Yes, agreed. Audiences for streamed content are sophisticated; they're au fait with 'alternate timeline' takes on franchise characters and material and they enjoy opportunities to make choices which don't have to be either/ or. A continued foregrounding of big, fresh films for the cinema need not preclude cycles of 'satellite content' for streaming or home entertainment only. (Bond fans have already had a taste of this kind of amicable plurality - in official Bond prose fiction, with its different continuities and occasional one-off worlds.)
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Let's be honest - the majority of us would watch a new Pierce Bond film. The minority being George Lazenby.
As awesome as it would be to see PB return, bringing him back directly after the Craig era would smack of disrespect for Craig and said era - everything Craig and EON bought to the table for 15 years would appear to be dismissed in favour of what would seem as going back to Brozza's reign to course correct, even if it were explained as a new incarnation.
I realize some would prefer going back to that 1962-2002 timeline, but in the end it's just a fun thought and the next era would be better off starting with a fresh face, as has always been the case. Clean slate all around, IMO.
Whether Bond #7's adventures fit between previous stories is something I'd like to see, but it's gotta be a new face, it can't go back to Pierce right after Craig. The idea somewhat reminds me of Craig starring in 2010's GoldenEye - and although a decent game, left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
Always have an escape plan. Mine is watching James Bond films.
Well, I'd say that the Craig era chose to dismiss itself at the point that it killed off its own Bond. Respect doesn't come into it. Craig's five Bond films will always be enjoyed for what they are, a completed arc.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
He's a working actor, his agent would be mad at him if he said he wasn't up for starring in an expensive movie!
Whilst it's fun to play with ideas a bit (Samantha Bond as M?), and whilst I would obviously watch it because it's Bond, I don't think it would be a good idea.
It's a really bad idea! Maybe Brosnan can be a kind of "cultural ambassador" for everything James Bond like Roger Moore was after he resigned as 007. Maybe he can voice Bond an an animated TV series. But having him on screen as James Bond would be Amazon throwing their hands up and saying: "We don't have anything new to offer. Our Bond will be backward-looking cinema for the old and middle-aged".
And yet... to repurpose a phrase from CR67... "Amazon is too much... for one James Bond!" so let's have a place for PB as the/an old Bond in the multiBondverse... (Sorry, I'm being ironic, but there's kind of a point here too. Let's hope that Bezos doesn't forget the first rule of streaming: "Give the people what they want!")
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
He likely would never be offered the chance to re-enter the role again, but it's refreshing to hear a Bond in his 70s embrace the role and express openness to being Bond again. Craig on the other hand seems to be doing everything in his power to distance himself from Bond.
So did Brosnan to be fair, doing a film with a scene in swim shorts and cowboy boots just for example. It's a pretty natural reaction to moving on from it.
I would have to politely disagree. Brosnan and Craig's attitude and projects post-Bond aren't even close. Craig still has time, but so far nothing else he has done has sniffed the action realm.
Brosnan wasn't doing much actiony stuff immediately after Bond; I guess After the Sunset is closest as it's a vaguely glamorous thief comedy thing, but he was literally filming that when he found out he wouldn't be Bond anymore. Then he did The Matador, as mentioned (very anti-Bond), and in the four-to-six years after his last Bond film, a romcom, a western, a kidnap thriller where he's the baddie, a period murder drama and a musical. His attitude seemed to be to do different stuff and not really lean on Bond much.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,906Chief of Staff
A difference between Brosnan and Craig is that the former didn't want to give up the role after his last Bond film, DAD; he'd been actively pitching for another, and was disappointed when passed over. On the other hand, Craig left no question of 'unfinished business': never has a Bond actor's exit been more 'final' than in NTTD (and even before that, the ending of SP had seemed to present as era-closure).
Dare I say it, Brosnan is as deserving of a 'knowing' swan song as OO7 and, after NTTD, audiences deserve the relief of a 'fun' farewell-to-arms flick on old-school Bondian terms, i.e. with a wink and a smile. A feel-good Brosnan finale, if only on streaming, would be a fitting way to preface a subsequent cycle of theatrical Bond films with a new actor and to restore the currently somewhat damaged mythos that Bond's "fight goes on and on and on". (Amazon has the capacity to support the production of two Bond projects at once.)
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Would it though? Because the ending of a, presumably one-off, 70 year-old BrosnanBond film would be likely another ending for the character; if not death then riding off into the sunset. Two (well, actually, after his quitting in Spectre, three) endings in a row for Bond more cements the idea that Bond doesn't go on much at all and in fact keeps stopping, you'd think! 😄
I reckon the series needs a start at the moment, not another end.
Why not pretend Brosnan isn't a serious candidate precisely because...he's not? I like him, but if he had not been Bond in the past, the question of his return wouldn't even be on the table. So why bother?
