(Spoilers ahead) So, Is the Craig Bond Character Arc that He's . . .
Gassy Man
USAPosts: 2,972MI6 Agent
a loser?
No, I haven't seen NTTD yet, but the ending is all over the place, so it's tough to not know.
But it made me think about how Bond has been presented throughout the Craig era.
In the bravura Casino Royale, Vesper dies under his watch. This follows the novel, but it also sets the precedent that even if his Bond wins, he loses.
The ADHD Quantum of Solace similarly dispatched Mathis in a muddy way that goes beyond the sacrificial lamb. Here, Bond has to convince Mathis to go on the mission as opposed to the typical disposable character who is assigned or already there. The muddled dialogue never quite makes it clear if Mathis was a bona fide LeChiffre operative or not, but either way, he seemed to join up with Bond to make up for things. And Bond doesn't get the girl.
The vastly overrated but unapologetically sentimental Skyfall has Bond retreating to his ancestral estate, presumably in a bid to save M and, I guess, retrieve a shotgun and some sticks of dynamite to fight Silva. It's a dopey plan in a movie not short on dopey moments, but the result is a dead M. Bond's strategy gets her killed but -- perhaps not surprisingly -- in good graces with the new M.
Spectre, in trying to prove that you can spend a lot of money but still not make anything resembling an epic, let's Bond finally ride off into the sunset with the girl . . . only for No Time to Die to apparently want to retcon that. It would be like if Casino Royale had ended with Vesper and Bond on their trip, fading out as they sail happily into port, only for Quantum of Solace to open up with her suicide.
Anyway, since this was all serialized, and that assumes some kind of point and character arc, what was it? Not having seen No Time to Die yet, I can't say what I've read about it suggests Bond is a tragic figure, at least not by the classic definition of such. His course throughout the five Craig movies seems to be simply to lose at each turn, never really rising to the level of greatness that previous Bonds had.
So, what was all this then? A Gen-X deconstruction of Bond as a toxic male? An attempt to subvert the previous Bond films in order to be "fresh"? An attempt to cash in on the current existentialist approach to drama, where characters are never truly happy? All or none of these? Is Bond ultimately just a loser in a cold, cruel world?
Comments
Of course he's a loser, at least on a personal level. But not because of NTTD. Fleming wrote it that way. He can't have what normal people have: meaningful relationships, a family (and not because he didn't try), so he turns into a blunt instrument, cold and brutal, that the government uses. He does not win anything when he accomplishes a mission, really, and he drinks a lot, uses drugs (in the novels), smokes like a chimney, gambles...I mean, James Bond has always been that way. Only the movies didn't explore that side until the Craig era.
No, Fleming didn't write it that way at all. What Fleming showed was his romantic life was always doomed -- bookended by Casino Royale and On Her Majesty's Secret Service with the two great loves of his life. In between are compromises between his personal life and his job. Like quite a few people of his era, he drank too much, indulged in medicinals and cigarettes. He had bouts of impotence. None of that is unusual for the WW2 generation and certainly not for people with high-stress jobs. But he never got M killed. He didn't coax Mathis into service to get killed. He didn't blow up his ancestral home. He frequently got the girl, even if the romances didn't last (and usually, it was the girl who was "damaged," not Bond). The idea that these films track with the novels is part of the deconstruction I'm talking about, throwing out the context and balance that's in the novel of a modern knight errant and replacing it with an arc that treats Bond as a loser.
In fact, in a lot of ways, the movies are more like an adaptation of John LeCarre's Alec Leamas than they are of Fleming's James Bond.
Consider this passage from Goldfinger that demonstrates not merely a cold-blooded killer. but a professional man willing to do the dirty work for his country and then trying to suppress what would be normal feelings of fear and guilt afterward. In other words, he maintains the coolness "about death as a surgeon" while in the performance of his duties, but this doesn't define his entire natural state of being, as the Craig films kept wanting to remind us. Soldiers who kill on the battlefield often speak of similar expectations of themselves.
"CHAPTER ONE
REFLECTIONS IN A DOUBLE BOURBON
James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.
