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cumaeansibylAccording to the entertainment industry, at least -- I prefer explosions and fistfights over romance, so obviously I'm "weird" -- whatever, gender standards, it's not like I'm Bond's hugest fan either.
Preface: Sometimes I fucking hate Bond. I hate how he uses women who trust him and think he's emotionally sincere, I hate his stupid smirky face, I hate his one-liners, and I really hate how he's a God damn rapist. I hate how the Bond franchise managed to waste both Christopher Lee and Christopher Walken in two of the worst movies they ever made. I hate the gay assassins in Diamonds are Forever. I hate how all of Maurice Binder's opening sequences are the same fucking thing, right down to the stupid unnatural poses for the naked girls. I hate the fucking stupid gadgets they make poor Desmond Llewellyn describe with a straight face. (I love Desmond Llewellyn, however, and will hear no ill spoken of him. He's adorable and fantastic and wonderful. I miss him terribly and John Cleese isn't a patch on him. Plus I suspect he's had more confirmed conquests than Bond himself, because he's a giant ladies' man.)
There are three things I'd love to see from a Bond film, and I know I'm in the minority, but that fact helps explain some of the essential attractions and flaws of the franchise. Those three things are:
1) Bond engaging in gay sex.
2) A woman refusing to have sex with Bond.
3) A Bond who is physically plausible -- i.e., both attractive to women and capable of performing secret-agent activities.
Daniel Craig, the newest Bond, has indicated that he'd be willing to do a full-frontal nude scene in a Bond film if the agent were having sex with a gay man. Now, leaving aside the utter impossibility of this, since Bond films do not deal in nudity, I find that I like the idea (and not for prurient reasons, shut up). The fans would scream, but think of it: Q notes in Licence to Kill that an agent must sometimes use every means at his disposal to achieve his objective, and Bond's been screwing women for information for years, so why not a man? After all, for every time Bond forms an attachment to a woman, there are three times when he's obviously going for her to get her on his side. He's something of a sexual sociopath in that regard, and I can't imagine he'd be entirely averse to using his powers of seduction on an attractive male.
The second one... all right, I know I'm not going to get that one. I'm just not. It's almost less likely than the gay thing, since that at least fits into the "everybody wants Bond" business. I've seen a couple instances where Bond has refused to have sex with women -- Bibi Dahl, the creepy underage figure-skater, and Xenia Onatopp, the psychotic Georgian sadomasochist* -- and other times when he hasn't managed to have sex with women before they've been killed or he's been captured, but I have never seen a woman whose stated unwillingness to sleep with Bond lasts more than about five minutes. It wouldn't have to be a huge deal about how awesome the character was; she wouldn't have to be a feminist** or a lesbian*** or anything like that. How about a woman who objects to Bond on the perfectly reasonable grounds that his sex partners have something like a 50% survival rate****? One who's in a fulfilling relationship*****? One who just kind of has issues right now and is busy dealing with other stuff and doesn't have time to get smexed up by some triflin Brit?****** It can't be that hard.
The third one was fulfilled just recently, with the casting of Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. Other Bonds had varying problems with this; Connery, Dalton, and Brosnan were all reasonably attractive (individual preferences taken into account), but for various reasons, seemed somewhat unconvincing as fighters. Lazenby earned his place in the ranks for "there's no hurry, you see... we have all the time in the world," not his looks or agility. Roger Moore was wrong all round and a smug bastard to boot -- what woman watching those films doesn't want to slap him until his hairpiece falls off? -- which wasn't his fault, I guess, since it's hard to be an action hero when you're made out of ham.*******
Part of the difficulty with the earlier films was the relative lack of sophistication in fight choreography at that time; the train sequence in From Russia With Love is shockingly good even today, a masterpiece of claustrophobia and brutality, but it stands out as anomalous in twenty years of wooden neck chops, creaky kicks, and the ancient martial arts discipline of Let's Attack Him One At A Time. By Brosnan's term the state of the art had advanced considerably, but while he looked wonderful driving various improbable vehicles, he always seemed a bit too pretty to be fighting hand-to-hand. I like Craig for two reasons: one, while he doesn't look like a model or anything, there's this je ne sais quoi that I cannot explain for the life of me, which basically makes him almost painful to look at because he's so fucking hot; and two, he's a fantastic physical actor, and he looks like he could do all that crazy shit in the movie. Can you imagine any of the other Bonds doing that fantastic running stunt sequence in Madagascar? There's no fucking way.
All that being said, you know, it occurs to me that Casino Royale isn't a very good Bond film according to the standards set by previous Bond films. Die-hard Bond fans have objected to a number of things, like the changed order in the beginning (it's usually gunbarrel-opener-titles, in this case it was opener-gunbarrel-titles, and in this one there weren't even any naked chicks on trampolines) and some other stuff, but there are some real fundamental disconnects. For instance, Bond has the opportunity to fuck a very VERY hot woman in the first half of the movie, but he leaves her behind in favor of chasing after a lead. Mind you, his decision prevents a terrorist attack on an airport and sets the second half of the plot in motion by putting Le Chiffre in an untenable position financially, but you know there were fanboys in the audience all "OMG WHY DIDN'T HE DO HER?? THIS IS SO WRONG!!!" And then, when he goes after Vesper Lynd in the second half, it's a true romantic connection -- he even gives up his career for her, without qualms, and makes himself absolutely vulnerable to her. Why, this is unheard of! It's weird and creepy! I've long suspected that the reason so many people hated on Lazenby was because he was the Bond who fell in love and got married, and this just confirms it.
What really separates this Bond from the others, though, is the sheer physical risk he faces through the entire thing. Other Bonds have had to jump back and forth between platforms or climb up cliff faces, but they've never really shown the kind of realistic effort and pain Craig does. Craig's hand-to-hand sequences have the brutality and formlessness of a real fight, for the most part; the scene where he almost dies of digitalis poisioning is excruciating (that bit where he runs into the bathroom with a salt shaker, and everything's white and fading, is just terrifying); and, of course, there's the bit with the knotted rope. You know the reason Bond has to stay in that convalescents' home for so long isn't just because of the car crash and torture; it's everything else he's endured through the movie, kept bottled up until he collapsed.
I understand why the fans are nitpicking over little stuff, and I understand why they were so pleased with the franchise references that essentially got shoehorned in; whenever there's an adaptation, or a remake, or a reboot, people want to be reassured that the people in charge actually paid attention to what came before and understood what the fans loved the best. A few weeks ago I rewatched Dracula 2000, which is a silly little movie in a lot of ways but which also has the best Dracula mythos I've ever heard (plus Christopher Plummer as Van Helsing, how good can you get) and there were so many Stoker/Browning references I couldn't even stand it, but every time they did it I got a little "eee! they read the book!" thing in my head. It helped make up for the egregious MTV editing and the silly secondary characters -- it just made me feel better about the whole thing, you know? And a Bond film, or any film, can gain considerable goodwill by putting in these little nods to previous material, but when there's a real gap in conception/execution between source and product, it screws with people no matter how many references there are.
For me, though, the reboot took care of a lot of the stuff that pissed me off the most about Bond films, and I was grateful. For once, we have a Bond who really looks like he could do all that stupid shit they make him do, and a minimum of stupid whizzy SFX crap and gadgets, and a real emotional value to the whole thing. They don't all have to be deep, God knows, but sometimes it's nice to know that Bond's still a human being.
*Now, you know Roger Moore would have fucked Xenia Onatopp, no matter how bad an idea it was. You KNOW it. Sean Connery would have put the knife in her back halfway through, and Dalton probably would've angsted his way out of it, but Moore would've been dumb enough to do her. And then he would have used the world's stupidest gadget to throw her out the window, and there would've been a slide-whistle noise. God, I hate Moore.
**Pam Bouvier would fit in this category, I think, and I like her, but why does she do Bond like ten minutes after they first meet? I know Timothy Dalton is smoking hot, but dang.
***In the novel, Pussy Galore was a lesbian, as were all the members of her Flying Circus; Fleming had Bond "convert" her, which irritates the hell out of me, and also shows that no woman is safe.
****Miranda Frost in Die Another Day was briefly promising in this regard -- "sex for dinner, death for breakfast" is a great line -- but you know what, she had to go and boink him anyway, and then she died, so I guess Bond women are too dumb to follow their own advice. Sigh.
*****We all know what happens to women who get married in the Bond universe: they're killed on their wedding days. FATE WORSE THAN DEATH, amirite?
******The best interpretations of Moneypenny, I find, are those that acknowledge the sexual tension inherent in Bond being around any woman his age but that also allow the poor woman some dignity; I hate it when the writers have her fawning over him as if he's the only reason she keeps working for MI6. Most of the time, there's a wistful sense of "oh, it would be nice, but he's bonkers and I don't want to touch that," and that makes sense to me. My favorite Moneypenny by far is Samantha Bond, who I maintain is boinking Colin Salmon's character and quite happy without any of this 007 business, thankyouverymuch.
*******In all seriousness, they should have taken Moore out after The Spy Who Loved Me and let Dalton take For Your Eyes Only. (Moonraker, if you must know, shouldn't have happened at all.) Moore aged badly in the face, his combover was obvious by about the second film, and by the end he looked like running up a flight of stairs would have left him winded.
Preface: Sometimes I fucking hate Bond. I hate how he uses women who trust him and think he's emotionally sincere, I hate his stupid smirky face, I hate his one-liners, and I really hate how he's a God damn rapist. I hate how the Bond franchise managed to waste both Christopher Lee and Christopher Walken in two of the worst movies they ever made. I hate the gay assassins in Diamonds are Forever. I hate how all of Maurice Binder's opening sequences are the same fucking thing, right down to the stupid unnatural poses for the naked girls. I hate the fucking stupid gadgets they make poor Desmond Llewellyn describe with a straight face. (I love Desmond Llewellyn, however, and will hear no ill spoken of him. He's adorable and fantastic and wonderful. I miss him terribly and John Cleese isn't a patch on him. Plus I suspect he's had more confirmed conquests than Bond himself, because he's a giant ladies' man.)
There are three things I'd love to see from a Bond film, and I know I'm in the minority, but that fact helps explain some of the essential attractions and flaws of the franchise. Those three things are:
1) Bond engaging in gay sex.
2) A woman refusing to have sex with Bond.
3) A Bond who is physically plausible -- i.e., both attractive to women and capable of performing secret-agent activities.
Daniel Craig, the newest Bond, has indicated that he'd be willing to do a full-frontal nude scene in a Bond film if the agent were having sex with a gay man. Now, leaving aside the utter impossibility of this, since Bond films do not deal in nudity, I find that I like the idea (and not for prurient reasons, shut up). The fans would scream, but think of it: Q notes in Licence to Kill that an agent must sometimes use every means at his disposal to achieve his objective, and Bond's been screwing women for information for years, so why not a man? After all, for every time Bond forms an attachment to a woman, there are three times when he's obviously going for her to get her on his side. He's something of a sexual sociopath in that regard, and I can't imagine he'd be entirely averse to using his powers of seduction on an attractive male.
The second one... all right, I know I'm not going to get that one. I'm just not. It's almost less likely than the gay thing, since that at least fits into the "everybody wants Bond" business. I've seen a couple instances where Bond has refused to have sex with women -- Bibi Dahl, the creepy underage figure-skater, and Xenia Onatopp, the psychotic Georgian sadomasochist* -- and other times when he hasn't managed to have sex with women before they've been killed or he's been captured, but I have never seen a woman whose stated unwillingness to sleep with Bond lasts more than about five minutes. It wouldn't have to be a huge deal about how awesome the character was; she wouldn't have to be a feminist** or a lesbian*** or anything like that. How about a woman who objects to Bond on the perfectly reasonable grounds that his sex partners have something like a 50% survival rate****? One who's in a fulfilling relationship*****? One who just kind of has issues right now and is busy dealing with other stuff and doesn't have time to get smexed up by some triflin Brit?****** It can't be that hard.
