Bond to fly solo without Q in Casino Royale?
By Ryan Block 
posted Sep 19th 2005 11:25AM
posted Sep 19th 2005 11:25AM
Say it ain't so! Apparently the next bond film, Casino Royale, will do without an older, more distinguished Bond
(he'll be a spritely 28) but more importantly—brace yourself—it's going to go off without Q and his gadgets. Seriously,
they're writing Q out of this one. The film's screenwriter, Paul Haggis, is calling this a Bond "reinvention," but a
007 flick without Q's toys, that's like a day without sunshine, or like an Engadget post about an upcoming movie… just
plain wrong.
[Via The Raw Feed]
From a bond fan standpoint it's a good thing. He had way too many crazy gadgets in Die Another Day. It was nearly as outlandish as Moonraker. While I will miss 'Q', this ones a prequel so it makes sense.
This isn't the first Bond movie without Q ... And I'm struggling to remember if Q was even in the Casino Royale novel.
Apparently he was in the original movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061452/fullcredits
Casino Royale was the very first Bond book. It didn't have Q. It was the most violent of the books and featured a younger, much colder James.
WTF. Q is one of the most important parts of a Bond film, right next to a hot Bond girl. In oder of importance: Hot Bond girl > Q > Bond > plot
Nooooooooooo, that was like the best part of the film :/.
AFAIK Q's actor is dead, so perhaps that's why there won't be a Q in the new movie.
Yea but a Bond movie with no Q, better yet a Bond movie with no gadgets? thats jsut like any other spy movie. Theres no point in reinventing Bond its way to populart to need to be reinvented.
Yea but a Bond movie with no Q, better yet a Bond movie with no gadgets? thats jsut like any other spy movie. Theres no point in reinventing Bond its way to populart to need to be reinvented.
Yea but a Bond movie with no Q, better yet a Bond movie with no gadgets? thats jsut like any other spy movie. Theres no point in reinventing Bond its way to populart to need to be reinvented.
I'd say that the original book has slightly more of a sway than a half hearted Bond fan
see even make believe job roles get outsourced... no reason to have an in-house, technology/gadget department... it's far more efficient, cheaper and secure to compartmentalize each gadget/tech project and outsource the various development processes and fabrication parts to different vendors and subvendors, within the US and throughout PAC.
i though the 077 bond genre was being replaced by the XXX series!? no wait, what about the mission impossible films!
Booooooooo!
Paul Haggis & Martin Campbell are looking to make this film much grittier than the last, which is a good thing. It'll probably be similar in tone to For Your Eyes Only, Licence to Kill & The Living Daylights.
John Cleese was the latest "Q" -- and actually his "name" is "R" in the last Bond film.
Well, John Cleese replaced the good old Q (Desmond Llewelyn) in the last JB flick, as R. I will still miss it though. I am not that old, but I really dont care if he is young or not, but what we all really dig was his attitude and the cars.
Um, is that, like, a doobie in his hand? I am by NO means a pothead, but damn... That looks like a really long dube. =P
One thing is for sure, there's no way this remake is going to have a soundtrack as cool as the original Casino Royale, comedy that it was.
As long as he drives the Austin Martin AMV8 I will be happy.
Oh wait, put a nuclear warhead in that puppy. :D
Q may have not been in the book, but he was in the original movie. If you look in the memorable quotes (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061452/quotes), even Q's assistant has some lines.
Die Another Day was one of the worst F'n action movies I've ever seen. I tried to watch it twice and fell asleep each time, especially after that horrid, piece-of-crap, 20 minute Madonna song at the beginning of the film. I grew up on Bond flicks, and they have ranged from good to so-so. But they have a lot of work to do if they're going to vindicate their last poor choice in production.
Does Bond even need Q any more? Mi6 could save itself a lot of money if it closed down the Q division and just started shopping in the same places the rest of us do.
As for the original movie, considering it starred Peter Sellers and Woody Allen, I wouldn't put too much stock in it.
Who is playing Bond?
#19, "Who is playing Bond?"
