Tweet

Comments (0)

 1 of 3

So, we have a new James Bond. Brit actor Daniel Craig was introduced last week as the new 007—and the first blond Bond at that. And Pierce Brosnan, still shaken and stirred over his surprise sacking after four films in the title role, is now a bit of film history.

On announcing their choice for the new Bond, a Sony Pictures press release called Craig "a superb actor who has all the qualities needed to bring a contemporary edge to the role." The release also promised that Craig's debut in Casino Royale next fall "will have all the action, suspense and espionage that our audiences have come to expect from us but nevertheless takes the franchise in a new and exciting direction."

The cynical among us aren't so quick to buy it. Press releases trumpeting big changes! are as common in Hollywood as power smoothies and fitness gurus. Studios are always eyeing the bottom line, and if an actor, direction or hair color gets in the way, they're jettisoned faster than you can say "Timothy Dalton."

But such changes are often merely cosmetic, because studios aren't about to mess with a sure thing. Hollywood's Golden Rule decrees that if a picture finds even moderate success, the formula must be used again. Would Sony dare to make serious changes to the most successful franchise in film history? Hardly.

But what about us Bond fans who'd like to see some "serious changes." What about those of us who've watched Dr. No and From Russia With Love a dozen times, who remember characters like Goldfinger, Oddjob and the diabolical Ernst Stavros Blofeld? What about fans who long for a return to taut, tightly directed Bond thrillers just over-the-top enough to be entertaining (like the Fleming novels they were based upon)—and who are long over the gargantuan, sex-and-special-effects nonsense the pictures have become?

The last two films in the series (1999's The World Is Not Enough and 2002's Die Another Day), with dead-on performances by Brosnan, were steps in the right direction—eschewing some special effects, ratcheting up the tension. Now Brosnan's gone and we're told more changes are at hand. Real changes, or cosmetic ones? Changes for good or bad? Is there any hope in that announcement for us Bond fans?

Actually, there just might be.

The first cause for hope can be found, ironically, in the aforementioned gushing press release from Sony. Besides "all the action, suspense and espionage that our audiences have come to expect," producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli also made a statement that gives me hope: "It has been a long time ambition for us to film the first book in the series, Casino Royale, which defined the complex character of James Bond."

Those two words—"complex character"—highlight the biggest difference between the Bond of the original Ian Fleming novels (and the first four or five of the films) and the sprawling, almost caricature-like movies that followed in later years.

In the beginning, James Bond was not the unstoppable, irresistible super-spy we've come to expect. He was human. While skilled and intelligent, he wasn't superhumanly so, and at times would go down hard to his opponents. He felt both pain and fear. He bled. He suffered physical and emotional scars. In one memorable scene from Moonraker (a novel sadly bearing no resemblance to the film version), the realization that his country's only chance of salvation lay with him, on his shoulders, left him literally shaking.

The real Bond often grappled with loneliness, and the excesses of the movies—wine, women, playing cards at Monte Carlo—were frequently shown in their proper light: as ways to crowd out the empty room that waited for him at the end of his assignment. This made the most moving scene in Bond history—from the novels and the films—all the more powerful: the conclusion of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Following his marriage to the Countess Tracy Di Vicenzo, Bond's one chance at companionship is shattered as his new bride is felled by an assassin. She dies before his eyes, just as the credits begin to roll.

next page... |  1 of 3 | last page