Where to go with the old dog now

Where to go with Craig now? He not only looks old in the part, his character is also being told as much, in SF.This is a first for the films, but for NSNA, where Connery was playing a semi-retired Bond.

So now, end of SF, we have yet another re-launch of the series, with a new M and a new MP and a new Q, but a tired old Bond. Seems only 6 years ago, he was the brand new double-0. But he didn't look very fresh-faced then either, but that's CR absurdity, water under the bridge.

I guess for the next two films, Craig will be the old dog, but I really hope they don't dwell on it. His tenure it seems, will just have to completely skip the part of his Bond career where he's in his prime and focused on mission. They've got an actor who does not age well, appearance wise at least, even if he can stay fit.

So I wonder, when the old dog packs it in, after the next two films, how does Eon reconcile the new presumably younger Bond with the old dog that's been retired. The answer I would hope, is that they simply do the cinema wink-wink trick, and carry on like the new guy has alway been Bond, as they did with Laz, Moore, Dalts and Broz. I do hope that they will be brazen enough to do this. It would require I think though, that in the next two films they don't get caught up in further character drama vis-a-vis the Mi6 principals, otherwise its going to be hard for a new younger character to step in and mix with this bunch, if the office-gang are too invested in their history with the retired old-dog.

tiffanywint wrote:

Where to go with Craig now? He not only looks old in the part, his character is also being told as much, in SF.This is a first for the films, but for NSNA, where Connery was playing a semi-retired Bond.

So now, end of SF, we have yet another re-launch of the series, with a new M and a new MP and a new Q, but a tired old Bond. Seems only 6 years ago, he was the brand new double-0. But he didn't look very fresh-faced then either, but that's CR absurdity, water under the bridge.

I guess for the next two films, Craig will be the old dog, but I really hope they don't dwell on it. His tenure it seems, will just have to completely skip the part of his Bond career where he's in his prime and focused on mission. They've got an actor who does not age well, appearance wise at least, even if he can stay fit.

So I wonder, when the old dog packs it in, after the next two films, how does Eon reconcile the new presumably younger Bond with the old dog that's been retired. The answer I would hope, is that they simply do the cinema wink-wink trick, and carry on like the new guy has alway been Bond, as they did with Laz, Moore, Dalts and Broz. I do hope that they will be brazen enough to do this. It would require I think though, that in the next two films they don't get caught up in further character drama vis-a-vis the Mi6 principals, otherwise its going to be hard for a new younger character to step in and mix with this bunch, if the office-gang are too invested in their history with the retired old-dog.

They've got make-up departments, lighting techniques, plus lots of digital retouching programs that were used in movies like X-MEN THE LAST STAND and BENJAMIN BUTTONS, so they can take a few years off of him digitally if need be and smooth around the edges.

But I digress. I think Craig should, once he leaves the series, should smoothly transfer over to the PSYCHO series. Go dig up M's old body and transplant it to a little motel on the dusty backroads of Bakersfield California. If MGM/SONY were smart, they'd get the rights to the PSYCHO series and reboot the series with new characters. Bond would be the new owner, but inside he's an imploding alcoholic, drug addicted, hotel operator who has left MI6, but who cannot cut the cord with his "mommy", so she's rotting and decaying in the house up on the hill, while he tries to keep the motel running. The film series could be about Bond trying to live a normal life post-MI6, running a little motel and cafeteria...trying to get his life back together.....trying to meet a nice, young girl who would be willing to try and understand the complicated relationship that a boy has with his mother....who happens to be up in the house on the hill, rotting away.

Any other ideas?

The bigger question is, if this film does gross 900m, how does Craig's successor compete with that?

The bar has been set very, very high now....

I've been thinking that myself. I expect once Craig's tenure's over and done with, they'll forget all about the storyline they've stirred up for him and move on to new dramas with the new Bond. Don't get me wrong, I dig the odd bit of drama now and then, but I'm hoping they keep to the traditional routine now. The whole crew's here, let Bond get back to sipping on martinis, banging broads and saving the world through questionable one liners and pure wit.

tiffanywint wrote:

I guess for the next two films, Craig will be the old dog, but I really hope they don't dwell on it.

I don't think they will. I doubt they'll even mention his age in BOND 24 and 25.

tiffanywint wrote:

Where to go with Craig now? He not only looks old in the part, his character is also being told as much, in SF.This is a first for the films, but for NSNA, where Connery was playing a semi-retired Bond.