It was part of his profession to kill people. He had never liked doing it and when he had to kill he did it as well as he knew how and forgot about it. As a secret agent who held the rare double-O prefix—the licence to kill in the Secret Service—it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. If it happened, it happened. Regret was unprofessional—worse, it was death-watch beetle in the soul.
And yet there had been something curiously impressive about the death of the Mexican. It wasn't that he hadn't deserved to die. He was an evil man, a man they call in Mexico a capungo. A capungo is a bandit who will kill for as little as forty pesos, which is about twenty-five shillings—though probably he had been paid more to attempt the killing of Bond—and, from the look of him, he had been an instrument of pain and misery all his life. Yes, it had certainly been time for him to die; but when Bond had killed him, less than twenty-four hours before, life had gone out of the body so quickly, so utterly, that Bond had almost seen it come out of his mouth as it does, in the shape of a bird, in Haitian primitives.
What an extraordinary difference there was between a body full of person and a body that was empty! Now there is someone, now there is no one. This had been a Mexican with a name and an address, an employment card and perhaps a driving licence. Then something had gone out of him, out of the envelope of flesh and cheap clothes, and had left him an empty paper bag waiting for the dustcart. And the difference, the thing that had gone out of the stinking Mexican bandit, was greater than all Mexico.
Bond looked down at the weapon that had done it. The cutting edge of his right hand was red and swollen. It would soon show a bruise. Bond flexed the hand, kneading it with his left. He had been doing the same thing at intervals through the quick plane trip that had got him away. It was a painful process, but if he kept the circulation moving the hand would heal more quickly. One couldn't tell how soon the weapon would be needed again. Cynicism gathered at the corners of Bond's mouth.
At the time of Casino Royale Paul Haggis made some comparisons between Bond and Le Carre, and I think he said that he wanted to bring some elements of the world of Le Carre into the world of Bond. The difference, however, was that a Le Carre character would be broken by what happens to Bond, whereas Bond suffers but then he gets up and keeps on going.
Personally yes, though hardly his fault, professionally no.
although, actually…the fact he clearly has sex after the CR torture scene must be chalked up as a gargantuan personal success!
CR - stops skyfleet terrorist attack, defeats le chiffre, captures Mr White. Huge success, so good, the best…Donald Trump is in charge of scripting his performance review.
QoS - saves entire country from drought and extortion, kills Greene, exposes Canadian intelligence leak, captures interrogates and hands in corrupt agent. DT again allowed to write performance review.
Skyfall - overcomes extreme workplace accident “take the bloody shot”. Avenges Ronson. Retrieves and hands in large sum of cash used to finance assassination. Saves colleagues from Silva ambush. Eliminates international terrorist. Admittedly also kidnaps boss and fails to save them. Someone with vocab level above 8 years old required for performance review.
Spectre - averts serious terrorist attack. Eliminates terrorist. Exposed international terrorist organisation. Locates defeats and captures leader of terrorist organisation. admittedly does pilfer workplace stationary…sorry, does pilfer multi-million pound Aston martin prototypes. But the ends do seem to justify the means!
NTTD - not telling as you haven’t seen it.
so whilst his personal life and personal work relationships are a Greek tragedy he has, by the start of NTTD, saved 10s, 100s of thousands…maybe millions of lives. Provided invaluable intelligence to multiple intelligence agencies and strategic partners and, broadly speaking, executed every mission objective he was set.
Broadly speaking. If Bond is sent after you, put your affairs in order.
I don’t think you could say that Craig’s Bond has a five movie arc. He has one between CR and QoS, that much is clear. He has one between SF and SP, I think… even if much of it is clumsily shoehorned in during exposition in SP, then NTTD tries to tag onto it…
Nobody could suggest this was the plan back in 2006, so I don’t really think he has a five movie arc. For this character, I don’t think the stories are about the arc. In the nicest way, it isn’t a Wes Anderson movie - the movies are meant to be silly escapism.
If anything is missing from the Craig era, it is that silly escapism - only SP ends in triumph and that’s the weakest of the bunch for me.
I think I don’t like killing the character off, I grew up with Bond so to me that was a blow. Creatively bold and brave, the movie is a good film, but for me it’s very difficult to reconcile it versus my slightly purist view of what Bond is and should be.
