I still have a soft spot for View To A Kill though. Cracking 80s theme, Bond on a snowboard, way too old for the Bond girl but what the hell, Grace Jones bad ass and Christopher Walken!
Perhaps I was being unfair, there’s nothing worse than a 50+ actor trying to play a 30 something character thanks to a lot of make-up and hair dye with a taste for 23 year old women.
I think an older Bond is fine, but once you go down the “I’m too old for this shit” road, then it’s hard to turn back – Did Bond magically recovered from all his injuries, or is he still banging away at it despite them? A Bond film based on a tired old Bond being dragged out of retirement could be good, it’s not the usual triumphant Bond, but it could be quite cool, but if he’s groaning and unable to shoot straight one minute because of a decade of being a ’00’ and jumping onto moving trains the next it seems a bit daft.
I’d personally like to see a more period Bond, since the 90s and certainly since DC took over the makers have been in a constant struggle – James Bond v the Modern World – almost every part of the character is at odds with the real world – the hard drinking, hard smoking, womanising psychopath and it seems that with every time a new film comes out what we will accept from a film hero is further away from the core character.
Even if it was a stand-alone film, a Bond film based in the 60s with a more anti-hero Bond rather than a modern hero version could be a great film and I think audiences could be more accepting of him because “it was okay back then”.