James Bond 26will begin scripting soon now thatAmazon MGM Studios has settled on Denis Villeneuveas the next director in the action franchise. But we live in a time when AI is rife and everyone believes that technology will soon be writing movies, creating all the special effects and even taking over the roles of our most beloved actors. So, we encouraged an AI chatbot to let us know everything about the nextJames Bondmovie, giving it a chance to live up to its potential, like the proud parents of Skynet when it infiltrates its first top-secret political document. And what we got could be a James Bond parody calledTry Another Cliché.
Despite the claims that AI is coming to take everyone’s jobs, we all know that it can make mistakes – some glaring, terrible and butt-clenching mistakes. It can also make things up. Ask it to tell you the plot of a movie that doesn’t exist, and it will tell you exactly what happens in it. Ask it to tell you the plot of a movie that does exist, and it will often do exactly the same thing.
An AI Chatbot Can Cast James Bond Better Than Amazon’s Painful Rumored Shortlist - Just Don’t Look at Its Reasoning
You know the names it suggests, but you would never guess the often bizarre reasons behind them.
From suggesting that Macaulay Culkin appeared inHome Alone 3,to recounting in detail the moment inThe Lord of the Ringswhen Gandalf personally flew into Mordor on the back of those eagles to save Frodo and Sam, AI can come up with some pretty inaccurate stuff when it doesn’t quite understand the millions of web pages it sucks information from. So how does it fare when being asked to plot out the nextJames Bondmovie? We gave it the option to bemore devious than Blofeld, but in the end it decided to be more of a blowhard.
James Bond: Redacted - An AI Adventure in Clichés
Under the “speculative” title ofBond: Redacted– quite possibly a worse title thanThe Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies(it does exist and was released in 1964… which might explain something) – the plot begins like this.
The details sound vague and plausible enough to have come from any action movie – and no doubt that is exactly where they have come from, any action movie that the bot scraped on its way to churning it out. While it apparently knows that most Bond movies have a cold open, it is clear that details are not the strong point of an AI-generated synopsis. A pre-007 Bond, a location, and a mission that goes wrong. All done ina dark and drearyChildren of Men-style, apparently. For anyone who doesn’t nod off, there will obviously be a big Bond theme song to take them into the heart of the story. By Billie Eilish and Hans Zimmer, no less.
Why Now Is the Perfect Time for James Bond To Go Back to the ’60s
It’s time for James Bond to flee the 2020s and head back to the 1960s.
Fans of the Bond franchise will not have to be told that Eilish won an Oscar for herNo Time to Dietheme song, and Zimmer provided the score for Daniel Craig’s final outing. So, in this new era of Bond, the best the AI model can suggest when devising a new, exciting Bond tune is a rinse-and-repeat of the latest collaboration of the franchise. As it notes:
“A Billie Eilish x Hans Zimmer collaboration reprises the tone of No Time to Die, but with more modern intensity – symbolizing Bond’s rebirth.”
Now, if someone could just explain how a four-year-old song can have “more modern intensity,” that would be smashing because I genuinely have no idea what that means.
A Three-Act Bond Movie That Sounds Incredibly Familiar
Getting into the main plot of the movie, it doesn’t take long to see cracks appearing, and the AI owning itself with a couple of big gaffs and some dialogue suggestions cringeworthy enough to make your toes curl all the way back to the heel.
The suggestion of Emily Watson taking on the role of M would be a solid shout, but more questionable is that of Naomie Harris – whose name the AI cannot even spell correctly. Harris is no stranger to the Bond franchise,having played the role of Moneypenny in three of Craig’s movies, but in throwing her name into the mix, it looks like the AI is suggesting that Moneypenny deserves a very big promotion.
After some scene setting, the chatbot then generated details of the main villain, and the juicy middle of the story. As seen in the detailed description below, classic-sounding Bond villain Felix Greaves – so classic it seems to have pulled the surname fromDie Another Day’s Gustav Graves – is your stereotypical aggrieved MI6 agent who has gone rogue - similar to Goldeneye’s Alec Travelyan then. Where does it get these ideas from? Moreover, the plot continues with Bond being framed for something he did not do, while trotting around many visually stunning destinations with a “peer-level” female agent that is definitely “not a Bond Girl” beside him. Almost likeNo Time to Die, then.
This is a James Bond movie plot, though, and even AI knows that the bad guy must die, the disaster must be averted, and Bond must be crowned Bond and welcomed back to the bosom of MI6 as a hero. Or, as the terrible dialogue puts it, “You’re not who we expected, Bond. But perhaps you’re exactly who we need.”
It is hard to really know how the movie pans out in this third act, because the AI seems to have lost its way like a writer on a show that has just been renewed for Season 36 when it only had a story that could stretch to Season 4. We aren’t sure what an “experimental identity cloak” that definitely isn’t a gadget and seems to rely on Bond’s “wit and deception” may be. Then there is the question of why Bond would ever consider becoming the bad guy and using the villain’s “surveillance archive” for his own ends. Maybe at this point the AI just didn’t feel it was being paid enough and tapped out.
So, asDenis Villeneuve prepares to take the helm ofBond 26, and the world waits to discover who he will be directing as the next generation of 007, we can rest safe in the knowledge that no one is going to be calling on AI bots to draft the script or even develop the plot of the movie. Your jobs are safe, and hopefully James Bond the Sixth will get a much better introduction than the one you have just read.
