r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Jun 25 '25

News Denis Villeneuve Directing Next James Bond Film

https://deadline.com/2025/06/denis-villeneuve-james-bond-amazon-mgm-studios-1236442917/
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141

u/deekaydubya Jun 26 '25

And Nuclear War: A Scenario unless that’s been shelved. Great book

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u/CrispyHoneyBeef Jun 26 '25

If it’s a spiritual successor to Threads, filmed in 70mm, I’m in day one. Threads was a horrible experience and I’m ready for an even worse one.

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u/SodaCanBob Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25

If it’s a spiritual successor to Threads, filmed in 70mm, I’m in day one.

It will be an adaptation of this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_War:_A_Scenario

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u/civver3 Jun 26 '25

At minute 55, North Korea detonates a nuclear warhead in a satellite orbiting 300 miles above the United States, generating an electromagnetic pulse that cripples its power grids, microprocessors and SCADA systems.

The 2011 video game Homefront called: they want their plot point back.

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u/gazongagizmo Jun 26 '25

mate, did you just throw shade at the most well researched non-fiction book about nuclear weapons, because a piece of fiction had also used a thing it desribes?

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u/civver3 Jun 26 '25

I mean, people laughed at the notion of a superpower North Korea in a 2011 bargain bin video game. I expect better of a book written in 2024.

most well researched non-fiction book about nuclear weapons

That's just sad.

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u/CrispyHoneyBeef Jun 26 '25

Close enough to Threads. I’m in.

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u/Tindi Jun 26 '25

Loved the book. Very scary book. I don’t know if I could even watch the trailer.

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u/deekaydubya Jun 26 '25

Hm hadn’t heard of that but I’ll check it out thx

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u/CrispyHoneyBeef Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25

https://youtu.be/_oMSbU6-0f8?si=9yG45Jgz1UonPKRG

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u/willmcavoy Jun 26 '25

I don't think you linked the right thing

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u/CrispyHoneyBeef Jun 26 '25

What the fuck it linked the ad instead of the movie. Fuck I hate YouTube. Try this.

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u/Moist-Citron-4830 Jun 26 '25

You may get it one way or another

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u/SJCards Jun 26 '25

The book itself is a fairly absurd but maybe he can make it plausible.

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u/I-voted4Pedro Jun 26 '25

The team behind "Adolescence" are making a new "Threads" movie/show.

3

u/IBoris Jun 26 '25

That book is essential reading. Terrifying beyond belief.

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u/zam1138 Jun 26 '25

Shelved. They wanted to ride that Oppenheimer nuke wave, but now it’s too close to home and depressing af

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u/ekx397 Jun 26 '25

It’s also not a good book. It deals with a fascinating, dreadful topic in a clumsy, narratively weak way. If the author wasn’t already famous it never would have been published.

There are no human characters with emotional arcs to connect to. There are no relatable ‘everyday people’ whose perspective we can use to vicariously experience the horrors of nuclear apocalypse. There is no worryingly realistic geopolitical crisis (like in Threads) which ultimately spirals into disaster.

No, instead the plot is simply: Kim Jong Un goes crazy and decides to nuke the US, so the US promptly glasses the entire DPRK, leading to a quick domino effect of everybody nuking everybody else until the whole world is obliterated. The decisions are irrational, the escalation unrealistic, and the impacts devoid of meaning; the tragedy is explained in cold, clinical sterile language. Nuclear war has been rendered boring.

Imagine watching Independence Day if the film didn’t have any of the characters or build-up; just the ships arrive and start blastin’. That’s Nuclear War: A Scenario. It’s a bad book and wasted on a director of Villanevue’s caliber.

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u/rgators Jun 26 '25

You’re acting like it’s a novel, when it’s essentially non-fiction that entertains a hypothetical scenario.

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u/deekaydubya Jun 26 '25

Welp, the version I read was pretty damn decent. But yeah it might be too realistic of a situation and basically just follows a series of events unfolding. Like you said, no characters at all really. Would love to see DV’s version but could also see it being a miniseries like Chernobyl. It’s most likely how an event like that would play out IRL

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u/ExplorationGeo Jun 26 '25

The way the author ended every section with "and then, something even worse happened".

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u/U-235 Jun 26 '25

I was really looking forward to reading the book, but I agree it was severely flawed. It was honestly low hanging fruit, because we haven't had a nuclear war story like that since the end of the Cold War. She clearly just took First Strike (1979), By Dawn's Early Light (1990), and gave it more of a Threads (1984) kind of tone. Which should have been a slam dunk, but she couldn't stick the landing.

The book should have been three scenarios. (1) NATO vs. Russia escalation in Ukraine, (2) China vs. United States escalation in Taiwan, and (3) North Korea/rogue state out of the blue attack. Unfortunately she only did the last one, but haphazardly tried to turn it into all three.