I saw Dickinson in Murder at the End of the World (the computer did it.) He played a mumbling American computer nerd. All I can say for him is he makes Holland look like a good choice.
Indeed. Predications are hard, especially if they pertain to the future. And predictions in media seem particularly hard. I mean, who needs Andor, a prequel about a secondary character in a prequel that answered questions that didn't need to be answered?
I was thinking a heavily stylized 1960s film, but you could do something similar with style and make it more contemporary. First of all, you don't need the Cold War. At first I thought maybe you kind of do, because it was easier to make cartoonish villains out of Russians etc, due to limitations on information, but I think you can draw from contemporary ideas and make some very Bondian villians: The looming threat of techno-fascism, billionaire oligarchs, ideological terrorist factions, bio-warfare, etc. I mean, take your pick of any number of well-known business moguls and you could use them as a template for a Bond villain.
Ultimately, with the movies this is already what they did. How many Bond villains were actually Cold War spies or governments? Very few. The villains are most often those very technofascists, billionaires, and international criminal conspiracies operating from outside of the Cold War participants. When Cold War relations were invoked was more often because SPECTRE was playing the poles off against each other or there was a risk of the Soviets (or even Americans) handling the situation their typical, less nuanced heavy-handedness compared to British subtlety.
Right, I think the last Bond film that felt cold war-ish to me was Goldeneye and it did quite a bit to put it to bed. Honestly, I like the too powerful individual(s) approach better than governments anyways.
Yes, good point. And there's newer elements that can be folded in. I mean, a rogue AI could feature as a villain.
Tomorrow Never Dies was on the right track with Elliot Carver, the media baron gone megalomaniac. It's still very contemporary if you switch traditional media for social media.