I disagree that Craig looks old as Bond. He still looks very much in his prime, which is why the "ageing Bond" story thread in SKYFALL doesn't quite work for me. He might look (a bit) old were it not for the filmmakers' shrewd insistence on showing him topless (he has four topless scenes in SKYFALL, if I remember correctly) in order to flaunt his remarkable physique. And given that Stallone is still getting his kit off onscreen at almost seventy years of age, I suspect that Craig could still maintain his Bond bod for another decade and beyond if he chose to do so.

Watch, say, OCTOPUSSY, NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN and DIE ANOTHER DAY (all of which are good, entertaining Bond films in my book, with enjoyable performances by Moore, Connery and Brosnan), and Craig suddenly doesn't look so old and past-it in SKYFALL.

Loomis wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

Where to go with Craig now? He not only looks old in the part, his character is also being told as much, in SF.This is a first for the films, but for NSNA, where Connery was playing a semi-retired Bond.

I disagree that Craig looks old as Bond. He still looks very much in his prime.

We've had this conversation before, but I still think Craig looks like a man in his 50s, who happens to have a high metabolism (could easily be a consequence of the stimulants he'd taken on his Turkish binge).

Yup, and Bond is supposed to be rejuvenated by the end of the film, getting his groove back, so I doubt his age will be brought up in the next two unless they want Bond 25 to give CraigBond a definitive ending... But that's four to five years away, so who knows?

I don't have any issues with Craig continuing at his age. My concern was simply that in this film, Mallory draws attention to the notion that this Bond might be passed his best-before-date. So how do you continue with that?

However, I do think the best course would be to dispense with the notion of Bond as old-dog (don't do the NSNA thing) and let the older actor simply play Bond, much like Rog and Broz did towards the end, and then we can transtion into the new young Bond (30 years of age would be nice. I do agree with Mallory that it is a young man's game. See '60s Connery and Laz).

Mallory, MP, Q and Tanner, through the magic of cinema, can just be oblivious to the fact that Bond is sudddenly taller, darker-haired and much younger.

They might though occasionally gather over a pint and wonderhow it is that Bond stays so vital, yet they age. Joking of course.

Well given the thought that the age difference between Fiennes and Craig is only 6 years then i'm pretty certain that they will play Craig in his prime age and perhaps continue the track where (M)allory is older.

And i think that when Bond had his beard shaved off, then he didn't look too bad. I thought he looked good and that he had aged well, compared to the previous actors who didn't age that well.

tiffanywint wrote:

I don't have any issues with Craig continuing at his age. My concern was simply that in this film, Mallory draws attention to the notion that this Bond might be passed his best-before-date.

I got the impression Bond had "lost a step" not because of age but because he had been shot and then went on a prolonged bender. Note that by the Scotland sequence Bond could once again shoot the antenna off a grasshopper at 500 paces.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

I don't have any issues with Craig continuing at his age. My concern was simply that in this film, Mallory draws attention to the notion that this Bond might be passed his best-before-date.

I got the impression Bond had "lost a step" not because of age but because he had been shot and then went on a prolonged bender. Note that by the Scotland sequence Bond could once again shoot the antenna off a grasshopper at 500 paces.

Yes he bounced back nicely, but Mallory did seem to suggest he was done, and MP called him an old-dog, but as we saw the "old-dog" returned to form and Mallory and MP seem happy to have him back.

About the bender. Fleming's Bond seemed to be on a 14 book bender! I like in GF how Du Pont ordered martinis for them both at the crab-bar, and then told the waiter in advance to have the next round ready in 10 minutes. This, after at least half-a-dozen bourbons (some probably doubles) at the airport bar. :drunken:

tiffanywint wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

I don't have any issues with Craig continuing at his age. My concern was simply that in this film, Mallory draws attention to the notion that this Bond might be passed his best-before-date.

I got the impression Bond had "lost a step" not because of age but because he had been shot and then went on a prolonged bender. Note that by the Scotland sequence Bond could once again shoot the antenna off a grasshopper at 500 paces.

Yes he bounced back nicely, but Mallory did seem to suggest he was done, and MP called him an old-dog, but as we saw the "old-dog" returned to form and Mallory and MP seem happy to have him back.

About the bender. Fleming's Bond seemed to be on a 14 book bender! I like in GF how Du Pont ordered martinis for them both at the crab-bar, and then told the waiter in advance to have the next round ready in 10 minutes. This, after at least half-a-dozen bourbons (some probably doubles) at the airport bar. :drunken:

Quite. And I must say, Skyfall is probably the booziest Bond film. Everytime you turn around, Bond, M or Mallory is slugging down some rotgut. Hell, I halfway expected M to crack open a bottle of Wild Turkey as that harpy of a Minster upbraided her in the security hearing.

