Is James Bond Past His Prime?
With Bond 23 having recently been cancelled, the UK's The Guardian is suggesting in a new article that the time may be right to retire 007's license to kill permanently.
The article begins by pointing out that we could be several years away from the next Bond film. If so, "The ramifications are huge, not least for Daniel Craig who, at 42, may have slipped into the old tuxedo for the last time."
Among the reasons in favor of keeping Bond, the Guardian offers up that the combination of screenwriter Peter Morgan with director Sam Mendes, plus the rumored Rachel Weisz cast as the villainess, would be a "masterstroke" that would make up for what many believed to be the pitfalls of the last film, Quantum of Solace. Additionally, past hiatuses have actually helped revitalize the series (compare 1974's Man With the Golden Gun with 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me, as well as 1989's Licence to Kill to 1996's GoldenEye).
Then there's the other side of the coin, reasons why Bond should be "ditched": "James Bond isn't James Bond any more. He's a tedious exercise in relentless product placement transparently modelled on Jason Bourne. James Bond actually died long ago, when Roger Moore strapped himself into his first male girdle and started wheezing around in a safari suit. The Connery films will still exist no matter what happens at MGM. Do people really want anything else?"
There's also the issue that no matter how much revitaliztion is done in the franchise, it isn't long before things start returning to formula: "It didn't take long for Brosnan's Bond to descend into a death spiral of invisible cars and sky-lasers and diamond-powered Korean dream machines and Teri Hatcher. On the basis of Quantum of Solace, Daniel Craig has already turned into a cartoon of a nightclub bouncer whose mother didn't hug him enough..."
So, where do you stand on this issue? Should Bond continue? Sound off below.
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