There's no reason to think there will be a Bond film in 2019. This isn't like the last time there was a delay, where there was a specific problem to be resolved--MGM's bankruptcy. This time there seems to be a set of in terlocking problems--no Bond actor, no distributor, no new ideas on where to go with the franchise--that have produced a gridlock. No Craig means no distributor, no distributor means no financing, no financing means no movie, etc.
If Craig does another Bond film in 2019 it will also have another effect: Idris Elba and Damien Lewis will no longer be on any realistic bookies list over future 007's, simply because of their age.
What if eon have actually finished with Bond? That's it bond drives off with swann and we are done.... No more..... Thanks for everything.... James Bond will not return.
(God that's a nightmare scenario)
If Craig does another Bond film in 2019 it will also have another effect: Idris Elba and Damien Lewis will no longer be on any realistic bookies list over future 007's, simply because of their age.
Elba is already too old, he's only a few years younger than dc.
This time there seems to be a set of in terlocking problems--no Bond actor, no distributor, no new ideas on where to go with the franchise--that have produced a gridlock.
At least two of those things seem to be wild assumptions.
And Gala Brand: you're just guessing that EON has no idea where to go with the franchise in the future. The Bond series is more successful economically and critically than it has been for a long time. so I simply don't see the problem.
There's no reason to think there will be a Bond film in 2019. This isn't like the last time there was a delay, where there was a specific problem to be resolved--MGM's bankruptcy. This time there seems to be a set of in terlocking problems--no Bond actor, no distributor, no new ideas on where to go with the franchise--that have produced a gridlock. No Craig means no distributor, no distributor means no financing, no financing means no movie, etc.
To be fair, we don't know Craig's status. And we don't know what kind of deals are trying to be made. Unless you know things that we don't know. But since there is no deal made as of now, it's likely that we won't get a Bond film next year, and I think Craig is going to be too old by the time things are worked out. Some of the prospects we are thinking about now may be too old by the time the next Bond film is made.
And Gala Brand: you're just guessing that EON has no idea where to go with the franchise in the future. The Bond series is more successful economically and critically than it has been for a long time. so I simply don't see the problem.
I agree. There is probably quite abit happening behind the scenes. And Craig's cat-and-mouse game with EON is not unlike the situation with Roger Moore later in his Bond tenure. Some thought he was out after Moonraker. Then he did three more!
Everything is just over-scrutinized now that we live in the era of the content-desperate 24 hour news cycle.
Asp9mmOver the Hills and Far Away.Posts: 7,485MI6 Agent
There isn't a cat and mouse thing going on with Craig. That's just media BS.
Most people in my circle who aren't die hard Bond fans already assume that Craig is no longer Bond and ask who the next one is going to be. The momentum seems to be leaving Craig and heading towards whoever will be the next Bond whenever that is.
There isn't a cat and mouse thing going on with Craig. That's just media BS.
I was referring to the various public statements made by Craig and EON, respectively. He basically says he's done in July '15; EON says they think he'll be back; EON then says in Sept. '16 Craig is still the top choice; Craig says no decision has been made in October '16. Perhaps they're just putting us on. Perhaps they're doing nothing. But the public statements of the principals involved have been far from definitive.
Most people in my circle who aren't die hard Bond fans already assume that Craig is no longer Bond and ask who the next one is going to be. The momentum seems to be leaving Craig and heading towards whoever will be the next Bond whenever that is.
That's what I've encountered. But I also knew people who were excited for Idris Elba to take over for Craig after Skyfall. A few people thought that when Spectre was announced in 2014 that Idris Elba was already cast as the next Bond and was starring in it. They were disappointed when I told them that Daniel Craig was still Bond because they wanted Elba. These weren't Bond fans, obviously, or they would have known better.
I'm pretty sure there will be a bare bones story for bond 25 already, as I've said before along with others, until dc confirms his position or a new Bond is announced then dc is still bond. I don't think eon will struggle to get a distribution deal, Sony already declared they wanted to continue so business as usual us the very least we can expect. Just my opinion but from starting Skyfall and up to Spectres release dc did very little else work wise, maybe he's just doing other things at the moment, as are babs and micky.
There's no reason to think there will be a Bond film in 2019. This isn't like the last time there was a delay, where there was a specific problem to be resolved--MGM's bankruptcy. This time there seems to be a set of in terlocking problems--no Bond actor, no distributor, no new ideas on where to go with the franchise--that have produced a gridlock. No Craig means no distributor, no distributor means no financing, no financing means no movie, etc.
