Shaken, Stirred, and a Tad Blown Up

Recent reports coming out of Amazon MGM have indicated that the studio is struggling to figure out how to bring James BondThe world's most famous secret agent, James Bond has starred not only in dozens of books but also one of the most famous, and certainly the longest running, film franchises of all time. back to the big screen. This apparently is because the last 007 film, No Time to Die, ended with (ironically for the title) James Bond dying (sorry if that’s a spoiler, but everyone should know that by now). This seems to be an issue because, as per the studio, it makes it hard to bring back Bond since the audience thinks he’s dead. You can’t just have him, in the words of Anthony Horowitz (current 007 author) “show up in the shower and pretend it’s all a dream” (which, if we have to comment, a Dallas reference really doesn’t feel like the right comment to make if you want your character to continue feeling current and edgy).

And sure, if that was the angle Amazon was going to take, I’d agree that would be a bad one. Hand waving away the character’s death at the end of the last movie would be a terrible thing to do, but that would only be the solution if, somehow, the studio managed to lure Daniel Craig back to the lead role after his definitive ending. But that’s also not happening because Craig is done playing Bond and doesn’t want to come back anyway. Hell, he was done with bond by the third film, and yet somehow got lured back twice more but only on the promise that they’d for realsies kill him off this time. And they did. Case closed there.

But the 007 series, for all its faults, hasn’t really ever concerned itself with continuity of transitions between its lead actors. When Sean Connery passed the torch to George Lazenby for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the film didn’t really make a big fuss about it. Lazenby stepped in, at one point made a little fourth wall break of a joke, and the series moved on. Connery stepped back in for the next film, Diamonds Are Forever, the series picked up whatever storylines were lingering and still played everything as normal. Each transition, up until Craig, treated the character like he was eternal. It didn’t matter his face, it was the same guy, and then it never really looked back.

This has been a strength for the series up until now. Unlike with other franchises, where an actor leaving a role has to be marked by the character leaving as well, or there has to be some big to-do about recasting within the continuity of the series, 007 has always swapped the actors in smoothly and then moved on to the next big adventure. Actors come and go but James Bond could always be counted on to be James Bond (for better and for worse). The actors were allowed to make the role their own and audiences followed simply because it was James Bond.

Now, sure, the Daniel Craig era changed that some. His first film, Casino Royale, was explicitly a reboot of sorts. Some actors remained in their roles, like Dame Judy Dench’s M, but for the most part it was a new era with a new Bond that shook off all the old, lingering bits of continuity. This allowed the series to start fresh, with an agent just out of training, ready to take on his first, real mission. And it works. Craig’s time in the franchise injected new life and got audiences interested again. While not all of his films were winners, overall his arc as the agent is considered a high point for the franchise.

So it was natural to mark his leaving the role with a big send off. His era marked a greater emphasis on continuing storylines and continuity among the Craig-led films. For a fresh actor to come in and take over the role, whatever that role would look like, the old series would have to be brought to some kind of definitive end. The series chose to do it by poisoning Bond and then having get blown by, just, all the missiles ever. He was not walking away from that, waking up in a shower, and pretending everything was hunky-dory. Not possible.

I can understand why the studio is reticent because this is new ground here. Craig’s era might have been a reboot, but the 007 series has never faced the task of creating a film after it’s just definitively killed off the lead character. Of course, that’s only an issue if, somehow, the studio wanted to continue the series in the same continuity. If some of the side characters, and their actors, were to return, then it might seem weird to audiences that everything is being treated as normal when a new James Bond walks into the room.

As I’ve discussed before (especially over on the podcast), there is an easy solution to the problem: don’t immediately recast the role. Instead of having James Bond be the star of a 007 film, let some other character carry the number for a little while Nomi was introduced in No Time to Die as the next Double-O, and then she relinquished her number back to Bond at the end so he could go out a proper agent. She could get the number back and go on a couple of solid adventures (maybe accompanied by Ana de Armas’s brilliant CIA agent from that film as well) before she decides to retire. During that time you could have her training a new, younger agent and, lo-and-behold, he becomes the next “James Bond”, showing that not only is the number transferred over but also the name, as needed.

This actually would explain away one of the big flaws of the series: James Bond never uses a code name. He’s always just James Bond (or, if you prefer, “Bond, James Bond”) which makes him one of the worst secret agents ever. If everyone knows who you really are then your identity really isn’t much of a secret (an idea perfectly lampooned over on Archer). But if “James Bond” is actually just a codename, and some agent gets assigned it (and the Double-O number) eventually, then it’s perfectly logical that “James Bond” could return even after the character bearing that name got blowed up real good in a previous film.

It also means that some of the more out there ideas for the series could be allowed to happen without it causing continuity issues. From time to time there have been discussions about bringing back a previous actor to reprise their role in an adventure. Since Connery did it once, even if he was still a younger man at the time, why can’t Pierce Brosnan or Timothy Dalton be allowed to return to the role and play an older James Bond for one more outing? It would have to be just the right story, created to work with the fact it’s an older guy who can’t do the things he used to, but that could all work well in the right adventure, just once.

And all of it can easily be hand-waved away eventually once a new James Bond actor is found and a new series of films can be started. Reboot, sequel, requel, it could all exist in the same continuity with a couple of simple ideas and a bit of creative tooling. Hell, I don’t even like the series that much and I can easily see a bunch of different ways that the series could be brought forward and refreshed into this new set of films. And if it were done right, with a bit of style and aplomb, audiences would follow even if it wasn’t James Bond immediately in the next 007.

More than likely Amazon will freak out for a little while and then do a safe and simple reboot, crossing their fingers that audiences will like the next Bond, just like they liked the last one. It’s James Bond. He really is eternal. Put a dude in a suit, give him a gun, and have him order a martini. It really isn’t that hard. The fact that Amazon is freaking out about it shows they are stressing things just a little too much, which feels like a bigger problem than who gets to wear the suit next and why. When studios meddle too much the product generally turns out terrible. The last thing the 007 franchise needs is MGM’s fingers too deep into the pie. Amazon needs to set its creative team on the solution and then walk away, trusting the creatives to see it through.

But when you’ve just spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a franchise, I guess that’s too much to ask. And so the studio will freak out some more and the rest of us will sigh because, seriously, this is really just a non-issue, right?