Why we are transiting the worst Bond film gap in history?

Twitter user Time To Bond (@timetobond007) made a poll on his timeline today, asking "Which long gap in between James Bond movies felt the worst?" and giving 1989-1995, 2008-2012 and 2015-2020 as three possible options. Everyone seems to agree with me in thinking the current one (2015-2020) is the worst of them all. I decided to make a blog post to explan why, even though I explained it on my Twitter account, which will be probably be yet again restricted sometime soon for "unusual activity", whatever the hell that is.

I have "lived" so to speak these three hiatus. While I didn't care about the first because I wasn't a Bond fan and I was basically a baby, I did study it for my books The World of GoldenEye and The Bond of The Millennium and got to know that in the 1990s everyone was doubtful that Bond would survive the new decade. The numbers of Licence To Kill had been bad. The Cold War has ended. The 17th Bond film kept being delayed due to litigations between Danjaq and MGM who at the time had been taken over by Italian businessman Giancarlo Paretti who played havoc with the company's assets, trying even to sell 007's television rights for a rather cheap price. At the same time, the script suffered many modifications until we got to the film we knew as GoldenEye, a massive success that according to MGM/UA's Jeff Kleeman took everyone by surprise.

I recall the second hiatus well because I was older. I knew MGM was under financial crisis but the script for what became Skyfall was being written with Peter Morgan on board until he left the project and John Logan came aboard to join Neal Purvis & Robert Wade. A four-year gap with the same actor was strange, yet one had the feeling that things were on the move. Sam Mendes, who turned out to be the film's director, had been touted since early 2011, along with Javier Bardem as the villain. I don't recall that hiatus to be particularly painful to Bond fans, even though as usual we wanted to see him back in action as soon as possible.

Now here's for the third one. SPECTRE did well at the box office. Not as much as Skyfall but it couldn't be considered a commercial failure. Other than that, the film had many people criticizing it feeling that the script was bland and a mess. I partially agree in the sense that the movie should have been structured differently but I still feel it as the most bondian Craig film: it has the gunbarrel at the beginning, a villain with a world domination ambition (the villain with the cat, actually), humour, a few gadgets and a happy ending where Craig/Bond finally wins the girl and she doesn't die or dump him. Bond "wins", for the first time since 2002.

The years that followed SPECTRE were turbulent. There were rumours that Craig was leaving the franchise and the regular names to replace him. Other comments pointed out that Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli weren't interested in Bond anymore. Then we had the annoying (yes, I consider them annoying) rumours regarding a black or female Bond and the eternal moralist questioning of our hero's antics, the ones that had make him so successful for almost six decades. "Licence to kill when he chooses, where he chooses, whom he chooses", we read in the Dr. No promotions and we loved it. Right or wrong? Well, it's fiction. Just as the Grand Theft Auto video games so popular nowadays.

Amidst that panorama, Daniel Craig agreed to return. Then we had a 8 November 2019 date as Danny Boyle was confirmed to be the director of the 25th James Bond film adventure with Universal and Annapurna distributing it along with MGM. Lots of worries and concern came regarding Boyle's choice as the director. I was one of the "worried" guys, I admit, after seeing his most "Bondian" work was probably Trance and that was far from what I wanted to see in a 007 film.

Anyway, Boyle resigned. The internet was filled out of concern, of speculation, of theories, of heated debates until Cary Fukunaga was chosen as Boyle's replacement and a new release date was announced: 14 Feburary 2020. It looked as if everything was back on track and soon there was another delay announced: the film wouldn't be released before April 2020. The hopes were lost and whinning came up once again, to the point of wondering "are they really shooting a movie?". 

Now it's October 2019 and not only we have the certitude that a movie is being shot, but the cast and the plot has been announced and the film was given a title: No Time To Die, originally planned to be A Reason To Die but pulled out by Universal in the last hour because it wasn't fulfilling enough for them. For four months, the movie was known as Bond 25 even after the cast and story was presented, harkening back to the events of 2002 with Die Another Day. Last weekend, we were given a teaser poster which was really mediocre in my opinion. But still, I'm happy to see that the machine is in motion and I'm looking forward to the teaser trailer.

Trying not to deviate from the subject in hand, I'll tell you why I find this is the worst gap in Bond history: social network. That has changed everything and our patience began to wane incredibly.  So I feel as if this four year and a half hiatus is like a decade, mainly because there are a lot of rushed statements and many of them fueled by the tabloids as well as by anonymous social media users with "connections" and some Bond fans that fall into the trap. Will Lashana Lynch be a "female Bond"? Chances are she'll have the 007 number while Bond is out of duty, but some people have already lost the faith in the film after even a trailer has been released and then again they don't seem to have it clear that BOND predominates every marketing campaign and that we are watching a film with "James Bond 007".

Earlier this year, as we had some candids of the shooting in Jamaica, rumour had it that Craig and Fukunaga were not on speaking terms, that they clashed every day and that things were tense in the shooting. All of this based on facial expressions of the two men chatting. 

This 2015-2020 gap is full of uncertainties, protests, complaints... everything feels a little bit toxic. And that, I think, comes from all the "noise" surrounding the production of the film, of which we know little about. A script wasn't leaked, unlike what happened in SPECTRE, so calling out to boycott the movie based on things people may think will happen is completely ridiculous. 

Regarding No Time To Die I have my doubts and I also complain and state whenever I don't like something or when I feel they aren't going in the right way, But as usual, I'll wait until I watch it to give my final veredict. The joy of knowing James Bond will return indeed when fans saw Pierce Brosnan announced as 007 on June 1, 1994 already gives the 1989-1995 gap a better taste than the bitter 2015-2020 one where the production of a James Bond film (and the James Bond persona itself) has been put under the magnifying glass of many keyboard warriors - Bond fans or not.