A 9.26 post on a British 007 fan site (www.ajb007.co.uk), written by a Minnesota-based fanatic named “Gymkata”, has passed along allegedly knowledgeable intel about negotiations between Chris Nolan, EON and Amazon that would involve restarting the Bond franchise as a stripped-down, back-to-raw-elements ‘60s period fantasy a la Dr. No and From Russia With Love.

World of Reel’s Jordan Ruimy yesterday passed along the second–hand “Gymkata” dish, chapter and verse.

Nolan’s alleged idea would theoretically mean a complete time-travel return to the Eisenhower-and-Kennedy eras, and particularly a refined and gentlemanly James Bond (possibly to be played by Aaron Taylor Johnson) with a vague undercurrent of casually cruel, sexist-pig entitlement…a perverse restoration of that (heh-heh, just kidding) good old “run along like a good girl, time for man talk” Sean Connery attitude…a rabbit hole immersion in a dusty, possibly pre-Beatles, low-tech realm of typewriters, newspapers, black-and-white TVs, phone booths, early ‘60s muscle cars, narrow-lapel Saville Row suits, unfiltered Turkish cigarettes, shaken-not-stirred Martinis and worldly but compliant sex bunnies who…Jesus H. Christ, who the hell are we kidding here? Ourselves?

You can’t go home again, bruh. Delicious as it may seem from a hazy distance, the pre-Goldfinger era couldn’t be fully, organically reconstructed unless the commitment to go back there is 100% total and absolute, and that would require a director with a brutally demanding Kubrickian mindset.

Plus the #MeToo brigade would shriek and howl. The deadweight EON caretakers (i.e., Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson) haven’t the courage for such a radical venture. And Nolan, a chilly control freak who’s shown time and again that he’s fundamentally unable to even flirt with the sensual, much less connect with pulp-erotic yesteryear dreamscapes…even Nolan would lack the necessary cojones to reinvest in a politically intolerable, dead-and-gone realm. And adhering slavishly to the original Ian Fleming stories…again, you can’t go home again.

Don’t get me wrong. I would love to surrender to a convincing reboot of those old From Russia With Love ingredients. I just don’t think it’s politically or psychologically or even physically (i.e., financially) possible.

Would I love to be proved wrong? Most certainly. Not so much for the inevitable resuscitation of Connery-recalling, Hugh Hefner-ish sexism (which a time travel Bond film would have to accommodate for honesty’s sake) as a revisiting of old-fashioned, bare-bones plotting and atmosphere.