Some asian dude. Chow Fat or something. They REALLY want to reinvent Bond, so...
The actor who played Q (Desmond Llewelyn) is indeed dead. Died around Christmas a few years back in a car crash on a icy road I think (should have been in one of his own cars, etc. etc. {insert your own tasteless gag}). And John Cleese did indeed take over as R -- with his tongue lodged firmly in his cheek.
Q only in fact made his first appearance in the 2nd Bond film (From Russia with Love). I think Q Dept may have been referenced in Dr No (the 1st Bond film; but not book -- as someone pointed out, that was Casino Royale) however.
Damn. I didn't even know I knew all this about Bond. Must be too many nights watching Bond as a student. I didn't even have to check with IMDB!
OMG, no Q, umh, one asian dude for d bond movie so what ll come next. Well atleast it ll still be bond and i ve got no choice than to wait 4d flick.
oh my god are they stupid or something gettin rid of Q and the gadgets if that does happen i will have to be forced into watching the movie!!!
This re-invention is lame. Just grab Brosnan for one more film. Cave into his wish to get Tarantino to direct. That would be pure cinematic gold.
And for the record, both Mission Impossible films were lame pretenders.
Well I would gladly trade Q for an actual MOVIE PLOT! The last few bond movies have really been a downhill slide for the whole bond franchise. Here's a novel idea, could we make it less about CG and gadgets and get back to a well laid out storyline?!? Oh, and also while we're at it, let's also bring back the laws of physics too (freakin' invisible car -- give me a break!)
god I hope they cut down on the CG in this film. Die Another Day looked horrible
The latest Bond films have been nothing more than 2 hour long product placement ads, and the gadgets off the shelf stuff. Maybe this is a good thing.
I LOVED "Die Another Day"! Sure it wasn't Oscar material, but it was bloody fun! It had all the great elements of a fun Bond story:
* Villian with more money than God.
* Villian with hardware that even the military couldn't produce, somehow deployed without anyone noticing.
* Babes.
* Stupid plot: stop the villian from world domination.
* Bond's gadgets: First there's the homage to the old stuff. Then, c'mon...who doesn't want an invisible car?
* Road-Runner physics
* Bond's ability to magically drive/fly ANY vehicle.
* Bond knows everything about every topic when asked.
* Fine champagne, clothing, living.
Be honest, when Bond was windsurfing the icecaps, didn't you think it was cool as hell (even though it was like completely physically impossible)?
Seriously is Motorola going to let them deny precious screentime for their newest phone?
Huh?
The actor Q?..
I see
(Sorry, had to make this gadget specific somehow)
No Q, No Gadget, no Bond. I'm not watching it.
Q sadly died in mid production of the world is not enough. Therefor how could they add Q to the series? I thought the reason they put R was because Q died and was planning on retireing in the first place?
Well... Bond without gadgets is like a tootsie pop without the center. Unfortunately bond movies these days are crap and golden eye was the last real good movie they made before I believe the original writter died? I forget the real story.
If i'm not mistaken MGM doesn't own the rights anymore and it has been transfered to sony, and so I sure hope they make bond less of a god in the next movie.
I knew this was going to be a flop. When you have this much trouble casting the main character and refuse to re-assess the production timeline you are creating a shit movie. When you take out an integral character like Q from James Bond you are creating a shit movie. It is like the current draft of Xmen 3 where they are going to kill Professor X and Cyclops, you can bet your ass that is going to be a fucking piece of shit of a movie. Fucking hollywood. That whole place needs to go up in flames for fucking up films the way they have and then blaming it on DVDs or downloading...fucking assholes.
No Bond movie will ever surpast Goldeneye
No Bond movie will ever surpast Goldeneye
That's like Batman w/o Alfred.
The only authentic Bond movie was the first one -- Doctor No*. The rest have been Hollywood-ized to a point that poor Ian Fleming would not recognize them.
