Mr. Kiss-Kiss Bang-Bang

We must confess at the outset here that we're a huge fan of MI6 agent 007 and the cinematic adaptations of his exploits. Who can forget the time that James Bond was winging away in a stolen fighter jet from a burning terrorist arms bazaar that he'd single-handedly destroyed, and discovered a terrorist was in the seat behind him? (Also, another jet was chasing him.) Long story short, Bond ejects his unfortunate passenger so that the guy's seat goes right into the other plane, causing it to explode for some reason. Bond looks at the camera and says: "Backseat driver." Doesn't sound like the new Bond flick, "Casino Royale," will have any such scenes in it, but that doesn't mean anything either — as our no. 40 news story today says, penning the screenplay is the Oscar-winning writer Paul Haggis, who was behind "Million-Dollar Baby" and "Crash," two improbably fantastic recent Hollywood offerings. His script includes a "reinvention" of the Bond character and doesn't include the beloved gadgetsmith Q, two things that initially put us on our guard about the movie. (The Engadget guys went way off their beat and did a post about just that.) Like a Spensarian sonnet, Bond movies conform to a very strict formula whose repetition makes them so much fun, and injecting any new things should always be done very carefully; reaction on this Metafilter feed has been very mixed. Still, after "Crash," which we encourage all BlogPulsers to see, Haggis clearly knows how to write a movie. And it's not as if the Bond franchise hasn't taken a wrong turn before.

Posted by Philip Ewing at September 20, 2005 11:14 AM

Category: Moving Pictures