I don’t know that the message is that Craig’s Bond is a loser - I don’t think it’s meant to be. But you couldn’t walk away from a Craig Bond movie feeing as buoyant as you would from any other era (exciting George).
That element is the loss for me, but I can certainly see your point.
One suggestion, and this isn’t meant to be in any way confrontational - but see the movie. You’re talking about a character arc that, with the greatest respect, you haven’t fully seen.
I have my own view having seen it, perhaps seeing it would change yours?
Yes, Fleming wrote it that way. It's in CR, it's in OHMSS, which as you say bookend the arc of his personal losses, and push him into being a killer without meaningful relationships and a family. The movies just didn't explore the effects of those personal losses until now, and focused on the professional side, as did Fleming, which you obviously enjoyed. I did too. But in my case, I welcome that the Craig era movies, without leaving out the professional/cold blooded killer side (the Goldfinger passage), chose to explore the other side.
No, Fleming didn't write that M die. He didn't write that Blofeld had a volcano lair, or anything to do with Stromberg and his underwater base, or Octopussy's circus, etc, But that's not the point I'm trying to make. My point is that what you call "deconstruction", I simply call exploring the character more in detail. I guess you choose to see him as just the professional and don't like to see the other side, which Fleming also wrote about. Fair enough. But he's a tragic hero, not a superman. Maybe "loser" is too strong a word for a guy who saved the world so many times, but he definitely lost a lot in his life and it's great that Craig's movies made him more 3D. My two cents.
Yes, Fleming did write it that way. CR and OHMSS novels are the cornerstones of the character. He's not a superman, he's not a psychopath, he's a man who falls in love, and actually cares about people. Those character traits are peppered all over the movies and novels, downplayed, but they've always been there. That's who he is, as written by Fleming, not Le Carre. That you enjoy more the hero, professional, cold blooded killer aspect is fair enough. But kudos to the producers and Craig who explored the other side after decades of focusing mainly on the heroic super spy side. "Loser" may be too strong a word, but he's definitely a tragic hero.
At best he's batting .500.
In Casino Royale, the overarching mission was to bring LeChilffre in so MI6 could squeeze him for information and also not lose the money from the poker game since if he did, the government would in essence be funding terrorism (one of the characters literally says as much). Well, LeChiffre dies and Mr. White walks away with the money (by the time Bond has caught up to him an indeterminate amount of time has passed so the money is most likely long gone). Bond is also wrong about Matthes' loyalty, stupidly allows himself to be poisoned and loses Vesper for good measure. He wins the poker game thru sheer luck and not thru guile or cunning and really only survives the torture scene thru a cheap deus-ex-machina out. All around, not a particularly productive or smart outing.
In Quantum of Solace he does kill the bad guy but is also responsible for the deaths of Matthes and Fields. He also completely strikes out with the girl at the end, showing zero chemistry with her (an ongoing problem with Craig).
The whole mission in Skyfall was really to protect M from Silva, who's plan was to ruin and ultimately kill M. Silva's holding the gun to M's head at the end wanting her to pull the trigger so they both die pretty much spells out his endgame. And guess what, he succeeds, just not quite the way he planned. He dies first but M only lasts a few minutes longer. So again, Bond failed in his primary mission.
Spectre is about the only movie from the Craig era where you can say he gets the job done without any strings or caveats. The Bond and Blofeld as adopted brothers thing nothwithstanding it was the closest to a traditional Bond movie of Craig's run.
In Casino he beats le chiffre steps aside for the CIA to bring him in and literally gives the money to the Treasury representative.
The fact the CIA aren’t quick enough and Vesper is about to screw him and the treasury can’t really be held against him.
No, couldn't agree less. To see the Fleming books at writing it that way is to dismiss everything else in them, including the context for Bond's behavior. The passage from Goldfinger alone shows a level of reflection on his job that is never demonstrated in the Craig films. In fact, if anything, Craig constantly reminds others in the film he is merely a killer. If the previous EON productions largely ignored the darker elements on the Bond books, the Craig films all-but-completely ignore the lighter elements. If the previous EON Bond movies treated him as a two-dimensional playboy, the Craig films treat him as a two-dimensional violent slog. If the previous EON productions made James Bond a winner, the Craig films paint him as a loser.
