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BONDING ON EMPTY Saving us from domination by rich mega-crazies, which now has more urgency in the real world than Bond’s, doesn’t lessen the continual emphasis of phallic worship. Judging by audience responses, Craig’s whole package—bod, naughty boy smiles, immersive voice and aura of endangerment—heels us to kneepitulation. As first Bond in Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger, Sean Connery’s height and hirsuteness gave audiences plenty to munch on; even his Scot accentuation comes through as tasty. Until his smirky specialty of bagging the broads between ridiculous heroics became boring and he wasn’t afraid to show it, and, let’s admit this too, there’s nowhere to go after encountering Pussy Galore. George Lazenby, whose assets essentially left us wanting if only out of reluctance to accept him after the disappointment of Connery’s departure, wasn’t around long enough to hanker for or get sick of and neither was Diana Rigg’s Tracy, the only woman to marry Bond. Close to asexual, Roger Moore’s phooey polish was a fey mock of 007ism negating whatever his masculinity, consistently in peril of sliding into poof spoof. How he survived as long as he did is beyond understanding; those who like him say they take him strictly for the laughs, re the use of crocodiles to hop across—instead of being swallowed up in—a swamp in Live and Let Die. Timothy Dalton’s brief allure was in the shiftiness of bad boy shyster working against both the character, as sinister-looking as any nemesis (and why he’s just right in A & E’s 1992 Framed), and obligatory sexual conquest. Pierce Brosnan’s attraction is being the ultimate (and Irish!) cutie pie. His prowess is verbalizing and responding to double entendres with aplomb. Judi Dench’s M calls him a “sexist, misogynist dinosaur” who’s light on his feet, bungee-jumping with the confidence of nine lives, one helluva of a pussycat bringing dandy apropos to articulation: when Moneypenny voice-mails her wordplay “I trust you’ll stay Onatopp of things,” he concurs with “purr-cisely.” Bond has always been cataloged as an impeccable clotheshorse and no one on screen in recent memory did more for the blue shirt and blazer or Savile Row drapes than Brosnan when globally cavorting. Even the fatigues were perfectly tailored and starched. Connery’s beefiness, having gone flab in his last installments, was often incompatible with his attire; he wore tuxes well but he was comically longshoreman-like in business suits. (Not true in the otherwise purposeless, unassociated Never Say Never Again, which ran out of fuel once Barbara Carrera prematurely exploded.) Returning by popular demand in Diamonds Are Forever, with the inducement of a hefty salary and 12.5% of the gross, his sloppy carriage and the sloppier production would do him in, though Shirley Bassey’s career received a huge boost with sellout concerts at which she stunningly delivered the title song (as the envy of every metrosexual who’d later karaoke it atop dining room tables at parties). Moore’s debonair ascots belonged more to the domain of Louis Jordan, though Lazenby ennobled the kilt in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Dalton’s knavery obscured 007’s urban finery. Clothed in Tom Ford, and like him a clean queen minus the pejorative, Craig benefits from collar bars and tight tailoring accentuating frame and accommodating size with or without the lifts and camera tricks. Impossible not to see how he “grew” a few throughout the years. Another indispensable for 007 is the mastery of multitasking. All of the actors were at least nuff at controls but Dalton and Brosnan and Craig look more convincing in driving, flying, steering hardware during the inevitable escapathons. (Well, there’s that Michael Dukakis moment Brosnan has in an armored tank.) In Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall, Spectre and, self-sacrificingly, in No Time to Die, Craig dominates the machinery, his ruggedly driven sleight a part of his DNA not so vehemently present in the other Bonds. The camera gobbles this up, and when in fulmination causes shudders on the brutality scales. Craig being the least schmoozy of Bonds rubs against diehards wanting the comfort of James’s humor, as if a walking, driving, flying WMD has an endless burden to crack jocularities, yet he delivers several as revival with Naomie Harris, the most active and satisfying Moneypenny. In case we’ve forgotten, by the time Brosnan met his icy Waterloo in Die Another Day, the quips, as well as the tricks and stunts, immobilized us. Despite the overblown wackiness and poor critical reception, the fridgidaire earned nearly $500 million, confirming in movie parlance that most franchises inherit audiences instead of earning them. Director Martin Campbell didn’t want Brosnan’s début in GoldenEye to be deluged with the gadgetry and super-hyped scenarios as they were already passé. Initially forecasting a move away from formula, he settled for or more likely pressured into accepting some Bond techno candy, and in lieu of battling warped psychos out to rule or destroy the planet he used an enemy (Sean Bean) wrought from within, presaging the betrayal we’d later see in Skyfall. (The loner psychos during the Brosnan years would return in Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough and Die Another Day, each sequentially more reductive.) As counter punch in GoldenEye, we’re introduced to a new M in Dench, a Glenda Jackson-like harridan who gives good edge and gets her share of potent one-liners throughout her tenure. This shift to a different approach to M is underscored by Eric Serra who, in addition to providing the music, sings the end credits song “The Experience of Love” which he co-wrote with Robert Hine and superior to Tina Turner’s title track; it’s now an alert to what we’ll see as climax in Skyfall. Sine qua non, the Bond bedtime broads are dishes de jour, starting with these: Ursula Undress in Dr. No, Daniela Bianchi in From Russia With Love, and—OMG 38!