What Shatterhand Title Means For Next James Bond Movie
The novel version of You Only Live Twice picks up immediately after Bond's wife is murdered on their wedding day. It's a haunting moment that we saw in On Her Majesty's Secret Service - and honestly, it's the best thing about that film - and it's the kind of story that would deserve a second go.
In the aftermath, Bond spirals out of control, losing himself to drinking and gambling and starts to make mistakes in the line of duty. M almost fires him, but instead demotes him to the diplomatic branch of MI6 and swapping his 007 status for a new codename 7777. He's then handed the "impossible" mission of convincing the head of Japan's secret intelligence service, Tiger Tanaka, to trade Britain information they've gained from spying on the Soviet Union for MI6 information.
Tanaka instead asks for a different trade: the Soviet information for Bond's help assassinating Dr Guntram Shatterhand, who operates a "Garden of Death" in a rebuilt ancient castle on the island of Kyushu where people flock to commit suicide. Bond then discovers that Shatterhand is in fact Blofeld and his "wife" is Irma Blunt - the pair behind the death of 007's wife.
For any of this to work in the movie, of course, we'd need to see Bond in a relationship, which is very possible considering he and Dr. Madeleine Swann drive off together into the sunset at the end of Spectre. Who is to say that their romance doesn't blossom and that Blofeld's revenge on Bond includes killing her? She did play a key role in his downfall, after all.
Even more interestingly, the novel's ending could offer Daniel Craig an exit strategy that would add some closure to his time as Bond while also allowing another actor to step in as Bond in his wake. Bond ultimately defeats Blofeld and Irma Blunt but he suffers a serious head injury in the explosion that destroys Blofeld's castle headquarters and suffers amnesia as a result.
Ultimately, Bond ends up entrapped by Kissy Suzuki, who had been posing as his wife on an undercover mission. She takes advantage of his amnesia to conceal his true identity, then gets pregnant by him (in the hope of getting him to propose) and allows the world to believe Bond is dead.
Aside from that weird diversion at the end, having Bond's mind wiped and the world believe he's dead would work for a means to write Daniel Craig out, as his "revival" could mark the start of a new narrative arc for a new actor.
The only issues here are that we've already seen Bond in disgrace with MI6, but it is sort of a running theme because of the nature of the beast. He operates outside of the law and laughs in the face of "doing it by the book," which is why he thinks it's fine to sleep with the widow of the guy he literally just murdered at the start of Spectre. Him falling out with M is as much of a staple of the series as him driving his Aston Martin, drinking martinis or being as sexually promiscuous as a sailor on shore leave.
We've also seen him lose a love interest back in both Casino Royale most poignantly and in Quantum of Solace more forgettably. But a wife is a different matter, as One Her Majesty's Secret Service proved.
More problematically, we've also recently seen Bond out of commission with the world believing he's dead, in Skyfall, so it would seem that if Fukunaga intends to use You Only Live Twice as the bones of his story, he'll have to change some things along the way. The suggestion that Christoph Waltz - and indeed Dave Bautista (who played silent hulking killer Mr Jinx in Spectre) - is set to return definitely points to a Blofeld-centric story. And it wouldn't at all be unprecedented for a Bond film to change up some story details from source materials.
All that aside, there are some other pretty big pitfalls Fukunaga would have to avoid too...