At
one point in Goldeneye, "M"
warns
Bond not to take his
assignment personally.
Without missing a beat, Bond
replies, "Never."
Nonetheless,
that's exactly what he ends
up doing. As the film
unspools, Bond allows Alec
Trevelyan's betrayal to get
under his skin, missing a
chance to kill 006 in the
"graveyard" of Soviet
statues, brooding on a beach
about his situation until
Natalya cheers him up, and
finally dropping Alec to his
death with what you might
call "extreme prejudice."
("For England, James?" "No,
for me.")
In The
World Is Not Enough,
the trend of personalizing
Bond's adventures continues,
as 007 endures not only the
usual evil schemes but also
a volatile personal
relationship that makes him
unusually vulnerable (and
since the film is still in
theaters, that's all I'm
going to reveal here).
Such was not
always the case. There was a
time when James Bond was
virtually immune to the
emotions we mere mortals
have to endure. In
1962's Dr. No,
Sean Connery gave us a
ruthless Bond who, among
other things, shot an
unarmed man to death and
seduced a female villain
before callously turning her
over to the cops. There was
a remorselessly cruel streak
in this early interpretation
of Bond, which is probably
just as well. What good is a
license to kill without a
matching lack of conscience?
Bond never second-guesses
his decisions in the early
days.
Over
the course of the first few
films Bond develops
something of a sense of
humor, but he never exactly
"mellows out." Bond gets
into plenty of hot spots and
warm clinches, but no one
really seems to get under
his skin one way or the
other. He kills the villains
because it's his job, not
because he's personally
enraged or vengeful. He
sleeps with the women
because they're babes, not
because they "touch him"
deep down in his heart.
This
is not to suggest that
Connery played a
one-dimensional Bond. Far
from it. In fact, by making
Bond such a generally
untouchable character most
of the time, Connery (and
the filmmakers) ensured that
the few fleeting moments of
emotion in the films took on
great significance.
For
example, Sean-Bond's banter
with Moneypenny often
conveys genuine warmth and
affection, so much so that
he even sings to her at one
point! When Kerim Bey turns
up dead in FRWL, there are
some powerful moments as
Bond is first visbibly
saddened and then furious,
taking his anger out on poor
Tatiana. The payoff for
these "humanizing" moments
comes in the danger scenes,
when we actually believe Bond
might die at the point of
Grant's gun, or on the
business end of Goldfinger's
laser beam. There were just
enough vulnerable,
humanizing moments to keep
Bond from becoming a cartoon
superhero, but even the most
serious set-backs never
dealt a lasting blow to his
self-confidence or sense of
purpose.
Things took a
radical left turn with the
arrival of Lazenby in OHMSS.
In this film, Bond "quits"
the Secret Service out of
anger and frustration, and
later makes plans to do it
again out of love. He falls
head over heels for Tracy,
and actually proposes
marriage. With Tracy's
death, he even breaks down
in tears at the end of the
film. These events must have
astounded audiences of 1969,
accustomed as they were to
the swinging, invincible
Bond of the Connery era.
When OHMSS didn't
live
up to expectations at the
box office, the filmmakers
quickly navigated Bond back
onto his former course,
making him more of a
superman than ever in DAF.
The experimentation with
gritty realism and personal
angst went out the window in
place of an increased accent
on humor. Apparently
unscathed by his set-backs
in the previous film, Bond
now seemed more comfortable
than ever in his job and
lifestyle. Now he seemed to
view the constant death and
destruction around him with
little more than mild
amusement.
Roger Moore
came to embody this era,
with a glib one-liner for
every occasion and a
"heartfelt reaction" that
usually amounted to a raised
eyebrow (Moore himself
quipped that his range as an
actor "ran the gamut from A
to B"). Yet even in Roger's
era there were those
occasional moments with real
emotional weight, as when
Bond reacts testily to the
mention of his dead wife
in TSWLM, or
kicks Locque's car off a
cliff in FYEO.
Again, the relative rarity
of these moments gives them
a lasting resonance. Bond
may spare a moment of
silence over the body of a
slain ally, for instance,
but these are only brief
asides in films that are
mostly fun and games.
When
Timothy Dalton showed up in
1987's TLD,
things began to change.
Dalton's Bond was brooding,
almost surly, full of
attitude from the very
beginning ("If he fires me,
I'll thank him for it!").
