{"id":19044,"date":"2022-07-23T10:00:29","date_gmt":"2022-07-23T08:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiotimes.com\/?p=1682549"},"modified":"2022-07-23T10:26:10","modified_gmt":"2022-07-23T08:26:10","slug":"james-bonds-next-reinvention-needs-to-bring-the-fun-back-to-007-movies","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/radiotimes\/rss_feed\/james-bonds-next-reinvention-needs-to-bring-the-fun-back-to-007-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"James Bond\u2019s next \u201creinvention\u201d needs to bring the fun back to 007 movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Morgan Jeffery\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Saturday, 23 July 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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The closing sting to last year\u2019s No Time to Die<\/a> might have made the familiar promise that \u2013 despite on-screen evidence to the contrary<\/a> \u2013 \u201cJames Bond will return\u201d, but as it stands, agent 007\u2019s future appears to be very much up in the air.<\/p>\n

Filming on the next Bond outing is, according to franchise producer Barbara Broccoli, \u201cat least two years away\u201d with no script yet in development. \u201cThere isn\u2019t a script and we can\u2019t come up with one until we decide how we\u2019re going to approach the next film because, really, it\u2019s a reinvention of Bond<\/a>,\u201d Broccoli recently told Deadline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re reinventing who he is and that takes time.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 007 film series has, of course, always reinvented itself. Over 60 years, it\u2019s ebbed and flowed, veering \u2013 sometimes dramatically \u2013 from (comparatively) straight-laced to more outlandish.<\/p>\n

The early Sean Connery movies grew increasingly ludicrous, culminating with 1967\u2019s You Only Live Twice and its iconic hollowed-out volcano villain\u2019s lair. George Lazenby\u2019s sole outing as Bond then reined things back in for one of the more faithful adaptations of an Ian Fleming novel, before a mixed reception to that film \u2013 1969\u2019s On Her Majesty\u2019s Secret Service \u2013 saw the franchise return to more playful, light-hearted fare from 1971\u2019s\u00a0Diamonds Are Forever onwards.<\/p>\n

This escalating sense of the outrageous hit its height with 1979\u2019s Moonraker, which saw Bond blasted into outer space, before 1981\u2019s For Your Eyes Only \u2013 with its story of Cold War rivalries and missing spy tech \u2013 quite literally brought 007 back down to Earth.<\/p>\n

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Roger Moore as James Bond and Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead in 1979\u2019s Moonraker<\/span><\/figcaption> Getty<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n

The silliness crept back in across the two Roger Moore movies that followed, with the series again course-correcting for the more sober Timothy Dalton movies of the late 1980s, which in turn gave way to the escapist popcorn blockbusters of Pierce Brosnan in the 1990s, and when that run of movies reached peak zaniness with the giant lasers, ice palaces and DNA-rewriting antics of 2002\u2019s Die Another Day, the series once again went back to the works of Ian Fleming \u2013 right back in this instance for a more serious-minded adaptation of his first ever Bond novel, Casino Royale<\/a>, in 2006.<\/p>\n

But that was 16 years ago and the wheel continues to turn \u2013 as Broccoli has identified, it\u2019s time for another reinvention and tradition dictates that it\u2019s time to let Bond have fun again.<\/p>\n