”Take it Away, 007”
- jmcgrfx
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Why I Think (and hope) That We Won’t See Another James Bond in Our Lifetime…
Part One
Article by James P. McCabe
3/26/25
Every day the Internet generates ‘content’ concerning ‘James Bond 26’, the mythical next film in the renowned and extremely successful series.
I’ve been a fan the whole time, and I hope ‘James Bond 26’ never happens.
Where has he (Bond) been, and what can he do about it?
After the release of No Time to Die in 2021 (which I took my time about seeing- it was 2024 before I got around to renting it, in no hurry to see the one in which ‘Bond dies’) I felt there was an opportunity for a creative type like myself to suggest what direction the series- the franchise, let’s call it- might take in the future. I had an idea for it, and I decided to do some research to back it up, before submitting it to EON Productions, which could conceivably be floundering about for such assistance…
In the process I generated far more questions than answers. I thought it made for an interesting article so I’ve left them in, for you to consider…
Here’s some background on the history of the Bond film franchise…
Ownership of the Bond films had been in the hands of EON Productions, which was originally founded by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman in 1961. They were the producers who dealt directly with Bond creator Ian Fleming, and were responsible for casting Bond originator Sean Connery in the role.
Mr. Broccoli eventually passed leadership down to his daughter, Barbara, and her half-brother Michael G. Wilson. The rights to James Bond’s character were passed down with them, and they had been overseeing EON ever since.
The series began officially with Dr. No in 1961. The most recent (and final?) film was No Time to Die in 2021.
The idea of ‘James Bond 26’ started to show up not long after the release of No Time to Die, as if the film was not being taken seriously for some reason… the reason, of course, despite the finality of the last few scenes, was that the line ‘James Bond Will Return’ appeared in the closing credits, as it always has…
How could Daniel Craig’s version of Bond escape the approach of exploding missiles?
Easily.
He could have taken a deep dive before the missiles hit and found his way to an underwater cavern to hide in… maybe even a SPECTRE submarine in the area, since they had been claiming him as one of their own in the last few films… this Bond has survived being shot and drowned before (Skyfall) and he could certainly do it again. Back in London, having finished their interminable “So long, James” toasts (which Fleming would have had no part of) everyone goes back to work at MI6… until one day Q notices a faint, almost imperceptible signal coming in on a phantom wavelength, from approximately the area in which Bond disappeared…
From there it would not be much of a problem for Q to come up with an antidote (on his own time) to the nanobots or whatever that were supposed to have done Bond in, and the stage is set for his return…
As I said, Bond could certainly return, and very easily,,, the question is, why bother?
Rumors concerning what actors were in the running to be cast as ‘the next Bond’ have appeared almost weekly in the following four years.
As far as I was concerned, all of it was just a matter of marking time, of keeping the Bond franchise alive and valuable, and I could not see any good reason to make another Bond film… unless Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson decided not to leave the table while it was hot.
The outlook suddenly changed just a few weeks ago.
Just before this year’s Oscars show, Amazon MGM Studios, Michael G. Wilson, and Barbara Broccoli announced a new joint venture, ceding creative control of the James Bond franchise to Amazon MGM. Wilson and Broccoli will remain co-owners of the Bond series but will step back from creative management…
Amazon, and all of its attendant properties, is owned by billionaire investor Jeff Bezos. It’s possible Jeff will have little involvement with the advancement of the Bond franchise, but he posted on social media only hours after the announcement, asking people who they think should be ‘the next James Bond’…
The consensus was that the ‘Bond machine’, having been sluggish for the last four years, was now suddenly boosted into high gear, and the announcement of a new film was imminent…
It seems like more than a dozen actors have gone through the process of being touted as ‘the next Bond’; considered, nominated, boosted, become wildly popular (until their next movie opens) and then dismissed, as we continue the ‘search’ (and generate content), no closer to the answer than we were when we started…
In physical capabilities alone, real life athletes have easily been going far beyond anything the thirty-something former Commander in the Navy James Bond of the novels could have done (cliff-diving, wing-suiting, bungee jumping, freestyle motocross, mountain rappelling to name a few), and the actors who were called on to play a commando-style Bond in the films, requiring skills like “parkour” (a great favorite of Daniel Craig) were finding the stunts increasingly rough going. What kind of ‘skill set’ are we going to expect from the new Bond that we haven’t already seen, in films by Tom Cruise, Vin Diesel, Jason Statham and Liam Neeson?
More to the point which started me on this article in the first place: what is there, realistically, left for him to do?
In Ian Fleming's novels, James Bond's purpose is to serve as a ruthless, Cold War-era operative, a Secret Service officer (code number 007), tasked with thwarting Soviet agents, bringing international gangsters to justice, and maintaining British national security…
For example, in Live and Let Die (published in 1954) Bond investigates the smuggling of 17th-century gold coins from the Caribbean by a mastermind known as Mr. Big, who is using the treasure to help finance the doings of Russian terrorist organization SMERSH. The reason for Bond’s involvement is that M. believes the treasury to be that of Morgan the Pirate, and that a claim on the treasure on behalf of the British government is appropriate…
That to me is a tight plot: contemporary, interesting in that it takes us places we’ve never experienced, in this case, the forbidden and extremely dangerous world of voodoo,,, and above all, realistic.
We don’t get the full benefit of Fleming’s writing in the films, and he’s quite a good writer. We don’t get the meticulous attention to detail, the first-person description of locations, the keen ability to create suspenseful and often harrowing situations… above all, we don’t get 007’s inner voice, by which we get to know him far better than we do in the films…
What I want to do is get to the idea I had for re-booting the series, and why I decided not to submit it to EON Productions: besides the fact that they don’t accept unsolicited submissions, that is…
Madeleine Swann is a character in the James Bond films (played by actress Léa Seydoux) Spectre and No Time to Die. I was sure that Madeleine Swann had been revealed as the daughter of Ernst Stavro Blofeld in No Time to Die, and that despite the cutesy-faced posturing (‘Please James, make them stop!’ she pouts as SPECTRE henchman riddle the famous Aston-Martin with heavy artillery) she may well have been the only one who could have known that Bond was going to visit Vesper’s booby-trapped burial crypt…
What am I suggesting? That in the end SPECTRE caught up with 007, and caught him in a trap he could not get out of? Maybe they did. Why not leave the series, and the character of James Bond, at that?
As No Time to Die comes to a close, Madeleine drives away with Mathilde (her daughter) in Bond's black Aston Martin V8, to Italy, and she begins to tell the child the story of a man named "Bond, James Bond"…
This is the point where I felt a rebooted series could begin… I thought it was possible that the “story” could conceivably go all the way back to the first novel, but this time not as a film, but as a television series, which I titled “Bond…by Fleming”.
(continued)
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