When should they have stopped making Bond films?

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For me they should have stopped with View to a Kill, when Moore hung up his Walther PPK. Admittedly not a high point, but marks the end of the era really. Craig did refresh things a bit, Casino Royale being interesting, but otherwise they keep churning out all the same boring formulaic stuff - it’s as if they’re just in it for the money. Only new bond film I would be interested to watch is if it’s set in 60s and follows the early Connery style.



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Maybe they shouldn't have started. The whole core concept of Bond is so fundamentally regressive that attempts to update it over the last few decades haven't overcome - Dalton went in a whole new direction, Brosnan lapsed into the same campiness as Moore, and Craig tried to temper the old-school brutishness with modern respectability in a way that never truly worked. Trying to revert it back to the '60s Connery style would just come across as a refusal to deal with how the character doesn't really work in modern times and even a deconstruction would only work as well as Dalton/Craig did (or didn't, YMMV).
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For me they should have stopped with View to a Kill, when Moore hung up his Walther PPK. Admittedly not a high point, but marks the end of the era really. Craig did refresh things a bit, Casino Royale being interesting, but otherwise they keep churning out all the same boring formulaic stuff - it’s as if they’re just in it for the money. Only new bond film I would be interested to watch is if it’s set in 60s and follows the early Connery style.
I guess technically they should stop making Bond films when they stop making money. But personally I lost interest after Casino Royale, which I did mostly like.

I have to agree with you that the only new Bond film I'd be interested in is one that was set in the early 60s and follows the Sean Connery style of Bond. Some good ideas you have there!



Victim of The Night
I dunno.
I feel like they've been hit and miss since the late 60s so a miss here or there doesn't make me feel like they should stop. I think the resets help and while some may come one or two movies too late and the Dalton ones ended up just being kind of a mis-step, the new blood and new effort that goes into the periodic rebooting really makes it interesting, breath of fresh air, as it were. Currently, for example, I thought Casino Royale was great and I really liked QoS from a character point of view. Skyfall seemed to get away from itself and Spectre had some issues but it's not like either were bad films, though what seems like a fairly steady decline through those makes it feel like it's a good time to reset again.
I guess I don't see any reason to stop if they can continue to make films that people enjoy. I mean, at this point, it's a part of the cinematic fabric. I'm looking forward to who will be next.



Bad sequels devalue the originals, look at what last Jedi did to Star Wars, and the last two Reeve supermans. Conversely good sequels make the original better eg blade runner 2049. Bond is an extreme example of this (devaluing the earlier ones)



Beat me to it. I was about to say, around the same time they stop making Star Wars sequels, prequels and spin-offs. It may be time to revive the Scarlet Pimpernel.



Btw, anyone who says this or that bond actor was the most like the bond of the books is talking nonsense. Ian Fleming never got into bond’s head/thoughts in any of his books, all he told you were bond’s tastes in food, drink, clothes, cars,... The bond most like the one in the books is the one who does the most product placement!



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I wouldn't want them to give up after a View to a Kill, because in my opinion every Bond movie from Licence to Kill to Casino Royale was good, and they were on a hot streak. I hated Quantum of Solace though, but thought Skyfall was decently good, so that was the last good one so far. Perhaps they should have given up after that one, but that one has such a too be continued ending though.



I have to agree with you that the only new Bond film I'd be interested in is one that was set in the early 60s and follows the Sean Connery style of Bond. Some good ideas you have there!
This is a fun idea, yeah. I think a period Bond film is probably inevitable at some point, especially with how "samey" the last few have felt (to me, at least).



I think that franchises like this should not be a treadmill of endless new adventures. This only raises questions,

Why is a cold war spy operating in the 21st century?

Wouldn't everyone know who James Bond is by now? You know that conspicuous white guy in a foreign country who brazenly gambles millions in casinos just before things blow up and people die?

How many conspiratorial organizations are out there? How many villains are trying to destroy the world as we know it?

Shouldn't Bond be a pensioner by now?


Think of all those shows that outlived their premises. Richard Kimble was hunting for that one-armed man for a ridiculous period of time. Dexter was murdering all those serial killers for far too long for it to be plausible.

Bond should be cast in the cycle of an epic. That is, anyone who commits to telling James Bond is committing to a re-telling of 6-7 stories. There were many versions of The Song of Roland, but they share most of the same details. But these stories were always set in the time of Charlemagne and the plot points are the same.

Bond as a nebulous evergreen spy is no longer a conceit that can be maintained. Connery's Bond of the 60's would be too old to participate in the events of Craig's Bond. They live in different worlds. The 007 saga should be an epic cycle. It should feature the best Bond stories, retelling them. We should be determining what should be in the canon.

