Bond 25: “This time, it’s repetitive!”

Bond mourning the death of Madeline Swann in Bond 25?

With the news that Lea Seydoux, the female lead of SPECTRE, will make a return appearance in Bond 25, the “Writing’s on the Wall” where the next 007 film is heading.

Unlike the usual Bond news, this isn’t from an unidentified source. It comes from Bond 25’s director himself, Cary Fukunaga via Daily Mail scribe Baz Bamigboye.

What can we expect?

Madeleine Swann’s life expectancy won’t be very long in terms of screen time. SPECTRE was a kind-of, sort-of remake of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.  One of the trailers even used a new recording of John Barry’s main theme for the 1969 film.

And, a draft of the script, dated one week before the start of filming, had Bond telling Swann, “We have all the time in the world.” While that didn’t make the final film, it was pretty clear that Swann was supposed to be the 2.0 version of Tracy from Majesty’s.

Thus, Swann is likely to get bumped off, perhaps in the pre-titles sequence.

“But you don’t know that!” No, I don’t. But it’s pretty pointless to bring Seydoux back for a scene where she and Bond break up. When Ian Fleming had Bond break up with Tiffany Case, it happened between the novels Diamonds Are Forever and From Russia With Love.

Meanwhile, it’d be even worse if Seydoux is dragged throughout Bond 25. In SPECTRE, Seydoux’s Swann was convincing when she hated Bond. She was less than convincing when she supposedly fell in love with him. Imagine that for an entire movie. It’ll be bad. B.A.D.

If Swann gets bumped off, Bond is out for revenge — again. Or, put another way, the series will again fall back on a trope it has used multiple times beginning with 1989’s Licence to Kill.

“But if that happens, we’ll finally get a faithful adaptation of the You Only Live Twice novel!” The thing about the novel You Only Live Twice is that Bond fell apart once. That’s what made it so special.

Eon has already cherry picked the You Only Live Twice novel (and The Man With the Golden Gun novel) for Skyfall. The 2012 film had Judi Dench’s M writing Bond’s obiituary, a la You Only Live Twice, just substituting “Turkey” for “Japan.” Bond was a broken man who has to get his mojo back.

So now, Eon gets to cherry pick the novel again, like fixing a meal from Thanksgiving leftovers. Will Daniel Craig’s 007 be a broken man again? If Swann gets killed early in Bond 25, how much screen time will Craig have of being on the edge?

“Mind you, all of this is pure guess work,” as M said in the movie You Only Live Twice. But if these guesses are at all close to what’s in store for Bond 25, the film’s advertising slogan is obvious. “This time, it’s repetitive!”