James Bond, the fictional British spy created by Ian Fleming, has starred in 26 separate movies.
But now Bond might be entering uncharted waters: The TV streaming market. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the TV streaming arms of Apple and Amazon are attempting to secure rights to the Bond franchise. Their motivation?
“Some observers feel that the franchise, by only limiting itself to theatrical movies, remains vastly under-utilized by 21st century standards, where expectations are to exploit intellectual property across all mediums, push out merchandising for all age brackets and have spin-offs and cinematic universes.”
While this is a fair assessment, I worry about using Bond as a staging point for “spin-offs and cinematic universes.”
For a start, that approach risks losing the mystic element of Bond fiction. Apart from Blofeld, M, and Moneypenny, Bond movie characters are constantly changing so that the viewer sees the same key character, Bond, in new circumstances. But because acquiring the Bond franchise would be extremely expensive, studios would almost certainly have to break this trend in favor of spin-off series.
In turn, I fear damage to the brand’s central identifier: James Bond. After all, Bond’s appeal isn’t simply his ability to infiltrate enemy strongholds and seduce beautiful women; it’s the psychological matching of his character to the enemy of each new film. This was best evidenced in the most recent movie, “Spectre,” in which Bond and his half-brother face off against one another in a long-destined showdown.
In order to fill up time, a TV series would necessarily have to broaden Bond’s universe to include a mix of separately interacting characters. And that would lose Bond’s larger-than-life personality, turning him into a reduced character.
After all, unlike other espionage fiction, James Bond is a unique force. One minute he is brooding over vodka, the next he is chasing plummeting planes off a cliff face. Yet, were these antics applied to each episode of a Bond series, as they would have to be to keep it interesting, Bond’s appeal would become generic. 007 would become just another superhero like those of the Marvel or DC Comics universe: Challenged, but broadly omnipotent.
There’s another problem. Were TV writers to take the opposite approach, slowly building up a plot over a series by focusing on the intricacies of espionage, Bond would lose his gregarious quality. He would quickly become a figure born of a Le Carre novel, rather than the creation of Fleming.
Ultimately, this is why the Bond movies have been so successful: Coming two or three years apart, they leave the viewer wanting more and thus more openly examining Bond’s absurd character. This is a character that can’t be mass-produced.
