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January 17, 2011

It’s time for the Bond films to become period pieces.

In my ideal Bond movie there should be vintage '50s era cars,
East Germany should exist, Bond (and all other adult males) should wear a suit and hat everywhere they go, his watch should have a radium dial that glows, the women should smoke cigarettes with filters, trains should be glamorous and mysterious, there should be secret codes or stolen plans on microfilm, his key field equipment should be a trick leather briefcase. -- Links « Rhymes With Cars & Girls

Posted by Vanderleun at January 17, 2011 1:20 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

Although I agree, there's a problem: the modern entertainment industry is almost* incapable of doing a straight 50's/60's piece, completely free of irony or post-2000 moralizing. They would feel an irresistible impulse to add not-so-subtle references to modern controversies (does Hollywood know how to do anything subtly any more?), or to whitewash the enemies and ideologies they now trivialize 20 years after the Cold War ended.

*Only the existence of Mad Men provides that "almost" qualifier. I doubt Hollywood's ability to accomplish the same tone in an intended blockbuster, especially within the expectations of a well-worn yet recently rebooted franchise.

Posted by: The Unbeliever at January 17, 2011 7:31 AM

Asking today's Hollywood to bad mouth the benign socialist utopia of East Germany/USSR is the same as asking them to immortalize G.W. as the Savior of the Western World.

Posted by: Peccable at January 17, 2011 1:47 PM

As I said over there in my own comment, I think Bond has to be a contemporary figure. But there's a good possibility I'm wrong. Indiana Jones isn't contemporary; he seems to do okay as a boy/man action "I want to be that guy" fantasy figure; and we don't need to sit through any sermonizing in a Raiders movie about how the New Deal was the right way to go, Wagner Act, Agricultural Adjustment Administration, National Labor Relations Act, Nine Old Men, etc. Tastefully handled, it could work.

Even if it can't, it certainly is an intriguing idea.

Posted by: Morgan K Freeberg at January 17, 2011 1:58 PM

It is the stability that "The Adventure of the Bruce - Partington Plans" would revolve around. That was Europe and the Great powers of that day.

Today? We are in Kipling's World. A little bit more messy, with frigates on the sea lanes, and mules pulling screw-guns to a place that tribesmen cannot believe a gun got to.

Fitting, though, that Watson was invalided out of the service due to a bullet wound in Afghanistan.

This is Kipling's World - and you are welcome to it; if you got the intestinal fortitude (guts) to face it.

Old Rudyard got it right, you know. East is East, and West is West:

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be forever. Amen.

Posted by: Mikey NTH at January 18, 2011 6:58 PM

Casino Royale was a good start, but QoS, jumped the shark. Quantum is supposed to be the successor to SPECTRE, but the latter was connected to no government, they were all about
profit. It chose to ignore the real enemies, like
the siloviki or the Islamists

Posted by: narciso at January 19, 2011 5:10 AM

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