Thoughts on James Bond and the release of Skyfall

           Finally, after four years, the inevitable follow-up to Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace has made its way to theatres. This is the longest interval between movies while there was a sitting Bond. But the enthusiasm generated from the success of Casino Royal has not worn off, despite the perceived failure of Quantum. The viewing public will no doubt be subjected once again to curiously sincere and lavish praise of the revised Bond movies. Truly head-scratching adjectives such as “serious,” “realistic” and, “smart” will appear in otherwise competent critic’s columns. Rotten Tomatoes already has it at 92%. Make no mistake, I count myself a fan of the Bond movies. I will see it, and hopefully I will like it. But I will never make a case that Bond is “realistic.” To do so is to misunderstand the nature of Bond movies, and what makes them worth being a fan of.

            Even the negative criticism of Skyfall seems to have little appreciation for why it is people watch Bond movies. Wesley Morris’s review in The Boston Globe, aptly titled “In ‘Skyfall,’ James Bond fights irrelevance” claims, “But, really, it’s what Chicken Little calls his action thriller, not 007.”[1] Oh! See what he did there? Because it’s called Skyfall. Still Morris bases his review on the fact that the movie is, of all things, bad. Which, of course, it is. Still, it is a hard case to make that any of the Bond movies are, based on the standards used for your typical Oscar-bait, any good at all. And Morris, whose review indicates that he does indeed like the Bond movies of old, still finds it lacking. Shocking, positively shocking.[2]

Most people are willing to claim some admiration for Bond the icon. But few really love the byzantine, incoherent plots, the self-conscious anachronism, and the brand-obsessed tastelessness as they do other escapist movies such as the recent Avengers movies, or Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. (Though, in fairness, the wisecracking armored male hero type started with Bond.[3]) When asked about specific movies, people can name one, maybe two Bonds they enjoyed. But hardly ever any more. Like a Bill Murray performance, people usually react to Bond with confusion, and irritation. Then, once you see enough, something clicks, and everything makes sense. You actually begin to enjoy the henchmen, the stunts, and the one-liners. “The bubbles tickle my... Tchaikovsky!”[4] And the much reviled Bond formula becomes a delight. No less than Umberto Eco praised the Bond formula, comparing it to a chess game: “Fleming’s narratives are best understood as a sequence of ‘moves’ in which the same archetypical characters play our familiar situations: M (Head of the British Secret Service) makes the first move by assigning Bond to a mission of vital national importance; the Villain moves and appears to Bond, usually attempting to kill him; Bond counter-moves and gives first check to the Villain, usually by besting him in a game that provides a symbolic rattling of sabers before the main confrontation; the Woman moves and shows herself to Bond; Bond seduces or begins the process of seducing the Woman; the Villain captures Bond and tortures him; Bond escapes, conquers the Villain and then convalesces with the Woman, whom he later loses. Within this schema there are variations…”[5] I digress. After all, the basic point I am trying to make is that we, as a culture, have recently found it necessary to try and take our popular culture too seriously. Far more so than it actually merits. Referring to Umberto Eco in a defense of Ian Fleming really doesn’t help my case.

The Bond formula is like a Steve Reich[6] composition. It doesn’t seem like a movie. It is clunky, long, and is so busy that it despite all the noise and, how shall I say it, stimulation, it can get boring. But, the pleasure is not in seeing a final, polished product. Usually, we want to see a fully formed movie that doesn’t show any edges. But, just like phase music, the only way to enjoy it is to see the process that was used to make it. Seeing how the same nuts and bolts have come together, again, to create something different, a variation on the schema, is what makes it enjoyable.

            I am sorry. I won’t do that again. No more middle-brow.

OK. So, Bond movies are a sort of self-referential type of fun. And, they work, because they have been for fifty years now immensely popular. Everybody has heard of Bond. And this brings me to the ultimate point I want to make. As I indicated before, much of the praise heaped on Casino Royale is based on the notion that it is somehow more serious, and therefore better, than previous Bond movies. Craig is also considered by far too many people to be the best Bond the franchise has known, with the possible exception of Connery. Craig is “complex.” His performance was “psychological.” The movie was a “masterpiece.” And it was credited from saving the franchise from being overtaken by a new type of espionage thriller typified by The Bourne Identity. But this is a weak hand that even Bond himself couldn’t win with.

