Sunday, September 18, 2005

Bond Movie News

"We're trying to reinvent Bond. He's 28 - no Q, no gadgets."

So says the writer of the next installment of the Bond franchise based on the Casino Royale book. Of course, he's not actually reinventing anything at all because in the book Bond was younger and Q did not appear. So it's less of a reinvention and more of an accurate translation to screen.

Quite apart from this chap's very silly self-importance, I am worried to hear that the next Bond movie is being written by the man responsible for Crash (racism in LA) and Million Dollar Baby (a woman boxing). I admit that I haven't seen either of these films but I would have thought that an important franchise like Bond, which is not doing so well, would take the trouble to invest in a screenwriter who actually wrote action or thrillers. With his track record I'm stunned that he has been picked.

If I were in charge (and quite frankly, anyone picked at random off the street would probably make better choices than the studio) I'd assemble the team responsible for the Bourne movies and then give Tarantino a call. Let Tarantino write up a rough draft of the script and then have the Bourne team go to work. Most likely they'd have to cut a lot of dialogue and change some scenes lifted from Hong Kong movies, but it'd have a much better chance at success than a story from a guy with no background in the genre- a man involved in such action-packed projects as LA Law and Thirtysomething has no place on a Bond movie.

What is the studio trying to do? Are they deliberately trying to sabotage the series?

No comments: