The James Bond series
is without a doubt one of my favourite movie franchises. These movies are two
hours of pure fun filled with globetrotting adventures, impossible spy gadgets,
femmes fatales and over-the-top villains. You always know what you are going to
get with a Bond movie and that has been working well for audiences for decades.
Yet after decades the continuity was getting very muddled in a 2006 the guardians
of the Bond franchises released Casino
Royale, which boldly restarted the franchise at zero with not just a brand
new Bond, but also a Bond on his first mission. A risky undertaking, but as
with most Bond missions it was a success.
I had first
discovered James Bond with Goldeneye,
Pierce Brosnan’s first outing as the world famous spy, and then dove into the
franchise by watching every movie starring Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, George
Lazenby and of course Sean Connery who launched the series in the first place.
It is an interesting franchise in that it reflects the political turmoils of
the time, with Connery and Moore occasionally going into Soviet occupied
countries and Dalton fighting a Pablo Escobar inspired drug lord in License to Kill. The problem became, are
we to seriously believe the character played by Brosnan in Die Another Day in 2002 is the same that Connery played in Dr. No all the way back in 1962?
I imagine the
producers in the 1960s probably never imagined the franchise could last this
long so they simply kept recasting the actor while sometimes making small
references to events of movies that came out decades ago. However with Bond
arriving into the 21st century it was clearly time to not only
recast but also take the franchise back to its root, hence their decision to
adapt the very first book by Ian Fleming, the author of the Bond novels that
were used for the early movies. Yet when I first heard that news I was
surprised since I had read the novel a few years prior to the movie and there
is actually not that much in the way of action in the book. Apart from one
major shootout, Bond spends a good part of the novel playing cards against a moneyman
for the Soviet Union called LeChiffre. As Deadpool would say, that’s not very
cinematic.
This is probably
why director Martin Campbell, and screenwriters Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and
Robert Wade, chose to punch things up a little by having Bond do a parkour
chase through a construction site early on in Casino Royale. Jason Bourne had stormed the box-office early on in
the 2000s with his frenetic energy and the audience was not going to pay to see
a spy movie in which the spy just sits down and plays card. Yet at the same time
the Bond we see in this rebooted franchise is still very different from Jason
Bourne and from all the Bonds that came before.
Played by Daniel
Craig, who went under so much scrutiny for the role you would think he was going
to marry a member of the royal family, this Bond is a spy who has only ever
killed two people by the time the opening credits roll. Q, the provider of the
franchise’s amusing gadgets is nowhere to be seen so Bond has to rely on his
fists, pistol and wit to get out of deadly situations. LeChiffre, played with
effective menace by international treasure Mads Mikkelsen, does not have
elaborate torture devices to make Bond talk but instead strips him naked and
spanks his testicles with a hard rope. That’s about as back to basic as it can
get.
This new take on
Bond has not been well received by everyone. Some lament the old days when Bond
would use a jet back to escape danger or have to fight a henchman who uses a
razor-sharp bowler hat to kill people. This may explain the success of the Kingsman franchise that took the most
ridiculous aspects of the Bond franchise and then cranked things up to 11.
I understand
these complaints, but I fully accept Daniel Craig as Bond because with him we
have a more fleshed out character than with previous incarnations. In Casino Royale we see him struggle with
his first kill, wrestle moral quandaries while taking orders from the
commanding M (Judi Dench, one of the best actresses in the franchise) and also
fall in love. His relationship with Vesper Lynd (Eva Green, who definitely is
more than just a Bond girl) affects who he becomes for the rest of his spy
career.
Not every
character deserves an origin story, but it is fascinating to watch Bond struggle
to kill a man in a bathroom early on in the movie and by the end see him confidently
shoot a different man in the kneecap before he marches up to him while wearing
an expensive suit to utter the immortal line: “The name’s Bond. James Bond.”
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