They should never make another James Bond film

Spectator World ^ | 11/25/2025 | Nicholas Clairmont

[Behind Liberal Lines]

Craig’s ego and woke politics killed the franchise.

[IndyTiger]

Then that should be the plot: Bond resurrected saves Britain from the Woke.

Now that’s a movie I would pay to see. They’ll never make it, of course.

[circlecity]

I think Bond was played out years ago. It ultimately became a live action comic book. A super hero movie without the costumes.

[jmcenanly]

James Bond will be shown in the first two decades of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, just as Filmmakers also present Sherlock Holmes mainly in the late Victorian era. The world that 007 operated in no longer exists.

[bert]

The nation for whom 007 was licensed to kill no longer exists

[Mr. Jeeves]

Then that should be the plot: Bond resurrected saves Britain from the Woke.

That's not a job Bond could do - it would require the type of hero that would make the film look more like Rambo V.

[william clark]

Well, the Daniel Craig films were a full reboot, so there’s no reason that can’t be done again, as long as it’s done creatively and sensibly. Hasn’t hurt Sherlock Holmes or Dracula, the two most filmed literary characters in history.

[TalBlack]

“Our hero had finally actually, after all this time, figured out how to be a man.“

A good essay always has a cherry on the parfait last line…

[Sicon]

"on the three Jackson LOTR films based on the Tolkien books. Quality all the way.

The largely CG Bilbo/Smaug series, while serviceable, are not up to the LOTR standard."

I wouldn't call "The Hobbit" movies remotely serviceable, at least not to anyone who read the book. It not only completely failed to capture the spirit of the story (unlike LOTR, which absolutely did), it was a mess of ridiculous action sequences, terrible "jokes", and invented plot lines and characters. It is hard to believe that the same guy directed both series of films. It clearly wasn't the same group of people that worked on "The Hobbit".

[yuleeyahoo]

Because Hollywood is creatively bereft. If they don’t have a source material to crib from, nothing will be produced.

At this point, it would be a good thing.

[9YearLurker]

The next Bond will probably be AI created anyway.

But the last readers in America are boozy women’s book clubs.

And they’re not that into Bond.

[Komarlady]

Nicely done.

[SaveFerris]

👍👍😃😁

[yuleeyahoo]

Personaly I average around 50 books a year, some of them I even read to my wife. Also at this point I read no fiction published after 1990 and approach with trepidation non-fiction published after that.

[Buckeye Battle Cry]

I have a suggestion-try making Bond movies faithful to the Fleming novels.

“Live and Let Die” for example, is a great and tense story. But the buffoons who got their hands on it with Roger Moore turned it into a farce-a clown show. Kananga’s death in the movie was cartoonish and laughable. In the novel, it is tense and quite believable.

Go back to the source material and reboot the franchise leaving out the clownish aspects-specially of the Roger Moore era and the over-gadgetry of the Pierce Brosnan era.

[Orosius]

“Make all the stories take place smack in the Post WWII-Cold War era.”

When I was getting started as a screenwriter in Hollywood back in the 1980’s, I pitched a reboot of the Bond saga set during the war with a young Bond undercover as a British naval intelligence agent on the Eastern Front, liaising with SMERSH and discovering just how rotten the Soviets actually were. An origin story to explain how he became Bond, James Bond. I got nowhere.

[x]

Bond will go out of copyright eventually, if he hasn’t already. Then you won’t able to stop anyone from doing what they want with him, just like with Sherlock Holmes or Frankenstein or Dracula. Does Bond have as much life left in him as those other characters? I don’t think so, but showbiz will find a way to keep him going.