Amazon is currently planning an elaborate reboot of the James Bond franchise, having taken over creative control from long-time custodians Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. This is arguably one of the most valuable franchises acquired by the tech giant, which previously shelled out $1 billion for the rights to a new Lord of the Rings streaming series. That plan didn’t exactly succeed, with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Powerstruggling to retain viewers through the course of its run. The James Bond franchise, which will be re-launched with a new movie directed by Denis Villeneuve, will also expand into the world of streaming. Amazon has already experienced growing pains in the area of mega-budget, long-form espionage programming, and it would hope to not make the same mistakes with the 007 franchise.
Around the same time as it developed The Lord of the Rings series, Amazon reportedly spent $300 million on just six episodes of a globe-trotting spy thriller show, which was designed to spawn a shared universe. To spearhead the project, Amazon roped in Joe and Anthony Russo, who were coming off the record-breaking success of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. What transpired in the next few years remains one of the streaming era’s most infamous stories. The show’s first season saw a behind-the-scenes conflict that resulted in it being significantly re-shot, with the original creative team making way for a new set of filmmakers. Two spin-offs followed, but after a recent managerial switch at Prime Video, it was announced that both shows had been canceled. The fate of the original “mothership” series, which returned with a second season this week, remains unclear.
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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
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Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
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🎭Ethan Hunt
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01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
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02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
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03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
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04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
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05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
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06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
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07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
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08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
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09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
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10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
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Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
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Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
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Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
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John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
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Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
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Prime Video’s Mega-Budget Misfire Couldn’t Unseat ‘The Boys’
We’re talking, of course, about Citadel. Starring Priyanka Chopra, Richard Madden, Stanley Tucci, and Lesley Manville, the series borrows heavily from the James Bond and Mission: Impossible franchises. It follows operatives of the secret spy society Citadel, who must bring down their sworn enemy, a nefarious organization known as Manticore, before global catastrophes unfold. According to FlixPatrol, the second season of Citadeldebuted at the number two spot on the global Prime Video viewership chart, behind the holdover hit The Boys. The second season wasn’t promoted with the gusto of Season 1, which premiered in 2023 and holds a 51% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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