The third one was fulfilled just recently, with the casting of Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. Other Bonds had varying problems with this; Connery, Dalton, and Brosnan were all reasonably attractive (individual preferences taken into account), but for various reasons, seemed somewhat unconvincing as fighters. Lazenby earned his place in the ranks for "there's no hurry, you see... we have all the time in the world," not his looks or agility. Roger Moore was wrong all round and a smug bastard to boot -- what woman watching those films doesn't want to slap him until his hairpiece falls off? -- which wasn't his fault, I guess, since it's hard to be an action hero when you're made out of ham.*******
Part of the difficulty with the earlier films was the relative lack of sophistication in fight choreography at that time; the train sequence in From Russia With Love is shockingly good even today, a masterpiece of claustrophobia and brutality, but it stands out as anomalous in twenty years of wooden neck chops, creaky kicks, and the ancient martial arts discipline of Let's Attack Him One At A Time. By Brosnan's term the state of the art had advanced considerably, but while he looked wonderful driving various improbable vehicles, he always seemed a bit too pretty to be fighting hand-to-hand. I like Craig for two reasons: one, while he doesn't look like a model or anything, there's this je ne sais quoi that I cannot explain for the life of me, which basically makes him almost painful to look at because he's so fucking hot; and two, he's a fantastic physical actor, and he looks like he could do all that crazy shit in the movie. Can you imagine any of the other Bonds doing that fantastic running stunt sequence in Madagascar? There's no fucking way.
All that being said, you know, it occurs to me that Casino Royale isn't a very good Bond film according to the standards set by previous Bond films. Die-hard Bond fans have objected to a number of things, like the changed order in the beginning (it's usually gunbarrel-opener-titles, in this case it was opener-gunbarrel-titles, and in this one there weren't even any naked chicks on trampolines) and some other stuff, but there are some real fundamental disconnects. For instance, Bond has the opportunity to fuck a very VERY hot woman in the first half of the movie, but he leaves her behind in favor of chasing after a lead. Mind you, his decision prevents a terrorist attack on an airport and sets the second half of the plot in motion by putting Le Chiffre in an untenable position financially, but you know there were fanboys in the audience all "OMG WHY DIDN'T HE DO HER?? THIS IS SO WRONG!!!" And then, when he goes after Vesper Lynd in the second half, it's a true romantic connection -- he even gives up his career for her, without qualms, and makes himself absolutely vulnerable to her. Why, this is unheard of! It's weird and creepy! I've long suspected that the reason so many people hated on Lazenby was because he was the Bond who fell in love and got married, and this just confirms it.
What really separates this Bond from the others, though, is the sheer physical risk he faces through the entire thing. Other Bonds have had to jump back and forth between platforms or climb up cliff faces, but they've never really shown the kind of realistic effort and pain Craig does. Craig's hand-to-hand sequences have the brutality and formlessness of a real fight, for the most part; the scene where he almost dies of digitalis poisioning is excruciating (that bit where he runs into the bathroom with a salt shaker, and everything's white and fading, is just terrifying); and, of course, there's the bit with the knotted rope. You know the reason Bond has to stay in that convalescents' home for so long isn't just because of the car crash and torture; it's everything else he's endured through the movie, kept bottled up until he collapsed.
I understand why the fans are nitpicking over little stuff, and I understand why they were so pleased with the franchise references that essentially got shoehorned in; whenever there's an adaptation, or a remake, or a reboot, people want to be reassured that the people in charge actually paid attention to what came before and understood what the fans loved the best. A few weeks ago I rewatched Dracula 2000, which is a silly little movie in a lot of ways but which also has the best Dracula mythos I've ever heard (plus Christopher Plummer as Van Helsing, how good can you get) and there were so many Stoker/Browning references I couldn't even stand it, but every time they did it I got a little "eee! they read the book!" thing in my head. It helped make up for the egregious MTV editing and the silly secondary characters -- it just made me feel better about the whole thing, you know? And a Bond film, or any film, can gain considerable goodwill by putting in these little nods to previous material, but when there's a real gap in conception/execution between source and product, it screws with people no matter how many references there are.