I don’t want to dwell on why I don’t care for Casino Royale. (Honestly!) Ultimately, my distaste for it may boil down to the fact that, having read the book, I knew of Vesper’s betrayal from the beginning. Of course, it doesn’t help that I never cared for the casting of Craig, but you shall see that I am open to embracing him. No, I don’t want to get into all that. (Seriously. I’m fine. I don’t want dwell.)  I’ll stick to the basics. First, the notion that the movie is somehow a cut above the normal action thriller is laughable. What in it could possibly deem it worthy of this distinction? The Paul Haggis dialogue? Haggis, most famous for writing the worst Oscar winning movie of all time, Crash was supposedly brought in to add emotion to the script. What we have is a Bond whose motivation is entirely unclear until he is betrayed, and is then driven by revenge. Anger, and a broken heart. Even the Twilight movies have more depth. There is the creepy scene in which Vesper first becomes attracted to Bond while he licks blood off her fingers. And we are supposed to see this as a tender gesture. Bond does not lick the blood off girls’ fingers to make them feel better. He just sleeps with them.[7] (But I’m not dwelling.) Then there is the ridiculous notion that poker is somehow about being able to call people’s bluffs rather than knowing odds and statistics. Also, Bond notices Le Chiffre’s tell is that he weeps blood. Subtle. I can really see how that would be overlooked usually. (I could go on, but that would be dwelling.) Finally, there is Craig’s performance, often compared to Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne. This is a Bond that is deeper, more real than others. But, unlike Damon, who played a character having an identity crisis brought on by an attack of conscious, there is little perspective in Craig’s Bond. Bourne was an assassin fighting a war nobody really believes in. Damon brought him existential angst. What did Craig bring Bond? He brought him an irony-free delivery of the fun little line in this exchange:

“Solange: What is it about bad men? You... my husband. I had so many chances to be happy, so many nice guys. Why can't nice guys be more like you?
James Bond: Because then they'd be bad.
Solange: [kissing him some more] Yeah...!”

So you see, Craig was intense, but complex he was not. He wasn’t even funny. Bond is supposed to be funny! Roger Moore would have winked at the camera when he delivered that line, and we would have laughed despite ourselves. But we were so eager to like Royale. We wanted it to be good. It offered so much...intensity…for us to justify it with. And, like Batman fans who want to claim that their movie was “realistic,” there is little use trying to argue against the notion that it is not. People really, really liked this movie. I get it. But that doesn’t mean we should think it is good. Why is it that we are so willing to take something seriously, when we used to realize that it isn’t?

            And if Craig is not Bond-like, then what is? The answer is simple, Sean Connery. But also Roger Moore. To get a little more complicated, Bond is a nihilistic Cary Grant. He wasn’t created to show us the strains of the rough and tumble life of a government assassin. And, while what he was created to be can be justly considered irrelevant, the problem with trying to make him Jason Borne is, you don’t have the right parts. That is why, despite the popularity of the opinion that Royale was intended to be a response to Bourne. There is little in the movies themselves to suggest a link. Damon didn’t play Bourne angry. Rather, he is almost easy going as he casually hands out excessive amounts of emergency cash in exchange for travel to Paris. He is slow moving, deliberate. Cold. Nothing of that is in Royale. Craig is decidedly Hot. So hot that he even has to cool off in the middle of the movie by taking a swim, in a speedo, in a ridiculous parody of Honey Rider’s famous appearance in Dr. No. To really drive the nail in, as Chapman points out, the Bourne movies were “’not in the same box-office league’ as recent installments of the Bond franchise.”[8] How about that? Bet you thought the Bourne movies trounced Die Another Day and The World is not Enough. But Bond has international street cred that can’t be touched. While most movies make about half their money in American markets, and half internationally, Bond makes double what it takes in domestically in the international market.[9]

            I might be dwelling.

            Bond is a nihilistic Cary Grant simply because, when you consider the amount of killing he does realistically (still a mistake), he must be amoral. And Cary Grant, particularly his performance in North by Northwest, was what the producers were thinking of when they made the first movies. An unflappable, heartless killer who is irresistible to women, and an unbelievably good gambler. Super realistic. He isn’t a real person. He is what people with inferiority complexes pretend to be. Then again, Cary Grant wasn’t a real person either. He was a persona. Sometimes the actor known as Cary Grant would not play this persona, as a matter of fact. It was when he wanted to act. When he wanted to be, real. So, it is impossible to have anyone sincerely play Bond as realistic. If you try to do that, you don’t get Grant. You get Archie Leach.[10]

            It was Connery who found a way to strike the right balance for this. I won’t even explain that. Everybody gets it. But, Moore should get some credit too. Connery’s Bond movies weren’t designed to be a franchise that lasted 50 years. There was an arch, his war with SPECTRE which was nearing its completion when he left the role.[11] In fact, his brief return (unless you count Never Say Never Again) marked the end of SPECTRE. Blofeld only returned for the pre-credit sequence in For Your Eyes Only. So it was the Roger Moore movies that established the franchise, and nailed down the formula. Despite the fact that each of his movies has a cringe worthy moment (the pigeon double-take, the slide-whistle that destroys one of the best stunts in all the movies), if you list some of your favorite Bond scenes, one-liners, Bond villains, etc., you’ll find that many, if not most are in his movies. The ski-jump parachute stunt in The Spy Who Loved Me; “He’s attempting re-entry sir;” Jaws. The list goes on and on. But I should point this one out, Jaws. It bears mentioning twice if for no other reason than the fact that he is in two movies, and is by far the most popular henchman.[12]