We all assume that there are all these "problems". The past issues were more severe in some sense because they involved legal issues and money. One issue will probably resolve the next. Once they know whether Craig is returning or not a deal with a distributor will get done. My guess is that how favorable the terms of the new deal are to MGM or even who the deal is with hinges on whether Craig is back.
Problems to be worked out....yes. Ten year hiatus problems, I don't think so. Craig or no Craig, in this era of remakes, sequels, and superhero films Bond is still a hot item and a surefire money maker. Based upon when previous official Bond film announcements have been made we aren't even at the timeline for a fall 2018 release yet.
Oh yes, that story about Elba is a joke....... 8-)
We are hopelessly starved for real news around here. If something was going to happen with respect to Bond 25 in 2018, I would think we'd be starting to hear actual rumblings. Instead, it's crickets.
On the other hand, Tom Hiddleston's 2018 is looking rather wide open!
LoeffelholzThe United States, With LovePosts: 8,990Quartermasters
We are hopelessly starved for real news around here. If something was going to happen with respect to Bond 25 in 2018, I would think we'd be starting to hear actual rumblings. Instead, it's crickets.
On the other hand, Tom Hiddleston's 2018 is looking rather wide open!
Mmm hmm :v
I haven't given up hope for a 2018 release just yet. We can get deeper into this year without anything 'official' without that being off the table, I think. What I'd most like to hear is a firm position on whether Craigger's hanging on or not...I expect the news, if the lead role is changing, will happen more or less simultaneously.
Check out my Amazon author page!Mark Loeffelholz
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
The problem is never the concepts but the execution. Saying SP is a traditional Bond film is like saying Donald Trump is President of the United States -- the title is there, but the execution is off.
The problem is the Bond films are now primarily in the hands of Gen-Xers, who don't quite get what made the originals work so well. On top of that, they're making them for Millennials. At least that generation wanted 1960s retro in style and fashion, which is in part why the films have gotten some of that mojo back. But Gen-X is weird in that we grew up with the 1960s Bond films on TV but internalized the idea that such were campy -- ironically more than the Moore films, which were "postmodern" in their sense of being self-referential and self-aware of what they were parodying. Austin Powers is the ultimate reflection of this attitude, congealing everything about the spy craze as a joke so Gen-Xers could snicker at them 'cause, you know, we're more sophisticated than that.
Same Mendes was born right at the beginning of the Gen-X birth period. His two films are perfect examples of the schizophrenia that comes from being in one's formative period during the late 1970s through 1980s.
On the one hand, SF and SP want to be hard hitting and sentimental. So, they rely on a kind of Star Trek: The Next Generation style character development, which is to say the characters are overwrought in their emotions and seem to be facing deeply personal issues, but the story never really confronts those so much as raises them to form the backdrop to the action.
On the other hand, the films spend enormous sums of money but never quite go all-in with the scope and scale. In a Mendes film, there are many, many moments where only one character is on the screen in vast, empty landscapes. The climaxes are always small scale -- we don't see anything on the order of the volcano raid in YOLT or even the underwater battle in TB, even though they had the ridiculously huge budget to do so. It's not just that pulling off something like that requires a deft touch that Mendes may not be capable of. The fear is that such will not be taken seriously in this day and age. Instead, we get some minimalist battle that is more like a video game. It's not surprising Mendes finds Moore's early Bonds to be so inspirational.
So, the end result are middling Bond films -- big budgets with small ideas. CR went beyond that in part because its director wasn't Gen-X but a Baby Boomer who was around when the originals came out. The script was doctored by a Baby Boomer and adapted from an actual Fleming story. The roots of classic Bond are there. After that, not so much.
So long as the thinking is "smaller is better," we'll keep getting these compromise Bond films -- at least until some other blockbuster film changes the expectations and the Bond people decide to follow suit.
As a Gen Xer (and an author) I owe it to my generation to take at least some issue with this! It's definitely true that my generation grew up recoiling from a lot of what the Baby Boom represented. By the time we came of age free love had given way to AIDs fears and possessing drugs — with intent to sell, even if the intent was in the minds of prosecutors — got you sent to prison for decades. So who wouldn't be cynical?
Austin Powers was a brutal send-up, but Bond was already being spoofed to various degrees in the 1960s (see the original Casino Royale Not to mention Derek Flint, Napoleon Solo, Matt Helm).
I've always thought of Bond belonging to the parents of the Boomers. Connery's famous put-down of the Beatles being proof. He was already a cultural outlier when the first films were being made.
