You know how when you were a kid Star Wars used to feel special and now it’s everywhere and everyone kinda hates it for a bunch of different reasons? Welcome to the rest of your life as a James Bond fan. The Broccoli family, who have owned the screen rights since the first Bond movie (Dr No, 1962), has sold up to Amazon for a rumoured fee of $1 billion, and Bond will never be the same again.
It’s hard to begrudge a family that has stewarded Bond so successfully the massive payday, especially when Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the heads of the family, are in their 60s and 80s respectively, and have been actively involved all their lives. It was Broccoli herself who pushed for Daniel Craig, who (unthinkably now) was once considered a poor fit for the role of Bond. These aren’t kids who have inherited a treasure they don’t value, these are hard workers who have fully earned the astronomical fee. But it makes me sad to think of what Bond might become.
007: License To Churn Out Spin-Offs
It’s important to be realistic about Bond – this is not a series that considers itself high art. It’s cheesy, campy fun and knows it. The Craig era is a little more serious than most, but still finds the pulp when it needs to, like Raoul Silva revealing his half-rotted face. Going back to Brosnan and beyond, Bond embraced silliness.
It also treated itself as a popcorn flick back in the day. Between Dr No in ‘62 and Dalton’s second and final outing in 1989’s License to Kill, only once was there longer than a two year gap between films, with the three year wait between The Man With The Golden Gun and The Spy Who Loved Me (my two personal favourites as Moorehead, if we’re counting). Each of the original Connery movies ended with ‘James Bond Will Return In X’, such was the conveyor belt, and George Lazenby (a model with no acting experience) was offered a seven-picture deal, though he turned it down and only appeared in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Despite this, Bond always felt like it was made with an indie spirit. Practical effects, loyalty to British business, and a strong ethos of integrity built on a recurring cast. Desmond Llewellyn appeared as Q in the second Bond, 1963’s From Russia With Love, and played Q 17 times in total up until 1999’s The World Is Not Enough. It has kept a specific focus: movies about Bond, James Bond. No spin-offs, no cinematic universes, no tie-ins, no side projects, just a perfectly cast leading man in movies that moved with the times and always delivered action-packed thrills.
From Streaming, With No Love
And that casting will be crucial in the years to come. As mentioned, it was Broccoli’s eye that saw a diamond in Craig. Jeff Bezos has already tried to crowdsource ideas for Bond, and while this was almost certainly just flexing his ownership rather than actually asking, there is a danger of playing to the peanut gallery here. Henry Cavill is too obvious a choice and his time as Superman did nothing to show he was the man for the job. Idris Elba, another longtime candidate, feels too old to carry the identity of 007 for the length of time typically required, plus his stint as Luther would feel too close if he played the more rugged Bond he would be drawn to.
I still believe Daniel Kaluuya is the best option available, but names like Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Damson Idris, and James Norton all make sense. Even if the casting is nailed, Bond movies work best when they arrive every few years, get the job done, then repeat. Craig’s tenure was more disrupted by writer’s strikes and his continued reluctance to stick around, but I fear Amazon will decide not just on a movie every two years or so (which would be fine), but also a tie-in series every six months, a spin off movie for Felix, an origin story for one of the Bond girls, a Young Q project aimed at ‘widening key demographics’, and all the rest.
Before the Broccolis sold up, there seemed to be a clear line in the sand. Amazon saw Bond as ‘content’, and the family who had steered his legacy since his on screen debut in the ‘60s disagreed. Money talks, and now Bond is content. The question now is can Bond be content and still be Bond?
Look, I’m a hypocrite in this. I’ll play any and all Bond games that come my way if we start getting them with the regularity at which we visit a galaxy far, far away. I would be there day one for a Paloma series on Amazon Prime. It’s also worth acknowledging that Bond and Star Wars are different. Ever since its inception, there has been so much Star Wars merch and we had a bunch of games and TV shows. Bond is different, and may remain different.
But that number has surged dramatically and Star Wars no longer feels special. It’s specifically this fate, losing its lustre in a sea of money spinners, that I worry about Bond succumbing to. I love James Bond as it is today, with all its ups and downs. With no movie (and little movement) since Craig stepped down in 2021, I’m grateful for the prospect of more Bond. But if that means more of Amazon’s Bond content, maybe we’d have been better off with no Bond at all. The news leaves fans shaken and stirred, and Amazon with a lot to prove.
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OpenCritic
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Top Critic Rating:
83/100
- Released
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August 25, 1997
- Publisher(s)
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Nintendo