James Bond: An Identity Crisis

It is hot property in show business these days to ‘re’ things. ‘Re-imaginings’ are populating the small screen in the form of the SciFi channel’s Battlestar Galactica or Tin Man, re-workings such as Tom Stoppard’s Ivanov translation are on the West End, but most notably the silver screen has been stormed by the ‘reboot’ approach.  It has worked box office wonders for the caped crusader in The Dark Knight and promises to soon do so for the Star Trek franchise, but in cinemas currently we can witness the second installment in the wildly successful reboot of the Bond formula.  But how much ‘re’ is there really to be found in this new, lean, mean, blonde, Bond, when the formula in question was never really set in stone in the first place?

When Die Another Day was released in 2002, it marked the 40^th anniversary of the Bond franchise, itself being the 20^th Bond film.  As such it managed to contain a reference to every preceding Bond film, ranging from gadget cameos to plot echoes.  That the film endeavouring to be a nostalgic reflection of the series came out as a jumbled, overweight mess says something about the identity crisis that Bond suffers from. 

Gadgets, puns, car chases, plots to rule the world, tuxedoes, martinis, all immutably associated with Bond, but really nothing more than IMDB keywords.  Surely Bond had not to this point survived on a simple rearranging trick?  He is arguably the most ubiquitous hero that cinema has created, competing only with the likes of Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker, but one is hard pressed to really pin down what exactly makes Bond James Bond.

The hero of Casino Royale, the first Bond novel, bears little resemblance to the Bond who led forty years of escapist action.  He seems to be merely a vessel for fetishism, a character around which Fleming luxuriantly fantasizes about the lifestyle of a secret agent.  When Felix Leiter offers to buy Bond a drink, he orders: “A dry martini, one, in a deep champagne goblet…three measures of Gordons, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet.  Shake it very well until it’s ice cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel”; a far cry from ‘Shaken, not stirred.’

Bond has, in his time, blundered from the sublime to the camp to the obscenely ridiculous.  While Connery started the series fairly close to the mark, being equal parts suave and ruthless, it deviated wildly with Moore as the leading man, and third nipples and voodoo priests began to crowd the scene.  Dalton was the first to really try to approach a more sinister Bond, a predecessor to the one on screens currently.  But he was a character out of place in films which didn’t know which way to veer.  You couldn’t imagine Craig’s bond escaping down a mountain in a cello case, but Dalton’s tried.

There was a six year hiatus following Dalton’s last outing before Goldeneye arrived on the scene, and with it, a return to Bond’s confidence as a franchise.  The Berlin Wall had fallen, Stella Rimington was head of MI5, and there was widespread belief that 007 was a thing of the past.  But given the impetus to question its own role, the franchise seemed to suddenly truly understand itself, and as the trailer proclaimed: “It’s a new world, with new enemies, and new threats, but you can still depend, on one man.”  With Brosnan declaring “you were expecting someone else?” and Martin Campbell (later director of Casino Royale) at the helm, an assured and self aware film brought Bond up to date as smoothly as one of his unfeasibly executed car leaps.

It had taken him 33 years to really know who he was, but sadly it was only a short time before 007 met his end.  Brosnan enjoyed three films as the confident apotheosis of three decades of trial and error before grimly delivering his last hurrah.  “As the countdown begins to the 21^st century,” begins the trailer to The World is Not Enough “it’s good to know there’s one number you can always count on.”  But as Bond, having just shot in cold blood a female love interest, declaring “I never miss”, it is obvious that the Bond we knew has succumbed to the “bitch is dead” cynicism of the coming century.

While Die Another Day was intended as a ‘revitalization’ to compete with 21^st century trends marked by xXx and The Bourne Identity release in the same year, it instead sent “40 years of cinematic history down the toilet in favor of bright flashes and loud bangs” (James Berardinelli).  “It just went too far,” said Roger Moore, “and that’s from me, the first Bond in space! Invisible cars and dodgy CGI footage? Please!”  The old Bond had reached his end, and the 20^th film, intended as a tribute, became a gravestone for his character.

However, the reboot worked, and just as thousands of bullets have invariably missed their target, 007 returned, though decidedly a different man.  Like his literary incarnation, he has been very specific about his ingredients.  ‘This drink’s my own invention, I’m going to patent it, when I can think of a good name.’  The name’s Bond, James Bond.