This morning I thought I’d try to get up to speed on what is happening with James Bond. I’d heard there was some kind of spat between EON Productions and Amazon, but other than that I was at a loss. However, I think I need to flag this excellent Den Of Geek article which I just came across up. It looks into what is going on with arguably cinema’s greatest series, and if you ask me it isn’t pretty. Amazon execs apparently want to turn Bond into a kind of Marvel franchise, with spin off film and TV series about characters like Miss Moneypenny and other Double-O agents. Now, as the article points out, there have always been Bond Spin offs in various media like novels, graphic novels (comics) and computer games; but arguably the phenomenal fifty year success of the Bond films boils down to the fact that they all centre around one character. That character, while retaining certain key aspects such as a liking for Martinis and his specific style of introducing himself, changes over time, acting as a kind of cultural barometer for over half a century. Any such spin-off media would probably distract or divert from that, missing the point entirely.

As much as I regret to say this, but I must admit that as I read this article it occurred to me that it may now be time to call an end to the Bond phenomenon: if this is indeed the way things are going, with disputes between film studios and the gradual abandonment of what has made James Bond James Bond, it may be wiser to consign it to history. After all, in this infuriating post-Brexit, Donald Trump era, we no longer live in the world either Ian Fleming or Cubby Broccoli placed Bond in. Many point to Bond’s misogyny, yet he is ultimately a character from a world in which Britain never lost it’s standing as a global imperial power – a delusion which will inevitably grow harder and harder to maintain. Especially after 2016, the over-simplified, good-vs—bad, Britannia rules the Waves world Bond inhabits does not exist any more, and both character and franchise will start to seem increasingly anachronistic and absurd.

Attempting to continue the franchise would surely just draw it out, exposing it to many contemporary sociopolitical pressures which I don’t think it could withstand. Such pressures would pull it in so many different artistic and commercial directions it would ultimately be torn apart. Thus rather than go through the rigmarole of selecting yet another actor, seeing that selection debated ad nauseam, and then waiting to see whether the resulting film lives up to the legacy, perhaps it would be best to consign these twenty-five films to history. After all, one of the greatest skills any artist can have is knowing when to finish a piece.