, however, finding it difficult to reconcile the fact that some of the films have had a very different feel to the Fleming novels, and while I appreciate that there are times when they need to cater for a wider audience, I think that they have, on occasion, crossed a line into what I would consider a "disrespectful" treatment of Fleming's work - particularly during the 1970s with the first "reinvention" after Connery retired from the role, although none are quite as horrendous as Brosnan's last Bond film, Die Another Day.

    I am also somewhat disturbed at the continuing rumours that, in a more diverse, tolerant and accepting world, the next actor to play James Bond might not even look like James Bond. This disturbs me greatly. James Bond is a character created by Ian Fleming and has an established background story, and an established appearance. For an actor to play the part, they have to look the part.

    There ought to be a balance between catering for a "wider audience", as it were, without completely alienating the die hard fans that have been there since the beginning.

    I'm also not a fan of the Kelvin universe Star Trek. I do not understand why they can't just re-enact the early years of Kirk going on adventures that have not been shown before, while keeping the timeline untouched simply by following established cannon. In other words, fill in the gaps between episodes of the original series, instead of reinventing the timelines and the characters altogether.

    There are differences in the formula between a good film, or even a great film, and one that fits in well with the franchise. It is possible for a film to be simultaneously a good film while being a terrible James Bond/Star Trek flick. The Kelvin universe Star Trek films are good films, but I'm not sure that they're particularly good Star Trek.

    From my point of view I think both EON and Paramount/CBS should be catering for the die-hard fans of the respective franchises first and foremost. While the vast majority of installments on both franchises are very good, there are the outliers in which both EON and Paramount/CBS have apparently tried to win over a new audience of which I have personally not been a fan. I'm not saying that they shouldn't do that - indeed, they should, but I think the execution of such concepts are flawed.
    "Watch the birdie, you bastard!"
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent
    I think in some ways they feel less obliged to fans than Trek or Wars, because of the continuation of the series suggests they don't just rely on fans... whereas the other franchises had to kickstart things again almost from scratch and therefore really depend on a fan base as a kind of standing army to get the movie the greenlight.

    It is worth point out that CR owed a fair bit to Fleming's novel and so would not have been the risk take it was without that story coming back into the clutches of EON. His diverse templates forced them to take chances rather than make Dr NO The Sequel and so on.

    Agree with Gassy Man about his post, they do tend to chop and change directors, often picking those who are unsuitable really, yet are very loyal to Wade and Purvis, the scriptwriters. There is no five-year plan or vision, but they are good at marketing the films. That should not be taken for granted.
    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
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