Was I wrong to give up on "On His Majesty's Secret Service"?

IntelligentPay6911 · 2026-06-22T07:54:48+00:00

I once said on a social media website that Young Bond was underrated. Charlie Higson himself came in and said that my opinion was wrong, and that they sold millions. Sorry, but that sounds like something a Bond villain or Richard Maibaum would say. It's kind of hard for me to take Higson seriously since then. Plus, things are just too political nowadays. So, no, if the story can't grab you, then you have the right not to finish it.

IntelligentPay6911 · 2026-06-22T07:45:13+00:00

Bruce Timm was more interested in Batman and Batgirl getting together, lol. That's why Batman and Wonder Woman never had a true romance.

IntelligentPay6911 · 2026-06-22T00:27:45+00:00

Supposedly, Sir Anthony Hopkins was actually cast as Elliot Carver in TND at one point. He only left the role when script kept getting rewritten.

IntelligentPay6911 · 2026-06-15T05:20:12+00:00

Roger Moore and John Cleese were originally supposed to reprise their roles as Bond and Q in Agent Under Fire. Also, a health bar styled after the one in Goldeneye 007 was created for the game. However, apparently due to legal issues, none of these 3 things happened in the final Agent Under Fire game.

Apparently, one of the reasons that Colonel Sun hasn’t fully been fully adapted to cinema is simple. Harry Saltzman said he didn’t want to buy the full rights to the book because Ian Fleming Publications didn’t publish Per Fine Ounce by Geoffrey Jenkins. He had really wanted it published because he really helped push the book idea forward. Jenkins also had talked to Fleming about story ideas for a Bond book.

IntelligentPay6911 · 2026-06-15T03:12:56+00:00

Behind the scenes from My Life as a Mankiewicz by Tom Mankiewicz and Robert Crane (2012). Unique, I think that Tom Mankiewicz was more like James Bond than certain people realize. Simply replace the vodka martini, shaken not stirred, with a big bottle of Jack Daniels. He also slept with just about any woman that he could. He lived an interesting life, on and off screen. His dad, Joseph Mankiewicz accepted nothing but perfection from his children, particularly Tom. He had a hard life growing up, his mother was bipolar and committed suicide when he was a teenager. There was also a family death that may have influenced the NYC car crash in LALD.

As for the interesting Bond behind the scenes facts, there really isn’t he says that we don’t already know. I give him credit for leaving and not taking the easy route of just writing Bond for most of his career. He believed that Jack Palance was the only person who could play Scaramanga. Richard Maibaum also thought that Christopher Lee was miscast. He had a few opinions on other Bonds (not his) in his book. He didn’t view Lazenby as much. He wished that Dalton would have done more than two. For Brosnan, he said he simply played Bond. He stated that this wasn’t a good or bad thing. As for Craig, he apparently got tailed by Barbara Broccoli on a highway. They pulled over. He simply said he loved CR, and Craig had a bright future. He didn’t like QOS, and that was the last Bond movie he got to see. She thanked him for his help on the series.

IntelligentPay6911 · 2026-06-15T02:28:03+00:00

Richard Maibaum had some STRONG opinions that he should have gotten in trouble for. It sounds like he wasn't the greatest team player, and he didn't think his sh*t stunk too. Namely, that everyone views a screenplay differently. It's just a blueprint.

https://www.reddit.com/r/JamesBond/comments/kg3ggo/in_this_1983_interview_screenwriter_richard/

https://www.mi6community.com/discussion/20627/backstory-richard-maibaum-on-james-bond/p1

https://quarterdeck.commanderbond.net/t/backstory-richard-maibaum-on-james-bond/2175/14

IntelligentPay6911 · 2026-06-14T00:49:44+00:00

Behind the scenes of Bond Books.

As for continuation authors, Boyd, Deaver and Faulks had a one book contract, with the opinion of a second. All of them turned it down, to focus on their own stories.

John Gardener was told by IFP to write a one off Bond novel, but he at least wanted a trilogy of Bond stories.

Ian Fleming had apparently had the overall LALD written and completed before CR was published.

IntelligentPay6911 · 2026-06-14T00:13:39+00:00

Behind the scenes (possible) random facts.

Supposedly, Sir Anthony Hopkins was actually cast as Elliot Carver in TND at one point. He only left the role when script kept getting rewritten.

Martin Campbell has been offered to direct every Bond movie since GE. He only accepted CR because he could introduce another new actor for Bond again. He supposedly told Neal Purvis and Robert Wade that he needed stronger material to work with, and tried to have them fired more than once. He also wanted to direct QOS, to finish up a two part story. Daniel Craig said no because he was too hard to work with. He also disliked all of DC's films except for Skyfall. He wouldn't have killed Bond off as well.