* What makes it "authentic" is it is the only Bond movie where 007 kills someone in cold blood (the guy who comes into his bedroom to kill him, shoots some pillows Bond stuffed under the blankets and, after chatting with him a bit, is summarily snuffed by Bond's silenced PPK), something that 007 in print did with regularity. Hollywood thought that was unacceptable, so in future Bond films he only killed bad guys who were trying to kill him.
"No Bond movie will ever surpast Goldeneye"
Unfortunately that seems to be the case...
Actually I rather liked Tommorow Never Dies, though it WAS rather bland for a bond movie...but hey...it got me my Michelle Yeoh fix...
No Q, huh ? I always kind of liked the character, but many in here are right IMHO, the overdependance on purpose built gadgets has been out of hand in the past couple films. Bonds gadgets used to do basically one thing (like his ultra powerfull magnetic watch for example), and Bond had to be clever enough to use the right gadget in the right way at the right time...else he would expire in a supremely horrible way. But the last couple films have gone a little like Star Trek TNG
"Oh, we'll just whip up a gadget that does precisely what is needed, no more...no less, and press the big red button. Problem solved !"
But then I am a child of the 80's, and thus I'm probably closer to a disciple of 'McGyver' than I am a Bond-ite (I don't like martinis or fast women, but I never leave home w/out yon leatherman tool) . But it would be kind of nice to see more grit in the character and more ingenuity in the action and less CGI in EVERYTHING. But that statement really could apply to action movies in general these days...
So perhaps THIS prequel will be as good for the franchise as everyone said Batman Begins was for that series. I haven't read ANY of the Bond novels, but if this is near the begining of his career I'm guessing it's also closer to the death of his wife so he would probably have more bitterness and rage (it will take at least a few years for him to rot his soul away and completely anesthetise himself with martinis and cheap sex), and would ostensibly be more green and headstrong, causing him to go off half cocked more often, thus nessecitating more improvisation when he gets in over his head.
Yeah...maybe I'll see it...
Well in the IMDB listing for the new Casino Royale, they've got John Cleese listed as "Q". Not that this necessarily means anything, but it's there...
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0381061/
Damn! Mr. Cleese was a breath of fresh air in the Bond films. Hmmm... If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
At least Bond isn't a chick!!!
One more time:
Yea but a Bond movie with no Q, better yet a Bond movie with no gadgets? thats jsut like any other spy movie. Theres no point in reinventing Bond its way to populart to need to be reinvented.
Q was not in the original 1953 novel by Ian Fleming. My blog (linked in my name) has a chapter by chapter summary and analysis of the Casino Royale novel. (click on the Casino Royale category when you get to the site)
It's a terrific book, and done right, it will make a great movie!
My mother was in the original, Daliah Lavi. I think that it would only be proper to put her in the new one. She played the spy opposite Woody Allen in the spoof version of "Casino Royale". This was still considered a Bond film....looks like they are running out of ideas.........
For the record, the thing Q has in his hand in the photo is a pen grenade (from Goldeneye, if memory serves).
I, like a lot of other people, very much enjoy the Bond series. Connery was the best, hands down, follwed closely by Brosnan, Moore, and distantly by Dalton and Lazenby. And the techno-stuff was getting to be a bit much, so a return to the roots of Bond is a refreshing thing.
And to think that Ian Fleming also wrote a kids book called Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which was made into a movie by the Broccoli family, the same ones that produce the Bond films.
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Oh, and on a side note, I've seen the actual jet used in the opening sequence of Octopussy. I've also met the man that did the flying, a neat gentleman by the name of Corkey Fornoff.
Q is doing Pen Missile!
Karl Urban (Eomer, LotR) is the most recent guess at 007. Thank god they decided againt Colin Farrell.
"At least Bond isn't a chick!!!"
Actually it's 4 chicks. Mighty fine ones at that...
http://www.bondmusic.net/
As for a chinese Bond...meh...let Chow Yun Fat have his dignity. I vastly prefer him as a hitman or gun runner. Unless of course by 'chinese bond' you mean this...
http://www.twelvegirlsband.com/
As good as Bond is, these gals are even better...