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,906Chief of Staff
The past is the past. Let's move on something fresh and new. Brosnan coming back would send a terrible signal from Amazon; the fact they really don't know what to do with the character. I want a Bond in his thirties, a new face to discover, a new way to rediscover Fleming's character in a modern era. That's where all the excitement comes from imo.
I know, I know... I guess that I just have a hankering for the kind of Bond-actor finale where the star recognises that it IS his finale, welcomes this and bows out with a smile and a wink, metaphorically or literally. The closing moments of DAF form a perfect template for that; Connery reprises the effect at the end of NSNA; Moore fools around in the shower with Stacy at the end of AVTAK, chortling while Q's silly robot dog looks on voyeuristically (there was no coming back from that!); and, in LTK, though Dalton wouldn't have known that his second Bond film would also be his last, the winking fish sculpture in Sanchez's mansion seems to know it!
On to Brosnan... True, DAD affords its Bond a happy consummation in its closing scene, appropriate to the movie's celebratory agenda in the series' 40th year, as the 20th entry; but the actor himself wasn't ready to bow out at the time, so he never got to give us that farewell wink with which he's now waiting in the wings...
Maybe it's better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
More than anything, I think the consensus on Brosnan is that he was a great Bond saddled with two really bad Bond films. Indeed, per a lot of people he only had one great one (GE) but I personally think TND is his best.
Regardless, I think a lot of people feel like he's owed a chance to go out with another good one. I'd be cool with that. Bros still looks pretty great and I think he could pull off a LOGAN type film.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,906Chief of Staff
It's tangent, but I wish they had embraced AVTAK as being Roger's last one, rather than just pretending he's in his thirties during the whole thing. Not dwelt on it maybe, but just an acknowledgement, a bit like Star Trek VI didn't shy away from its leads' age. Even NSNA, as you say, nodded a bit towards Bond retiring at the end. Get a leading lady who was a bit more Maud Adams in maturity (maybe Stacey's husband had died and left her the house rather than her dad!) and maybe have them end up together properly, somehow Sutton Oil is given Zorin's chateau and his stables as his company and assets are broken up, and they ride off into the sunset 😁
By fresh and new, I mean a brand new guy in the tux, with his own take on the character. It obviously doesn't mean this guy should be allowed to do anything he wants. His portrayal must remain faithful to the spirit of Bond. But I remember, when I first saw CR06, being impressed by the intensity Craig was able to put in the scenes. It was very fresh and different from what we were used to with Brosnan, and I liked it a lot.
I don't expect the next Bond to be a vintage Bond with a former actor in his seventies. It's like a new coach. After let's say ten seasons with the same guy, as a fan, I'd probably like the team to be trained by someone else, with another tactics, another kind of management, another way of speaking to the media...This guy will have to respect the traditions and the spirit of the club, but I'm also thrilled by what he can bring to it. Do you see my point?
He could, but considering we all know how it ends, it would be too predictable, especially after NTTD which has many common points with Logan. Bond's death should not become some kind of pattern. It works in NTTD precisely because it had never been done before and because the ingredients they put into the whole Craig era made it relevant plotwise.
Will the next Mission Impossible be a remake of those movies? I hope Cruise and McQuarrie found another idea than repeating the concept of the aging hero coming back for one last ride before dying. We all know this song, and I think it would become a little bit boring to hear it again, again, again and again.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,906Chief of Staff
I don't expect the next Bond to be a vintage Bond with a former actor in his seventies. It's like a new coach. After let's say ten seasons with the same guy, as a fan, I'd probably like the team to be trained by someone else, with another tactics, another kind of management, another way of speaking to the media...This guy will have to respect the traditions and the spirit of the club, but I'm also thrilled by what he can bring to it. Do you see my point?
Totally…but plenty of sports teams have had the same coach for two decades with continued success, and the fans have been distraught when they’ve finally left 😁
It’s not the so much ‘the man in the tux’ as the people behind it….they’ve all changed…so it IS all new.
I’m not advocating for Brozza to return…I’m just saying it could be “new and fresh” to have a 70 year old Bond 🤭
Yes, but don't forget the new generations will discover Bond with the next film. I'm not sure many children and teenagers will identify with a seventy year old spy whose best days are behind him.
Comments
Yes, agreed. Audiences for streamed content are sophisticated; they're au fait with 'alternate timeline' takes on franchise characters and material and they enjoy opportunities to make choices which don't have to be either/ or. A continued foregrounding of big, fresh films for the cinema need not preclude cycles of 'satellite content' for streaming or home entertainment only. (Bond fans have already had a taste of this kind of amicable plurality - in official Bond prose fiction, with its different continuities and occasional one-off worlds.)
