" I don't think the world needs James Bond anymore. The people he fights aren't the world's enemies anymore. During the Cold War, we used James Bond to explore the terrors of technology and to watch a a man singlehandedly diffuse disasters the likes of which often rivaled the thermonuclear warfare we were trying so desperately to avoid. In the 90's, Brosnan's bond is famed for being a technofetishist, using and fighting the gadgets society was at that time afraid of creating. Daniel Craig's James Bond is sort of a psychoanalysis of the phenomenon that was James Bond; what could possibly drive a man to kill the way Bond always has, and do it with such dry wit and lack of compassion? Thing is, humanizing Bond is not what people want from the character; we want him to prove to us that through ingenuity and good faith, we can eliminate the foe that frightens the world most. Right now, in America at least, that's probably terrorism. Most places, it's probably still thermonuclear warfare, and he's fought that enough times over the years now. Bond really can't fight terrorism for its own sake. He's fought profiteers, assassins, heist-masters, and extremely powerful lunatics before, but there's a reason we don't often send him to the jungle, urban or organic. His skills, outside of the older trapmaster Bonds, don't help him there. Especially with Daniel Craig, the strengths of Bond lie in fighting guards, doing research and espionage, and tracking people. If he doesn't know who he's looking for, and the people he's looking for are as alert and stealthy as he is, he's not really the right man for the job. The man to fight guerilla warfare singlehanded is more of a Master Chief type, as we've seen in levels like Sierra 117 or Outskirts. They need to be so tough that it doesn't matter who's got the drop on who; he's tougher, so he wins in a one-on-one. What's there to be done with him? Well, they could go the route of Uncharted and send him after people with interest in the occult. He could still be stealthy and dry as he assaults their information, though there's less room for Bond's sexuality in these ventures. Alternatively, send him after Kim Jong Il types. Otherwise...well, I said it already. I don't think the world needs Bond anymore. "You had me pretty interested until you mentioned Master Chief and were actually being serious about it. But I can see that you wanted to segue into talking about video games, so thats alright. It's hard for me to see how James Bond isn't relevant anymore after 22 films that have adapted to each time period they've been written in.
I think Quantum of Solace was deliberately made ala Jason Bourne because that's the style relevant today or rather that's the style, sadly, that audiences expect from spy stories. So it only makes sense in that regard. Although I do like Quantum of Solace for certain reasons, I miss the old formula terribly!!
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