Solace? Not stirred

So James Bond will return. In, er, Quantum Of Solace.

The name of the next 007 film has been announced. And it’s rubbish: Quantum Of Solace. It doesn’t get any better the more you say it.

It sounds like the name of a failed New Romantic band from 1980, or a sci-fi paperback you read when you were 13. It definitely doesn’t sound like the title of the new adventures of Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

To be fair, it is at least authentic Ian Fleming: it was originally the name of a short story from his 1960 anthology of Bond adventures, For Your Eyes Only.

But there’s just something wrong about it. Bond film titles should have glamour, swagger and sex. Goldfinger and Diamonds Are Forever. You Only Live Twice and From Russia With Love. It’s The Man With The Golden Gun, not The Man Who Dabbles In Feng Shui.

Perhaps they should have asked Charlie Higson, who has come up with some distinctly 007-calibre titles for the Young Bond series of novels: SilverFin, Double Or Die and Hurricane Gold. Now that’s the sort of thing you want to see on a cinema poster.

The last Bond movie with a dodgy title was 1989’s uninspired Licence To Kill, a last-minute replacement for the original title, Licence Revoked, which more accurately summed up the plot, in which 007 is dismissed by MI6 (largely for being Timothy Dalton). But, according to urban legend, they had to change it because American audiences didn’t know what ‘revoked’ meant.

It’s lucky, though, that the new Daniel Craig era of 007 looks to have done away with the tradition that the theme song must be named after the film (except for Octopussy, when Tim Rice bottled it and turned in All-Time High) or at least mention it in the lyrics (see Carly Simon’s Nobody Does It Better, with that casual throwaway reference to “the spy who loved me”).

Imagine trying to write a worldwide top 10 hit around the title Quantum Of Solace. Not even the combined forces of Duran Duran and A-ha could manage that.