My suggestions for getting the next Bond movies right.

I must admit, the news last week that Jeff Bezos and Amazon MGM had acquired creative control over the James Bond films from producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson took me by surprise.

Broccoli and Wilson are half siblings and members of the Broccoli family, which via Eon Productions has shepherded the Bond franchise since the early Sixties. (Albert “Cubby” Broccoli co-produced Dr. No in 1962.) Famously, Cubby Broccoli and his heirs have always been very jealous of their control over the films. There have been lawsuits. Many, many lawsuits. That’s why, despite the fact that Amazon MGM was already involved in the distribution of the films, I didn’t expect that the Broccoli family would ever willingly relinquish the real decision-making. But . . . I suppose it’s pretty hard to say no to a $1 billion offer.

I’ll put my cards on the table: I’m a Bond fan. I like the films, and I look forward to more of them — but I had my doubts that the transition to the post-Daniel Craig era would go very well under Broccoli and Wilson.

That’s mostly, but not exclusively, because of when that era began.

Craig’s finale, 2021’s No Time to Die, hit theaters at the height of the woke surge of the pandemic years. At the time, there was a genuine possibility that the producers would choose that moment to go in a new, “diverse” direction, with, say, Idris Elba playing Bond or with Ana de Armas reprising her spy character in the Bond universe.

Elba is a fine actor, and de Armas is — let’s face it — hot, but neither of them was going to be able to carry a James Bond film because neither of them could be James Bond.

Now, well — I’m still not certain it’s going to go perfectly under Amazon, but the temptation to kowtow to the wokesters’ demands is lower today than it was three or four years ago. That’s good news. Instead, I think Amazon’s temptation will be to justify its $1 billion investment by going The Full Star Wars on Bond: demanding and producing a variety of disjointed, mediocre streaming spin-offs and reboots to go along with the tentpole Bond feature films.

That, in my view, would be a mistake. James Bond is a man who belongs in novels and movies — ideally good ones. TV is too low-brow, too cheap, too unglamorous.

Here are my suggestions for getting Bond right (minor spoilers below):

(1) Cast the Right Bond

He should be Scottish, or at least English. He should be a he, and preferably in his mid- to upper twenties so that he can play Bond four or even five times over the next 15 to 20 years. He should be a B- or C-lister with potential — young enough to play the role for a while, but mature enough to carry the role immediately.

Daniel Craig’s five Bond movies are an uneven bunch, even if I’d place them with the first five Sean Connery films as the best stretch of the 26-flick series. 2006’s Casino Royale is a work of art. 2012’s Skyfall is excellent. 2015’s Spectre and No Time to Die are flawed but buoyed by strong set pieces and the fact that they look fantastic. (2008’s Quantum of Solace should probably be called a “bad movie”; it was a mistake to try to complete it during the 2007–2008 writers’ strike.)

What unites the five, however, is the fact that Daniel Craig’s James Bond is utterly believable. He’s athletic, and brooding, but he can crack a grin and display a bemused wit and a wry sense of humor. Despite multiple directors, multiple writers, and a mix of good and bad plot ideas, Craig shouldered everything and made it all work.

If Jeff Bezos’s Amazon gets its James Bond right, those movies will work too. If they don’t, they won’t. Easier said than done, of course.

(2) Set Bond Back in the Cold War

There’s a lot of talk that Bond films must be set in the present era, that part of Bond’s charm is that he’s always “timeless” as he moves through the decades. That’s a lot of crock. The Sean Connery Bond movies have no sense at all that they’re timeless. No one meant them to be so. They’re set during the Cold War, and discernibly in the ’60s.

Similarly, whatever else they are, the Craig Bond movies are set in a recognizably post–Cold War period. The conjecture that Bond is “timeless” is mere backward reasoning. It’s an unnecessary artifact of nerdzor fanboys’ obsession with making sure that every last thing in their favorite movies is canonical.

In reality, Bezos and Amazon have two options: They can reboot the series, or they can cast a new Bond and start the next movie in medias res.

But the problem with the latter option is that the Craig era ended with Bond’s death in No Time to Die — a self-sacrificial death at that, in which the famously selfish assassin finally learned to love. In doing so, the franchise tied its loose plot threads up in a bow.

So starting in medias res wouldn’t really make sense — but rebooting the series with an origin story set in the present day would cause every future decision to be immediately compared to the Craig reboot.

If, instead, Amazon set the new films in the ’60s, Bond could return to fighting Soviet Commies, always glorious cinematic baddies, and international terrorists but in an earlier, more elegant age. And there’d be no need to pay any heed to the previous cannon or write in artificial fan service.

Also — one of the worst things about the post-2000 Bond films is that Bond is constantly on his cellphone.

James Bond should not be texting! James Bond should not be sending emojis! James Bond should not be downloading the Waze app on his Nokia smartphone!

Even worse, in recent movies, Bond is practically always being surveilled, tracked, and watched over by friends and foes alike. Setting the films back in the Cold War would put Bond back in an era in which MI6 can’t track him with the push of a button and where he’s truly on his own. Let James Bond use his wits to get out of a jam, instead of simply calling up the cavalry to come help out.

(3) Give Us Bond’s Backstory. But Not All at Once

I don’t think a full accounting of Bond’s origin story (down to his childhood, service in the Royal Navy, etc.) is strictly necessary. Part of the Bond mystique, in my view, is that he’s an assassin whose background has always been somewhat vague. But if Amazon insists on filling in the blank spots on the map — and I’m sure it will — I suggest spooling that information out slowly. Make it a slow burn. Let the audience find out a few things in the first film. Dribble out some more information in the second and third. And, then, tie those pieces of biographical information into a critical plot point that pays off in the climactic movie.

A linear reveal of Bond’s background would be a mistake. There are subtler ways of telling that story.