—Honor Blackman in Goldfinger, delivering variants of Euro snatch not quite abating the Bond flash of latent misogyny as duty when, after unloading juice into the middle piece, who remains one of his rare intriguing traps, he offs her. Before Diana Rigg’s touch of class in OHMS and then after, the dishes became toploaded skanks, especially Plenty, Bambi and Thumper in Diamonds Are Forever. Moore’s Bond had his share of mismatches, pardoned as setups for snickers, and Dalton’s dalliances were maintenance. With Brosnan came the mutts: in GoldenEye, the villainess Xenia Onatopp, played by Famke Janssen, is markedly funny; a Julie Newmar type, she knows how to put the squeeze on those she kills and gets orgasmic when panting “He’s going to derail us!” There’s Izabella Scorupco crossbred as Sheena Easton and Nastassja Kinski and not overjoyed by the “boys with toys” syndrome. The least mongrel of Brosnan’s dames are the beauty Sophie Marceau in The World is Not Enough, curvaceous Halle Berry and cunty Rosamund Pike in Die Another Day. Hands down the cheekiest love interest for Bond, in Casino Royale, is Paris-born Eva Green as a little bit Parker Posey, a little bit Kate Beckinsale, a welcomed bit of Susan Kohner, mingling Algerian, Spanish, Swedish and Sephardic Jewish heritages. (Green and Craig have the single best dialogue sequence of any 007 movie, on a train to Montenegro, from which springs a complicated romance.) Quantum of Solace offers Olga Kurylenko as an agile Ukrainian stand-in for Catherine Zeta-Jones giving Bond a kiss but doesn’t bed him. In Skyfall, Naomie Harris’s Moneypenny, in slinky armor, finally gets what the other Moneypennies didn’t—a covert assignation with Bond following the sexiest shave any 007 ever received. Léa Seydoux tries in Spectre to be Kate Moss eventually slinking to submission to thwart the lingering suspicion she’s not too far above statutory rape bait (the same unease felt in Midnight in Paris and Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol). With Craig in Casino Royale, the no-nonsense 007 is firmly ensconced. Knowing the turf and liabilities, Campbell eschewed the hallmark fantasies for, basically, revenge. Fear not, there are the compulsory come-ons, chases and crashes. And one marvel of virtuosity—a Venetian palacio dramatically tumbles down. (Don’t give much credence to the depths of its cascading collapse, for the canals of Venice aren’t too deep: the Grand, in pre-cruise ship non-dredging, averages around sixteen feet and the inner canals three to five feet.) Expanding Dench’s tough play with Brosnan, Campbell substantially enlarged her M for Craig. We’re not too sure what’s clicking inside her about him other than being pissed over his re-occurring insubordination and twice sneaking into her home. Chilling with intent in issuing orders—she impatiently calls for a hit resulting in making Bond “collateral damage” in one installment—there’s a grudging like for him, perhaps somewhat less for the Lazarus Effect epitomizing the liberties in the genre than for the lone wolf she may empathize with. In Quantum of Solace, a snooty title few of us initially grasp in the scheme of 007 until we see the aguacave prompting reminder of the Cochabamba Water Revolt in Bolivia over the real fears of captialist pigs trying to buy a city’s water supply, and in Skyfall, the bleakest personal rubric before No Time to Die, we’re moving into an increasingly entangled relationship between Bond and M. If the love/hate and accompanying contempt strain into a moldy, not-fully-realized mother & son thing, we nevertheless hang on to the overtones, as they’re both borderline humanoids. With Javier Bardem a sort of Burgess going Blondie Hannibal, we get extra discomforting imports wisely left knotty. Those wanting a return of outlandish techno flash must have been very disappointed when the “prestige” of Sam Mendes directing Skyfall and Spectre meant the comic fanfare would be further diminished and in its place (1) the realities that lingering personal nemeses and government spies who are about to be mercilessly retired by computer wizardry and (2) a conclusion to Dench’s M. Her sendoff and Bardem’s inclinations help explain the former’s $1.2 billion dollar box office. After the eye-popping nightscapes of Shanghai—a Chinese Epcot as a blue-lit blend of futura with yesteryear—it comes close to feeling like a chore to stay with it: the isolated Skyfall itself, in the Scottish Highlands, recalls the oppressive Reata in Giant. The business attended to there is ugly, with Mendes orchestrating the foreboding action with a whatever-is-available self-defense proficiency. We don’t easily surrender to Craig in Spectre, either; he looks distressed and drained in his resolutions, never ineffectual yet workmanlike in servicing a widow. Hunting down leads to the crime syndicate Spectre, there are the usual chases—one on a bank of the River Tiber in Rome—before he absconds a rickety plane to save his next yet reluctant squeeze and then both board a convenient train, in the middle of nowhere with expedient tux and sexy dinner gown, interrupted by arduous maulings from a brut called Hinx, climaxing as tribute to From