Anyone who knows anything about Doctor Who and remembers this will appreciate what a great entrance Brosnan could make in a Bond reprise:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-U3jrS-uhuo
Or even Tennant coming back as the lead year before last!
“It's a new world, with new enemies and new threats [as well as a few old ones]. But you can still depend on one man."
”
What we are witnessing here is a revival. A rebirth. The Brosnaissance is upon us.
Let's be honest - the majority of us would watch a new Pierce Bond film. The minority being George Lazenby.
As awesome as it would be to see PB return, bringing him back directly after the Craig era would smack of disrespect for Craig and said era - everything Craig and EON bought to the table for 15 years would appear to be dismissed in favour of what would seem as going back to Brozza's reign to course correct, even if it were explained as a new incarnation.
I realize some would prefer going back to that 1962-2002 timeline, but in the end it's just a fun thought and the next era would be better off starting with a fresh face, as has always been the case. Clean slate all around, IMO.
Whether Bond #7's adventures fit between previous stories is something I'd like to see, but it's gotta be a new face, it can't go back to Pierce right after Craig. The idea somewhat reminds me of Craig starring in 2010's GoldenEye - and although a decent game, left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
The "old Bond" idea was put to Brosnan on the UK TV show The Jonathan Ross Show last Saturday and he did not dismiss it.
Well, I'd say that the Craig era chose to dismiss itself at the point that it killed off its own Bond. Respect doesn't come into it. Craig's five Bond films will always be enjoyed for what they are, a completed arc.
He's a working actor, his agent would be mad at him if he said he wasn't up for starring in an expensive movie!
Whilst it's fun to play with ideas a bit (Samantha Bond as M?), and whilst I would obviously watch it because it's Bond, I don't think it would be a good idea.
It's a really bad idea! Maybe Brosnan can be a kind of "cultural ambassador" for everything James Bond like Roger Moore was after he resigned as 007. Maybe he can voice Bond an an animated TV series. But having him on screen as James Bond would be Amazon throwing their hands up and saying: "We don't have anything new to offer. Our Bond will be backward-looking cinema for the old and middle-aged".
And yet... to repurpose a phrase from CR67... "Amazon is too much... for one James Bond!" so let's have a place for PB as the/an old Bond in the multiBondverse... (Sorry, I'm being ironic, but there's kind of a point here too. Let's hope that Bezos doesn't forget the first rule of streaming: "Give the people what they want!")
He likely would never be offered the chance to re-enter the role again, but it's refreshing to hear a Bond in his 70s embrace the role and express openness to being Bond again. Craig on the other hand seems to be doing everything in his power to distance himself from Bond.
So did Brosnan to be fair, doing a film with a scene in swim shorts and cowboy boots just for example. It's a pretty natural reaction to moving on from it.
I would have to politely disagree. Brosnan and Craig's attitude and projects post-Bond aren't even close. Craig still has time, but so far nothing else he has done has sniffed the action realm.
Brosnan wasn't doing much actiony stuff immediately after Bond; I guess After the Sunset is closest as it's a vaguely glamorous thief comedy thing, but he was literally filming that when he found out he wouldn't be Bond anymore. Then he did The Matador, as mentioned (very anti-Bond), and in the four-to-six years after his last Bond film, a romcom, a western, a kidnap thriller where he's the baddie, a period murder drama and a musical. His attitude seemed to be to do different stuff and not really lean on Bond much.
For a one-off film I think it could be a great idea…could meaning script dependent 😁 but I wouldn’t be averse…
A difference between Brosnan and Craig is that the former didn't want to give up the role after his last Bond film, DAD; he'd been actively pitching for another, and was disappointed when passed over. On the other hand, Craig left no question of 'unfinished business': never has a Bond actor's exit been more 'final' than in NTTD (and even before that, the ending of SP had seemed to present as era-closure).
Dare I say it, Brosnan is as deserving of a 'knowing' swan song as OO7 and, after NTTD, audiences deserve the relief of a 'fun' farewell-to-arms flick on old-school Bondian terms, i.e. with a wink and a smile. A feel-good Brosnan finale, if only on streaming, would be a fitting way to preface a subsequent cycle of theatrical Bond films with a new actor and to restore the currently somewhat damaged mythos that Bond's "fight goes on and on and on". (Amazon has the capacity to support the production of two Bond projects at once.)
Would it though? Because the ending of a, presumably one-off, 70 year-old BrosnanBond film would be likely another ending for the character; if not death then riding off into the sunset. Two (well, actually, after his quitting in Spectre, three) endings in a row for Bond more cements the idea that Bond doesn't go on much at all and in fact keeps stopping, you'd think! 😄
I reckon the series needs a start at the moment, not another end.
