Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible Movies Are Better James Bond Movies Than $7.8b Franchise Itself, Says Young Bond Author
James Bond is a well-known British Secret Service agent created by Ian Fleming and has appeared in twelve novels and two short stories. After Fleming’s death, eight authors, including Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, and Anthony Horowitz, wrote officially sanctioned Bond novels for the public; the most recent of these is Horowitz’s With a Mind to Kill. Charlie Higson has also written a series on the young James Bond.
A total of twenty-seven performers, including Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig, have represented the fictional character on screen. With No Time To Die from 2021, Craig said goodbye to the franchise in his final appearance. The movie was a huge hit and set records, but since then, there have been rumors about who would replace the actor. Charlie Higson, however, thinks that the franchise has gone astray and that another franchise has taken up the role that theirs should have played. Let’s read more.
Charlie Higson says James Bond movies over-complicate the character
Author Charlie Higson wrote Young Bond, which is a series of young adult spy novels featuring James Bond as a young teenage boy attending Eton College in the 1930s. The author revealed that the series was supposed to have only five novels, but after the release of the fifth novel, he considered the possibility of having a second series of four novels. The novels have garnered the attention of the audience and the critics by receiving positive reviews.
During an interview with The Times, the author was asked about his views on the best Bond movie and he explained,
“They overcomplicate him…The best ‘Bond films’ now are the Mission: Impossibles. There is no inner life, it’s just, ‘Woah! Look at that building — I’d love to climb it and blow things up.’”
The author went on to explain his point by explaining regarding the latest Bond movie, No Time to Die which is Daniel Craig’s last Bond movie and he said,
“I went to see No Time to Die with my oldest boy, Frank, who is 30, and he said, ‘That felt like a Bond film made by people who are embarrassed to make a Bond film.’ You had to watch two films in advance to know who such and such is and you think, ‘Oh, f**k off with that.’ Make it a new mission each episode and let him be Bond.”
He further added, “Guns, cars, a supervillain, and a woman. M, Q, Moneypenny. 007 is a fantasy figure who solves things with a fist and doesn’t overthink.” Some fans also did point out that the movies in the Bond franchise now have a disconnect from each other which is not what was set out to be made.
Is Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible better than Daniel Craig’s James Bond?
Fans have always been confused between the two massive successful franchises and wondered which one of them is better and now with Charlie Higson stating that the Bond movies have started to over-complicate the character, it is easier to say that people believe that Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible has delivered what it had promised; action.
With its recent movie Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, the actor along with the director-writer Christopher McQuarrie might have outdone the James Bond movies as they pushed themselves to a new limit when it came to performing stunts in the movie. It is no secret that the actor has insisted on performing most of his stunts himself; pulling off a series of escalating, death-defying sequences throughout the Mission: Impossible franchise.
Talking about a specific stunt featured in the latest Mission Impossible movie, Cruise said via Den of Geek:
“This is far and away the most dangerous thing we’ve ever attempted. We’ve been working on this for years.”
Christopher Nolan wants to direct James Bond in a period setting
According to reports by NME, Oppenheimer‘s director, Christopher Nolan, would like to direct multiple James Bond movies but in a period setting. The reports suggest that their source, World of Reel, noted that the director is possibly in talks with Bond producer Barbara Broccoli to direct the next Bond movies.
During his appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Nolan talked about his interest in making a James Bond movie. As he mentioned,
“The influence of those movies in my filmography is embarrassingly apparent. It would be an amazing privilege to do one. At the same time, when you take on a character like that, you’re working with a particular set of constraints.”
He added that it has to be the right moment in their creative life where one can express what they want to express and burrow into something within the appropriate constraints because they would never want to take on something like that and do it wrong.
There has been no announcement on who will be succeeding Daniel Craig as the new James Bond.
Source: The Times