Like I said, this tracks more with Alec Leamas in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (though his character is more three-dimensional).
Perhaps the closest then to achieving more of the balance in the book is Connery in From Russia with Love, Lazenby in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and Dalton in either of his productions.
They definitely moved in that direction. Leamas' descent, including his final outcome, very much tracks with Craig's Bond.
Wow, I know I've been away from this site for a bit, but I'm really hating this new posting interface, haha.
I started to respond to R-L-E's post and then realized you did a much more elegant job of nearly all of my points, TonyDP!
I'd only point out that Bond doesn't really kill Green -- he lets Green go and then Green essentially commits suicide drinking the oil. It's poetic justice for Fields, but as you say, if we're going to give Bond credit for LeChiffre and Green, then we have to give him responsibility for Fields and Matthis.
It's interesting, too, that as you point out, Bond often fails in his principal mission. That makes some sense for Casino Royale because the story isn't really about the mission but about Bond learning from his first mission -- it's equivalent to the standard trope in comic books where the hero fails initially at great personal cost, learning from then on never to let it happen again. But Craig's Bond doesn't really learn, as he continues to commit mistakes that are costly personally and otherwise.
Skyfall is the worst in this regard -- his bizarre plan ends up getting M killed. I recall when seeing it thinking, "Wow, Bond sure is dumb here." But given the outcome of the five films, it makes sense if we see this Bond not as winner he traditionally is presented as but the loser, not just in his personal life but overall. Perhaps this is meant to be a high-minded political comment on the decline of the British Empire overall, but it seems at odds with the arc of both the Fleming novels (where, at best, he's more the knight errant, who at great personal emptiness will loyally defend the crown and his unrequited lover for the Queen) and the films to this point. Hence, a deconstruction.
This is an interesting thread and makes me wonder if my level of satisfaction with the Craig era is affected by the fact he rarely succeeds in his mission, and even when he does, it's only after the death of people he supposedly cares for. I mention in my own review:
Bond isn’t growing as an individual here, he’s regressing: regretting everything he’s done and the death he’s caused or dispatched.
My disappointment with the preceding SP was that, given it is the most traditional Bond film of his tenure, it was saddled with all that Franz Oberhauser rubbish and an over-arching plot linking Blofeld to Quantum which was, frankly, toilet. I was rather pleased he ended that film in a better place and NTTD does his legacy no favours; he may accept his fate for reasons of devotion, but his death felt as bleak as the monochrome beginning of CR.
It feels to me like they didn't quite have this arc in mind to begin with and that Casino Royale was really meant as a clean slate. They clearly aped Batman Begins in being a prequel about an imperfect, obsessive, psychologically damaged anti-hero, mining those darker qualities to the exclusion of most else the same way Nolan did the 60 years of Batman comic books, where for the most part, Batman/Bruce Wayne aren't so one-note.
Then along comes Quantum of Solace, a rather slap-dash second part that not only subverts a lot of Casino Royale but also works hard to distance Bond further from his traditional qualities. Clearly, they're going in the direction of "this isn't your father's 007." But it is in the sense that they still recycle a lot of story and visual elements -- for instance, Fields death from oil mimicking Masterson's in gold. They also did that in Casino Royale, where the Germanic-sounding guy whose Range Rover Bond destroys is an ersatz Goldfinger.
The series will continue this, in both small and big ways. Silva is another version of Alec Trevelyn, for example, with a visual throwback to Max Zorin. Swann is a Tracy Bond, both blond as in the books and Bond's equal, being the daughter of a crime figure. Mr. Hinx is Jaws, except instead of metal teeth he has metal fingernails. And so on.
Yes, they reinvent these characters and essentially subvert their course -- in NTTD, it's Bond, not the girl, who dies, which is the obvious move if you're trying to reverse the concepts. And they continue to track Nolan's Batman films -- Skyfall is a redux of The Dark Knight in many ways, just clumsier in its plotting. NTTD sounds like The Dark Knight Rises, with Bond's past coming back to bite him, a doomed love story, and a sacrifice at the end.
