An Open Letter to the Producers of James Bond
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
I'd....I'd forgotten just how awesome this scene is.Matt_LRR said:
He just powerslided a tank.
Hell yeah.
Oh and OT: I'm in two minds. While Craig is a good Bond and closer to the original novels, you can't beat a bit of good old ridiculousness in a Bond film....
Awesome article, Bob. And you're right on the money.
For the record, I have read some of the books, and wasn't really impressed by them. They seemed to tread a line between gritty realism and over-the-top exploitation silliness, and not really succeeding at either. The films at least committed to the latter.
I mostly liked the new Casino Royale, because there were light-hearted, fun moments like the early stages of Bond and Vesper Lynd's relationship, and Dame Judi Dench's awesome performance as M ("In the old days if an agent did something that embarrassing he'd have a good sense to defect. Christ, I miss the Cold War"), and Felix Leiter was pretty jocular ("Does it look like we need the money?").
That all got deflated by the tacked-on betrayal and death ending however. Quantum of Solace decided to go full-on morose and moody Batman. Bond was all moody, M and Leiter became morally compromised, and the villains' lame scheme to profit from selling water was apparently even worse in the real world case it was based on. When Bond villains are coming up short compared to real-world corruption, something's gone wrong.
(Also, I am thoroughly sick of Bourne-esque shaky-cam action. The next action film I see with shaky-cam, I will personally TP the director's house.)
Let Bourne and Bauer (or their successors) do the gritty realism of tradecraft. Bring back the Brosnan-era deconstructions: keep the thrilling stunt sequences, fun gadgets and cheeky humour, but the villains can be compelling and threatening without having to go full comic book Dr. Doom/Cobra Commander on us. And Craig can pull it off, as his turn in Layer Cake showed.
For the record, I have read some of the books, and wasn't really impressed by them. They seemed to tread a line between gritty realism and over-the-top exploitation silliness, and not really succeeding at either. The films at least committed to the latter.
I mostly liked the new Casino Royale, because there were light-hearted, fun moments like the early stages of Bond and Vesper Lynd's relationship, and Dame Judi Dench's awesome performance as M ("In the old days if an agent did something that embarrassing he'd have a good sense to defect. Christ, I miss the Cold War"), and Felix Leiter was pretty jocular ("Does it look like we need the money?").
That all got deflated by the tacked-on betrayal and death ending however. Quantum of Solace decided to go full-on morose and moody Batman. Bond was all moody, M and Leiter became morally compromised, and the villains' lame scheme to profit from selling water was apparently even worse in the real world case it was based on. When Bond villains are coming up short compared to real-world corruption, something's gone wrong.
(Also, I am thoroughly sick of Bourne-esque shaky-cam action. The next action film I see with shaky-cam, I will personally TP the director's house.)
Let Bourne and Bauer (or their successors) do the gritty realism of tradecraft. Bring back the Brosnan-era deconstructions: keep the thrilling stunt sequences, fun gadgets and cheeky humour, but the villains can be compelling and threatening without having to go full comic book Dr. Doom/Cobra Commander on us. And Craig can pull it off, as his turn in Layer Cake showed.
The problem is that the 'true' James Bond is pretty much a true Scotsman fallacy (a true Connery fallacy?) since each person has a different view on who the 'true' James Bond is, mostly depending on what was the first Bond movie they watched/liked, it's hard to nail which is the Bondest one. Asking to fall back on the books just doesn't work. Anyone who's read the books knows Fleming's Bond is so different from the movies' Bond that they're hardly the same entity at all.
Personally, I wouldn't care if the Bond franchise went to rest, at least for a while. Everything dies.
Personally, I wouldn't care if the Bond franchise went to rest, at least for a while. Everything dies.
I don't know about that.RTR said:
Think about Nolan's style for a sec, wouldn't Harley Quinn be perfect as deranged copycat recast as a major villain trying to get noticed by a Joker that isn't even around anymore?
She could, if a proper actress could be found, be the successor of Joker's insanity and continue the general character without having to recast the Joker (which wouldn't work).
It wouldn't be too far from her character to seem superficial, and we can all have a good time with a female Joker on screen.
Craig wasn't exactly playing Bond as a reluctant hero. Christ, QoS was entirely driven by what he wanted; revenge. And he ended up realising the error of that.
Thank you for making the Iron Man/James Bond connection. It explains a lot about my feelings for both franchises. Movie Bob you insights make my Fridays just that much better.
Funny that you should write this article, I was watching Goldfinger last night and I was constantly saying "See, there's another good thing the new James Bond films are lacking".
I think part of James' modernization (I.e making his films boring) is the fact that three of the staples of earlier Bond films (Gadgets, girls and good supervillains) have been respectively undone by advances in technology making his car with an inbuilt radar look like a boring GPS, women's rights movements making characters like the womanizing James Bond get labelled a "Chauvinist" and now that the soviet union's disbanded and there are no strong tensions between global superpowers villains backed by nuclear arsenals and laser beams just seems less realistic.
I think part of James' modernization (I.e making his films boring) is the fact that three of the staples of earlier Bond films (Gadgets, girls and good supervillains) have been respectively undone by advances in technology making his car with an inbuilt radar look like a boring GPS, women's rights movements making characters like the womanizing James Bond get labelled a "Chauvinist" and now that the soviet union's disbanded and there are no strong tensions between global superpowers villains backed by nuclear arsenals and laser beams just seems less realistic.