:)

Where do they go from here?

It's simple. Bond gets called into M's office, and the conversation goes like this:

"Tell me, Double-Oh Seven, what do you know about __________?"

Perilagu Khan wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

tiffanywint wrote:

I don't have any issues with Craig continuing at his age. My concern was simply that in this film, Mallory draws attention to the notion that this Bond might be passed his best-before-date.

I got the impression Bond had "lost a step" not because of age but because he had been shot and then went on a prolonged bender. Note that by the Scotland sequence Bond could once again shoot the antenna off a grasshopper at 500 paces.

Yes he bounced back nicely, but Mallory did seem to suggest he was done, and MP called him an old-dog, but as we saw the "old-dog" returned to form and Mallory and MP seem happy to have him back.

About the bender. Fleming's Bond seemed to be on a 14 book bender! I like in GF how Du Pont ordered martinis for them both at the crab-bar, and then told the waiter in advance to have the next round ready in 10 minutes. This, after at least half-a-dozen bourbons (some probably doubles) at the airport bar. :drunken:

Quite. And I must say, Skyfall is probably the booziest Bond film. Everytime you turn around, Bond, M or Mallory is slugging down some rotgut. Hell, I halfway expected M to crack open a bottle of Wild Turkey as that harpy of a Minster upbraided her in the security hearing.

:)

I do like how Craig's Bond is actually shown as being tipsy/drunk sometimes. Noticed on my 3rd viewing yesterday that it's a bottle of beer (had previously thought it was apple juice, for some reason) that Tanner is drinking during the 'breadcrumbs' scene.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

I do like how Craig's Bond is actually shown as being tipsy/drunk sometimes. Noticed on my 3rd viewing yesterday that it's a bottle of beer (had previously thought it was apple juice, for some reason) that Tanner is drinking during the 'breadcrumbs' scene.

I think it was a Heineken...had a couple of those myself at the shows.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Where do they go from here?

It's simple. Bond gets called into M's office, and the conversation goes like this:

"Tell me, Double-Oh Seven, what do you know about __________?"

That works just fine!!! Please don't "cock it up" filmmakers!

Blunt Instrument wrote:

I do like how Craig's Bond is actually shown as being tipsy/drunk sometimes. Noticed on my 3rd viewing yesterday that it's a bottle of beer (had previously thought it was apple juice, for some reason) that Tanner is drinking during the 'breadcrumbs' scene.

But we got to watch that Bond isn't actually drunk. Fleming's Bond drank like a champ, but Fleming took pains to explain that Bond could hold his booze, ie not appear drunk. A somewhat fanciful notion but Fleming wanted a hard drinking agent that could hold it.

I do take note that Fleming did have Bond knock out the booze entirely as he trained for his dangerous night swim and the planned assault on Big's Jamaican base. Although I think he had a couple of quick belts, shortly before he launched, but nothing during his training.:)

We haven't really had a "young" Bond since Connery and Lazenby made their respective debuts (and the former looked about 10 years older than he was). So I don't think there'd be too much drama with the continuity assuming EON pick someone in their late 30's/early 40's as they've done with the previous three Bonds.

tiffanywint wrote:

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Where do they go from here?

It's simple. Bond gets called into M's office, and the conversation goes like this:

"Tell me, Double-Oh Seven, what do you know about __________?"

That works just fine!!! Please don't "cock it up" filmmakers!

My concern is that EON will over-use Ralph Fiennes. He's an excellent actor - I couldn't think of a better choice for the role - but when Judi Dench was M, EON kept finding ways to work her into the film so that she didn't go to waste. And on a certain level, that was fine; for all the complaints about Dench's M meddling too much, she was at least consistent, and so you got the sense that that was how she ran the Service.

It would be a shame if they want down the same path with Fiennes, least of all because Gareth Mallory is a totally different character to Dench's M. I think Mallory has a great backstory: SAS member taken captive for three months during the Troubles. Nothing more than that is needed. I also liked what they did with him in SKYFALL, particularly the scene where Q and Tanner are laying a false trail. He's smart enough to recognise what they are doing, and trusts them to be able to make decisions for themselves without having to get clearance. And, of course, he doesn't care much for political grandstanding - Fiennes absolutely nailed the line in the inquiry scene where he told Helen McCrory to put a sock in it and let M speak for herself.

