There's been a minor piece of Bond 25 news lately, as apparently Neil Purvis & Robert Wade have been hired to write a script. This has been met with horror in certain quarters, because apparently we've reached the stage where Spectre is the worst film ever made; a film can no longer just be "not very good", it has to be apocalyptically awful. Somehow, Purvis & Wade are to blame for Spectre's failures, which seems unfair since they were the last people brought on board. Personally I'd blame John Logan, because many of the criticisms of Spectre - its fan-wankery, its attempts to answer questions that no-one ever posed, its refusal to ever stop - could also be levelled at Logan's Star Trek Nemesis.
James Bond is incredibly hard to write, as anyone who's read my fanfic While England's Dreaming will attest. Each Bond film or novel needs to be exactly the same as the one before and also completely different to the one before; it needs to be extremely modern and yet still hark back to the fifties and sixties; it needs to present a modern rounded character who is somehow also just a blunt instrument. Few people can do it, which is why the same names keep turning up - Richard Maibaum, Tom Mankiewicz, Michael G Wilson, Bruce Feirstein and, yes, Purvis & Wade. If they can take this formula and make it fresh and interesting time and again, then by all means, keep returning to them. Mickey and Babs are smart enough to know that they can get the old reliables to knock up a framework and then bring in a John Logan or a Jez Butterworth or a Paul Haggis to spice it up.
Having said all that, I do have a few requests, and as someone who occasionally knocks out a Bond blog which is read by literally ones of people, I feel that Purvis & Wade should listen to me. So here's what I'd like to see in Bond 25.
1. No sign of Madeline Swann.
She's dead, she's missing, she just got bored; whatever. Use another bit of leftover Fleming and have her run off to America with a US Embassy attache. I don't care. Lea Seydoux is a lovely actress, and she did her best, but Madeline was just boring. She reminds me of Harriet Horner or Flicka von Grusse, Bond Girls created by later writers who James Bond supposedly considers on a romantic par with Vesper and Tracy. They're not. Give it up. Don't kill her in the pre-titles and have Bond go out for revenge for the rest of the film. In fact...
2. Don't make it personal.
By my count, the last film where Bond didn't have some kind of deep personal reason for fighting the villain was The Living Daylights, thirty years ago. Since then, there's always been a certain level of betrayal or revenge and I'm bored of it. James Bond is a civil servant whose job happens to include a lot of sex and violence. Do that. His motivation should only be that a crime is to be committed against the UK or the world. That's plenty. Turn up at MI6, get your assignment, then bugger off to Hong Kong or Seville or wherever and kill some people before they kill us. Speaking of which...
3. Enough of the Scooby Gang.
Bond is a lone figure. He has few friends and fewer emotional attachments. And part of the glory of a Bond film or book is seeing him manage to overcome the odds all on his own. Spectre, though, had him being aided by M, Q, Moneypenny and Tanner, with Bond's hunt for Madeline being paralleled with the MI6 crew stopping Moriarty. No. I get that when you've got actors of the calibre of Fiennes et al on staff, you want to use them, but no. A bit of help is fine - we all love it when Q turns up in the Bahamas - but beyond that, stop. M can give Bond the assignment. Moneypenny can pine hopelessly. Tanner can... do something. If Bond needs help then...
4. Bring back Felix Leiter.
I never thought I'd be advocating more Leiter, but Jeffrey Wright is great as Felix, and he's barely been in these films. If you want Bond to have someone to talk to and to work with, that's Felix's job. If you can't get Jeffrey Wright back again, then feel free to create an ally for whatever country Bond is in. A new Mathis, a new Vijay, a new Tanaka. You can even kill him if you want to go really traditional; it'll make the baddie look even badder. As would...
5. Give the villain a proper scheme.
Daniel Craig's fought four villains and only one - Dominic Greene - had a proper, Bond movie Evil Scheme. (One which is sadly foggy in the finished film). Le Chiffre was just cleaning up a mess of his own creation, Silva just wanted to kill M, and Blofeld just wanted to get his hands on a lot of information. Boring. I'm guessing we're never again going to see a Bond baddie try to eradicate the entire population of the earth, but how about an ambitious plan to do something properly nefarious? Create a war for some reason. Hold a country to ransom. Threaten something with destruction. Something with a nice big ticking clock and a fight against the odds. And if it involves two huge armies fighting in a secret underground base, all the better. In other words...
6. Make a Bond film.
Finally, please, give in and make a Bond film. Have Bond actually enjoy his job. Have a couple of beautiful girls: one dies, one lives, no-one falls in love. Have some outrageous stunts. Have some jokes. Have lots of jokes. Make it fun and exciting and entertaining. I know you're worried it might go a bit A View To A Kill, but it might go a bit GoldenEye. It might go a bit Spy Who Loved Me. It might go a bit World Is Not Enough. Make a Bond film, not an action movie with James Bond in it. It'd just be nice.
Or, you know, ignore everything I've said and make exactly what you want to make. Let's face it; you've already got my money, so who cares what I think?
