Entertainment
Quentin Tarantino’s Vision for James Bond’s Future Is Exactly What the Franchise Needs
One of the big questions on movie fans’ minds this year is who will be stepping into the tuxedo of Bond, James Bond, in the 26th installment of the long-running franchise. As the series turns a page following Daniel Craig’s farewell in 2021’s No Time to Die, everyone has an opinion on what director Denis Villeneuve should do as he reboots the world’s most famous spy story.
In 2023, Quentin Tarantino joined that chorus, while discussing his own history with the character. An ill-fated attempt to make his own Bond movie came and went in the 1990s, but the man behind such classics as Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill offered his own take on what we should be seeing in future iterations of MI6’s finest.
Quentin Tarantino Flirted with the Bond Franchise in the ‘90s
At the peak of his powers, the director sought to create an outlaw Bond movie, developed without classic Bond producers EON Productions. This seemed possible, due to the fact that the rights to Casino Royale were owned by an entity outside the main franchise (a non-canon movie was made from them in 1967, with David Niven playing an older Bond). Tarantino told Deadline he wanted to make his own, stand-alone Bond movie as his follow-up to Pulp Fiction, set in the ‘60s, with no intention of a sequel.
According to his own recollection, EON Productions secured the rights to Casino Royale in the late ‘90s, and decided he was not the kind of director they wanted on board: “I was always told very flattering versions of like, ‘Look, we love Quentin, but we make a certain kind of movie, and unless we f*** it up, we make a billion dollars every time we make that type of movie, OK? We don’t want him to do it.’”
Casino Royale would eventually be realized as an EON Bond movie in 2006, becoming Daniel Craig’s debut in the role and reigniting the franchise for a new millennium. Despite the rejection, Tarantino was a fan of the Craig era, describing it as a “good run.” But the Oscar winner does have opinions on where the franchise should go following Craig’s departure.
The ‘Pulp Fiction’ Legend Knows What He Wants From a Bond Movie
Many James Bond fans yearn for the franchise to return to its roots, offering the hard-edged espionage tales that were the defining feature of Ian Fleming’s original novels. Tarantino seems to be one of those fans, whether he directs the story or not. When asked where he thought the franchise should go, he told Deadline: “What I think they should do, and I’ve been thinking they should do this for a long time, is so many of the books have these really classic names and really classic adventures. And for the most part, a lot of them, they never did the book. They never did the stories.”
“They took the plot line and maybe the Bond girl or maybe the villain and then just went their own way.” he continued. “I think they should not remake the movies but actually just do the books, but do them the way they were written. And those would all be brand new.” All fourteen books published by Fleming have been adapted into films, with varying degrees of faithfulness to the source material. 2006’s Casino Royale was the last film to be adapted from one of the novels, with original stories being written for most of 007’s adventures from the late ‘80s onwards. With this in mind, a new Bond with an old mindset might freshen up the 64-year-old franchise.
Denis Villeneuve May Be Taking a Similar Inspiration
Two years after Tarantino made the comments, Denis Villeneuve was announced as the director of the forthcoming Bond movie, with a script written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight. Tarantino may have been on the wrong side of the French-Canadian filmmaker before, publicly saying he refused to watch his Dune movies as he views them as remakes (Villeneuve’s response clarified that he saw them as separate adaptations rather than remakes of films that had come before).
Nevertheless, they do share one thing in common: a love for Casino Royale. Whereas Tarantino tried to adapt the novel himself, Villeneuve appreciated the 2006 movie as a fan of the franchise, calling it his “favorite” Bond movie and Daniel Craig “the ultimate James Bond.” These remarks were made in a podcast interview prior to his involvement with the forthcoming movie, but they give an idea of what he appreciates in a 007 blockbuster.
While they make very different types of movies, both men share similar values when it comes to directing: an auteur’s vision, a knack for world-building, and character-driven stories that contain a violent edge. As such, there’s every chance Quentin Tarantino will be nodding in approval when he watches the new James Bond makes his entrance, as it will be brought to the screen by someone with similar views as to what makes the character special.
- Release Date
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November 17, 2006
- Runtime
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144 minutes
- Director
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Martin Campbell
- Writers
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Neal Purvis, Paul Haggis, Robert Wade, Ian Fleming
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