To me the central creative conundrum with Bond is that times changed so what do you do with a Cold War era boozing and womanizing assassin? Look how TLD attempted to make Bond monogamous! (It might have been interesting if the CR reboot had been set in the 1950s although it could have become a Mad Men type thing — too self aware for its own good.) Generation-wise, it's hard for me to think that Millennials growing up in the era of trigger warnings and conscious uncoupling are primed for Fleming's Bond. But who knows?
I DO like your comparison of the sentimentality in Skyfall and SPECTRE to Star Trek the Next Generation. And I always appreciate your insights, Gassy Man.
LOL, okay, but I think the distinction between the parodies of the 1960s and the sensibility about the films for Gen-X is that the former laughed with the Bond films -- they understood they couldn't really compete with them, so instead they went the route of exaggerating them further. But for Gen-X, a lot of it was laughing at the films from the 1960s -- at the perceived campiness, the fads and fashions, the formulaic plots, the comparatively crude special effects. Of course, for some of us, that was simply not the case, but the Moore films tapped into a sensibility that the Bond films were in some ways passe, and poking fun at themselves was a way of making them more palatable. Austin Powers was the ultimate expression of this. As much as Meyers may claim to be fond of the films, he really was skewering them for the obvious -- the obvious that I heard in college bull sessions about Bond, when even magazine articles and film reviewers were asking if it was time to hang them up. To me, a big part of the reason why Dalton never caught on is because his films played it to straight. By then, though, the die had been cast among too many teens and 20-somethings.
By the time the Craig films roll around, an entire new generation represents youth. They didn't grow up in this period, so to them, the 1960s were a period of great cool and admiration. They didn't find the fads and fashions strange -- they embraced them, and suddenly everything retro that was tired and silly to so many in Gen-X was stylish. That's why a show like Mad Men would have tanked in the 1980s, but by the early 2000s, people were hungry for it. And in the same way that Gen-X may have rejected what worked 15-20 years earlier, Gen-Y rejected a lot of Gen-X tropes. That's one reason the generation doesn't seem to get sarcasm very well and actually finds it offensive or threatening in many cases. To a Gen-Xer, that sort of thing is just second nature.
But the boomers were around as young people when the 1960s Bonds were big. I think one of the reasons I like CR eminently more than GE is because while both were directed by Martin Campbell, he embues the former with more of the film qualities I expect of a 1960s film -- more time to develop character, better development of their relationships, and action driven by those dynamics rather than the other way around. By comparison, GE seems like a tired cable movie from the 1980s, right down to minimal character development and a thin, cliched script. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have an actual Fleming novel to draw so much from, as well.
But Forster and Mendes are Gen-Xers, which is to say, they still don't really get what made the original Bonds work and felt the need to stamp their films with some sort of artsy fartsy take on the Bond mythos. A lot of that is driven by the work of another Gen-Xer, Christopher Nolan, who brought an almost minimalist approach to his Batman films, but at least he is an unabashed fan of the classic Bonds. Forster and Mendes are not, and they both have a kind of intellectual understanding of Bond, which is to say they get the formula and tropes but they don't get the experience.
To me, that's why the last three films haven't worked as well. SP is the closest thing to a classic Bond film we've had in 20 years, but it stopped short because, it seems, Mendes still has that Gen-X fear of being accused to camping Bond up by going all out with the action and set pieces. He thinks that downplaying the things that help make the 1960s Bonds so good -- that by the 1980s were considered points for ridicule -- would make people laugh at his film, too. So, he got the chance to make a classic Bond film but weighted it down unfortunately with that conservative sense. You can see just how much he holds back in so many scenes, which is why the humor so often fell flat for audiences and the lair/escape and climax were so underwhelming.
I remember when Austin Powers came out, none of my friends were even aware that it parodied Bond because the only Bond my friends knew was Pierce Brosnan. Everyone loved Austin Powers, but they also loved GoldenEye and had no idea the two were related.
The problem is never the concepts but the execution. Saying SP is a traditional Bond film is like saying Donald Trump is President of the United States -- the title is there, but the execution is off.
The problem is the Bond films are now primarily in the hands of Gen-Xers, who don't quite get what made the originals work so well. On top of that, they're making them for Millennials. At least that generation wanted 1960s retro in style and fashion, which is in part why the films have gotten some of that mojo back. But Gen-X is weird in that we grew up with the 1960s Bond films on TV but internalized the idea that such were campy -- ironically more than the Moore films, which were "postmodern" in their sense of being self-referential and self-aware of what they were parodying. Austin Powers is the ultimate reflection of this attitude, congealing everything about the spy craze as a joke so Gen-Xers could snicker at them 'cause, you know, we're more sophisticated than that.