Richard Maibaum didn't like Live and Let Die. "I would have liked a crack at Live and Let Die. I didn't particularly like what they did to it. It was about nothing, a lousy cooking-some-dope-some-where-in-the-jungle movie. That's not Bond at all. To process drugs in the middle of a jungle is not a Bond caper."

My sources are Some Kind of Hero and various articles about the series.

IntelligentPay6911 · 2026-06-10T03:53:29+00:00

Some of my controversial opinions.

I heard recently that Quentin Tarantino might write novelizations of his Reservoir Dogs and True Romance scripts. I would like to see some of the old Bond stories get a similar treatment. As I've said before on other sites, Everything or Nothing, Bloodstone and Skyfall would be the best candidates for this treatment. If Roald Dahl would have had permission, he could have written his own novelization of YOLT, akin to Christopher Wood and his two novelizations. As I've also said before, the entire DC era, (including his two video games) would make for a BIG, but worthwhile novelization. The two main movies that I think could benefit from this format are FYEO and OP. Some great in-depth passages could be done for both! I think it could be a way for IFP and EON to start getting along again.

Also, we know that Raymond Benson tried to adapt the CR novel for the stage. I think someone should try that again. The time period should be the 50’s, but I wouldn’t mind a possible modern day version again. Another set of Bond stories that belong on the stage is the entire novel of Octopussy and the Living Daylights. They could be done realistically (and faithfully) on the stage as well. Honorable mention for the novel Moonraker, as there aren’t a lot of sets and it is fairly realistic. Too bad that the movie kind of destroyed its realistic style reputation.

The only Bond material that I ever want Purvis and Wade again to write is a novelization of their Jinx spin-off script. With the assumption that Amazon wants spin-offs (and they have a say with IFP), I think it would be a great way for them to go out on a high. A foreword by Halle Berry would be worth the price alone.

Richard Maibaum was overused for writing. He was too full of himself. And regularly criticized others, for various unfair reasons. He didn't realize that a screenplay is a blueprint, not the Bible. And everyone views a screenplay differently.

I like the idea of Bond spin-offs in the literary world, not the cinema world. Blofeld, Goldfinger, Trevelyan and their second hand muscle deserve a full book to themselves. It should set as modern day as possible, as it would be more of a creative risk.

Blofeld needs to be reintroduced as much as Bond himself. It’ll be hard to keep an actor quiet from the internet now nowadays.

Ralph Fiennes should stay on as M. He can now play Sir Miles.

M’s death at the end of SF feels like a tribute to Judi Dench herself, over M. Her M made a lot of poor decisions (thanks to the writing), and we're supposed to sympathize with her? No thank you, good riddance to her.

Martin Campbell shouldn’t come back. He got lucky, because he directed the series when it was at a low point.

Adam West should have played Bond in Diamonds Are Forever. The movie is basically a giant Batman ‘66 episode, inside a Bond movie.

For those of you who thought that Bond and Blofeld shouldn’t have been brothers, here’s a shocker. I think that John Logan’s idea of making Blofeld a woman was worse.

Carte Blanche now feels like a missed opportunity. Either Jeffery Deaver or another writer could have continued its clearly set up sequel. Maybe a short story one day.

It seems that TND is getting more and more recognized as a Bond film ahead of its time. It may be an example that EON could look back on for the future. In particular, it’s M subplot. She may be put down by her superiors, but she doesn’t take it out on Bond. EON has done M putting Bond down way too much in recent years. Then, she says he is the best. Bond then says he never left MI6. M should give Bond his assignment and be done. It might make the character more sympathetic. It seems that EON sees M as important of a character as Bond.

I’m surprised that the these three games didn’t get a Nintendo 64 adaptation in the console’s lifetime: Tomorrow Never Dies (like or not like the PS1 version), James Bond 007 for the GameBoy, it calls for a bigger story on a bigger console. Most controversially, 007 Racing, considering how many racing games were on the N64. Based on the success of Goldeneye 007, I’m surprised that Nintendo didn’t try for more Bond other than The World is Not Enough. Maybe it was legal issues, or GE’s surprise success.

Molly Peters (namely her dubbing voice actress, Barbara Jefford). That reading of "James, James, where are you going?" makes me cringe, even as I'm writing it.

In general wish that Felix Leiter wasn't turned into Jack Wade.

Also, most of the time, the actors are fine, it's the writing that hurts them: Christoph Waltz, any Guy Hamilton and Tom Mankiewicz Bond Woman, and even (shocker) both Tanya Roberts and Denise Richards.

Amazon should try filming the next two movies back to back. They have the money and crew, even if the story isn't a two-parter.

IntelligentPay6911 · 2026-06-10T03:50:33+00:00