James Bond

Short Answer: Spin-off with side characters... or ones who are only implied

The latest Bond movie, No Time to Die, is officially the 25th in the franchise, one of the largest and longest-running of them all. And the star is on record as saying he is done with being Bond.

There has been a call to re-make the character as Jane Bond, and that works if you ascribe to the fan theory that there is no "James Bond" as such, that this is just the code name for whatever agent current holds the 007 designation. (Which makes much more sense to be than the theory that has Bond as Dr. Who-like time lord). Many such a character name turns out to be job title, such as Green Lantern and (spoilers for Princess Bride) Dread Pirate Roberts. 

There have been pretenders to the Bond throne too, from Jason Bourne to the new Kingsman series.

So maybe it's time to give Bond himself a break and explore his larger world. Some possibilities:

What if 007 graduates, potentially, to becoming M? While both Connery and Moore are, sadly, gone, Pierce Brosnan would make a great M. Wouldn't it be interesting to see what M does all day? All the various agents and cases that administrator oversees? All the other governmental departments, and foreign counterparts, they interact with? There may not be as much action down that road, but intrigue can still be intriguing. 

Another path to consider is that of Q's. Yes, gadget-inventing is interesting, but I'm talking about having Q leave the lab for... reasons. "But I'm not a field agent!" he protests. "You are today," M tells him. I see this as a sort of high-tech MacGyver adventure. Q lacks Bond's combat skills, but he is smarter and more disciplined. He could find a clever way to thwart a threat that Bond would never come up with. Ben Whishaw, the current Q, easily has the charisma to star in a movie. Also, since he is not 00 designated, he cannot kill and so is forced into even cleverer solutions.

Are these too stuffy and geeky, respectively? Well, there is another agent we could follow: Felix Leiter. At least seven people have played this role, meaning that it's another code name/designation... or that Mr. Leiter is a master of disguise. (Spoilers for No Time to Die) Yes, he dies in the new movie, but when has that ever meant anything in movie-dom? For all we know, there are as many Felix Leiters as there are Black Widows, which could also explain the variety of his appearance. Or we could show Felix's origins, or even revisit the Craig films from his standpoint, Rosencrantz-style.

And if all of these leave you cold, we learn in Thunderball that there are nine agents with "00"-- or license-to-kill, um, licenses-- from 001 through 009. Fleming himself mentions 0011in the Moonraker novel. So... what are all of these other agents busy with? Yes, some we know, but we also know that-- if both the novels and the films are canonical-- that several of the numbers have been recycled; there have been at least three 003s, one of whom was a woman. What are the other 00's adventures like?

Also, we have had white guys as M and then a woman-- Dame Judy Dench. So this time, we have to switch it up again, demographically speaking. Alexander Sidding, some will recognize from A short stint on Game of Thrones, but more as Dr. Bashir on Deep Space Nine, is my vote. There is sort of an in-joke here. While Capt. Picard role-played on the Holodeck as a film noir detective, Dr. Bashir role played there (or "there"?) as a Bond-esque agent. The joke-- he's now IN a Bond movie... and is still not playing Bond. 

The future of the Bond series may in fact lay... beyond Bond. 

Monsterverse (Godzilla)

Short Answer: Gamera

For a whole "universe" of monsters, the Monsterverse has been very focused on just one-- Godzilla-- and marginally interested in just one more: King Kong. While there are innumerable movies about both stretching back decades, almost to the beginnings of film itself, the official "Monsterverse" has had-- since 2014-- two movies about the lizard, one about the gorilla, and one about both.

But despite the recent re-appearance of Godzilla's rogue's-gallery mainstays like Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah, there is another kaiju that has not been re-introduced.

His name is Gamera, and he is a gigantic, flying, fire-breathing turtle. To fly, he pulls in his hind legs, and rocket-fire shoots out instead. 

I know, insane. But also... insane! In a good way.

One way this terrifyingly colossal reptile is different from the other one is that he has a soft spot for kids. This makes his story ripe for a Miyazaki-style story of wonder and friendship, instead of another "big thing knocks down other big things" special-effects spectacular. 

I am not making Gamera up, either. There were some 14 movies with him early on, and a reboot in 1995. He's not as big (ha ha) elsewhere as in Japan, but with the right marketing-- showcasing his legacy as a character-- a Gamera movie might be, well, huge.

Middle Earth (Tolkien)

Short Answer: The Tolkien Reader... or The Kalevala and The Ring of the Nibelung

Peter Jackson's cinematic vision of the Lord of the Rings novels is beloved, and rightly so. His version of The Hobbit... less so, if only because taffy-pulling this one shortish novel into three epic movies was never a great idea to begin with.

