Some thoughts you'll probably enjoy reading.
GOLDSTEIN'S BOND BOOK IN A DYSTOPIAN BOND-LESS FUTURE
Granted. It's nothing new that some people hated James Bond ever since 1953 and went against everything he represented in terms of manhood and geopolitics. Yes, the Soviets wanted Bond dead for ages. But... IFP and EON always flipped their middle-finger against them and made him an exemplar of Western fortitude, someone who never betrays his essence while adapting himself to new eras, enemies and technologies. The prime example is, of course, GoldenEye: the world has changed, but Bond didn't -Feirstein dixit. The film shows you how other characters percieve him as "outdated" but in the end he shows how we still need him to save the world and how he'll always answer the call whenever National or Western security is in danger.
Flash forward to the late 2010s/early 2020s and some people still go against Bond's values and want him killed or changed. What's the difference here and now? That EON pleased them and conceded the enemies of their product the victory by actually killing off James Bond before making him bow down to the villain in a scene where "pathetic" and "insulting" are tame words to describe it. "Bond" wasn't bowing down to Safin. He was breaking the fourth wall and bowing down to the establishment people who wanted to see him crumbling against the new "marvellous" changes of this world, redeeming himself only by committing suicide in a so-called "heroic" way. Because you know, nowadays if you are a white, straight male action hero you gotta die to be considered "good". Let's look how Daniel Kleinman even parodied his GoldenEye main titles in Time To Die: the 1995 film showed Soviet statues crumbling to mark the end of opression in the East after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In TTD, we have Britannias falling and crumbling, along with DB5s and PPKs and, finally, a chocolate bunny Bond exploding in a colorful way [Re: main titles - not my observation, I think it steamed from the BondAndBeyond forums]. If the gunbarrel hinted at it and the main titles made it more obvious, the ending confirms we are witnessing the destruction of James Bond and that the character can't definitely survive the 2020s.
Why does that happen? Well, many people drinking happy dust in their breakfast cereal insist that this was a "clever move" by the talented Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. I strongly disgress. You have to just look at Barbara and how she thinks. Michael is too old now. Barbara's kind of films are movies that empower women and always wants to score points with her feminist friends who -like the Soviets before them- hate James Bond and his values. Inheriting Bond is the cross she has to carry to have some weight and relevance in the film industry (Rythm Section, Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, they all flopped). Without Bond, she's off the grid. But at the same time, her friends *hate* Bond and that complicates things. TWINE, which I consider her first true Bond film as a producer detached from Cubby's standards, set the pattern for most of the films that followed: strong women, M as an integral part of the plot, someone's past coming back to haunt him/her, Bond disobeying orders big time and his emotions explored to the full. No complains there, because TWINE and DAD still felt like Bond films. Then Craig came, and according to their very own words in recent interviews, it was him who proposed to kill off Bond to end his era. She immediately said "Yes!" (without even flinching) and said she had to convince MGW (I better not ask how). A producer saying yes to the leading actor to execute a radical and questionable idea, that never happened with Cubby, not even with Connery. In the meantime, as 2006 began, we were treated with sweet words such as "CR will redefine Bond and we'll see him getting his 007 number until we gradually "see how he becomes the one we all love and know". Many people, like me, fell for that lie and that's why I even got to name Craig as one of my three or four favourite Bonds back then. The end of CR was solid: Craig goes after "the hand that helds the gun and the whip" and says "The name's Bond... James Bond", applause.
After CR, we progressively saw a couple of mis-steps that downgraded Bond and EON evidenced that this arc was never planned and had no clear idea where to go (other than secretly, kill Bond off). QOS continued CR and unsatisfyingly closed the arc, SF went a little bit back to basics -DB5, Q, Moneypenny, male M- but still played with the idea that Bond may not be the straight guy you think he is, and SPECTRE -thankfully- took the formula back although they made Blofeld Bond's foster brother. But most importantly, it had some kind of a typical Bond conclusion with Bond leaving with the girl. Wasn't that the type of ending for "the Bond we all love and know"? As expected, Craig wanted to slash his wrists and Barbara begged him to return because "she can't imagine Bond without Daniel". When he returned, he brought to the table the finale everyone has forgotten, probably as a condition. And they went for it.
Why people, specially "Bond fans", applaud this ending? Half of them just want to pander to EON because there's nothing like a free lunch and now owning a fan site is a 9 to 5 job where you have to please the boss and be on the team. So, even if you didn't like the film, you have to buy it because you have to support EON. They reject the idea that Babs was mean spirited just because "she loves Bond", but really, what evidence do you have other than her words? We all say we love our job, particularly when we are in costumer service and dealing with a client, or in job interviews. You never resigned because you couldn't stand that job, just "because I felt a cycle was over and I wanted a new challenge" (you and I both know this is a lie in the 98% of cases). Needing a job is not the same as loving a job. Let's say you have a little kid and you work 10 hours from Monday to Saturday loading big and heavy boxes in the docks although your real passion is playing the guitar, you wouldn't leave that because you and your wife and kid would starve. But that doesn't means you love working at the docks, you'd prefer getting money by playing the guitar. But you know you may not have the chance to succeed or make enough money with that, so you stick to your regular, boring, tyring job. Well, the same happens to Babs: Bond is "working at the docks", the feminist movies is "playing the guitar".