Totally agree, Bob. And if the current trend is any indication, it looks like our heroes are being allowed to be "fun" again. And it think this dovetails with your prior article, "The Death of Reality." You've of course mentioned "Iron Man," and it looks like the upcoming "The Green Hornet" is going to be in the same vein. Like you, I don't always believe that a hero always has to be "grim n' gritty." The concept behind many superheroes and characters like James Bond or my personal favorite Flash Gordon, is that they and their exploits are supposed to be bigger than life, and that always usually means they're fun as well. And I also believe as you do that superhero stories can be fun without being necessarily corny or campy.
I think that the more serious and realistic turn the Bond films took in the last decade can be traced back to pop culture's knee-jerk reaction to 9/11. It influenced a lot of entertainment whether the creators knew it or not. It certainly had an influence on Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, which was originally generally lighthearted space opera and was turned into something so dark and depressing that I wanted to slit my wrists every time I saw an episode. I think it also began that trend towards "realism" that you and I despise, as it seemed that the powers that be thought after 9/11 that stuff like Bond's previous cinematic exploits or a superhero movie that was faithful to its comic book roots would feel frivolous and not representative of the new worldview we just got smacked upside the head with. And while I wouldn't exactly say that after about 10 years that we're "over" 9/11, I'd say we've recovered from it enough that we can now accept the reality of it while at the same time allowing for less serious-minded entertainment.
I don't have anything against Daniel Craig, and I wanted to like him as Bond, but I found Casino Royale boring (The high point was a poker game? Yawn.) And like someone else pointed out, the plot was too mundane for a James Bond film. After seeing it, I wanted to go back to the Sean Connery and Roger Moore Bonds. Or even Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan. Again, they were more fun and fit the image of Bond that I had grown up with. And hopefully once MGM gets its house back in order, maybe they'll also realize that it's time to make Bond fun again.
I think that the more serious and realistic turn the Bond films took in the last decade can be traced back to pop culture's knee-jerk reaction to 9/11. It influenced a lot of entertainment whether the creators knew it or not. It certainly had an influence on Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, which was originally generally lighthearted space opera and was turned into something so dark and depressing that I wanted to slit my wrists every time I saw an episode. I think it also began that trend towards "realism" that you and I despise, as it seemed that the powers that be thought after 9/11 that stuff like Bond's previous cinematic exploits or a superhero movie that was faithful to its comic book roots would feel frivolous and not representative of the new worldview we just got smacked upside the head with. And while I wouldn't exactly say that after about 10 years that we're "over" 9/11, I'd say we've recovered from it enough that we can now accept the reality of it while at the same time allowing for less serious-minded entertainment.
I don't have anything against Daniel Craig, and I wanted to like him as Bond, but I found Casino Royale boring (The high point was a poker game? Yawn.) And like someone else pointed out, the plot was too mundane for a James Bond film. After seeing it, I wanted to go back to the Sean Connery and Roger Moore Bonds. Or even Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan. Again, they were more fun and fit the image of Bond that I had grown up with. And hopefully once MGM gets its house back in order, maybe they'll also realize that it's time to make Bond fun again.
True, but I think Nolan is reluctant to recast the Joker if for no other reason than Heath Ledger's performance was just so brilliant and he probably feels he would somehow do it a disservice if he recast. Still, I wouldn't have minded seeing someone like Javier Bardem or Adrien Brody in the role. They both would have been good replacement choices I think.THEMANWHOIS said:
Movie Bob does an excellent job summarizing the ingredients for a classic Bond film. However, having recently watched bits and pieces of both Gold Finger and From Russia With Love, the unfortunate fact is that the classic Bond formula doesn't really hold up. And I would argue, the James Bond we love, is dead.
I think there are many reasons for this but there are a few that stick out in my mind. There is influence of writers like John Le Carre, and his fatalistic, flawed spies. Also, the classic James Bond struck a chord with baby boomer audiences because he really signaled the emerging phenomenon of the bachelor - the unmarried man in full with money burn and a libido to tame. I don't know that that image, by now a cliche if ever there was one, is the powerful vehicle for fantasy it was once. There's also the issue of plain modernization. Foreign travel isn't exotic anymore, English style has long since been integrated into American men's fashion, and, most importantly, the English do not make the best sports cars in the world, no matter what Jeremy Clarkson might have us believe.
James Bond has basically become the Philip Marlowe of spy movies. The smart alecky world weary PI no longer has a place in the way Chandler first imagined him - he became a pastiche through constant imitation. Rather we have to look to Jack Nicholson to give a nuanced performance of that archetype. And, in the case of Bond, we have to look to Daniel Craig to give us a Bond with psychological depth and a broken heart. My point is, you can't go home again, no matter how clear and well paved that path may be.
I think there are many reasons for this but there are a few that stick out in my mind. There is influence of writers like John Le Carre, and his fatalistic, flawed spies. Also, the classic James Bond struck a chord with baby boomer audiences because he really signaled the emerging phenomenon of the bachelor - the unmarried man in full with money burn and a libido to tame. I don't know that that image, by now a cliche if ever there was one, is the powerful vehicle for fantasy it was once. There's also the issue of plain modernization. Foreign travel isn't exotic anymore, English style has long since been integrated into American men's fashion, and, most importantly, the English do not make the best sports cars in the world, no matter what Jeremy Clarkson might have us believe.
James Bond has basically become the Philip Marlowe of spy movies. The smart alecky world weary PI no longer has a place in the way Chandler first imagined him - he became a pastiche through constant imitation. Rather we have to look to Jack Nicholson to give a nuanced performance of that archetype. And, in the case of Bond, we have to look to Daniel Craig to give us a Bond with psychological depth and a broken heart. My point is, you can't go home again, no matter how clear and well paved that path may be.
