Under New Management: 007

James Bond has been in the news a lot lately with the revelation that the longtime owners of the movie franchise, Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, have opted to hand over control of the series to Amazon for a cool billion dollars. The reaction from fandom and the world in general seems to have been fairly negative on balance, possibly because of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ growing resemblance to a real-life Bond villain himself or maybe just due to a general unease over the way his company continues to consume…well, everything.

In the case of hardcore Bond fans, the negativity is also driven by the fact that for most of us the Broccoli family, or more precisely their business entity Eon Productions has been synonymous with “Bond” all our lives. It was a last holdout, family-owned business in a world where everything else is owned by faceless mega-corporations, a business handed down to a younger generation by a legendary founder so non-reviled we called him “Cubby,” for Pete’s sake. We knew what we were getting with EON — for good or ill — whereas what we’ll get from the algorithm-driven hive mind at Amazon is very much unknown, though the odds favor overexposure, relentless monetization and an endless stream of side character spin-offs aimed at building a Marvel-like “Bondverse.” On the other hand, it was only a few weeks ago that fans were griping that nothing at all was happening in the world of 007 and we might all die of old age before we saw another Bond film. What can I say, it’s the nature of fandom to never be content.

I’ve been trying to gin up some panic or outrage over all of this, given that I’ve been a fan for upwards of 50 years now, that I have way too many Bond books, posters and chotzkies for my own good and that I helped run a popular Bond fan site for years, but so far I’m coming up short. The truth is James Bond has already been pushed pretty far into the margins of my life and at this point it doesn’t matter a lot to me whether the next film(s) come from EON or Amazon.

It’s kind of like having a favorite restaurant, where despite usually ordering the same thing it’s always a treat to be there; the atmosphere and the food push all the right buttons. Then one day the owner retires, or passes away, and though the business stays in the family, nothing’s quite the same afterwards. The name over the door remains, the decor stays relatively unchanged, but the atmosphere is missing the old spark. The menu technically offers all the familiar choices, but the food somehow isn’t as tasty. You keep showing up out of nostalgia or habit, and it’s not like it’s awful, exactly. Then yet another owner sweeps in, maybe a big corporation, and buys out the original family entirely.  Is there any point in getting upset about it? Sure, it’s a shame the place will never again be what it was years ago, but then it hasn’t been that for a long time, has it?  What’s the point of bitching about Owner #3 if the last time you loved the place was under Owner #1?  It’s a battle you lost a long time ago: that beef tournedos you used to love isn’t any more lost to you now than it was before.  Gone is gone.

How’s that for a tortured metaphor? Anyway, the point is that the bloom’s been off the Bond rose for a long time, for me. I found the Brosnan era largely unengaging, with both the star and his entries a sort of bland amalgamation of earlier incarnations. In 2002, I walked out of Die Another Day ready to write off the series entirely. Then came the out-of-left-field casting of Daniel Craig and with it a certain curiosity about where on Earth things were headed. Casino Royale was hugely satisfying precisely because it tossed history out the window and took the approach of “how would we adapt a Fleming novel to screen if it had never been done before?” That was fun, but the rest of the Craig era was less satisfying to me, sometimes dramatically so. At any rate, I was never able to quite connect the dots from “NuBond” to “Classic Bond,” which on the one hand left me free to react to the Craig era films on their own merits and not on their ability to measure up to earlier entries, but on the other hand it also meant I felt no particular loyalty or investment since this alternate reality version of Bond wasn’t “THE” Bond in my eyes. When they killed him off in No Time To Die, I didn’t feel the outrage some fans did, because to me Craig’s 007 was a different beast altogether from the Sean/George/Roger/Tim/Pierce version, and since nothing he did could be reconciled with their versions of the character anyway, what did it matter if he died? NTTD ended his story, but not THE story.

So if Amazon wants to take things in a different direction, let them, I say. I’ve already jumped off the Bondwagon and I’m viewing things from a safe remove. At this point, Bond is a property with a beginning and end for me, like “The Prisoner” or Steed and Emma’s “Avengers.” It exists only in the past, but the good news is it’s safe, there. I can pull out my discs to revisit the films whenever I want and they’ll always be as I remember them. I take the same view of Star Trek; I know Trek is still a going concern and an active franchise, but nothing matters to me after the Original Series.  And yet the fact that I don’t care about new stuff doesn’t mean I’m not a fan. Bond is the same: 1962 to around 1987 “count” for me and the rest is apocrypha, glorified fan fiction. I’ll watch it out of curiosity but it doesn’t matter much to me whether it’s great, “meh” or crap because for me the saga’s already over.  I guess that could sound bitter, but it’s actually liberating, and even fun.  As noted, it’s what let me enjoy Casino Royale on its own merits and maybe it’ll help me enjoy whatever Amazon churns out. And I know I’m not unique in this “Bond is dead, but let’s see this new thing anyway” attitude, because other Bond fans I know drew their cut-off line when Connery retired, or the 60s ended. Nothing after that “counts” for them, but they keep watching.

Fans miffed at Broccoli and Wilson for “selling out” also need to consider harsh reality. We’re only ten years out now from Ian Fleming’s works passing into the public domain, at which point anyone who wants to can adapt them to the screen. Realistically at the pace they’ve managed lately, Eon could maybe have cranked out two films in that time period, whereas Amazon can milk the property for all it’s worth. Odds are the billion dollar golden parachute handed to the Broccolineage (I stole that, but I love it!) is the best deal they could’ve made, and now Bond is someone else’s problem. There’s also the reality that cinemas are struggling these days and there’s no reason to assume things are going to get better. As much as we may all cherish our memories of seeing new Bond films on the big screen as a bi-annual cultural event, the reality is those days are probably all in the past.

James Bond will return. In what form and to what kind of reception remains to be seen. But as a general rule, the past can not return, and that’s a reality even Bond can’t escape. Good luck to Barbara and Michael with whatever comes next for them, and here’s hoping Amazon pulls off something great. I’m betting it won’t be a story where Bond fights a megalomaniacal billionaire with dreams of world domination and the conquest of space, and not just because it’s been done before.