Same Mendes was born right at the beginning of the Gen-X birth period. His two films are perfect examples of the schizophrenia that comes from being in one's formative period during the late 1970s through 1980s.
On the one hand, SF and SP want to be hard hitting and sentimental. So, they rely on a kind of Star Trek: The Next Generation style character development, which is to say the characters are overwrought in their emotions and seem to be facing deeply personal issues, but the story never really confronts those so much as raises them to form the backdrop to the action.
On the other hand, the films spend enormous sums of money but never quite go all-in with the scope and scale. In a Mendes film, there are many, many moments where only one character is on the screen in vast, empty landscapes. The climaxes are always small scale -- we don't see anything on the order of the volcano raid in YOLT or even the underwater battle in TB, even though they had the ridiculously huge budget to do so. It's not just that pulling off something like that requires a deft touch that Mendes may not be capable of. The fear is that such will not be taken seriously in this day and age. Instead, we get some minimalist battle that is more like a video game. It's not surprising Mendes finds Moore's early Bonds to be so inspirational.
So, the end result are middling Bond films -- big budgets with small ideas. CR went beyond that in part because its director wasn't Gen-X but a Baby Boomer who was around when the originals came out. The script was doctored by a Baby Boomer and adapted from an actual Fleming story. The roots of classic Bond are there. After that, not so much.
So long as the thinking is "smaller is better," we'll keep getting these compromise Bond films -- at least until some other blockbuster film changes the expectations and the Bond people decide to follow suit.
As a Gen Xer (and an author) I owe it to my generation to take at least some issue with this! It's definitely true that my generation grew up recoiling from a lot of what the Baby Boom represented. By the time we came of age free love had given way to AIDs fears and possessing drugs — with intent to sell, even if the intent was in the minds of prosecutors — got you sent to prison for decades. So who wouldn't be cynical?
Austin Powers was a brutal send-up, but Bond was already being spoofed to various degrees in the 1960s (see the original Casino Royale Not to mention Derek Flint, Napoleon Solo, Matt Helm).
I've always thought of Bond belonging to the parents of the Boomers. Connery's famous put-down of the Beatles being proof. He was already a cultural outlier when the first films were being made.
To me the central creative conundrum with Bond is that times changed so what do you do with a Cold War era boozing and womanizing assassin? Look how TLD attempted to make Bond monogamous! (It might have been interesting if the CR reboot had been set in the 1950s although it could have become a Mad Men type thing — too self aware for its own good.) Generation-wise, it's hard for me to think that Millennials growing up in the era of trigger warnings and conscious uncoupling are primed for Fleming's Bond. But who knows?
I DO like your comparison of the sentimentality in Skyfall and SPECTRE to Star Trek the Next Generation. And I always appreciate your insights, Gassy Man.
LOL, okay, but I think the distinction between the parodies of the 1960s and the sensibility about the films for Gen-X is that the former laughed with the Bond films -- they understood they couldn't really compete with them, so instead they went the route of exaggerating them further. But for Gen-X, a lot of it was laughing at the films from the 1960s -- at the perceived campiness, the fads and fashions, the formulaic plots, the comparatively crude special effects. Of course, for some of us, that was simply not the case, but the Moore films tapped into a sensibility that the Bond films were in some ways passe, and poking fun at themselves was a way of making them more palatable. Austin Powers was the ultimate expression of this. As much as Meyers may claim to be fond of the films, he really was skewering them for the obvious -- the obvious that I heard in college bull sessions about Bond, when even magazine articles and film reviewers were asking if it was time to hang them up. To me, a big part of the reason why Dalton never caught on is because his films played it to straight. By then, though, the die had been cast among too many teens and 20-somethings.
By the time the Craig films roll around, an entire new generation represents youth. They didn't grow up in this period, so to them, the 1960s were a period of great cool and admiration. They didn't find the fads and fashions strange -- they embraced them, and suddenly everything retro that was tired and silly to so many in Gen-X was stylish. That's why a show like Mad Men would have tanked in the 1980s, but by the early 2000s, people were hungry for it. And in the same way that Gen-X may have rejected what worked 15-20 years earlier, Gen-Y rejected a lot of Gen-X tropes. That's one reason the generation doesn't seem to get sarcasm very well and actually finds it offensive or threatening in many cases. To a Gen-Xer, that sort of thing is just second nature.
