When I was a kid, we had Saturday night movies. The family would gather on the couch after dinner and pop a tape in the VCR. Even though I'm sure there were many different films we watched, mostly I remember the ones starring James Bond. It's not like we had all of the Bond flicks on VHS, but we watched a certain few of them over and over. Dr. No, Goldfinger, Thunderball, and Diamonds are Forever on a rotating cycle. Even today, they remain my favorites, despite their many flaws. Something about the first few films' progress toward a satisfying pattern of production fills me with nostalgia for a vanished past.
When you grew up is perhaps the most important factor in determining who you believe is the authentic James Bond. There's no denying the facts that Sean Connery originated the role in the 1960s, Roger Moore largely carried the franchise through the tumultuous 70s and 80s, Pierce Brosnan rebooted a series out of sync with the 90s, and Daniel Craig has held sway over the majority of 21st-century pictures. True Bond fans have come to blows over the relevancy of George Lazenby's single addition to the catalog and the darker duo of films fronted by Timothy Dalton. However, in the larger history of western cinema, it's hard to think of a more simultaneously admired, reviled, imitated, and derided character than 007.
James Bond grew out of his literary roots and onto the silver screen under the constant vigilance of EON Productions. The same company that to this day maintains an iron-fisted control over the exploits, adaptations, and maturation of Ian Fleming's original creation. No Time to Die will be the 25th officially sanctioned episode of the uniquely fused genre, and it's tough to imagine a comparable achievement to the almost 60 year legacy of hard-boiled espionage, high-tech thriller, and romantic global adventure stories. There are many other singular films whose box office receipts and critical response exceeds any one of the greatest Bond projects. Still, in our era of divided attention, the cumulative impact of the series would be impossible to replicate. While the scope of Disney's Marvel cinematic universe presents a comparable achievement of epic possibility, the antics of Ironman, Thor, and Captain America are braided across countless competing storylines. With Bond, a singular thread binds together the entire twisted lineage of victims and villains. Amidst all of the stunts, death defying escapes, and explosive chase scenes, audiences around the globe have developed a long term relationship with a remarkable matinee idol.
Blockbuster film-making involves countless stereotypes, suspensions of disbelief, and convenient changes in loyalty. For better or worse, these are the narrative tools of the trade. Unfortunately, there is also a fair amount of misogyny, entrenched prejudice, and gratuitous violence built into this type of storytelling. Part of the enduring appeal of Bond is his license not only to kill, but to say and do things outside the boundaries of political correctness. The on screen combination of exotic locations, outlandish happenings, and provocative seductions is a calculated fantasy. He lives a life of abusive excess, above all rules of law, and comic book in scale. He fights with dramatic flair, but rarely sickening realism. Over the years, narrative development has occasionally been overshadowed by visual spectacle and gratuitous destruction, but attempts to curtail extravagance in set design, action sequences or location budgets tend to occur when the aura of leading man is passed to a new star.
Having recently rewatched the entire series chronologically, I'm reminded of how each iteration of the character has presented a new archetype of masculinity. Connery personifies rugged classicism, easeful and sardonic. Lazenby is the rebel, unable to escape the cool shadow of his predecessor. Moore is the playboy of the bunch, a self-effacing sly charmer. Dalton is the brooding romantic, most casual by far and yet always seething with an undercurrent of rage or bemusement. Brosnan could quite often be mistaken for an international banker, with a sophisticated exterior hiding absurdist bursts of agility. While Craig embodies the rogue, every motion fraught with a weight of lived betrayal. Each version of Bond is a product of his generation, accentuating aspects of the social currents swirling around politics and pop culture.
The precise details of this ageless agent provide the real-life feeling in an otherwise unbelievable set of stories. Specificity is easier to appreciate on the printed page, but the James Bond movies are filled with endless moments of idiosyncratic personal attachment. It's the accumulation of evocative specificity, the drinks, guns, cars, and clothing, that make the man a myth. The aspirational markers of consumption that either inspire or infuriate an audience. As the years have passed and product placement assisted more with the financing of production, the style of Bond evolved along with shifting times; Saville row suiting giving way to Brioni, Tom Ford, and Massimo Alba in turn. Fashion choices aside, part of the fun in any new picture is recognizing the moments of similarity and difference between the current episode and all those previous. The volcano lair in You Only Live Twice has a striking resemblance to the submerged satellite base in Goldeneye. The railroad car fistfight in From Russia with Love is reprised with panache in Spectre. The Tangiers rooftop chase in The Living Daylights is updated with a flurry of terra cotta in Quantum of Solace. In the end, every movie must stand alone on its own merits, but the legacy of residual character built up over decades provides an enormous lift to even the lowliest of offerings.
The progress toward a public debut of No Time to Die has had almost as many twists and turns, reversals, and changes of fortune, as the plot of any good mystery. However, what is most beguiling about this particular film is the conclusion of Daniel Craig's stewardship of Bond. After fifteen years, the latest embodiment of the gentleman spy is poised to take his final turn as a defender of the free world. The times have changed, and inevitably, a new actor will be found to better represent the current moment. It's this reinvention of character that allows the films to remain relevant, while continuing to operate just beyond the measure of believability.
Walking into a dark theater to share in a collective dream used to be an innocent indulgence, and now seems like a dangerous luxury. Amidst the global calamity of COVID, it's difficult to quantify the cultural value of James Bond, but after enduring a crisis that could have been cooked up in a fictional laboratory and stopped only by a display of movie magic, it's fair to say the world is waiting for a reliable hero.