But I suspect they also realized at some point they could deconstruct James Bond, not just to create something "fresh" and "surprising" so audiences show up, but also to present a Gen-X-y/Millennial progressive viewpoint on Bond -- that he's not really the hero but as a toxic male, a more inept dinosaur representing backwards thinking. It's pseudo-academic and something scholars can yak about for years, but it also makes the Bond films suddenly have currency they haven't for years.
Yes, Bond has some moments where he is the classic hero, but at the same time, there's a kind of (presumably) witty satire of Bond in that much of the time, he either doesn't win or merely wins by accident, not quite Inspector Clouseau but certainly not the Bond we've know before, whose only true loss in the previous 20-plus films was Tracy. Bond's actual efforts and contributions are usually an exercise in some form of failure. That they included an Austin Powers-like brotherly conflict just cements what may be a perception of their cleverness. I'm not sure they started this way, nor that they were quite conscious of where all this was taking them, but consciously or not, it feels like this is where we've arrived.
I will, of course, wait until I actually see NTTD. But my guess is the theme of failure is repeated there, too.
That's why I'm asking the question, though -- not having seen it. But I'm guessing the seeds of what I'm talking about are there, too. It's not just the stripping away of Bond's friends and co-workers, but the idea that his actions -- even if they seem as passive as merely convincing someone to go on to a mission with him -- end in some form of failure. From what I know of the ending, Bond ultimately fails to be there for the rest of his family's life. But here's a question if you've seen the movie: Was the missions essentially over when Bond dies? In other words, was his death essentially unnecessary to its conclusion? If so, that would seem to only reinforce that he's the ultimate loser in these movies, at least in comparison to the previous Bonds.
They do seem to have jumped the rails from escapism to the more "serious" stories of LeCarre.
What if Craig's Bond simply was what Barbara Broccoli wanted the character to be ? I always wondered what BB thought about Fleming and his work, especially the misogyny that defines both Bond and his creator. Is it possible she considers the ending of OHMSS illustrates Fleming's total disregard to women in general, with Tracy being murdered and Bond surviving ? Is it possible in her mind, it should have been the opposite considering a "feminist ethic" prism ? Is it possible NTTD is her own version of OHMSS with Bond dying instead of Madeleine symbolizing women's empowerment from a fictional point of view ? The use of OHMSS theme three times in the movie could go that way...
Furthermore, it's difficult to put aside the fact Madeleine is the only character to ever pronounce the legendary line "Bond, James Bond" except Bond himself in the entire series. NTTD could be seen as a NON James Bond movie but as a movie featuring the character of James Bond, which is completely different.
Is it possible Bond only serves the plot as a pawn ?
Is it possible genuinly identifying with female characters whose storylines are for some of them more developed than Bond's has been Broccoli's wish for years and started to become possible after Cubby's death ?
Is it possible to see TND as a Michelle Yeoh movie, TWINE as a movie mainly dealing with the story of Elektra King, DAD as a movie which almost led to a Jinx spin-off, and the Craig era the demonstration of how important female characters are storywise (it's funny to notice despite her death was unavoidable, Olivia Mansfield is the PILLAR of SF and clearly the best written character of the film).
Is it possible to wonder if the early stages of the deconstruction of what Bond structurally represents in the novels started with Brosnan ? Concerning GE, given the movie is mainly an attempt to prove the character still has legitimity to exist in a post Cold War world, I would say the concept is relevant indeed and the scenes with Moneypenny and M work very well, that's why I always saw GE as Dalton's third movie.
But for the rest, from 1996 to now, these questions are quite interesting.
Ah, but Madeleine isn't the only character other than Bond himself to say "Bond, James Bond"..... 😉
Yes doesn't Fiona Voloe say it in Thunderball? In bed as well, the cheeky minx.
Yes, that's it! 😁
Also, Zukovsky says it in TWINE.
Sure, but not in the particular context showing the character introducing himself on purpose with the complete sentence including the word "name" like Madeleine does.
