With news that Sam Mendes is on board to direct Bond 24 (link), it's curious to note how many people are already declaring the as-yet unmade film will be brilliant or a disaster. It's a classic case of projecting one's best hopes or worst fears and becoming convinced one's thoughts are real. They're thoughts shaped out of acquired preferences, learned tendencies for either polarity or non-polarity response and generalizations about what names like 'Sam Mendes' equates to.

Here's the thing that interests me: it's a curious by-product of devotion.

SKYFALL and STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS are two great examples of highly successful films which have attracted bitter criticism from a large number of franchise fans.

It takes devotion to get that upset by making the Enterprise eight times larger than it used to be. (By the way, it's not twice as big: it's twice as long; and twice as tall and twice as wide). It takes devotion to an expectation of who James Kirk is to get that upset by his new-found juvenility.

Here's my untested theory:

When a franchise has been going as long as James Bond, it will attract many fans who are devoted to a favourite film, a favourite actor, a favourite style or a favourite era. The greater the devotion, the more difficult it becomes to please. If you're utterly devoted to GOLDFINGER and the Sean Connery 007 films (as am I), Bond 24 faces the double bind that if it's too much like GOLDFINGER it'll be rip-off and a pastiche and they should have left the GOLDFINGER thing alone; and if it's nothing like GOLDFINGER, it'll just not be like the heyday of Bond films, i.e. GOLDFINGER.

I used to joke that the only people who thought SKYFALL was the best Bond film ever (we mustn't forget the comic book guy emphasis on the word 'ever') were those who also added, "and I'm not even a fan of James Bond films, normally".

I thought that last little bit of the declaration was the telling sign. I told myself it was the James Bond film for people who don't like James Bond films.

Of course, that was just me falling for the illusory reality of my thinking. See, we all do it.

But here's the thing. History teaches us that it takes an outsider to re-invigorate a franchise and not get locked into the more-of-the-same thing that trapped directors like John Glen. It takes someone free of the past to create the future.

Prior to SKYFALL at least, there were a lot more people not yet converted to Bond than ones devoted. That's the bigger sea to go fish in. If James Bond is going to survive another fifty years, it has to keep fishing in new seas, not old ones. It has to convert new fans, not just entertain old ones, many of whom have become grumpy and impossible to please. Like a snake, it occassionally has to shed its skin to grow new skin.

It's the outsider directors who know how to fish in those new seas. Abrams may have alienated a proportion of devoted Trek fans but he's probably converted many more new ones. And it may be to his films, not the original series, that these new fans become most devoted. Mendes is seemingly achieving the same with 007.

I'm still devoted to the old Sean Connery films with classic John Barry scores. But, y'know, that time is past. Do we continue by pastiching that era? I might not be a great fan of 'new Bond'. SKYFALL didn't convert me. Bond 24 may or may not do so either. But I've got my Bond films to treasure.

It's no disrespect to the past to create a new future. And it doesn't help anyone when a franchise dies of entropy. That's why franchises like Bond and Trek need people like Mendes and Abrams, even if they're not creating their works for old school die-hards like me.