007 Gets “Emotional” And “Groundbreaking”
As a lifelong James Bond fan, I have never felt so ambivalent about the imminent release of a new Bond film. I’m torn. Part of me is happy and part of me is almost dreading it.
Normally I would be so excited I would be eating/drinking/sleeping Bond in anticipation. But this time is different. Of course I want the film to be good and to be a hit – the latter of which is pretty much a fait accompli – but at the same time, everything I have seen about Skyfall seems to feed my worst fears.
I’ll explain.
I’m what might be called an “old-school” fan. I like my James Bond sophisticated, stylish, clever, witty, suave and a smooth operator with women. That’s why as a kid I chose him over Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name, or Charles Bronson, or any other typically miserable and monosyllabic American action hero. I didn’t want to grow up to be the scowling loner guy roaming from town to town getting into fights. I wanted to be that smooth motherfucker in the tuxedo who has all the women and seems to be enjoying all the finest things in life. The guy who has a slight grin playing on his lips at all times because he is just that cool – knows whatever musclebound thug he’s up against, he’s going to turn the odds around and beat him. That, in my mind, was true confidence and true masculinity. The other guys may act “tougher”, but Bond was the one who would always come out on top. Then he would brush off his tux, order another vodka martini and kiss the sexy Ukrainian girl…who was also sent to kill him, but is now hopelessly in his thrall.
That’s Bond to me. That’s what makes the character so special.
There have been a load of pretenders and parodies, but no one has ever beaten that Bondian recipe – a very particular mix of action and comedy, sex and violence, glamor and gadgets.
Brosnan was perfectly suited to the role and did a great job, but was unlucky enough to have gotten the role, not under Cubby Broccoli’s reign, but that of his children, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, filmmakers only by nepotism. They seemed more interested in picking up their huge producer fees and slowly but surely selling Bond on the cheap – making each film less and less ambitious, less cutting edge, less grand in scale. And like all bosses who have no idea what they are doing, they ended up blaming the resulting failure on their employee (Brosnan) and unceremoniously dumping him. Thereby getting rid of the one thing RIGHT about the films and robbing him of the great Bond film he deserved.
When Daniel Craig won the role, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I won’t belabor the point because it’s become such a stale topic of contention, but in no way did he resemble the five Bonds who came before him…that is just a fact. Listen, I’m told by his defenders that women go crazy over him. Whether this is because he’s playing James Bond and isn’t their plumber, I guess we’ll never know. But my problem is not with his blonde hair (in the new film he practically has a shaved head), nor his short stature – it’s the craggy face of stone and his monotone acting. He would be a perfect character actor for playing flawed and stoic blue-collar heroes, diamonds in the rough, or even villains, but his looks and whole manner directly subvert the role of 007.
He has stripped Bond of the cool ease that made him special and turned him into just another thug who has to prove to us with every frame of film how tough – and tormented – he really is.
That’s just my opinion.
I have nothing against him as a person, I just think he is bizarrely overrated as an actor. He seems utterly expressionless and drains every line of dialogue of any color or life. He has failed to make good on his supposed “star power” in non-Bond films with flop after flop after flop and still his defenders talk about him like he’s the greatest actor to ever walk the earth. It’s surreal.
Anyway, when he got the role in Casino Royale, I was nervous but ready to give him a chance. When I read the leaked script for CR, my hopes doubled. Here was a smart script that turned the Bond formula temporarily upside-down and played brilliantly against expectations. I thought it was brave and exciting. It still felt like Bond to me on the page. But when I saw the finished product and Craig’s dour take on the character, I just couldn’t go with it. Martin Campbell, also strangely overrated in my view, had turned that smart script into a lumbering, stilted film. And just not that exciting. It felt like a Bond film for people who don’t like Bond films. Which, I guess, some people would say was the whole point.
Maybe because I now had such low expectations, I enjoyed Quantum Of Solace more. It’s a terribly edited film, mind you, but the pacing and tone feels much more like Bond to me. It’s an ACTION FILM. It moves! And Craig allowed for some nuance, a few moments of actual humor. Was he becoming Bond? Was he getting the idea there should be an ease not angst to the world famous British spy?