But the boomers were around as young people when the 1960s Bonds were big. I think one of the reasons I like CR eminently more than GE is because while both were directed by Martin Campbell, he embues the former with more of the film qualities I expect of a 1960s film -- more time to develop character, better development of their relationships, and action driven by those dynamics rather than the other way around. By comparison, GE seems like a tired cable movie from the 1980s, right down to minimal character development and a thin, cliched script. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have an actual Fleming novel to draw so much from, as well.
But Forster and Mendes are Gen-Xers, which is to say, they still don't really get what made the original Bonds work and felt the need to stamp their films with some sort of artsy fartsy take on the Bond mythos. A lot of that is driven by the work of another Gen-Xer, Christopher Nolan, who brought an almost minimalist approach to his Batman films, but at least he is an unabashed fan of the classic Bonds. Forster and Mendes are not, and they both have a kind of intellectual understanding of Bond, which is to say they get the formula and tropes but they don't get the experience.
To me, that's why the last three films haven't worked as well. SP is the closest thing to a classic Bond film we've had in 20 years, but it stopped short because, it seems, Mendes still has that Gen-X fear of being accused to camping Bond up by going all out with the action and set pieces. He thinks that downplaying the things that help make the 1960s Bonds so good -- that by the 1980s were considered points for ridicule -- would make people laugh at his film, too. So, he got the chance to make a classic Bond film but weighted it down unfortunately with that conservative sense. You can see just how much he holds back in so many scenes, which is why the humor so often fell flat for audiences and the lair/escape and climax were so underwhelming.
Do you know what? I am going to agree with you almost entirely here.
I know Matt Spaiser disagrees (and I respect him immensely), but I also prefer "Casino Royale" over a "Goldeneye" (even though I like the latter). Sometimes I think people here tend to view the Dalton era as the grittiest when really the films do attempt sly humor. "Goldeneye" has always seemed to me to be in the same vein but with a more impishly charming actor. I say that as someone who wishes the amazingly talented Dalton had a different career.
But I would argue that one of the reasons "Casino Royale" jumpstarted the franchise is, simply, that it had a strong female lead.
You can nitpick the dialogue, but there is no denying the force of Eva Green's performance. She is Bond's equal — maybe even superior — in a way that is unprecedented in the series. My wife loves this movie. She finds Craig irresistible. But she is not much of a fan of his other Bond films, and I think it's because of the tension between him and Green.
To get back to your point, I do feel that there is a generational problem processing Bond. I am one of the only Gen Xers I know who saw "The Spy Who Loved Me" before I saw "Star Wars." That probably accounts for something in my make-up....
Comments
(God that's a nightmare scenario)
At least two of those things seem to be wild assumptions.
And Gala Brand: you're just guessing that EON has no idea where to go with the franchise in the future. The Bond series is more successful economically and critically than it has been for a long time. so I simply don't see the problem.
To be fair, we don't know Craig's status. And we don't know what kind of deals are trying to be made. Unless you know things that we don't know. But since there is no deal made as of now, it's likely that we won't get a Bond film next year, and I think Craig is going to be too old by the time things are worked out. Some of the prospects we are thinking about now may be too old by the time the next Bond film is made.
I agree. There is probably quite abit happening behind the scenes. And Craig's cat-and-mouse game with EON is not unlike the situation with Roger Moore later in his Bond tenure. Some thought he was out after Moonraker. Then he did three more!
Everything is just over-scrutinized now that we live in the era of the content-desperate 24 hour news cycle.
I was referring to the various public statements made by Craig and EON, respectively. He basically says he's done in July '15; EON says they think he'll be back; EON then says in Sept. '16 Craig is still the top choice; Craig says no decision has been made in October '16. Perhaps they're just putting us on. Perhaps they're doing nothing. But the public statements of the principals involved have been far from definitive.
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
That's what I've encountered. But I also knew people who were excited for Idris Elba to take over for Craig after Skyfall. A few people thought that when Spectre was announced in 2014 that Idris Elba was already cast as the next Bond and was starring in it. They were disappointed when I told them that Daniel Craig was still Bond because they wanted Elba. These weren't Bond fans, obviously, or they would have known better.
Idris Elba isn't blind and deaf, so he knows about the rumours about him and the James Bond role. In other words, that look can mean anything.
" yes I know, isn't everybody"
They did that in thunderball tp!
"you don't understand, you see I enjoy my dancing"
I was thinking more of this with the full evening suit
I agree, I think it's a stupid article really, I just saw it on facebook so thought I'd post it here.