Or someone could write a new story about a new character. Does the world need another reboot?



This is a fun idea, yeah. I think a period Bond film is probably inevitable at some point, especially with how "samey" the last few have felt (to me, at least).
It would be cool if done as a prequel, which could include the creation of the 00 agent section of the British Secret Service. The opening scene could focus on a man being intensely interviewed in a mysterious setting. He then is told his new identity is James Bond and his agent number is 007...So back to the very start.

Then I would forget the larger than life elements and outlandish tech equipment and instead focus on what a real, cold war counter intelligence agent would actually have been like during the early 1960s.

Maybe use the events leading up to the Cuban Missile crisis as an impetus to drive the story and get the BBS agent involved...Or maybe make it post Cuban Missile crisis with the cold war going underground and unseen by the masses and yet still a world wide thread. Anyway I'd dig that.



This won't give you a real sense of it because it's a screwball comedy, but OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies is sort of a period secret agent piece (kinda of Bondian satire), and when it's not being too silly you can kinda get a feel of what a throwback Bond might look like now.




It's also just a really, really great Naked Gun style comedy that I can't recommend enough.



It's also just a really, really great Naked Gun style comedy that I can't recommend enough.
I’ll have to check it out, sounds like Guy Ritchie’s Man from Uncle which was good fun.



Victim of The Night
Bad sequels devalue the originals, look at what last Jedi did to Star Wars, and the last two Reeve supermans. Conversely good sequels make the original better eg blade runner 2049. Bond is an extreme example of this (devaluing the earlier ones)
I would respectfully disagree. The fact that there are some worse ones in there doesn't devalue the good ones and the overall arc remains positive.
You Only Live Twice is a fun-in-a-pure-camp-way movie that is totally ridiculous so I suppose we should have stopped before we got there. However, The Spy Who Loved Me, several films later, is a very good Bond Film. As is Goldeneye. As is Casino Royale.
By your rationale, they should not have made any more after Thunderball. No Roger Moore films, no Brosnan films, no Craig films. If that is what you meant then I guess I take your point, but I don't agree. Some of my favorite Bond films came after 1965.
The Last Jedi sucked (though not as badly as The Rise Of Skywalker) but it didn't hurt The Empire Strikes Back for me.
And Blade Runner was definitely not made any better by 2049.



And Blade Runner was definitely not made any better by 2049.
That is correct.

Didn't hate 2049, but I have not felt compelled to rewatch it. One viewing was pretty much all I needed for that one. Blade Runner was good for a decade of rewatching. Maybe that, in part, is because there weren't many options for VHS.



Never; despite the franchises's Cold War roots, it still essentially takes place in a fantasy world, one that can be reconfigured as needed for the tastes of each subsequent generation, with new incarnations of the character ready to go whenever the current actor gets tired of playing him, whether it be the relatively grounded nature of the early Connery efforts, the camp of the Moore era, or the grit of the Craig films, and they still make really good Bonds on occasion with entries like Casino Royale or Skyfall, so I see no reason why they should stop now, or ever.



Never; despite the franchises's Cold War roots, it still essentially takes place in a fantasy world, one that can be reconfigured as needed for the tastes of each subsequent generation, with new incarnations of the character ready to go whenever the current actor gets tired of playing him, whether it be the relatively grounded nature of the early Connery efforts, the camp of the Moore era, or the grit of the Craig films, and they still make really good Bonds on occasion with entries like Casino Royale or Skyfall, so I see no reason why they should stop now, or ever.
Well, most of them are not that good as movies. I don't know why this is so hard to admit. We can keep on making bad superhero movies too (and apparently, we will); but that we can make them is not a strong argument that we should.

What made Bond interesting, way back when, was that it was new. It was of its time and was fitted for that moment. Today, trying to make Bond fit is a bit like using a screwdriver as a chisel. It can be done, but it's not optimal craftsmanship.

The Mad Men sexuality of old Bond doesn't play well anymore. Watching Craig's Bond get chastized for being sexist isn't really fun. Are we imagining that we're the untouchable spy with a license to kill or is this an after school special? Are we supposed to like Bond or hate him?

Bond has been satirized, played for camp, played for grit, it has been deconstructed. The horse has been flogged. Franchises can simply get tired (see Dr. Who).



And at the point that we finally repurpose Bond in to something other than a chauvinist care-free nationalistic murderer who is more concerned with quips than human life, the franchise simply becomes a "brand" - Bond in Name Only. To the extent that it stays true to its core, it's an anachronism.

Sure, millions can (and will) be spent revivifying "this old franchise," but how many new stories will be left on the shelf as we cycle through reboots of infantile power fantasies?