Here we go again. Another Bond film, another new Bond, and another last gasp from a character that should have been consigned to history along with the Iron Curtain and Joseph Stalin. Judi Dench had it right in GoldenEye when she dissed Pierce Brosnan’s 007 as “a dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War” – though the truth is even more damning than that. Even in the heady, halcyon days of Sean Connery, Ian Fleming’s spy was a fossil: a preposterous totem of an impotent Britain long since rendered an irrelevance in the world of global affairs.
Fleming used 007 to live out his own sad fantasies of fine living, rampant womanising and jet-setting adventure. What’s sadder is that we’ve been doing the same ever since, exchanging the meals, wines and impeccably tailored fashions of the author’s day for more contemporary objects of desire (cars, watches, gadgets and the like). The girls, of course, remain the same – a little feistier, perhaps, but still beddable and biddable conquests to be thumped, humped and dumped. No wonder Bond’s such an idol for the paunchy, middle-aged, Top Gear-loving male. He’s the fictional embodiment of every randy, sexist, imperialist urge – the Daily Mail reader recreated as invincible, lady-killing superhero.
image © PA Photos
We are told, of course, that Casino Royale will be different: that Daniel Craig’s 007 will be closer to the tougher, rougher, more ruthless agent from Fleming’s original novels. (Perhaps that’s why they’ve chosen a pug-faced actor with cauliflower ears and a hooter that looks as if it’s been remodelled by Mike Tyson.) A commendable ambition, if rather familiar; after all, didn’t they say the same thing before For Your Eyes Only, Licence To Kill and a host of other Bond pictures? What we got, though, was what we always got: camp villainy, groan-inducing puns and empty pyrotechnics in far-flung locales. Oh, and let’s not forget the product placement. Bond flicks these days are little more than extended adverts; cynical marketing opportunities cementing the character’s new role as corporate flunkey. (Don’t believe us? Check out that awful Avis plug in Tomorrow Never Dies or Richard Branson’s Casino cameo.)
The real problem, though, is that Bond, rather than leading the field, now plods along behind like the huffing fatso on sports day. In his pomp it was James who inspired the imitators: Matt Helm, In Like Flint, The Man From UNCLE. Now it’s he who copies, be it Die Hard and Lethal Weapon in the 1980s or the Jason Bourne thrillers of today. Why else make the baffling decision to “reboot” the Bond franchise, reviving 007 as a fledging novice earning his spurs instead of the suave, unflappable veteran? Far from the innovation that will eke a few more years out of a tired series, this may well be the last nail in its coffin. The one thing Bond has going for him is his perennial stasis: the fact that he remains essentially unaltered, like the Great Wall of China or the National Debt. You mess with that at your peril.
The views in this column are those of the author alone and not of MSN/Microsoft