            Ok. So, Craig is some kind of different, revisionist, rebooted Bond. Casino Royale was hugely popular, and people take it way too seriously. Of course, making a case against taking it too seriously runs the risk of being too serious as well. And the pleasure of the Bonds of old may be gone. But, while Casino Royale was hugely popular for deviating from what might be regarded, possibly, as a worn-out out formula, Quantum of Solace was in fact seen as a failure for what could be regarded as being too Bond-like. Think of all the reasons people didn’t like it. They are all classic Bond elements, aren’t they? Also, generally speaking, most people don’t like a Bond movie the first time they watch it. It has to grow on you. Like a Taylor Swift song. Perhaps it was better than you remember. And maybe, just maybe, Craig will be Bond in Skyfall. It may find a way to balance between the appeal of Royale, and the lack of self-importance that used to characterize a Bond movie.

            I will see the movie, and finish this essay. Also, I’ll admit that I haven’t thoroughly read any of the reviews, even Morris’s, to avoid spoilers. (Yes, I am that kind of viewer.) So I will give him another chance too.

*           *           *

            It would have felt great to sit down and unequivocally endorse Skyfall as a fantastic entry into the Bond movies. It was good. Really good. And there is the whole needing to let it grow on me thing. If I could learn to stop criticizing and love On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, then anything is possible. And I very nearly liked everything about Skyfall. Bond was funny! The credit sequence was fantastic! Even the name Skyfall is much better when you know what it means. I am not going to list everything that was good about the movie, because it takes the fun out of it. Not to avoid spoilers or anything. Confession, I am that guy. Not like a Star Trek fan. But the guy whose love of baseball goes much, much too far. You think you like baseball, and then you talk to that guy. I’ve already had to edit much out of this essay. So it’s best I don’t get too much into the details.

            No, all that was fine. The only thing I don’t like is that it is, just like Royale and Quantum, an origin story. An origin trilogy if you will. It is my considered opinion that Bond does not need an origin. We all know who he is. Trying to explain it still seems like a mistake to me. But that is the way of the world. Everything has an origin story or prequel these days. Sometimes two. Star Trek decided to have its origin story be an alternate timeline, if for no other reason than to avoid busybody fans point out “but that’s not how Kirk and McCoy met!” Not that I would be that kind of fan or anything. Besides, the fact that Bond has been in his thirties for fifty years has suspended logic enough for any variation of origin to be tolerated. Moreover, one key character who had been absent from the Craig movies has a new origin which I sort of love.[13]

            So it isn’t the origin format itself that I find problematic. It is the fact that using it makes the plot largely personal. The mission isn’t all that important. If Bond fails, it really doesn’t matter much to anyone but him, and M. While even the low stakes isn’t really that big a problem,[14] in this case, the latter half of the movie was one long profile of Bond. And it isn’t pretty.

            That is that. Like Spiderman and R2D2, Bond has been unnecessarily rebooted. But in doing that, he has managed to capture some of the thrills of the Bond of Connery’s day. I’ll give Craig that. Also, Morris’s review was spot on. In looking at it thoroughly, I see that he understands Bond quite well. He is clearly a fan. And he gave this movie a bad review. This is exactly what I am saying we should all do. This is a bad movie. Recognize that. Now you can enjoy it.

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[1] http://bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2012/11/06/skyfall/Kq0yP5cYYowvShPEOMDFnM/story.html

[2] Goldfinger, pre-credit sequence.

[3] Pretty much every cultural claim about Bond in this review is from the book License to Thrill by James Chapman. If you want more formal citation, that can be arranged. Though, the less plausible, but nonetheless factual claims will be cited.

[4] Pola Ivanova, A View to a Kill

[5] Chapman provides this summary of the Bond formula and Eco’s opinion of it. Sorry for the length of the quotation, but hey, where else have you ever seen the structure of the Bond plot so well stated. Plus, it is the only chance I am going to get to be high-brow with this review. And it really only achieves middle-brow. Maybe even unibrow.

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_music

[7] See every other instance of a woman feeling upset in a Bond movie. A good one is Live and Let Die, in which a double agent sees a sign from Mr. Big informing her that he will kill her, is justifiably upset by it, but for some reason, is consoled by the fact that Bond’s libido is calling.

[8] Chapman cites a Screen International edition from March, 2005.

[9] Keep in mind, that tickets are less expensive in other countries too. 

[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cary_Grant

[11] I’d love to go into Blofeld, SPECTRE, and Lazenby’s Bond. But this is getting too long.

[12] Craig’s movies have by far the worst henchmen. Not that I am blaming Daniel Craig.

[13] You’ll just have to see who for yourself.

[14] One of my favorite Bond movies, The World is not Enough had a similar urgency. If the villain had won, oil would have been transported to western countries one way over another. And no one would have cared.