To keep Bond alive, you've got to learn to let go

There is something darkly hilarious about the conundrum that the new owners of the James Bond franchise are struggling with, where they don't know how to relaunch the movies after killing off Daniel Craig's Bond at the end of the last movie.

As if it bloody matters! As if it ever bloody mattered. The next guy can just roll in on his own charm, looking sexy as fuck, killing the bad guys, and literally nobody will care that he blew up at he end of the last film. 

It was a bad idea to kill him off in the first place - absolutely nobody wants to walk out of a Bond film feeling teary-eyed about his noble sacrifice, they want to walk out humming the Bond tune and talking about how neat it was when he shot that dickhead in the kneecaps and jumped off the tallest building in Thailand. 

But even though they had an extraordinarily long time to think about this - No Time To Die was in the can for ages before it appeared at the movies, which raised false hopes that they really had considered all this - the filmmakers still killed Bond off, and are now fretting about how to carry on. 

What it does remind me of is the way DC Comics can't let go of its history whenever it restarts its universe. It makes a big deal about the fresh start with every reboot, but can't concede that recent events in Superman or Green Lantern comics 'don't count' anymore, so they twist their existences into knots to make everything fit.

The post-Crisis DC universe was doomed because some things happened and some didn't, and nobody was sure what the fucking deal was with Hawkman anymore.

Comics lead the way in mass mediums, making mistakes that the rest of the entertainment industry only pick up decades later. But there should be no pride in coming first in this race, because it's still stupid as hell.

The Daniel Craig films have their faults, and doubled down on them through the years, but they were a specific era. So have the new guy come out and beat up people on a beach, wink into the camera, and then get on with things. It's how Bond rolls.