Evidence? Since 2008, she never went back to the two-year cycle. She never changed Purvis & Wade, the scribes of the much maligned DAD everyone hates and nearly caused the downfall of the franchise and thank God for Craig for saving us and turning the dynamic duo into Nobel prize writers! The films are hardly original: we always see Bond going rogue or semi-rogue, a "personal" mission, a villain we feel sorry for to the point of making us think: "actually, Bond and MI6 were the bad guys with him", next to no sexual interaction with a girl, a Bond who can't fully enjoy life (don't tell me Fleming's Bond didn't, because he was an annoying costumer with his preferences! He never dressed "with disdain" or "gave a d**n" about how his drink was prepared), and loads of homages to previous films. DAD was crucified for that, but TTD's homages to OHMSS are blunt and loud as two DD44 fired in the Archives level of GoldenEye 64! For Christ's sake! Virus on atomizers, people becoming the weapon, Barry's OHMSS theme and even "We Have All The Time In The World" sang by Louis Armstrong!!! You would have burned DAD's DVD to ashes had that film ended with Shirley Bassey's Diamonds Are Forever because Bond and Jinx are sleeping over conflict diamonds! More evidence? Take 2015-2021 as a prime example, why did TTD took six years? (Almost the same LTK-GE gap) In 2016, everyone was too tired. In 2017, they convinced Craig to return. They hired P&W to write a script, which they ditched when Boyle and Hodge came with "a story". Boyle left, back to P&W and Scott Z Burns. The years passed by and Fukunaga came, which delayed the film to February 2020. That way it would have avoided the crisis and released on time, but the script needed more... substnce(s) and along came Scott Z Burns, Fukunaga as a writer and Pheobe Waller-Bridge, hired by Craig himself because he wears the pants. April 2020 came, then the health crisis, and delay after delay and after delay to the point the hype was lost. Remember why Dalton didn't return? Because Cubby wanted him for three more movies or bust, and he said no. Barbara sacrificed Bond (literally now) because of Craig. Does a producer that delivers a character to the lead in a silver platter and refuses to think another actor playing him loves the product she owns? Nope.
This takes me to another point: people saying "Bond is more alive than ever" because the TTD finale has waken curiosity on how Bond 26 will be. Naturally, many are betting on new reboots or origin stories or spin-offs or anything that represents a sort of "new beginning" as the 25 film series ended with the death of "James Bond" (sorry, the inverted commas will always be when I refer to that character that went up in smoke). I disgress. They have hidden the fact that many people are already placing TTD in their final place in the rankings. Even some vehement DAD haters have placed it below DAD! I know because I frequently read rankings on Twitter. When I openly expressed my rejection over TTD in my sites, even on the social media accounts I use to promote my Bond books, sales have mysteriously increased! For a while I thought my "agressive" stance would make my numbers to drop, fortunately, had around three to five books sold per day in recent weeks, people who even bought all of my books in two days. Also heard many others thanking me for charging against EON's doings. I know many can't or won't dare to openly say it, but I know they hate TTD even when they just deal with it as "just another Bond film". Months after watching that fateful film, I decided to close Bond En Argentina, my site dedicated to the franchise, because I felt I couldn't "just treat TTD as another Bond film" and would go against my ideals to promote a film I didn't like one bit. When I announced my decision, I got the usual contempt of some people with words like: "We'll wait you when Bond returns in Bond 26" or "Join us for the 60th anniversary" and a screencap from the "James Bond Will Return" joke from the end credits of TTD. But many others, even people who liked the ending and the film and didn't agree with my thoughts, have wished me well and told me they'd appreciated my decision and said it was a noble thing to do, instead of using the account to boycott B26 or things like that. Then again, I was surprised (maybe not) when nobody -only one person on Twitter, actually- covered the fact that a James Bond fan site was closing down in disagreement with the road EON was taking James Bond to. It never happened before, as far as I know, and my site has always been "objective" and even appreciative with the Craig era, so they don't even have the excuse of "they are crossing out an actor they've never seen in the role" as they did with CraigNotBond back in 2005. When MundoRare, a page dedicated to the video game company Rare, closed down as an answer to Rare's new direction, collagues made lenghtly interviews to the webmasters and covered wht happened. In my case, they didn't. And no, it's not that I want "fame", it's just that this is something that never happened before. DAD didn't make a Bond site to close, as "bad" as it was. So there you see, that's what Time To Die provoked to Bond fans: a huge division, a crack, an open wound that made people leave the franchise. But heaven forbid if you openly admit that, you'll lose score points with EON, and you mustn't allow that to happen!
Bond fans is an old term, is something that doesn't exists anymore. Now there are just EON employees, or ambassadors, or ad honorem representatives dreaming with the day Babs smiles at them. The other half, they've never really liked Bond or they never understood what made the character so special. For them, Bond is as vulgar and common as Marvel or Star Wars or any franchise where leading characters die and are regenerated or retconned or rebooted. That's why they come at you with "Marvel did it and no-one complained", because Bond is just another franchise and "come on, it's just a movie", or they believe ludicrous theories like John Mason in The Rock is actually Connery's Bond - because that sort of thing frequently occurs in the franchises they really love!
For them, Bond was not the character that served you as a role model of what you wanted to be as an adult. There's nothing special about driving an Aston Martin DB5, they never dreamed with wearing a tux and going to a casino and playing baccarat with a seductive girl, going all over the world is limited to taking a pic next to the MI6 building. Bond is reality-based. Bond can train you for adult life, Star Wars can't. At 35, you wouldn't look ridiculous in a suit or a tux but you would if you wear a monk suit and laser swords. Bond has always been an example of overcoming difficult times, a man who always escaped the impossible, the kind of satisfaction that made you say: "I want to be that man".
And this is why I think Time To Die hurted the franchise more than any other film, official or unofficial. And why not only I'm not gonna buy it in any home video format, watch it again ever in my life, and sell everything I've got concerning it as soon as possible.
And why I won't watch Bond 26 on the big screen.
So what's with all the snarky smartass comments with M and 007 (the new one)? It's obviously supposed to be witty banter but from your description DB it sounds a little more passive aggressive and misanthropic.
