Bond 21

So the twenty-first Bond film is in the works, without Pierce Brosnan, and I was thinking about it.

The details right now are pretty sparse at CommanderBond.net, but the only thing we know so far is that it will be loosely based on Ian Fleming's Casino Royale, and that Bond will deliver one-liners with astonishing alacrity, especially after or before sleeping with several beautiful women.

Now, a Bond film based on an original Fleming would be great news to me, if Die Another Day hadn't been based (apparently) on Moonraker. Of course, this actually puts Die Another Day in wonderful context, it makes total sense that the foundation for Die Another Day was the worst Bond film made before it. Although I don't really see the connection at all, but that's what the sources say . . .

In any case, people are weighing in on their choice for Bond. I've heard Clive Owen, Hugh Jackman, Jude Law, and a bunch of other names being thrown around. It should probably be a lesser known actor, but that's not what I'm thinking about right now.

Because I've decided that if this next Bond will be any good, the opening song has to be done by Coldplay.

Must be. No one else. Coldplay satisfies all the requirements and then some. Big name, popular, but slightly edgy and British. One of the problems with Die Another Day was that it had the worst opening song ever, because Madonna's brassiere is the only thing that's edgy about her, and she only thinks she's British. Garbage was decent, and Sheryl Crow wasn't bad (but not British). Moby actually made the soundtrack to Tomorrow Never Dies worthwhile.

But Coldplay . . . now, their songs already sound like they could be Bond theme songs. Listen to "Politik" and tell me that doesn't sound like a Bond theme. It's got the themes, the slow start, languid and smooth, operatically rising to a fairly hard hitting climax.

Anyone that has seen a Bond intro knows that the song has to go with the intro, which means two things. Naked women and guns. If you listen to a song, and you can't envision a naked women diving into some kind of liquid or sitting on a bed, a gun firing, or a naked woman being fired out of a gun, or a gun being fired by a naked woman, then the song can't possibly be used as a Bond theme. (By the way, I'm copyrighting that last sentence).

To put it simply, the song has to have the "bang-bang" or the "oooh,sexy." Of course, the best Bond songs have the "ooooh, sexy bang bang." I'm copyrighting that one too. I guess that could apply for the movie itself too.

But Coldplay's "Politik", and several of their other songs, sound pretty good as Bond themes.

They could go with a harder sound that's been the trend recently, or their could go with an older sound, using the piano lines that were used in earlier Bond songs, like Wings' "Live and Let Die". Listen to Coldplay's "Scientist", which is too soft for a Bond theme, but you hear the requisite movement, very driven. Speed it up and add John Barry's electric bass, some distortion guitar, and I think we have a nice Bond theme.

Chris Martin would be an excellent choice, since it's about time they go back to a lead male vocal. The last one was a-ha's "The Living Daylights", if I'm not mistaken, and a-ha is fairly vocally andrygynous, like most other Euro pop of the time. While Chris Martin doesn't have the lounge singer voice of Tom Jones (Thunderball), Matt Monro (From Russia With Love), or even Louis Armstrong (We Have All The Time in the World - for On Her Majesty's Secret Service), he's got a great voice nonetheless.

Radiohead would work too, but Thom York is too much of an "artist" and Radiohead would never do it.

We could even compromise. Chris Martin could slip in a reference to his daughter Apple, thereby doing a Bond song and making the requisite "just-had-a-baby" song.