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Gardner # 15


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#1 terminus

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Posted 12 October 2005 - 09:33 PM

The proposition is simple - assume that Gardner didn't choose to retire after COLD but was given the year off that he may have asked for. The new Gardner novel debuts in April, 1998 - what would you have liked to see it be about and what do you think it would have been about ?

Here is my opinion, under a few headings, use the title of KISS KISS BANG BANG:

BOND GIRLS

Flicka Von Grusse is dead - so Bond would be in a sort of mourning so we may have seen the girl be a casual fling. She means nothing to him - just a girl to have sex with and pump for information.

Gardner showed a predisposition for having a character turn into a traitor so this book would be no different - the primary Bond girl turns bad and betrays Bond (was she ever really on his side) and we leave Bond with the casual fling.

BOND ALLIES

Gardner didn't seem to like giving Bond a sidekick - but he often placed Bond into the context of working with a team of agents from other countries. Again, this novel is no different - we see Bond work with a Russian and an American, one woman and one man ... the man gets killed, the woman is the traitor.

BOND VILLAINS

Gardner exhausted any return to SPECTRE and exhausted many other acronyms too at the same time as - having pretty much every villain having some sort of connection to a Nazi resurrection. Again, not much difference here, Gardner finally uses the Lustig name he was going to use in SeaFire and ditched - and the villain is a billionaire who laundered Nazi funds through the Swiss Banks and seeks the Spear of Destiny to relaunch the Third Reich. Whilst his views are widely known - he also donates vast amounts of money to Aryan charities.

BOND LOCATIONS

Middle East, Carolina, Florida Keys

BOND GADGETS

Of course - we get the new SAAB replete with gadgets for use in Carolina.

PLOT

Bond might go to the Middle East in this one - tracking down the people who are tracking down the Spear, teams up with a sexy British archaeologist and pumps her for information: she's being funded by Lustig. Lustig eventually tries to take out the archaeological team - but Bond saves the archaeologist, tracks down Lustig to the USA and joins the team of agents, the female agent betrays the team, the male agent is killed and Bond is taken before Lustig on his private island off the Florida Keys. Bond eventually uses the spear to kill Lustig - and escapes to rendezvous with the archaeologist.




WHAT WOULD YOUR GARDNER 15 BE ABOUT ?

#2 coco1997

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Posted 03 January 2011 - 11:30 PM

Bump! With the renewed interest in Gardner as of late, this thread deserves reconsideration.

#3 OmarB

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 12:56 AM

I would have loved to see where Gardner would have gone with Bond. His books are some of my favorites of the whole series (I've got one Benson on my top 10 too). I recently re-read Scorpios, intense.

#4 Mr. Blofeld

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 01:58 AM

I sort of wish they'd done what Fleming had done on Thunderball; take an unfilmed Bond project and "pre"-novelize it. Thunderball turned out well enough, and if Gardner were running out of ideas, then certainly this and the Michael France GoldenEye script would have adapted nicely -- so why didn't they go for it? :)

#5 terminus

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 06:32 PM

I sort of wish they'd done what Fleming had done on Thunderball; take an unfilmed Bond project and "pre"-novelize it. Thunderball turned out well enough, and if Gardner were running out of ideas, then certainly this and the Michael France GoldenEye script would have adapted nicely -- so why didn't they go for it? :)


I think the difference being Fleming had the rights to the plot of Thunderball, or a share of it, whilst Gardner would have had zero claim to the TPOAL or GE plots, as well as EON and Glidrose being seperate entities. EON likely wouldn't have even shared the script with him until the film was well under way with filming.

#6 Mr. Blofeld

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Posted 04 January 2011 - 09:07 PM

I think the difference being Fleming had the rights to the plot of Thunderball, or a share of it, whilst Gardner would have had zero claim to the TPOAL or GE plots, as well as EON and Glidrose being seperate entities. EON likely wouldn't have even shared the script with him until the film was well under way with filming.

I know, but neither of those scripts were ever produced in those forms; change a few names, and who would know? :)

(Save Messrs. France and Ruggiero, of course...)

#7 terminus

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Posted 05 January 2011 - 11:00 PM

Well - the fact is still that EON would have owned the drafts and treatments of the scripts. Even with the fact they weren't filmed, several ideas from both movies (and a fairly hefty amount in GE - if not in GE itself, then several elements in TWINE) turned up in later films. It wouldn't've made financial sense.

Whilst I appreciate the desire to have seen them novelised. I can understand why the concept was never used.