But now Amazon is putting out The Rings of Power, a prequel series, set in the Second Age of Middle Earth.  I don't know to what degree the series is based on actual books Tolkien wrote, or if it is just pulled from various notes he made about his world's origins, but the Tolkien estate is involved, so that will help ensure that the show stays true to the sources, whatever they are. 

It is good that that Amazon is not trying to remake the books that Jackson retold, though. 

The very name "Tolkien" is somewhat synonymous with the concept of "epic" at this point, and many feel that the next Tolkien epic to tackle is his Simarillion. However, the estate is adamant about not selling the rights to that work or having it adapted. So it's really a non-starter to even discuss it.

I wonder, though, if they opposite approach might be tried-- instead of epics, maybe a series of stand-alone films could be assayed. The book The Tolkien Reader collects several of his shorter works, some of which seem adaptable: Farmer Giles of Ham, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhtheelm's Son, and Leaf By Niggle... as well as The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, a figure who was in the Lord of the Rings books but cut from the movies because he mostly recited long poems. (Also in the Reader is On Fairy-Stories, but that seems more like an essay than a narrative.) There are other stand-alone works as well.

But an entirely different work might also be adapted. This is the work, the epic, that inspired Tolkien to begin with: The Kalevala. This is a Finnish tale with the scope of myth equal to that of the Norse tales, the Gilgamesh stories, or tales like the labors of Hercules and the Odyssey. The Kalevala is not all that family friendly, from what I gather-- but then neither are The Witcher or Game of Thrones, and not everything has to be at the Harry Potter level of family friendliness. 

And while the Beowulf story, which also inspired Tolkien, was made into a movie (that now, sadly, looks like a janky video game), the Ring of the Nibelung story, which Tolkien drew from, has not. The Norse epic was famously made into a very long opera series by Wagner (a set of four full-length operas!), and occasionally performed in marathon sessions by opera houses-- in German. This presentation is, well, not all that approachable to most audiences, and an epic movie series is warranted.

As for what Jackson's next fantasy-movie project should be? I think that the one who brought Gollum to life should also tell the story of the Golem. 

Marvel Cinematic Universe/ X-Men

Short Answer: A) Two more Hulk movies and B) a better way to introduce the X-Men to the MCU (hint: it's Storm).

A) There are six Avengers in the first Avengers movie. Four of them are super-powered.

Captain America (who gets a trilogy), Iron Man (who gets a trilogy), Thor (who got a trilogy and is now getting a part 4!), and the Hulk. 

Who gets... a movie... that was not even an MCU movie but was retcon-ed into it.

One of the best Hulk storylines in the comic books is called Planet Hulk. They made it into an animated movie. In it, Hulk lands becomes a gladiator on a distant planet and liberates his fellow inmate-warriors. You might recall this as the plot of the third Thor movie, in which Hulk does not lead the rebellion.

But why do the Marvel people treat Hulk so shabbily? Why doesn't he get a trilogy, or at least two more movies that are properly MCU movies, in which he is played my Mark Ruffalo?

At the end of the Edward Norton version, Hulk is in a pine forest learning to control his power. When we meet him in the MCU, he is treating patients in a poor Asian village. OK, how'd he get from one place to the other? Where's that story, for starters?

And then Betty Ross, Hulk's girlfriend in the Norton movie-- daughter to General "Thunderbolt" Ross-- is AWOL. A movie could explain what happens to her and fill in more holes in Hulk's timeline. She disappeared in the Snap and came back with everyone else, and her story may be continued from that point in the She Hulk series. I'm talking about what happened to her between she had Hulk parting ways in the Norton movie and the Snap.

B) The other questions are what to do about Black Panther now that Chadwick Boseman is gone... and how to integrate the X-Men in to the MCU (now that Disney has the rights to them). Their answer to the second question revolves plopping Professor X into the next Dr. Strange movie.

But there is a much better way that also solves the Black Panther issue. And it also plugs a whole in the X-Men storyline. Yes, it solves all three problems at once!

See, Storm and T'challa-- in the comic books-- were a couple. They even get married. 

So... integrate Storm into the next Black Panther movie, and made it a prequel. Set it before T'Challa joins the Avengers, when he is dating Storm, when she was still Ororo Munroe

As was implied by the title "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," there was going to be a series of such movies for each of the original X-Men. In the first movie, Wolverine (still just Logan then) shows up and meets Professor X, Cyclops (whose origins we see), Storm, and Jean Grey. They are the professors; the rest are still students. 

Putting Storm in the next Panther movie reboots the "X-Men Origins" sub-series and gives the X-Men franchise a place to "go," now that it has been to both the past and future.  

Yes, Hollywood was hesitant to have a female-led superhero movie after Supergirl, Elektra, and Catwoman. But now we have had Captain Marvel, Black Widow, and Wonder Woman prove that a woman can lead a superhero movie successfully. Wonder Woman even got a sequel.