So I hoped again.
Especially when Craig spoke of making the next movie a “Bond, with a capital B”.
Then, as more and more details leaked about Skyfall…including some storyboards, call sheets and pages from the script…everything I saw seemed to contradict what Craig had said. This would be Part III in the ‘gritty, realistic’ – but mostly melodramatic – reboot of the series. It has that same goal of demythologizing the great James Bond. He “dies”, he hides out for a while in Istanbul, he mopes, he grows a beard that makes him even fuglier, etc, etc. He’s really a tortured soul underneath it all. Could it be he even has some unresolved issues about Mommy and Daddy who died when he was very young?
Oh, steel yourself – because that’s where we’re going..
But first, after following a villain to Shanghai (not really, Craig never set foot in China – just the Second Unit people…another cop-out by the Broccolis), he returns to London – where the bulk of the rest of the film takes place. That’s right, a Bond film that takes place largely in London. It’s like a Star Trek film that takes place in the Enterprise’s docking station in San Francisco. He returns to find the MI6 offices have been attacked and moved underground, just to make things even more dreary and “down-to-earth”. He doesn’t return right to duty though. Oh no. He fails his shooting test and has to take a psych exam where he is given a word-association quiz. Raise your hand if you ever thought you’d see this in a fucking Bond movie.
The last word meant to provoke a reaction is “Skyfall” – the name of his family’s ancestral home in Scotland. It’s no coincidence this is the title of the film and the location of the ‘climactic battle’, or that Judi Dench is there for that battle, along with a mysterious elderly man played by the great Albert Finney who is described as an “important figure from Bond’s past”. Rumor has it that this is Dench’s last film and that she may meet her ultimate fate in Bond’s arms. Meanwhile, Javiar Bardem’s villain Silva seems to hold a very personal grudge against M and his identity is being protected as the film’s biggest secret.
Are you putting all this together?
The director Sam Mendes, known for drama not action, says it will be “groundbreaking”, and Craig promises it will be “emotional” and “moving”.
I don’t know how much Bond’s parents figure into the story or whether Silva is literally related to M or Bond – hopefully it’s only a thematic parallel, not a clumsy Darth Vader-like twist – but there is no doubt that the producers are going somewhere Freudian where no Bond film has gone before.
And I hate it.
It smacks of heavy-handed soap opera and the antithesis of a light popcorn adventure.
If I’m even half right, I think a good portion of the audience will be tired of this “personal” take on Bond. Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol was much more Bondian than Bond these days and it was a huge hit. People want to be awed and exhilarated like they were when Cruise scaled that skyscraper. I don’t think they go to a Bond movie to be moved or cry, I really don’t.
And the old rustic Skyfall lodge, in the middle of nowhere, strikes me as a boring location for a big finish. In fact, all the action in the film looks/feels retro to the point of deja vu. The big opening sequence caps off with yet another old-fashioned fight atop a train. After that, it seems to be only conventional shoot-outs and a foot chase through a London underground station. There doesn’t seem to be any innovative or spectacular action in the entire film. Another element of the Bond formula to get stripped away.
And yet the film is 2 hours and 25 minutes long – a long sit.
I’m extrapolating here, of course, I haven’t seen the film yet. Maybe I will end up absolutely loving it. That’s my struggle – despite my gut instinct, I’m trying to keep an open mind and go on the journey.
It doesn’t help that the PR campaign for Skyfall has been one of the worst in the history of the franchise.
We’re a month off from the premiere and this is their idea of a final one-sheet:
In any case, it will be a big hit. All Bond films are and I’m grateful for that. I’m just very curious what the critical reaction and general consensus will be. Am I completely alone in wanting Bond to return to being an aspirational hero, a wonderful excuse for escapism – the ubercool superspy who lives the high life and takes on dangerous glamorous missions that are, you know, unrelated to his personal life??
Oh well. There’s always the next one…
For now, though, I have never had such mixed feelings about the return of Bond.
–RR