For me, though, the reboot took care of a lot of the stuff that pissed me off the most about Bond films, and I was grateful. For once, we have a Bond who really looks like he could do all that stupid shit they make him do, and a minimum of stupid whizzy SFX crap and gadgets, and a real emotional value to the whole thing. They don't all have to be deep, God knows, but sometimes it's nice to know that Bond's still a human being.
*Now, you know Roger Moore would have fucked Xenia Onatopp, no matter how bad an idea it was. You KNOW it. Sean Connery would have put the knife in her back halfway through, and Dalton probably would've angsted his way out of it, but Moore would've been dumb enough to do her. And then he would have used the world's stupidest gadget to throw her out the window, and there would've been a slide-whistle noise. God, I hate Moore.
**Pam Bouvier would fit in this category, I think, and I like her, but why does she do Bond like ten minutes after they first meet? I know Timothy Dalton is smoking hot, but dang.
***In the novel, Pussy Galore was a lesbian, as were all the members of her Flying Circus; Fleming had Bond "convert" her, which irritates the hell out of me, and also shows that no woman is safe.
****Miranda Frost in Die Another Day was briefly promising in this regard -- "sex for dinner, death for breakfast" is a great line -- but you know what, she had to go and boink him anyway, and then she died, so I guess Bond women are too dumb to follow their own advice. Sigh.
*****We all know what happens to women who get married in the Bond universe: they're killed on their wedding days. FATE WORSE THAN DEATH, amirite?
******The best interpretations of Moneypenny, I find, are those that acknowledge the sexual tension inherent in Bond being around any woman his age but that also allow the poor woman some dignity; I hate it when the writers have her fawning over him as if he's the only reason she keeps working for MI6. Most of the time, there's a wistful sense of "oh, it would be nice, but he's bonkers and I don't want to touch that," and that makes sense to me. My favorite Moneypenny by far is Samantha Bond, who I maintain is boinking Colin Salmon's character and quite happy without any of this 007 business, thankyouverymuch.
*******In all seriousness, they should have taken Moore out after The Spy Who Loved Me and let Dalton take For Your Eyes Only. (Moonraker, if you must know, shouldn't have happened at all.) Moore aged badly in the face, his combover was obvious by about the second film, and by the end he looked like running up a flight of stairs would have left him winded.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 07:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 07:15 am (UTC)And Daniel Craig is hotter than the white hot sun. Just sayin'.
Also am in complete agreement about Samantha Bond, who has rocked my world since I saw her in "Rumpole of the Bailey" and "The Ginger Tree", so I was biased out the gate. I adore her.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 07:57 am (UTC)It's kind of the end of an era. Which might possibly indicate something good about society (although I think it's somewhat more reflective of increasing cynical despair in popular culture), but it also somewhat sad when I think of my decades chuckling at ticker-tape message watches and "Roma" women showing their midriffs in public.
And Lazenby was annoying because his shot was boring and slow, not because of his venture into monogamy. The marriage bit might have worked better if their whole relationship hadn't been based on angsting at each other.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 08:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 02:55 pm (UTC)Which is funny, because when Brosnan announced his departure I immediately started hoping they would promote Robinson (Colin Salmon) to 00 status and make him the new Bond. He's got the looks, the moves, and oh that voice. Your speculation above would make great fodder for characterization had my desired scenario come to pass.
I'm pretty much in complete agreement with the rest of your post, and thank you for it.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-21 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-22 08:52 pm (UTC)We have Jason Stratham and Matt Damon doing great action films with characters that are much like the Bond you described above, I don't really see a need for Bond to become more like that.
However, I'm seeing the movie tomorrow so hopefully I can give you a better response on whether or not I like this new angle.