More Bond: The best thing thay could do is to forget making Bond "relevant." The stories are period pieces. So treat them as such. Make a movie that actually takes place at the height of the cold war. Casino Royale would work. A real treatment of Moonraker would be great, and certainly still "relevant" considering the Norks and Iranians threatening to Hugo Drax us.

Did you all see Tailor of Panama? That was how the Bond stories should be treated. Gritty, no cardboard heroes, lots of intrigue, minimal gadgetry. In the books, Bond is a hard-boozing, chain-smoking, thoroughly bigoted male chauvinist pig. No sense trying to make him otherwise. Let's not play dumb: it was what made the character work.

More: Massie's take is not without merit, though he does not explain how he would "return to the roots" of Bond without making period films. (He also mentions Bond's "double first in Oriental Languages at Cambridge," another idiotic detail that the script writers made up for "You Only Live Twice." James Bond would never go to Cambridge! Besides, the Oxbridge life was closed to him after he got kicked out of Eton for getting one of the housemaids in a family way.)