I really had hoped that for the next Bond, we wouldnât see âBrofeldâ.
Iâve never had a problem with M being a woman or Q being a nerd, but ignoring Flemingâs entire background for Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the Daniel Craig movies, and supplanting him into the Franz Oberhauser family as a foster brother to Bond, felt a step too farâa step, incidentally, that we have Sam Mendes to credit. We have yet another Bond villain, as penned by screenwriters Purvis and Wade, with Daddy issues, the same plot device used in The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day in the Brosnan era.
Looks like the third Austin Powers movie contributed something back to the cinematic Bond-lore, when we learn Dr Evil was really Dougie Powers. The ret-conning of the first three Craig Bonds in Spectre felt forced. And professional reviewers have said plenty. No Time to Die looks decent enough from the trailer, but once again weâre exploring back stories. While this may be how blockbusters do it in the 2010s and the start of the 2020s, I just really donât care about Brofeld and the silly world we find ourselves in now. The sooner they can get away from this tangent, the better, and as much as I liked Daniel Craig as Bond, Iâm looking forward to the start of the new actorâs tenure some time early next decade. Iâve no idea what the world would expect in cinematic tastes come 2023 or so, but letâs hope all the pieces fall together once more for a satisfying Bond entry, well away from Mendes.
Trivium that no one cares about: No Time to Die is the first James Bond movie to be released in a year ending in 0.
Has John Cleese become embittered? He suggests that the Bond films after Die Another Day (his second and final) were humourless because the producers wanted to pursue Asian audiences. Humour, he says, was out.
âAlso the big money was coming from Asia, from the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, where the audiences go to watch the action sequences, and that’s why in my opinion the action sequences go on for too long, and it’s a fundamental flaw.â And, âThe audiences in Asia are not going for the subtle British humour or the class jokes.â
I say bollocks.
Itâs well known that with Casino Royale, the producers went back to Fleming, and rebooted the series. Quite rightly, too, when the films had drifted into science fiction, with an invisible car and, Lee Tamahoriâs nadir, a CGI sequence where Pierce Brosnan kite-surfed a tsunami.
This is nothing new to gamers (whose world I am not a part ofâunless you count the last time I had a gaming console, which was 1984), though I found the opening sequence to the remade Goldeneye 007 game rather well done, apart from the colons. The Neuzeit typeface looks good here. As we’ve known for some time, theyâve removed Pierce Brosnan in favour of the current Bond, Daniel Craig, for the game. And many of the “official” Bond team is involved beyond actors Craig and Dame Judi Dench: Craig double Ben Cooke is the stunt coordinator, while composer David Arnold has remade the theme song, with Nicole Scherzinger replacing Tina Turner. And Craig fans like me get to hear the actor say some of the Remington Steele, I mean, Pierce Brosnan, lines.
When you see work like this, itâs becoming far more obvious that gaming will overtake movie-making as an industry. Me: I’d still prefer to veg out to a film, even if that is heading the way of television with decreasing budgets and big producers playing things safe.