There's an electrifying
moment in Vienna when Agent
Saunders is killed; Bond has
a look of rage on his face
that tells us he is not a
man we want to cross. Again,
most of the film is standard
fare -- the usual formula of
action, gadgets, stunts and
babes -- but when Dalton
throws in a moment of
genuine rage, or in the case
of Kara true tenderness, we
sit up and take notice.
Sensing they
were on to something with
Dalton's emotional range,
the filmmakers tailored the
script of LTK to
make it all emotion,
primarily
anger. In fact, the whole
point of the film is that
007 has lost his well-known
calm demeanor and is now
royally ticked off. Even the
ad campaign eschewed the
usual emphasis on stunts and
spectacle and promoted the
emotional angle: "His
Bad Side Is A Dangerous
Place To Be," said
the posters. In LTK,
Bond is pushed to his
emotional limits, and for
the bulk of the film he's a
juggernaut of vengeance,
piling up an impressive body
count and disposing of
baddies in particularly
gruesome ways. In the course
of his vendetta, he turns
his back on duty and, for
all he knows, walks away
from his old life forever.
He also makes some serious
mistakes, at one point
botching an ongoing
international intelligence
operation and getting a room
full of "good guys" killed
(including one member of his
own service).
These
were fascinating and bold
changes to the Bond formula,
and depending on who you
ask, the jury's still out as
to whether it worked. Even
so, the effects of the
Dalton era continue to be
felt. Pierce Brosnan
inherited a very different
Bond in 1994 than he would
have in 1986, and for better
or worse the character is
now as vulnerable to things
like heartache, remorse and
rage as any of us. As stated
above, Brosnan's debut in GE placed
Bond at odds with a former
friend, one who knew all of
007's weak points and didn't
mind twisting the knife.
("Tell me James, do all
those vodka martinis drown
the cries of all the men
you've killed? Does the
comfort you find in the arms
of your women make up for
all the ones you failed to
protect?" Ouch!).
In TND, Bond
encounters
an old flame, Paris Carver.
It's obvious he still has
feelings for her, and when
she asks, "What went wrong?
Did I get too close?" He
confesses, "Yes." This is a
far cry from the love-'em
and leave-'em Bond of
earlier films. The modern
Bond actually has feelings
for his women, and sometimes
those feelings place him in
harm's way. Which brings us
to TWINE, with
still more personal issues
arising to complicate Bond's
mission du jour.
Whether
the recent tendency to "take
it personally" is a good
thing depends on your point
of view. After almost 40
years the scriptwriters must
find it hard to come up with
new twists and turns to keep
Bond fresh and interesting.
Perhaps it's only logical to
start exploring Bond's
emotional side and "up the
ante" with stories that hit
close to home. In some ways
this approach is closer to
the "real" Bond, anyway. Ian
Fleming created 007 as a man
very much haunted by the
deaths of those around him
(Tracy, Vesper Lynd, etc)
and occasionally sick and
tired of his job. He formed
deep attachments to other
men of action (Felix, Kerim
Bey, Marc Ange Draco), and
fell hard for every pretty
girl he worked with
(sometimes ending up
rejected by them, as with
Gala Brand in "Moonraker").
In
fact, he fell so hard for
Tracy that her death sent
Bond spiraling into the
depths of depression, making
him so unstable that M
relieved him of his
"double-0" status in "YOLT."
And the events of that book
left him weakened and ripe
for brainwashing by the
Russians, a process so
effective that Bond nearly
assasinates M on behalf of
the bad guys (M retaliates
by sending Bond on a suicide
mission as soon as he's
"cured"!).
In short, the
literary Bond was much more
human and vulnerable than
his big-screen counterpart.
But the fact remains that
most people know Bond from
the movies, and any way you
slice it the cinematic Bond
has undergone a major change
in the last decade. If the
60's were the era of the
"macho, chauvinist" Bond and
the 70's the era of the
"swinging, comedic" Bond,
then the 90's have emerged
as the era of the sensitive,
vulnerable Bond. Brosnan
(and before him Dalton) has
given us a Bond who still
gets the job done, but often
at great personal cost, and
with lingering scars.
So
how do audiences respond to
this more human version of
James Bond? If the box
office receipts are any
indication, very well
indeed. In fact, one of the
remarkable things about Bond
is that he stands up to
periodic reinterpration.
Agent 007 has been retooled
repeatedly to fit the times,
and remains hugely popular
in all his forms. It should
be fun to see how Bond
evolves to fit the new
Millenium.
