The Sunday Feed
Is James Bond still relevant?
In 1961 author Ian Fleming sold a six-month option to all his James Bond novels and short stories with the exception of Casino Royale, which he had previously sold, to entrepreneur Harry Saltzman. Harry formed Eon Productions with Albert R. ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, and they started looking around for a director and an actor to play Bond.
Patrick McGoohan was the first option to play Bond in Dr. No, but he didn’t want it on moral grounds. For publicity purposes the company ran a bogus competition to find the perfect man to play Bond. A 28 year-old model named Peter Anthony won, but he was never going to play him because he was not an actor.
In the past 60 years, a total of 26 James Bond films have been made. And from the first movie, the salience of the audience has grown exponentially. This fact is linearly represented by the revenue it collected. The first venture Dr. No made a box office hit of $60 million while the last one Spectre managed to get a whopping $879 million.
In marketing, there is something called a PLC: Product Life Cycle where a product after being launched, does a complete round and comes to a stage where it needs to be shelved. Has Bond reached that stage? I think so. While it might still generate enough revenues for a successful action movie, the essence no longer holds true at a deeper level.
The world has changed. People are no longer interested in superheroes defeating the bad guys. They want to some real stuff. As real as the story of a boy or the girl next door! Cause, that’s what resonates with the hearts and minds. Not some kind of a weirdly dressed buffoon jumping around terraces.
People have realised that the real badass villains are not humans but something much smaller yet a billion times stronger. Something that a Batman or a Bond cannot even dream of confronting! People have understood that this is where the world is headed and it is going to be the brains not brawn that will come to the rescue of the needy.
But how far will reality influence our choice of movies is still a question that cannot be discretely answered. Will people go to the theatres to get a temporary respite from the grim realities of the world is billion-dollar question. Personally, I think they will not because there is enough and more, new and old content freely available on the net. So why would one pay a lot of money to go to the theatres to watch something that they don’t believe in.
Also, this pandemic has made us realise that a virus or a bacteria that can spread easily is much more lethal that a gangster or a don operating in some part of the world. And Bond getting rid of this goon makes not difference to the rest of the world.
So have the superheroes of the world been repositioned by the virus. Maybe. Maybe Not! Does the world now want to see real life heroes like the scientists or other front line workers in action solving real life problems rather than some good looking dude dressed in immaculate suits fighting a fabricated villain.
To sum up, the film industry thrives on taking small, interesting stories and presenting it to the world in a completely different way by magnifying all the minute details with the help of brilliant cameramen, shot directors and screen play writers. I some how get a feeling that in the next few years, we will see a lot of low budget movies made around how individuals or families interacted with the pandemic. How some managed to overcome the virus and some succumbed to it.
And as far as Bond is concerned, at a deeper level, he is finished. The core value is no longer appealing. There is nor reason for the masses to look up to him or any other superhero for that matter. People are wearing masks for hours at length and the last thing they want is to to watch a fictitious character going around killing more people. Sometimes, enough is enough!
