James Bond Franchise • Page 11

i watched this as a kid

 

oh I know and I don’t need this tv show or 8 other spin offs

 

Same. All I remember is the theme song.

 

Totally agree. We don’t need expanded universes for everything. All it does is dilute a franchise. A film series that took its time with its sequels, one actor at a time, was perfect, even if the movies weren’t. It’s the one time where gatekeeping was good.

 

I'm not gonna pretend that every Bond film has been the most untouchable piece of art or even the Broccolis were hiring the best filmmakers in the world every time. (Hiring auteurs was more of a recent thing with the Craig era, usually they got guys that could keep the train moving. Sometimes to amazing results like Martin Campbell knocking it out of the park twice.) However, giving up control to the tech overlords at amazon so they can milk it dry is deeply sad. I am not holding out hope that Amazon will allow the next batch of films to continue to shoot on-location and have analog stunts.

Nightmare scenario is this franchise becomes nothing but streaming slop

 

i was talking with a friend about this yesterday. the thing with the James Bond franchise is that the formula really hasn't changed much in 60 years - it's mostly the same schtick every movie with slight variations in how campy or serious it can get. it doesn't mean all of them are remotely good, but the franchise's track record has been reasonable throughout its run, and for the most part (maybe some of the loose serialization of the Daniel Craig run aside), you could put any of them on and have a decent time without having to know much about their predecessors. it's "functionally accessible".

Amazon's desire to turn the franchise into an interconnected world of multiple films, shows, spinoffs, etc. that nobody asked for robs the viewer of any functional accessibility and throws them into lowbrow "thematic accessibility" - where you can't jump in at any point but the content is ultimately watered down. my fear is that we'll just get caught in this cycle of the same poor quality, fragmented story over and over with less care given to making the films unique and more care given to making the films smaller pieces of a larger whole.