Should the next James Bond film be the last?

“When you can’t tell your friends from your enemies, it’s time to go”
- M to Bond, Quantum of Solace

Last year, it seemed bland financial difficulties would spell the end for the man many had tried to shoot, stab, drown, torture and generally just beat up. Thankfully, even boring old bankruptcy has failed, as James Bond will be back in 2012, fifty years since the first film, and sixty since the first book.

But after nearly dying out with a whimper, shouldn’t the producers end the Bond series on their own terms?

We are now in the third serious gap we’ve had between Bond films in less than twenty five years. Between 1989 and 1995, there was no new movie, as complicated legal wrangling caused there to be a pause which seemed to be a definite full stop. At the time, many people thought there was no longer a place for 007 on the cinema screen, that he would – if anything – go to cable television, or else die altogether.

Fortunately, that never came to pass, and there have been six big-screen outings since, the latest of which was 2008’s much derided Quantum Of Solace. Had that been the last film, however, fans would be left without any solace at all. The most successful fictional character of the 20th century would have petered out with a decidedly uncharacteristic movie, which deliberately avoided the tropes we had come to expect. 

There has been much talk over the last few years about Daniel Craig’s suitability for the role, and also the Jason Bourne films’ influence on the last two entries (in the early days, it was Bond influencing other movies, not vice versa), so there’s no need to discuss those here.

My point is that after cheating fate on a good few occasions, shouldn’t the Broccolis call it quits now? Sony will be releasing the next one in 2012, with another apparently following in 2014. So why don’t they make these movies typical, old-school 007, show how Craig’s Bond becomes the one we know, and then end the series for good?

The Craig films are reboots, not prequels (case in point: Bond meets CIA agent Felix Leiter for the first time twice, once in 1962’s Dr No, and again in 2006’s Casino Royale), so the writers don’t necessarily have to match it up with what we know already, in the same way as the newer Star Wars films did.

Having said that, we know that actress Naomie Harris will be playing Moneypenny (the first time a black woman has portrayed the role), and that Michael Sheen may star as Blofeld, so perhaps things will dovetail after all. Also, this will be Judi Dench’s final Bond film, so if the series does continue, then a new M – a fourth – will be required.

Perhaps a new M will come in and tell Bond that he is basically a thug, and must act suave to dupe a potential enemy into believing he isn’t tough. Bond’s manner would then become smoother than silk, as we know him to be.

One last hurrah would be great to see. But if it ever happened – and one day, it surely must – how could you end a franchise which has been thrilling audiences for half a century?

Well I, for one, would like to see Bond die.

He came closer than ever in 1967’s You Only Live Twice, when they faked his death as a ploy to convince the bad guys that he was dead, so they would stop trying to kill him. But to see it for real, though, wouldn’t that be incredibly poignant? To have him sacrifice himself, to save the day only to slowly bleed to death before the credits roll, a caption reading James Bond Will Not Return sliding across the screen before fading to black?

Perhaps they could adapt one of the non-Fleming novels. John Gardner wrote more than Fleming, and most are pretty decent. Gardner was arguably a better writer than Fleming, but one of the flaws of his books (published between 1981 and 1996) was that there would always be someone who would betray Bond, and they were usually the female fatales.

One of the books which could work as a finale would be Nobody Lives Forever, from 1986, as SPECTRE puts a price on Bond’s head and every contract killer in Europe is consequently out to get him. 1998’s High Time To Kill, by Raymond Benson, is set on Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world, and pits Bond against an old rival from Oxford.

And as a new series of Bond novels (beginning with Jeffrey Deaver’s Carte Blanche earlier this year) has just begun, perhaps it is time for books to carry the baton, if the series is indeed retired.

If it isn’t, well, Bond might be about to get into the same trouble as he did in the late eighties, when movies like Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Indiana Jones and Batman threatened to put him in the shade.

After alll, in the next couple of years, two popular literary characters are about to leap onto the screen.

Jason Statham will be playing the eponymous role as the criminal Parker, based on Richard Stark’s series of novels, alongside Jenifer Lopez, in 2012. Mel Gibson played the (slightly altered) role in 1999’s Payback, and Lee Marvin portrayed him before that.

Then, in 2013, Tom Cruise will be seen as Jack Reacher in One Shot (for which he has received a momentous amount of criticism due to their differing heights), based on one of the best-selling books by Lee Child. While the movie is seen with skepticism, due to the involvement of Cruise, the books have always sold by the bucket load.

As far as suspense fiction goes, Jack Reacher is the elephant in the room: no writer – new or old – can ignore him, they just have to create an alternative and hope for the best, much how rival film studios reacted to Bond’s success in the 60s.

So, should the Bond series avoid the risk of getting into more dire straits and end with this next film? Or should it go on, as nobody does it better? Leave your own thoughts on this in the comments...

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