Credit: James Bond
There are technically 27 movies in the 007 collection, but only 25 are within canon, apparently. But when one looks at the entire timeline it could be easy to say that the story of James Bond exists in a multiverse of its own, even though most will argue that point. But the main point here is that the franchise has lasted for decades and produced the second-highest number of movies of any franchise, as the MCU is first. But with the ending of No Time to Die, one has to wonder if it might be time to retire the idea of James Bond and finally let someone else take over the franchise, instead of revamping the name ‘James Bond’. When one really thinks about it, the name James Bond could easily be like that of Jason Bourne, a name given to an operative, even if it’s not the name they were born with. But doing this would cheapen the franchise quite a bit since having to use the name of the character while recruiting the best of the best is something that indicates that a writer is running out of ideas and that the franchise might be nearing its end.
Credit: James Bond
Keeping Bond around for this long has been a risk, despite what the box office says.
It’s been easy enough apparently since the Bond movies have been spread over the decades and have therefore been embraced by more than one generation. While the MCU has seen that benefit as well, they’ve lumped most of their movies into a much shorter timeframe. The MI6 agent has had the benefit of not only being released over the decades but he’s been given a new look every so often to keep people interested since with all due respect to the late Sean Connery, it would have been a little awkward to see the world’s greatest spy still tooling around when he was old and grey and had no business performing even a quarter of the stunts that Bond has executed over the years. It is worth noting that Connery grew tired of the role at some point, and it was necessary to find someone else anyway. The list of names that have taken on the name and designation of the famous spy is currently up to seven, and it would be nice if that’s as far as it goes, but there’s not a lot of faith that this will happen.
Bond has become a massive stereotype and is hard to take seriously any longer.
No matter how much he’s changed since the first movie, Bond is still the womanizing, martini-drinking, risk-taking daredevil that he’s always been and because of this, he is a massive action stereotype since there’s no longer any question of what’s going to be seen in a Bond movie. More often than not he’s going to get the girl, defeat the bad guy, and save the world from one threat or another. That’s what Bond does and what he’s been designed to do for a very long time, and it doesn’t appear as though anyone wants to break that particular trend. Personally, I don’t have a problem with it, but when thinking about the story it’s easy to believe that if something did change in a drastic manner it might actually change things around. If nothing else, it might actually break the stereotype just a little, which could be a good thing.
Credit: James Bond
The character is, honestly, kind of overdone at this time.
After watching so many Bond movies it becomes easy to predict what’s going to happen and what Bond is going to do and how he’ll react to certain stimuli. There have been some surprises, but they’re few and far between if anyone has watched at least two or three Bond movies. At this point, however, if one has watched a certain number of action movies they’re likely to figure out what’s going on before the opening credits start to roll. The stunts, the storylines, and the dialogue have become more than a little predictable, and despite the desire to see things change, it doesn’t appear as if that’s on the list of things to do when making one of these movies.
At some point, the movies start to feel episodic, and that also cheapens the experience, in some regards.
It might not be what people want to hear, but after a while, the Bond movies do feel as though they’re simply overly long episodes in a singular story that have very simple solutions when it comes to stopping the bad guy and saving the world. Those who love this franchise would likely say that no, of course it’s not that way, but after watching the entirety of the franchise, even the two movies that aren’t considered to be canon, it feels that this could be pitched as ten seasons worth of a popular TV show and people would still eat it up.