In the long run, and as someone whose stake in the Bond movies is based purely on my enjoyment of watching them, this has turned out to be the greatest of blessings.
Consider that one of the barely concealed secrets of the James Bond flicks is that until Craig got behind the wheel of an Aston Martin, there was virtually no continuity between installments, and many of the movies shared nearly identical plots. It might be a wonder even that Bond himself never seemed to clock that two years after meeting a megalomaniac who wanted to destroy the world and force everyone to live under the sea (1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me), he met another bloke with pretty much the same idea, except now he wanted to pick the survivors for his eugenics colony in space (1979’s Moonraker).
The plots, of course, were rarely the point. In fact, a great deal of the pleasure in watching a good James Bond movie is the sense of familiarity. Getting a proper Q scene, complete with a couple witty aspersions between Bond and the good quartermaster (preferably played by Desmond Llewelyn), followed by shots of exotic vacationing while “on the job,” and then the obligatory double entendres opposite women of equally relaxed virtue is all part and parcel with the package. The same way a theatergoer expects an overture when the curtain rises at the opera, Bond fans anticipate the car chase, the gadgets, and the megalomaniacal speech.
Even as the Craig era began by deliberately deconstructing or subverting these expectations in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, one of the joys in his later efforts, particularly the more popular installments, was how Eon brought back one by one the elements they’d stripped away in 2006. The ceremonial structure of the Bond movies is one of their most rewarding features—especially when you have gone years without attending this approximation of a vodka-soaked communion. Distance makes the heart grow fonder; it also makes what might otherwise be perceived as a limitation become a virtue. That’s refreshing to think about in 2024.
While the Bond franchise has staved off inquiries into “expanding” its universe on the small screen, so many younger but still fairly gray-haired franchises of yesteryear have given into the temptation of going supersized. Granted, it’s been a noticeable four and a half years since the last Star Wars movie, but that pause hasn’t been from a lack of trying on Lucasfilm’s part. The Disney subsidiary has failed to get a new movie set in that galaxy far, far away off the ground, but they have absolutely flooded the market with a glut of Star Wars TV shows for the streaming service Disney+.
When it started, that was a novelty too. Star Wars fans were over the moon about the first season of The Mandalorian being part of Disney+’s maiden voyage. They were ecstatic about The Mandalorian Season 2 as well. But a little less so for The Book of Boba Fett, despite that show also turning into a covert third season of Mando. The actual third season of Mando, meanwhile, came and went, as did the genuinely superb Andor. And nowadays, new Star Wars “content” that Disney could spend an eye-watering $180 million on, like The Acolyte, has become such a non-event to subscribers that Disney felt compelled to cancel the series.