Anyway guys, what do you think about these questions? How do you judge the evolution of Bond since Cubby's death? Do you think he would have shared his daughter's vision or not? Personally I'm not sure...
Well, you didn't say that....
And as for Cubby's vision versus his daughter's, see Imaginary Conversations! 😁
I think in an attempt to "reboot" the franchise what they have done is give us a Bond who can never get out of his own way. He has learned nothing. It makes NO sense that he would continue to be undone by women. Craig's entire turn has been re-hashing the same thing over and over, just to show us a Bond who is in a constant state of conflict and emotional turmoil. Because that's what is in vogue now - DRAMA!
Craig was quoted recently in the NYT as saying: "I guess I'll be known as the grumpy Bond..."
Are you sure?
When asked recently if he would: "Pull a Connery and come back again?" he said "No." That's because he already did it after Spectre!
00-cash grab!
At least Cubby knew that no actor was bigger than the character.
It's disappointing that they let so many other franchises/films and politics/social trends influence their own franchise.
I liked CR and there is absolutely nothing wrong with a more in-depth exploration of the character, but in my opinion I think Cubby would think they took it too far. Personally, having been out of movie theaters for so long I was really looking forward to seeing a good, well-rounded Bond film. From the sound of it, a few changes in the script could have put this one right where it needed to be.
The world needs James Bond! I think him doing what he always does best would have been a welcome respite from this crazy time we're all in.
I look forward to seeing the scenes with Paloma as those sound exactly like what everyone needed!
Casino Royale remains my favorite, by far, of Craig's Bonds (so far). It refreshed the series in a way it needed for decades, making it exciting once more because it not only treated Bond as a character again, but it suggested anything could happen. After, they seemed uncertain where to head except to mimic other movies, such as the Nolan Batmans.
I really do think at some point they decided to deconstruct Bond and, consciously or not, all-but-satirize him as a toxic White male. At the very least, their instincts kept coming back to showing him and his way of life as passe and ultimately self-destructive. It's the sort of thing that will lead to lots of papers in graduate school and articles in academe.
Fleming presented Bond as a knight errant, who gave up so much for his country. The earlier film series took a mostly lighter approach because audiences came to the movies for escape, not depression. Life was tough enough. The Craig Bonds present him as a man with some strengths but overall poor judgment, displaced aggression, and directionless momentum.
His missions are less about defending the realm than they are about finding something to do where his arcane skill set actually has any use. One gets the impression that if Craig's Bond doesn't have a mission, he sits in a room turning a lamp on and off.
That pretty much tracks throughout his films -- and you're quite correct that Bond appears to learn little to nothing. Even M's assessment in Casino Royale that Bond has learned to not trust anybody is undone soon after with any number of people, including Moneypenny after she nearly kills him.
What frustrated a lot of long-time fans is that they kept waiting for Craig's Bond to emerge as the guy we know, when it now seems that never was in the cards. He has some of Bond's habits and traits, but in the alternate universe he seems to exist in, things were just never going to go right for him.
It's you who dismisses what Fleming wrote, to the point of saying that because EON explores now the dark side in Craig's movies, it's not Fleming. It has to be Le Carre. That's not how it works. They always go back to the novels for new themes, inspiration, character traits... Not to Le Carre, Clancy, or any other writer. And saying that because they explored the darker side of Bond with Craig "they all but ignored the lighter side" is totally unrealistic. You don't like Craig's tenure. Fair enough. I did't like Brosnan's, which at times became borderline moronic IMHO. But I would never say that the producers were being unfaithful to the character created by Fleming, or getting inspiration from Monty Python (apart from using John Cleese, that is). Cheers!
Snort. Nah, not even close. I've read the books multiple times over the past four decades. I literally posted an excerpt that says Bond does not enjoy killing and showing him trying to quiet his emotions in the aftermath, including any guilt he might have. We never see an inkling of that in the Craig movies. In fact, in Quantum, we watch him rather impatiently waiting for a kill to finally bleed out. You're also twisting what I wrote to absolutes and asserting that I didn't like Craig's take, despite my consistently saying Casino Royale is a bravura film. You have your black-and-white take, I have my more nuanced one.