A Bond out of time
Is James Bond a character whose time has passed or a vibrant cinematic universe? Amazon is about to find out.
It’s the end of an era. The Broccoli dynasty has relinquished their tight, restrictive, obsessive 64-year curation of the James Bond luxury brand and has passed over full creative control to Amazon.
Whatever comes next for Commander Bond will be fundamentally different. To be fair, that may not be a bad thing. But as someone who grew up in England watching James Bond movies as often and repeatedly as I could, I‘ve already come to terms with the fact that the Bond I knew and loved is dead. Turns out he did have time to die after all.
Bond is a cultural institution in the UK, and I honoured it as such. Back in the 1970s, The Regal in Henley-on-Thames—which still had an organist who would rise out of the stage to play during intermission—would feature James Bond Weeks: Two Bond films played in a double feature Sunday to Tuesday, another two Tuesday to Thursday, and two more on Friday and Saturday. I would watch them all.
The majority of those films starred Sean Connery as Bond: Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Thunderball, Goldfinger (I had one of the original Corgi toys Aston Martin DB5, complete with machine guns and ejector seat), You Only Live Twice (who doesn’t love a secret rocket base hidden inside a volcano?) and Diamonds are Forever. Later on, they added Roger Moore’s contributions, including Live & Let Die, his first outing, which also boasted Jane Seymour as a tarot card reader with “psychic abilities” (her name was Solitaire, get it?) and the fantastic title song by Paul McCartney and Wings—the only track Wings ever recorded that was any good; I’ve never forgiven McCartney for “Mull of Kintyre.”
Many of those films were already classics at the time; the first James Bond film I saw on release was The Man with the Golden Gun in 1974. I was obsessed with Christopher Lee’s Scaramanga and his titular golden gun, assembled from a hip flask, cigarette lighter, and pen, almost as much as the Hamilton digital watch Bond is wearing when M comes to call at the beginning of Live and Let Die. I wanted that watch so badly.
I've never known a world without Bond movies. The first 007 film, Dr. No, was released in 1963, the year I was born. As a child, I was very proud to be the same age as James Bond and to have the same initials. I have seen every James Bond movie at least once—including David Niven in the comedy version of Casino Royale (the full movie is available for free on YouTube) and Sean Connery’s return to the role in an “unofficial” and genuinely terrible Never Say Never Again—and most of the other films too many times to mention. As I have said before, if you grew up in Britain, James Bond was more than a movie character; he was a national institution.
Of course, like many British national institutions, James Bond has had more than a few off years. Much as I loved Roger Moore in Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun, his movies got progressively sillier and cringier as Moore got older. By the time A View to a Kill was released in 1985, Moore was 57, and it was crystal clear that he was long past the point at which he should have called it a day. Timothy Dalton, who on paper seemed positively born to play Bond, took over the role but only appeared in two films—The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989)—after his contract expired during a four-year legal dispute between the studio (MGM/UA) the rights holder (Danjaq LLC) and he decided to walk away.
The Walther PPK was handed to Pierce Brosnan, who, like Dalton, seemed ripe for the part. The Broccoli’s originally wanted to cast Brosnan as Bond in 1986, but he was under contract in Remington Steele. Though I thought Dalton more Bond-like compared to Brosnan, who seemed a tad too suave and smooth, more like a banker than a Double-0, he certainly grew into the role over time. Even so, I enjoyed the GoldenEye video game far more than the movie and thought The Bourne Identity a far better Bond film than Die Another Day, both of which were released in 2002. I also couldn’t get past Brosnan being forced to drive BMWs after a lifetime of Aston Martins that dated back to the books themselves.
Die Another Day convinced me that my Bond phase was over and that it was time to move on. 2006’s Casino Royale, starring Daniel Craig, proved me wrong. And he drove an Aston Martin.
The contrast between Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day and Daniel Craig in Casino Royale went far beyond the Aston. The opening fight scene, filmed in a public toilet in grainy black and white, is graphically violent and intense—more like The Bourne Identity than any previous Bond movie. And whereas Connery portrayed Bond as an indifferent, almost callous killer, Craig was physical, brutal and committed; he fought like his life was genuinely on the line and punched like he meant it. Craig was the anti-Bond Bond, a force of nature early in his Double-0 career that he had yet to harness effectively. It’s a point made perfectly when asked by a barman if he’d like his Martini shaken or stirred, “Do I look like I give a damn?” he replies.
With the possible exception of Quantum of Solace, which suffered from a messy and overly convoluted script due to the writers' strike (but was redeemed by the spectacular Tosca opera scene at the Bregenz Open Air Theatre in Austria), Craig had a nearly flawless run as Bond—Casino Royale, Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time to Die are beyond doubt the best four Bond movies ever made. They feature the best casts, the best scripts, the best direction, the best stunts, the best villains, the best cars, and the incomparable Judi Dench. Just in case it needs to be clearly stated at this point, Daniel Craig is The. Best. Bond. Ever. Sorry, Mr. Connery, I will die on this hill.
I’ve watched the Craig Bond films multiple times—particularly Skyfall, which I consider the greatest Bond movie of them all (it’s certainly the most successful, grossing over $1.1 billion worldwide). But I have watched No Time to Die only once. Because once was enough, the ending destroyed me.
I am not at all worried about what Amazon does with the James Bond brand because, frankly, like the shaken or stirred Martini, I simply don’t give a damn. Maybe Amazon will treat Bond like the expanded Star Wars cinematic universe and we’ll get something brave and brilliant and extraordinary like Andor. Or, conversely, perhaps we’ll get The Book of Boba Fett and rather wish we hadn’t.
Whatever direction Amazon takes the Bond franchise, the 007 character that I have known and loved for over 52 years is dead: (SPOILER ALERT) he died to save the lives of his wife and child and the whole world in the process in the closing moments of No Time to Die. What end could be more fitting, more emotional, more perfect, or more final?
James Bond. RIP.