This past week has seen the release of the first video game based on the James Bond 007 since 2012’s poorly received 007 Legends. Outside a couples of pastiche novels, it is also the first major piece of media based on the franchise since 2021’s No Time to Die. I have not played and have no interest in the new game which is titled 007 First Light and serves as an origin story for the character. Nor, for that matter, have I seen the last film and even with it easily available on streaming services, I have no interest in seeing it. In fact, I can’t say for sure whether I saw Spectre which came out just before it as I only remember seeing Skyfall back in 2012.
My loss of interest was initially due to rapid decline in quality of the films starring Daniel Craig that began in 2006 with Casino Royale. I didn’t mind the first film but I hated Quantum of Solace and Skyfall got a pass mark for not being as bad but I didn’t much enjoy it either. As above, I’m not sure if I saw Spectre but that simply means it was forgettable.
As someone who used to love the franchise, this is quite a change. I have read all the original Ian Fleming novels and seen all the films from Sean Connery’s first in 1962 through to the Pierce Brosnan era; many of these multiple times. I was also in the perfect demographic for the now classic video game GoldenEye 007 based on the 1995 film. I played most of the games that followed (and at least one that came before), including many of the bad ones too.
How did a once beloved franchise fall so far in my esteem?
The first and most obvious one to get out of the way is the way the franchise has been changed to fit to “modern audiences” which means to fit nobody at all. This has been going on for a while but it was blatant in the last few films and is certainly evident in the new video game. This began with Bond’s CIA contact and friend Felix Leiter was made black in the 2006 as was Miss Moneypenny in Skyfall. In the most recent film, Bond’s famous number is given to another black woman. As if this was not enough, the famous fornicator was largely neutered to the point where he was barely recognisable. That Daniel Craig is the worst actor ever to take the role doesn’t help either.
Not even the original Fleming thrillershavet been left alone with more recent editions excising the “worst” of his now highly problematic prose. I used to own a full set of the paperbacks and I’m now a little sorry I sold them before they went up in value as a result of this. As I have observed with Robert E. Howard’s Conan, this is a feature and not a bug of the series and one that actually makes them more appealing today with all the dreck we’re subjected to elsewhere.
Here some smarty pants might point out that Felix Leiter was played by a black man in 1983’s Never Say Never Again. This was a remake of Thunderball that saw Sean Connery making one last return to the role but the average person probably has no idea the film even exists. It was made by a different production company that got the rights due to some legal happenings surrounding the original novel’s authorship. They would also point out that M was reintroduced as a woman in GoldenEye which also saw a number of other changes. This is more relevant but conveniently misses a few important details.
As far as M goes, it is openly insinuated in these films that she got the job because she was a woman and the men below her (including Bond), show little respect or trust in her. In their very first meeting in the film, Bond is openly disdainful of her; as she is of him. This changes over the four films Brosnan appeared in as she gradually earned his trust and proved she was more than an accountability-avoident bureaucrat. Miss Moneypenny also initially appeared to have caught a mild case of “independent woman” in GoldenEye but she certainly had recovered by the time Tomorrow Never Dies was released in theatres in 1997. In the final Brosnan film Die Another Day, she uses one of Q’s gadgets to have a virtual liaison with Bond which is comically interrupted and also which puts a lie to her pretend indifference to his advances.
The Brosnan films did have a few red flags that are more obvious with hindsight. One was evident in what I believe is his very first spoken line, “Filthy habit,” uttered after knocking out a Soviet soldier that had lit up a cigarette in a toilet cubicle. This would have come as a surprise to all previous iterations of the character and certainly his creator who was himself heavy smoker. The tone of the film also questioned whether Bond had a place in the modern world at all. The main reason for this was the collapse of the Soviet Union a few years before it released which certainly did raise that question but more was hinted beyond. With all of this, Bond was still the suave spy audiences expected and still travelled to exotic locations and met many beautiful women along the way. Craig’s films in contrast were so bad that 2002’s Die Another Day, a film I disliked when I first saw it, has now risen significantly in my esteem as too have the campier Roger Moore films.
While I certainly dislike the direction the character has taken, the main reason I have lost interest isn’t really related to any of the above. The first Bond novel Casino Royale was published early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth II and the final film as of writing was released the year before her death. For the entire run of the series up until her passing, it was OHMSS ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’. Regrettably, Queen Elizabeth II even joined in with a demeaning skit with Daniel Craig for the 2012 London Olympics Opening Ceremony. During her reign, her kingdom became a place that would be unrecognisable to any of the people who lined the streets for her coronation. It is certainly not a place a character like James Bond would consider worth risking his life for.
The cultural vandals are right in a sense that James Bond is a product of this time and not necessarily for the good. The main enemy that opposed him was gone before the end of the millennium and the real enemy is now manifestly within the world order he defended. He is also somewhat a model for toxic masculinity though not in the way the scolds would have us believe but for a different reason. Ian Fleming and his character have something in common with Hugh Hefner and his execrable magazine in the way they encouraged men to be lecherous “playboys”. Though married, Fleming was not chaste and his wife apparently wasn’t either. He went to a relatively early grave with his vices at least partly to blame and his only son Caspar died of a drug overdose in his early twenties. A real-life Bond would be unlikely to reach old bones either and so is hardly an example to be emulated.
There have been many evils since the end of the Second World War but one of the worst is the destruction of the family and Fleming’s own personal life is one of far too many cautionary tales. Although certainly a heroic character, Bond defended a world order that with hindsight can be seen as very destructive to the moral order of the Western world. His personal flaws were seen as admirable when they are really both self and socially destructive. The repair bill for this destruction is largely being left to those who have come after and have little knowledge or interest in the character.
Now would be a fitting time to end the franchise. The world order it was born into is dying and ironically the nations that fell victim to the Communist state Bond fought against, have come out of that living hell better prepared to face the world to come. I’m sure there will be at least one more film in the franchise but it can safely be assumed that it will be the character in name only much as were the four Craig films. I see little chance of any new film being true to the character and I’m not sure I’d want to see it even if it did.