Now some of you might be wonder, what is the Bond formula? Well it is the strategy of the entire James Bond film franchise, where an actor is kept for a number of films until his contract expires, or he cannot play the character anymore.
While the actors may change and the technology may advance, the character always remains the same super spy, womanizing badass from good old Britain. The various Bonds have all had these common traits but they are all different enough not to be derivative of each other.
The Daniel Craig Bond is much more of a loose cannon than the previous characters who were by the book. He is typically in conflict with MI6 just as much as he is in conflict with his nemesis at any given movie.
Now you may again ask yourselves, what the hell does James Bond have to do with CBMs? Well the Bond formula of just changing the actor or director for a movie is much similar how in the comic book industry we get a new writer who replaces the old one and gives us his take on the character.
This could easily be applied to not just the Marvel CU, but too all CBMs. Some could argue that the Bond films don't really have a continuity per say like CBMs do, however the Daniel Craig movies all have James Bond fighting a group of very powerful people, controlling the world through the shadows.
And each of his 3 Bond films are different, Casino Royale wasnt much of an action movie as it was really an espionage movie with Bond trying to win a high stakes game of poker. Quantum of Solace was much more of a summer block buster with big explosions and Skyfall appears to be a mix of Quantum with a bit of Nolan esq realism.
Also people always say things like THERE WILL NEVER BE A JOKER AS GOOD AS LEDGER! They said that about Nichelson, they said that about Ceaser Romero and we will at some point get a Joker who will be better than Ledger for the generation of movie goers who havent grown up with Nolans Batman movies.
Robert Downey, Chirs Hemsworth, Mark Ruffallo and Chris Evans all portray theyre respective characters well and people do say we will never get an Iron Man like RDJ or a Thor like Hemsworth.
However we will get more Thor and Iron Man and Hulk movies in the future and at some point we will get a new actor to portray these characters. I mean people said Norton was the best Hulk and now Ruffallo is.
Just because an actor or director is leaving a film franchise doesn't mean we immediately have to reboot it and make all the previous movies non cannon. No, you find a new actor or director or creative team and make a new take on the character that is in the same continuity as the previous films.
This is how comic books have worked for decades now, a writer comes onto a book, does his/her take on the character and leaves for a new writer who gives us their take on the character.
We also don't need to reboot something when a bad movie is made in a franchise, comic books always have a bad comic run, these series usually don't get canceled, they just get a new creative team to work on them and hope it turns out better than the last one.
The reboots fever has a far lesser chance of catching MCU, because all the movies are connected and making a dark Iron Man movie or something would contradict the rest of the universe.
The Bond formula needs to be implemented so that we can have a truly long lasting series of CBMs, and not just a world that is awesome until a bad 3rd film destroys it then the executives get the idiotic idea of just rebooting everything.
The series I want to use the Bond formula is Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man finally gave us a true comic book Spider-Man film, I don't want it too last just 3 movies, if you want to fire the actors or director after a bad movie? Go ahead, but don't ANOTHER reboot just because of a bad movie.
Go back to the drawing board, get what you need to make a new film, give us a little more time to get the bad movie taste out of our mouths then give us the next Spidey movie that is in the same continuity as the ones before, but it is a different take on the character without making all the previous movies non cannon.
What do you guys think of this strategy? Do you think the big companies would undertake a risky plan like this one? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.