To say last year’s Spectre was a let-down would be a colossal understatement. With its bloated runtime, boring villain, and bizarrely tangled mythology, it was James Bond repurposed for the Marvel age, a film that wanted to honor its heritage while scribbling haphazardly over it. Viewers cried foul, and rightly so – the film inexplicably missed everything appealing about the Bond character.
Needless to say, producers are scrambling to wash the bad taste out of fans’ mouths as soon as possible, so conversations are already taking place about the plot of Bond 25, which will bring back Daniel Craig for one more adventure and (hopefully) send the actor’s run as 007 out on a high note.
[zergpaid]Though producers have Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld to play with if they so desire, there have been no concrete details as of yet related to the direction Bond 25 will go in. However, thanks to Birth.Movies.Death., which caught part of a Norwegian-language interview with associate producer Gregg Wilson, son of Eon Productions head Michael G. Wilson, we’ve now learnt a little bit more:
We’ve just begun to doodle with ideas for the next movie. Each script process begins when we ask ourselves the question: “What is the world afraid of now?” In the case of Spectre the theme was global monitoring and utilization of information. So now we are trying to find out what will be relevant in the coming years… We always want to do something new with the Bond character and see him in situations we have not seen him in the past. We must give the audience something new every time…often it helps to go back to Ian Fleming’s novels for inspiration, whether you’re talking about grades or mood…
It’s good to see that the people working on the next Bond movie are forward-facing as they hunt for a new story, but it should also be noted that Spectre‘s topicality made it no less confusing. In attempting to address government surveillance in the digital age, the movie wound up wallowing in a cesspool of nonsensical plot threads and devices – something about a “Nine Eyes” security program and lots of hacker-related gobbledygook.
Skewing topical is all well and good, but the Bond movies have traditionally been retro in terms of their sensibilities and structures, so here’s hoping there’s a little more appreciation is shown this time around for 007’s old-school style. After Spectre, maybe it’s dumb to hold out hope that there’s still someone involved with the franchise who knows what’s kept Bond going all these years – but Wilson’s suggestion that Fleming’s novels could come into play is at least a small step in the right direction for a franchise that’s been led painfully astray.