Bond, James Bond by Brad Gilmore

Author:Brad Gilmore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mango Media
Published: 2022-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

James Bond Jr.:

Bond Becomes Animated

In the sixty-plus years since James Bond came crashing onto movie screens in 1962, there have only been two periods where Her Majesty’s top agent had been forced into a semi-retirement, the first of which is the most recent stretch after Spectre debuted in 2015. The film felt like a nice wrap-up of the Craig-led films. This era of Bond was the first in which each film built off of the previous entry, leading to Bond seemingly successfully stopping SPECTRE and heading off to start a life with Dr. Swann. Craig was unsure if he would do another. There was talk of Wilson looking for a replacement. And the film, while a success, had not managed to be a hit the way the previous film, Skyfall, had. The other period, a far more uncertain and tumultuous time, was back in 1989.

Bond was getting ready to jump back into the action in Timothy Dalton’s second outing as Agent 007 in License to Kill. Heavily influenced by real-world headlines of the ongoing “War on Drugs” and other drug-themed films of the time like the Lethal Weapon and Robocop, Bond, too, was headed to the seedy world of the drug trade. Cubby Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson wanted to craft a story that kept the darker tone they had established with The Living Daylights and married it with real world drama. “License Revoked,” as it was originally titled, saw Bond head off in a revenge-fueled rage against Franz Sanchez (modeled after the sadistic drug lords of the time, like Pablo Escobar), who had maimed his close friend Felix Leiter and killed Felix’s wife, Della. The film saw Bond with his license to kill revoked and on his own.

It was released in the summer of 1989, amid massive competition—Lethal Weapon 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Ghostbusters 2 were filling theaters across the country. Perhaps the biggest hit to Bond’s chances of success that summer was the birth of the superhero megahit, Batman. That summer you could not escape the Bat. He was everywhere. The movie was a game-changer in the industry, as it had audiences clamoring for everything and anything they could find with Batman on it. Were audiences looking for something new? Did they not want to see one of their favorite heroes dropped into the middle of a real-world crisis? Whatever the case, the superheroes in capes were here to stay, and James Bond was hit with some of its lowest box office numbers, only managing to pull in just over $34.6 million domestically.

Things were not looking good for Bond. He had faced death by laser beam, escaped incineration by a space shuttle, and fought Christopher Walken atop the Golden Gate Bridge, but it seemed like just maybe audiences had tired of the British secret agent. While trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the film, Cubby Broccoli went on record as saying, “It was obvious that Michael and I had to do some rethinking.

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