Word has permeated the internet. The Alamo has fallen. The last legacy of long established IP is now under control of the Raiders of Silicon Valley. Jeff Bezos now owns James Bond. May his reign be short lived.
When word reached me, a wave of depression hovered over me like a darkened cloud. The internet knew what this meant; it was an end of an era. It was 25 films spread across 60 years. The Royal Family that was the Broccolis ruled over their fiefdom as benevolent rulers and providing their subjects with an undiluted product that influenced a multitude of generations in Hollywood.
Now it is over. It can only be assumed that the legions at Amazon are preparing for a new era in the 007 universe, complete with spin-offs, television shows, and cheap and unfettered reality entertainment. The mystique of James Bond will be tainted for a millennium and the joy of its spectacle will be cheapened and diminished. What is dead cannot return.
It has taken me awhile to assess my feelings on the matter. I’m not angry with Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson for selling out. As with any valuable property, it must be defended unrelentingly from cash-grab predators and opportunists. The ceaseless battle can and will take its toll. I can’t blame Broccoli and Wilson for taking the money and running. Any of us would have done the same under similar circumstances. Instead I see this as a changing of the guard from independent artistry to tech dominance of content creation.
Perhaps in a few generations the people will see this as “progress”. Amazon naturally does. But can we genuinely say that the quality of established IPs improved under this paradigm shift? Did it for Star Trek? Did it for Star Wars? There is little reason to believe that James Bond won’t face a similar fate as those two. But maybe we need to reckon with an uncomfortable truth: if we love something, we must let it go.
As Bond fans, we were blessed with 25 films. Though their quality varied, we love each of them on their own terms. I wouldn’t omit a single one from the canon. And these films are going nowhere. They will be embraced by cinephiles for generations to come. Additionally Broccoli and Wilson had the foresight to “kill off” James Bond in the final film under their tutelage. It was a controversial decision but one I always defended. Although I think this move was done as a way to give Daniel Craig a proper sendoff, in hindsight it gives us fans a sense of closure.
But in these times of mourning, perhaps we should seek a silver lining. The exact terms of the deal between the Broccolis and Amazon are unclear to me currently. With any luck, the Broccolis have been relegated to an advisory position. That might not mean much but it might give us hope for a shred of continuity. Yet this is admittedly wishful thinking. Though Amazon will posses the rights to the “gun barrel” sequence, Albert R. Broccoli’s Eon Productions, and the history of the character, the Jeff Bezos takeover is in effect a death to the old order.
However, the old must give way to the new. As much as we piss and moan over Hollywood retreads, there has been a landslide of new intellectual property over the last two decades from Harry Potter, Breaking Bad, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Game of Thrones, etc. Perhaps things never really die; they’re born into something new.
The Internet Ruined Everything 