Russia with Love. Fitting, as it signals the end of the line, advanced not only by Sam Smith’s thematic “Writing’s on the Wall” during the opening credits but also by the attitudinal assumption carried throughout by Mendes; he’s wrapping up some loose ends of Craig’s Bond. In fact morbidity opens the movie with a highly pronounced excessiveness in jaundiced visuals of the Mexico City celebration of El aia de los muertos; then a head slammed against a monstrous Roma palacio table before the eyes are gouged and a quick neck break; a Casino Royale baddie daddie killing himself in front of James; a very tiresome Christoph Waltz as Blofeld pampering his Chinchilla Persian kitty. Which may explain why Ben Whishaw’s Q becomes, in the Brit sense, rummy: as in Skyfall, showing up just when needed, he’s Carnaby Street clad and his hair a welcoming throwback to George’s in Shampoo, with a mod subtly in his favoritism to Bond, who knows how to use it. The delayed release of No Time to Die could have easily endangered the movie’s big “secret” but somehow it held and initial audiences were genuinely shocked. Believe it or not, I remain dismayed. Having studiously avoided the movie, the reviews, the hoopla, my first viewing came on the 1st of July, 2024, when I went on YouTube to continue bingeing on 40s & 50s film noir. On the Home page, No Time and Quantum of Solace appeared. Knowing UA/MGM’s stringent venue guard, these might be fronts for tomfoolery. Wasting no time in clicking, No Time starts up—in what turns out to be the longest opener at 23.5 minutes of any Bond—and at long last there’s Craig. (By the time the movie was over, the count reached more than 250,000 viewings before being yanked.) As it concludes, there’s a hard time adjusting to the fact the best Bond of them all would consciously decide to...WTF? Did I miss connectives, beyond the knowledge Craig wanting to exit the role? The beginning of No Time is a mess of disassociation from Bond openers, and I began to feel more personally distanced when Ralph Fiennes’ M seems removed too, and suddenly there’s a new 007—yes, a woman, but the wrong one, as it should be Naomi Harris who got the promotion, having performed previous duty that almost killed Bond on hysterical orders from Dench’s M and then helping to save him from the dangers of Komodo dragons. The script by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade is dispersive, linking not only their six prior Bonders—The World is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall and Spectre—but also trying to colligate the other 007s as much as possible. (This article will help follow the dots.) Director Cary Joji Fukunaga contributed as well and the most generous nod would be he’s worked diligently to steer away from pile ups. There are, however, congestions: Bond’s most steady lay (Seydoux) has a daughter, revealed at the end to be his yet obvious throughout that its point is compulsory sap; Ana de Armas’s black-gowned gymnastics in the Cuba sequence is a rushed joke; and the unconvincing villain growing batches of the super toxic Heracles virus is a strange mishmash of Rami Malek’s specialty of bug-eyed misfits. James gets infected, realizes there’s no cure and heroically stays on the island to keep open the silo blast doors for rockets to bombard the deadly water-borne microflora. Of course we’re thinking it just can’t be—this is Bond, the perfect escape artist as neo-realist we’ve been fastened to for fifteen years. If an entertaining chatfest as mini-documentary on YouTube entitled Being James Bond helps in getting over the loss, it also has producer Barbara Broccoli gleefully victorious about her decision in selecting Craig, who, before Casino Royale opened to raves, was ridiculed as too pocket-sized by nearly everyone else, including a very hasty press. The irony in the last scenes of No Time is Craig watching the sky while standing near a silo looking fashionably bloody-grungy in costume designer Suttirat Larlarb’s white long-sleeve sweatshirt with suspenders attached to cargo pants; the image becomes more powerful than any of Q’s weaponry. A communal farewell occurs: Not only do we acquiesce to Craig’s retirement, we need rest too. Still, having so successfully bonded to his classic realness in fantasy franchise warns of the danger of emptiness that awaits. After every Bond chapter, expectedly mindless speculation begins about the next actor to play him. The nancies want Tim Hiddleston, who buffed up a bit in Kong: Skull Island; the masochists crave Tom Hardy (mainly after Mad Max: Fury Road); the sex-hungry nudists petition for Michael Fassbender. Henry Cavill would seem a logical choice, if he hadn’t filmed The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and one too many of those fatuous superhero crappers. I’ll throw in, against insuperable odds, Idris Elba, the freckled Eddie Redmayne (after the TV series The Day of the Jackal) and Jonathan Bailey. Though Danish and in his 50s, actor Claes Bang briefly emerged a while back as contender, who’d swing Bond away from super butch to Fleming’s original intent to be a slender sophisticate (though he, as well as Justin Baldoni, would be highly suitable as villain). With Amazon MGM now in creative control, surprises and socio-political shifts can be anticipated. Tendering the following as urgent plea for this story line, maybe the only one left that matters but, with Jeff Bezos the largest stockholder of Amazon, the least likely: prepare the new Bond to wipe out the fascist Twitler plague in America. Text COPYRIGHT © 2007 RALPH BENNER (Revised 03/2025) All Rights Reserved. |