If you don't feel like clicking through, here's the list:
10. High Time To Kill (Raymond Benson)
9. Young Bond (Charlie Higson)
8. License Renewed (John Gardner)
7. For Special Services (John Gardner)
6. Icebreaker (John Gardner)
5. Devil May Care (Sebastian Faulks)
4. Scorpius (John Gardner)
3. Colonel Sun (Kingsley Amis)
2. The Man With The Red Tattoo (Raymond Benson)
1. Carte Blanche (Jeffery Deaver)
Not a bad list though I would put Nobody Lives Forever on the list.
ReplyDelete"Carte Blanche" in the No. 1 spot? "Devil May Care" in the list at all? Who compiled this list? SPECTRE? Although, I DO agree with three of the Gardner titles. "Icebreaker" would make a very interesting Bond film. Very interesting indeed.
ReplyDeleteYeah, both CB at No. 1 and DMC on the list at all seem very weird to me, too! Lots of Gardner's stuff is filmable, but like John I'd definitely rate Brokenclaw as being moreso than Scorpius. But, like Count Istvan, my top top top choice of Gardner adaptation (and of any non-Fleming book adaptation for that matter) would be Nobody Lives Forever. My top three would be Nobody Lives Forever, Colonel Sun and Benson's Doubleshot. Speaking of Benson, I'm surprised Facts of Death didn't make their list, too.
DeleteLet's see decent, un-disguised adaptations of Moonraker, You Only Live Twice (suicide castle idea at least) or The Spy Who Loved Me (which would make an awesome west end play) before we start dragging up Carte Blanche, shall we? I doubt the Fleming estate would object to it being filmed against Fleming's wishes if it makes $1bn. Or is it a bit too close to the ending of Skyfall?
ReplyDeleteDevil May Care is a highlights reel of Fleming's work, I doubt it would work as a movie (it didn't as a book) without people thinking "Oh, the villain is cheating in a tennis match, like the golf match in Goldfinger, the bridge game in Moonraker, the backgammon in Octopussy..."
The big difference being that in all of the examples you mention, Bond himself cottons to the cheating and puts a devious stop to it. In DMC Bond was never once remotely proactive, so instead SOMEONE ELSE figures out what's going on and puts a stop to it! I agree that DMC would make a terrible movie. (But it's a good title if they want to take only that aspect...)
DeleteI also agree that it would be cool to see some straightforward adaptations of Fleming books they took only the titles from - most especially YOLT. That would work well for Craig's Bond, but it would be too similar to Skyfall to do immediately following.
Sorry, but "Carte Blanche", while well-written and nicely capturing certain English phrasing, wasn't a memorable book at all. To me, anyway.
ReplyDelete"The Spy Who Loved Me" would be interesting, but the story closely resembles "Woman In The Dark", a little-known Dashiell Hammett novella.
'"Carte Blanche", while well-written and nicely capturing certain English phrasing'
DeleteI'm English and it felt like he'd scattered some very odd cultural references and bits of slang over the manuscript, and wasn't too worried where they landed.
There's also the bizarre bit where we're told that terrorism isn't like it was in the IRA days, because now terrorists go after civilians.
"Devil May Care" not in the No. 1 spot? "Carte Blanche" in the list at all? Who compiled this list: Quantum?!
ReplyDeleteThe glaring omission for me is the comic Permission to Die. That was great fun, I thought.
Stephen, I really love Permission to Die, too (especially that opening, which always struck me as sort of a variation of Gardner's FSS opening only on the ground), but I can't really imagine the whole thing as a movie. It was pretty disjointed, with the best bits alluding so directly to the movies of FRWL and YOLT that they probably wouldn't work (again) on film. And the third book seemed to come out of nowhere to me (two or three years late, as I recall), and felt pretty different from the first two. But it does make a great comic, nonetheless. My favorite comic was Serpent's Tooth, but that was pretty Roger Moore-y and would lend itself to Craig. Probably too sci-fi for Movie Bond anyway.
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