{"id":502162,"date":"2026-05-25T18:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T18:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/502162\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T18:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T18:35:08","slug":"james-bond-just-cant-stop-learning-to-be-james-bond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/502162\/","title":{"rendered":"‘James Bond’ Just Can’t Stop Learning to Be ‘James Bond’"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a time in every franchise where they fall into a rut and need to do something to get out of it. For many, the solution has been to reboot; whether hard or soft, these restarts are meant to get the audience and property back on the same page<\/a>, but can easily lead to a stagnation of its own that\u2019s as frustrating as it is invigorating.<\/p>\n

One of the bigger victims of this phenomenon is arguably the\u00a0James Bond\u00a0franchise. Ian Fleming\u2019s iconic super spy has spent 20 years learning to become the classic version fans love, starting with 2006\u2019s Casino Royale. To give the property a full-on restart, original IP owners Eon looked at Batman Begins\u2019<\/a>\u00a0approach to dark and gritty realism and an emphasis on practical stunt work for inspiration, creating a young Bond that was no stranger to secretly serving Her Majesty, but still had some tricks to learn. As surprising as it was to hear back then, Eon thought this was necessary for the good of the franchise, and it\u2019s a gamble that paid off spectacularly. Mostly.<\/p>\n

Yes, Casino Royale introduced the world to Daniel Craig<\/a> and convinced studios that reboots were the new hotness. But it also did its job a bit too well, putting Bond in a state where he\u2019s never quite left the reboot mindset. 2012\u2019s Skyfall functions as a soft reboot by adding in classic 007\u00a0fixtures missing from the prior two films like his supporting cast. (Q, Moneypenny, and a male M all debut here and recur going forward.) And both Skyfall and Craig\u2019s last, No Time to Die,\u00a0see Bond rebooting himself within those films, working throughout them to get his groove back after he\u2019s spent a different amount of years in retirement.<\/p>\n

The now viral \u201cSurf Dracula<\/a>\u201d tweet poking fun at modern storytelling almost applies to Craig\u2019s Bond movies. While the post-Casino\u00a0sequels don\u2019t drag out Bond\u2019s story like a prestige show, there\u2019s some admitted tedium that makes the whole run uneven and spoil some of the goodwill earned. This is a fascinatingly messy set of movies, where the frequent restarts as are part of the era\u2019s DNA as their habit of imitating fellow blockbusters like Batman\u00a0or\u00a0Captain America: The Winter Soldier.\u00a0Despite that, and the more mixed reception to\u00a0Quantum of Solace\u00a0and\u00a0Spectre,\u00a0these films were generally safe from any major fan blowback that can\u2019t be separated from the current franchise age.\u00a0Spectre\u00a0making Ernst Stavro Blofeld into Bond\u2019s brother is dumb, but it barely registers as controversial when placed alongside\u00a0Zack Snyder\u2019s Superman tenure or either of J.J. Abrams\u2019 Star Trek<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Wars<\/a>-related decisions.<\/p>\n

Of course, James Bond has a leg up on other franchises in that it has a built-in fix for its any poorly received decisions. Having a new actor on a regular basis creates a loop of soft reboots, with each man creating a new mini-continuity that can stand on its own and theoretically tie to the prior star\u2019s run. And if there\u2019s a lousy Bond, oh well, he\u2019ll either get better or just swapped out eventually. This self-correcting method a defining feature of the franchise\u2026but then, Craig\u2019s Bond went and found time to very definitively die<\/a>, leaving things in an awkward (and admittedly funny<\/a>) position. So how do Bond\u2019s stewards forge ahead? Apparently by giving audiences not one, but two new Bonds in relative proximity to each other.<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s currently hunting for a new actor<\/a> to grace the big screen, but it\u2019ll be preceded by 007 First Light<\/a>. Developed by IO Interactive and out this week, the game has its own young Bond played by Patrick Gibson and stands in its own continuity the studio hopes can expand to a trilogy<\/a>. While IO\u2019s drawing more from Fleming\u2019s books and short stories<\/a>, it\u2019s still in conversation with the films, to the point First Light has an opening title sequence<\/a> featuring a Lana Del Rey single and text that declares Gibson as the man playing Fleming\u2019s creation.<\/p>\n

Between\u00a0First Light\u00a0and Denis Villeneuve\u2019s upcoming movie<\/a>, there\u2019ll undoubtedly be overlap between the two and how they go about rebooting James Bond. What\u2019ll make all this interesting isn\u2019t just whether or not Amazon opts to unify the two projects, a la Tomb Raider,\u00a0but how the game and film bounce off one another. What will they say about Bond\u2019s current cyclical nature, and will they have it in them to try and push the character and property forward under new stewards<\/a> without such historical baggage<\/a> weighing them down?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll find out when\u00a0007 First Light\u00a0comes out May 27 for PC and current-gen consoles (with a Nintendo Switch 2 release later this year), followed by Denis Villeneuve\u2019s Bond movie in the near future.<\/p>\n

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Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a time in every franchise where they fall into a rut and need to do something to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[31484,29203,14170,18,117,19,189232,17,7391,327],"class_list":["post-502162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-007-first-light","tag-daniel-craig","tag-denis-villeneuve","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-io-interactive","tag-ireland","tag-james-bond","tag-movies"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}