I can't picture Fiennes' M being a meddling psychobabbler. He's a no-nonsense sumbitch. A younger Bernard Lee, if I may be so bold. I think (or hope, anyway) that the writers recognise this and don't try to embed him into every damned thing Bond does.

I'm sure they'll find some way of working him in. Hopefully one that's consistent with his character. He doesn't tolerate political grandstanding, so I imagine it would be a case of "do what you've got to do, and let me worry about what the parliament says". For example, if he had been M when Bond shot Mollaka on camera, then he probably would have told the inquiry to fuck off instead of bitching about it once he left the room.

AFter SKYFALL, I think BOND 24 really needs to go for a villain with a plot that would have global repurcussions if it was successful.

CASINO ROYALE was really one-on-one between Bond and Le Chiffre. Even though flipping Le Chiffre would no doubt save thousands of lives with the information he could provide, it was only really an indirect consequence, since none of it would really be detailed in the film even if Bond had have succeeded.

QUANTUM OF SOLACE certainly had much bigger stakes to play for, though Bond was fighting to save the population of Bolivia from a man-made drought. Even then, I think the intention of the film was to show Bond going wherever he had to and doing whatever he had to in order to get answers over Vesper's death, so the actual plot is secondary.

SKYFALL, of course, goes in the opposite direction. The stakes are deeply personal this time around, and Silva's plan to discredit and kill M doesn't really have any wider consequences. MI6 kept going, even without him or her. Whatever public embarrassment they suffered was simply a by-produt of Silva's plot.

So I think BOND 24 needs to go for a villain with a bigger, bolder plot. Something that will affect thousands - if not millions - of people if it succeeds. Perhaps not on the scale of MOONRAKER or THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, but certainly something akin to THUNDERBALL. The trick is that EON set a very high standard for themselves with SKYFALL, and no doubt the temptation will be there to make the stakes personal again.

The way I see it, these world domination plots never really worked because Bond didn't really engage on any level with the villains. Sure, he walked into Drax Enterprises, had a chat with Hugo, disrupted his plans and ultimately killed him, but there was a vast chasm between them. Bond needs to go up against a villain who can challenge him, and that whatever the outcome, he will come out on the other side a slightly changed man.

This is why I think films like THE SPY WHO LOVED ME are so weak. They just follow the basic structure of a narrative that we all get taught in primary school: there is a beginning, a complication and a resolution, at which point the status quo is restored. But stories don't do that. There is never an equilibrium, but rather what I like to call a 'dynamic disequilibrium' where things are constantly out of balance, swaying between order and chaos. By the end of the story, things are not the same as they were to begin with, because to have thigns the same as they were to begin with is to deny that anything ever happened, thereby making the story redundant. That needs to happen - Bond needs to come out of the film a changed man. It doesn't have to be a revolutionary change, but the audience should be able to recognise it.

I think that the easiest way to capture this is through the villain's motive. Bond villains are typically limited in their motivations for doing what they do; some, like Franz Sanchez and Dominic Greene, are motivated purely by profit. Others, like General Orlov and Karl Stromberg, are motivated by ideology. And the likes of Raoul Silva and Alec Trevelyan, are motivated by revenge. Perhaps the most interesting motivation is Georgi Koskov, who - although greedy for profit - tries to use Bond and MI6 to cover up a crime. So I think BOND 24 should endeavour to find a new motive for its villain, or failing that, find a new spin on an old motive the way they did with Koskov.

I think we'll get something that's bigger and better. EON have always capitalised on the successes of the most recent film. Thunderball went bigger and better than Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice went bigger and better than Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service had 'bigger and better' in the timeline.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

...what I like to call a 'dynamic disequilibrium' where things are constantly out of balance, swaying between order and chaos. By the end of the story, things are not the same as they were to begin with, because to have thigns the same as they were to begin with is to deny that anything ever happened, thereby making the story redundant. That needs to happen -

Isn't the "dynamic disequilibrium" essentially the 'new equilibrium'... That's what I've been taught.

Quote :

Bond needs to come out of the film a changed man.

Did Bond necessarily change after each mission in the 60s/Fleming's novels? Bond's not really about psychological journeys.

FieldsMan wrote:

Isn't the "dynamic disequilibrium" essentially the 'new equilibrium'... That's what I've been taught.

Yes, but "equilibrium" implies that everything will remain constant from that point on - and we know it won't, because at the very least, people change all the time.

FieldsMan wrote:

Did Bond necessarily change after each mission in the 60s/Fleming's novels?

I would argue that he did, even if the changes were subtle.

FieldsMan wrote:

Bond's not really about psychological journeys.

I never said it was.