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
We all assume that there are all these "problems". The past issues were more severe in some sense because they involved legal issues and money. One issue will probably resolve the next. Once they know whether Craig is returning or not a deal with a distributor will get done. My guess is that how favorable the terms of the new deal are to MGM or even who the deal is with hinges on whether Craig is back.
Problems to be worked out....yes. Ten year hiatus problems, I don't think so. Craig or no Craig, in this era of remakes, sequels, and superhero films Bond is still a hot item and a surefire money maker. Based upon when previous official Bond film announcements have been made we aren't even at the timeline for a fall 2018 release yet.
Oh yes, that story about Elba is a joke....... 8-)
On the other hand, Tom Hiddleston's 2018 is looking rather wide open!
Mmm hmm :v
I haven't given up hope for a 2018 release just yet. We can get deeper into this year without anything 'official' without that being off the table, I think. What I'd most like to hear is a firm position on whether Craigger's hanging on or not...I expect the news, if the lead role is changing, will happen more or less simultaneously.
"I am not an entrant in the Shakespeare Stakes." - Ian Fleming
"Screw 'em." - Daniel Craig, The Best James Bond EverTM
By the time the Craig films roll around, an entire new generation represents youth. They didn't grow up in this period, so to them, the 1960s were a period of great cool and admiration. They didn't find the fads and fashions strange -- they embraced them, and suddenly everything retro that was tired and silly to so many in Gen-X was stylish. That's why a show like Mad Men would have tanked in the 1980s, but by the early 2000s, people were hungry for it. And in the same way that Gen-X may have rejected what worked 15-20 years earlier, Gen-Y rejected a lot of Gen-X tropes. That's one reason the generation doesn't seem to get sarcasm very well and actually finds it offensive or threatening in many cases. To a Gen-Xer, that sort of thing is just second nature.
But the boomers were around as young people when the 1960s Bonds were big. I think one of the reasons I like CR eminently more than GE is because while both were directed by Martin Campbell, he embues the former with more of the film qualities I expect of a 1960s film -- more time to develop character, better development of their relationships, and action driven by those dynamics rather than the other way around. By comparison, GE seems like a tired cable movie from the 1980s, right down to minimal character development and a thin, cliched script. Of course, it doesn't hurt to have an actual Fleming novel to draw so much from, as well.
But Forster and Mendes are Gen-Xers, which is to say, they still don't really get what made the original Bonds work and felt the need to stamp their films with some sort of artsy fartsy take on the Bond mythos. A lot of that is driven by the work of another Gen-Xer, Christopher Nolan, who brought an almost minimalist approach to his Batman films, but at least he is an unabashed fan of the classic Bonds. Forster and Mendes are not, and they both have a kind of intellectual understanding of Bond, which is to say they get the formula and tropes but they don't get the experience.
To me, that's why the last three films haven't worked as well. SP is the closest thing to a classic Bond film we've had in 20 years, but it stopped short because, it seems, Mendes still has that Gen-X fear of being accused to camping Bond up by going all out with the action and set pieces. He thinks that downplaying the things that help make the 1960s Bonds so good -- that by the 1980s were considered points for ridicule -- would make people laugh at his film, too. So, he got the chance to make a classic Bond film but weighted it down unfortunately with that conservative sense. You can see just how much he holds back in so many scenes, which is why the humor so often fell flat for audiences and the lair/escape and climax were so underwhelming.
Do you know what? I am going to agree with you almost entirely here.
I know Matt Spaiser disagrees (and I respect him immensely), but I also prefer "Casino Royale" over a "Goldeneye" (even though I like the latter). Sometimes I think people here tend to view the Dalton era as the grittiest when really the films do attempt sly humor. "Goldeneye" has always seemed to me to be in the same vein but with a more impishly charming actor. I say that as someone who wishes the amazingly talented Dalton had a different career.
But I would argue that one of the reasons "Casino Royale" jumpstarted the franchise is, simply, that it had a strong female lead.
You can nitpick the dialogue, but there is no denying the force of Eva Green's performance. She is Bond's equal — maybe even superior — in a way that is unprecedented in the series. My wife loves this movie. She finds Craig irresistible. But she is not much of a fan of his other Bond films, and I think it's because of the tension between him and Green.
To get back to your point, I do feel that there is a generational problem processing Bond. I am one of the only Gen Xers I know who saw "The Spy Who Loved Me" before I saw "Star Wars." That probably accounts for something in my make-up....
Sometimes. ;%