Why not pretend Brosnan isn't a serious candidate precisely because...he's not? I like him, but if he had not been Bond in the past, the question of his return wouldn't even be on the table. So why bother?
Precisely BECAUSE he was Bond in the past…it was the same for Connery and, despite his protestations, he DID come back.
I don’t think it will happen…but Brozza is as likely as other actors mentioned…probably more so.
The past is the past. Let's move on something fresh and new. Brosnan coming back would send a terrible signal from Amazon; the fact they really don't know what to do with the character. I want a Bond in his thirties, a new face to discover, a new way to rediscover Fleming's character in a modern era. That's where all the excitement comes from imo.
I know, I know... I guess that I just have a hankering for the kind of Bond-actor finale where the star recognises that it IS his finale, welcomes this and bows out with a smile and a wink, metaphorically or literally. The closing moments of DAF form a perfect template for that; Connery reprises the effect at the end of NSNA; Moore fools around in the shower with Stacy at the end of AVTAK, chortling while Q's silly robot dog looks on voyeuristically (there was no coming back from that!); and, in LTK, though Dalton wouldn't have known that his second Bond film would also be his last, the winking fish sculpture in Sanchez's mansion seems to know it!
On to Brosnan... True, DAD affords its Bond a happy consummation in its closing scene, appropriate to the movie's celebratory agenda in the series' 40th year, as the 20th entry; but the actor himself wasn't ready to bow out at the time, so he never got to give us that farewell wink with which he's now waiting in the wings...
Maybe it's better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
More than anything, I think the consensus on Brosnan is that he was a great Bond saddled with two really bad Bond films. Indeed, per a lot of people he only had one great one (GE) but I personally think TND is his best.
Regardless, I think a lot of people feel like he's owed a chance to go out with another good one. I'd be cool with that. Bros still looks pretty great and I think he could pull off a LOGAN type film.
The past is the past? So you want a non-smoking, non-drinking, non-womanising, woke Bond. Nice 🤣
Obviously I’m pulling your leg…😉
So…what do you want that is “fresh and new”? 🤔
It's tangent, but I wish they had embraced AVTAK as being Roger's last one, rather than just pretending he's in his thirties during the whole thing. Not dwelt on it maybe, but just an acknowledgement, a bit like Star Trek VI didn't shy away from its leads' age. Even NSNA, as you say, nodded a bit towards Bond retiring at the end. Get a leading lady who was a bit more Maud Adams in maturity (maybe Stacey's husband had died and left her the house rather than her dad!) and maybe have them end up together properly, somehow Sutton Oil is given Zorin's chateau and his stables as his company and assets are broken up, and they ride off into the sunset 😁
By fresh and new, I mean a brand new guy in the tux, with his own take on the character. It obviously doesn't mean this guy should be allowed to do anything he wants. His portrayal must remain faithful to the spirit of Bond. But I remember, when I first saw CR06, being impressed by the intensity Craig was able to put in the scenes. It was very fresh and different from what we were used to with Brosnan, and I liked it a lot.
I don't expect the next Bond to be a vintage Bond with a former actor in his seventies. It's like a new coach. After let's say ten seasons with the same guy, as a fan, I'd probably like the team to be trained by someone else, with another tactics, another kind of management, another way of speaking to the media...This guy will have to respect the traditions and the spirit of the club, but I'm also thrilled by what he can bring to it. Do you see my point?
He could, but considering we all know how it ends, it would be too predictable, especially after NTTD which has many common points with Logan. Bond's death should not become some kind of pattern. It works in NTTD precisely because it had never been done before and because the ingredients they put into the whole Craig era made it relevant plotwise.
Will the next Mission Impossible be a remake of those movies? I hope Cruise and McQuarrie found another idea than repeating the concept of the aging hero coming back for one last ride before dying. We all know this song, and I think it would become a little bit boring to hear it again, again, again and again.
I don't expect the next Bond to be a vintage Bond with a former actor in his seventies. It's like a new coach. After let's say ten seasons with the same guy, as a fan, I'd probably like the team to be trained by someone else, with another tactics, another kind of management, another way of speaking to the media...This guy will have to respect the traditions and the spirit of the club, but I'm also thrilled by what he can bring to it. Do you see my point?
Totally…but plenty of sports teams have had the same coach for two decades with continued success, and the fans have been distraught when they’ve finally left 😁
It’s not the so much ‘the man in the tux’ as the people behind it….they’ve all changed…so it IS all new.
I’m not advocating for Brozza to return…I’m just saying it could be “new and fresh” to have a 70 year old Bond 🤭
Yes, but don't forget the new generations will discover Bond with the next film. I'm not sure many children and teenagers will identify with a seventy year old spy whose best days are behind him.