Hence Logan penning an op-ed in The New York Times. While he acknowledges Eon Productions—which has overseen the Bond franchise for decades and is still essentially a family-run business led by half-siblings Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson—has ironclad control over the franchise, Logan fears corporate interests can still apply pressure. “From my experience, here’s what happens to movies when such concerns start invading the creative process,” said Logan. “Everything gets watered down to the most anodyne and easily consumable version of itself. The movie becomes an inoffensive shadow of a thing, not the thing itself.” Logan (rightfully) credits the Broccoli family as the reason the Bond franchise has endured so persuasively through the decades. Tastes and movie trends change year to year, and decade to decade, but the family that’s at least been one-half of the creative impetus of the series since 1962’s Dr. No has remained in place, shepherding the series from a place of passion. According to Logan, working on the creative process of a Bond film is like a lively discussion at a family table, one where no executives are present to run the numbers on an idea. “That’s why we don’t have a mammoth Bond Cinematic Universe,” Logan explained, “with endless anemic variations of 007 sprouting up on TV or streaming or in spinoff movies. The Bond movies are truly the most bespoke and handmade films I’ve ever worked on. That’s why they are original, thorny, eccentric and special. They were never created with lawyers and accountants and e-commerce mass marketing pollsters hovering in the background.” And it’s true, there is something refreshingly old-fashioned about 007, and we don’t just mean his insistence on formal wear and dry martinis. While Bond is a franchise crafted around convention and formula, each era of 007 seeks to find its own voice, and even its own Bond. They’re also content with being singular, standalone cinematic experiences that occur only every few years. Having a franchise film you’re allowed to just sit with, and consider independently from its franchise, as opposed to view merely as the latest cog in an inter-connected media strategy’s ceaselessly spinning wheel, feels like a balm in 2021. You don’t walk out of a Bond movie worried about the glorified teaser trailer for the next one in four months which ran over the end credits.
