James Bond’s Identity Crisis
How Spectre tries to be the best of both Bonds…and finds itself falling short
Note: what follows is both a review of Spectre and a reflection on the Bond franchise. There will not be spoilers for Spectre, but all other Bond films are fair game.
I have to open this article by outing myself as a die-hard James Bond fan. I would actually argue that, contrary to the case for many males around my age, the Bond franchise was more important to me in my formative years than the Star Wars franchise.
So with that being stated, I settled into my seat at the Chinese Theater Thursday night for the early release of Bond’s newest adventure, Spectre. First off, as part of the entire franchise, Spectre is an decent Bond film. It’s currently sitting at a 63% rating on RottenTomatoes, ranking it at #17 of all 26 Bond films. But as the second installment of the franchise directed by Sam Mendes, and the fourth of the “prequel” series ushered in by the casting of Daniel Craig, the film does fall flat. After all, Casino Royale and Skyfall currently hold the two top spots for Bond films on RottenTomatoes. So let’s dive a little into the franchise, and specifically Craig’s “Bond Renaissance,” to see where the latest film goes wrong.
For the sake of this argument, we’re going to agree that the film franchise has featured two different types of Bonds: Classic Bond, as seen in all the films from Connery’s Dr. No to Brosnan’s Die Another Day, and Modern Bond, as seen in the four most recent films starring Daniel Craig.
So what makes Classic Bond classic?
With Dr. No, Sean Connery instantly set the standard for the character that actors would follow for the next 40 years. Classic Bond is smooth, charismatic, witty and brutally heartless. He’s got a license to kill and never flinches to use it. He seduces women constantly, usually two or three per film, and tosses them away as soon as they are no longer useful to him. Classic Bond always has some unbelievable gadget given to him by Q that will get him out of even the tightest situation. And he famously always has a pun ready after a big kill.
But by 2002’s Die Another Day, Classic Bond had reached such a high level of exaggeration that it bordered on parody. After watching an invisible car chase through a melting ice palace, audiences seemed to be a little worn-out of Bond’s antics. So the franchise took an unusually long four year break, returning with director Martin Campbell at the helm to revitalize the franchise. Campbell was the director of 1995’s GoldenEye, which was widely regarded at that time as being the last “great” Bond film made. And Campbell brought the world a completely new Bond.
Enter Modern Bond
“New” doesn’t just refer to his Craig’s controversial blonde hair and blue eyes. Casino Royale took the franchise in a completely new direction by adapting Fleming’s very first Bond novel and launching something somewhere in between a prequel and a reboot. The film introduced us to Modern Bond, an agent who has just earned his license to kill. Gone are the gadgets, the car chases, the one-liners after a kill. This Bond is more human. He still kills people, but now he broods afterwards. Somewhere deep inside this Bond is an actual heart.
The entire film is just more grounded, more realistic. There are no underwater bases, no giant space lasers made of diamonds. Instead, Bond heads to a casino for a high-stakes poker game. Gone are the cartoonish villains who are overly fond of monologues; Bond is playing against an accountant. This is also a Bond who doesn’t womanize anymore. This Bond falls in love. Eva Green stars as Vesper Lynd, one of the most dynamic and compelling “Bond Girls” to ever grace the screen, and one of the only Bond Girls to ever steal 007’s heart.
After the critical and commercial success of Modern Bond, Craig’s next outing as 007 took the idea a bit too far. Quantum of Solace saw Bond on a revenge mission after the heartbreaking death of Vesper. This is a broken, angry Bond; Bond Hard with a Vengeance, if you will. Everything that worked for Modern Bond in Casino Royale is just too much here. The once refreshing Bond brooding is now overdone. Understandably, he’s too heartbroken to seduce the Bond Girl, played in this film by Olga Kurylenko, but that leaves the leading pair with zero chemistry. The eco-terrorist villain is just too realistic, to the point that he’s instantly forgettable. The critical response to Quantum made it clear that too much Modern Bond could be a bad thing.
Then Sam Mendes swooped in to save the day. After another four year hiatus, Skyfall came back with the right amount of Modern Bond, plus a tantalizing taste of the Classic. Javier Bardem brings some old-school menace to the villainous Silva. Like many of the great Bond villains, he is both charismatic and threatening, but with a realistic enough motivation and plan to not feel too over-the-top. Back now are some Classic Bond favorites that had been noticeably missing from the new franchise, but with a modern twist. Enter Ben Wishaw as a young, computer nerd Q, and Naomie Harris as a capable, battle-hardened Moneypenny. Even the film’s climax, widely lampooned as being too similar to Home Alone, brings back some of the fun of classic Bond set-pieces.
It’s toward the end of Skyfall that we realize that the Modern Bond films have been setting the series up for a return to Classic Bond. (Also notably the first time the franchise has ever given 007 a multi-film character arc.) As we watch Bond become more accustomed to killing and slowly fight off his broken heart with booze and women, it’s clear that he is on the path to become the charming but heartless agent introduced in Dr. No. After all, it’s not hard to see how this man might become more callous over the course of the past three movies. In addition to having to kill a large number of people, he’s experienced the death of his first — and possibly only — true love…
…the death of a father figure…
…and the death of a mother figure.
Over the course of three films, Bond has lost everyone that he let himself care about. And so, at the end of Skyfall, the franchise is at a turning point. To continue with the more realistic Modern Bond, or to make the full transformation back into Classic Bond?
And Then Came Spectre
Spectre flinches away from that decision and tries to do both, and it sadly feels like the cast is uncertain of which type of Bond film they are in. Craig is supposed to be bringing back the cool, pun-ready Classic Bond, while still brooding over the death of loved ones. It just doesn’t work. Lea Seydoux is somehow meant to be a 50/50 combination of Vesper and the other Bond Girls. She’s intelligent and self-sufficient, and she slyly rejects Bonds advances initially, but soon she’s inexplicably falling into his arms. The entire romance makes both characters’ motivations feel strange. Her anger at Bond for dragging her into a dangerous caper and sorrow over the death of her father, paired with Bond’s continued mourning for Vesper, make their professions of love for each other entirely unbelievable.
The person who suffers most from this mixed up attempt at both Bonds, however, is Christoph Waltz.
On paper, bringing in an actor like Waltz to play the villainous Oberhauser should have secured the character a spot as one of the great Bond villains, ranking up there with Scaramanga, Goldfinger and Ernst Blofeld. But Oberhauser is just not sure if he is supposed to be a Modern or Classic Bond villain. Supposedly driven equally by a purely capitalistic “evil plan” and a deep-seeded hatred for Bond, Oberhauser is torn between being realistically pragmatic or dramatically vengeful. Waltz, who famously played one of film history’s greatest villains, feels disappointingly restrained here.
The list of casualties from the mixing of Bonds goes on and on. Don’t get me wrong, this is not an awful Bond film. The story is interesting, the action sequences are impressive, and it’s shot beautifully (thanks, in part, to a new precedent wonderfully set by Roger Deakins on Skyfall.) Spectre should not be viewed as a failure, but as a sure sign that Modern and Classic Bond just cannot equally co-exist. As the franchise moves forward, one Bond needs to be chosen. With continued debate over whether Craig will return or not —the latest news says he is — I have to say that, in my opinion, a full switch to Classic Bond should happen soon, but Craig is too deeply ingrained in the identity of Modern Bond to ever pull off that switch. It’s safe to say that until the current formula for a Bond film is shaken up, another sequel like Spectre will not cause much of a stir.
I’m sorry. I just had to try a Bond pun. I’ll see my way out now.
