There's an element of 'start as you mean to go on' almost, except they didn't quite mean to. They got boxed in to doing a film about Bond's inner life. Do that and you're in trouble in some respects because a happy ending must always be denied because once that's done, where else do you have to go? In the 'classic' Bonds a happy ending - well, okay, Bond tended to get that! - so the next film = new villainy, new locations etc. Oddly, Craig didn't seem to travel far and wide in his tenure - little of mainland USA, no New York, New Orleans, Frisco and so on; nor Putin's Russia - even the diverse locations tended to have that same sunny look of Africa, the Adriatic or panoramic London - to create a visual uniformity.
Each film had to carry on from the first and one suspects that a) The makers didn't have much ideas of their own and b) Were in hoc to Fleming's opener.
Same with Jason Bourne though, if you make it all about him then each film has him sort of the loser because his troubles must continue, even in the last one he doesn't get the cottage with the white picket fence.
Once they started like this with Bond, any happy ending with the gal - essentially always a comedy scene in the earlier films - would look out of place and insufferably smug; I liked the end of Spectre though, just right imo. He's almost more in love with his Aston there though! In fact, that seems to be his enduring love since CR!
The turning point was Quantum of Solace. Casino Royale, despite the tragic death of Vesper Lynd, ended on what is essentially the note to start the series up again proper -- Craig debuting in his version of a Connery suit and uttering the famous introductory line.
Where it goes awry is Quantum of Solace. Everyone involved decided to take it darker and to remove any of the fun. Mathis is not only shot in the back but dumped in a trash bin. Leiter may or may not be working against Bond. Fields get 10 minutes before being drowned in oil. Bond bleeds out an enemy and looks bored while doing it. His drinking is not merely recreational -- remember, we get no real hints he has a problem in Casino Royale -- but alcoholic, and Mathis offers him pills. Medrano attempts to rape a woman. And so on. These are not quite the characters in Casino Royale but the darker versions.
It got more problematic because they basically followed Nolan's Batman films, just revising the concepts slightly. Casino Royale is Batman Begins. Skyfall is The Dark Knight. No Time to Die is The Dark Knight Rises. No, they're not perfectly parallel, but the big ideas are much the same, as is the basic arc of the main character. In Skyfall, they even have Bond -- a lonely orphan -- return to the mansion of his birth where he meets up with his old servant and caretaker while fighting against a brilliant but unhinged genius who has plans within plans, keeps plunging everything into chaos, and has funny colored hair and a facial deformity.
Nothing ever stops a writer from coming up with better stories, though, except the limits of their imagination and, perhaps in this case, the pressures of too many cooks in the kitchen imposing their ideas. It would have been easy to end Bond's arc on a less conclusive and more satisfying note -- they basically tried to do that with Spectre where Bond just drives away with the girl. If No Time to Die is the end of Craig's arc, it basically says Blofeld one, and in this sense, Bond is the ultimate loser in his own series.
By the way, if they want to do another Bond film with Craig, it could pick up with Bond alive but under a new identity. The bit about Swann telling their daughter his name was Bond, James Bond, becomes literally true because he's now living as someone else. (It's strange to me Swann not only looks somewhat happy at the end, but they play Louis Armstrong's upbeat love song while she's driving what appears to be the same road as at the beginning of the movie . . . where Bond eventually goes to a gravesite.)
Perhaps this is explained as a condition Bond and Swann had -- that for him to return to the service for that one last mission against Saffin, he had to have an exit where his enemies would think him dead, and he and Swann could live the rest of their lives with their daughter in peace because Blofeld was always going to come after him otherwise.
Things didn't quite turn out the way they expected, even though they'd planned to fake Bond's death regardless, but they ran with what they had. (Remember that Bond's death was faked in You Only Live Twice by being shot multiple times; perhaps they'd planned something similar here, but Bond really gets shot and we know the rest.) If they really wanted to irritate audiences, they could just ignore explaining precisely how Bond survived -- it's classified, but he's now free of the nanobots and after months of physical rehabilitation, is ready to live his life again. Then some crisis arrives and Bond is pressed back into service one more time . . .
Sound silly? No more than Bond's constantly quitting and re-upping in his five movies. He's also been dead before, literally and at least one time thought to be. There's no shortage of soap operatic push and pull in this regard in his movies already. And they've become more fantastic with each one Craig makes.
So, then the question is what loose ends are there in No Time to Die besides Swann and Bond's daughter? Blofeld is dead, as apparently is SPECTRE and Quantum. So where could they go? Well, conceivably anywhere. If they don't go back to the novels and former movies, they could make up whatever they want. What if, for instance, Blofeld has a child, perhaps a daughter (a la Raz al Ghul in Nolan's Batmans)? What if she's even worse than her father? What if she finds out Bond's still alive? What if she comes up with a far worse plan for the world that -- wait for it -- demands Bond as the ransom. And so on.
I don't think Cubby would have bought into his daughters vision, and now you have highlighted the women power since she took over the reigns, I understand what you mean. It started subtly with a new female M, and led to Bond dying and the girl surviving, with a daughter in tow.
I definitely think its Babs who has been calling the shots, and MGW has been happy to take a back seat since Cubby died.
Gassy, the Blofeld's daughter seeking revenge plot has been done- "For Special Services", by John Gardner. I think Eon would have to pay some money to his estate to use it.
Oh, that's easy to fix -- just make her his surrogate daughter, perhaps an orphaned waif he takes in who then begins to hate Bond because of her father's fixation on him and dedicates her life to making sure both of them suffer for years and years by founding an organization called SPECTRE2 (or, perhaps, SPECTREX or SPECTREE, the "x" or "e" standing for "extra") that has been operating in the shadows to control SPECTRE and the world but really is just meant for her to get her revenge on Bond and her father.
Well, maybe that's just too cheesy and unbelievable.
Of course, they could name her Britney Blofeld, which might add a certain cachet.
I honestly couldn't face another Craig Bond and while this is all just fun talk, I can't see that audiences would buy it, after all the climax of that film was its coup de grace in many people's view, you can't just undo it and make it a con. Presumably Q wouldn't be in on all this deception or be a great actor? No need for the drinks roundup with the inner sanctum toasting Bond's memory.
I don't think the general audience would be bothered so long as the movie is good -- full of action, outrageous stunts, great locations, etc. The ones who would gripe the most would be us fans (except those of us cheering so long as the film earned it). We don't really represent the general moviegoing public because they neither take it as seriously nor are as discerning. They just want a good meal, a good movie, a drink or two, and the hope they get lucky later in the evening. The rest are kids.
I don't think Q would have to be in on it, but remember, too, that Q has been further retconned. In Skyfall, he was clearly dismissive of exploding pens and the like, but by Spectre, he's making tricked out cars and by No Time to Die, even more inventive gadgets, like a glidersub (which the Russians more or less already experimented with 70 years ago). We also see him giving it to being deceptive in Skyfall and more so by Spectre.
But if they did try to continue with the Craig series -- and I highly doubt they would -- my guess is this writing team would come up with either a non-explanation or some unnecessarily baroque one, as they seem to confuse simple plots and complex details with, to me, the more preferred complex plots and simple details.
So, Is the Craig Bond Character Arc that He's ... a loser?
...
Anyway, since this was all serialized, and that assumes some kind of point and character arc, what was it? ... 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?
I think youre generally right that CraigBond is consistently shown failing at his missions, or snatching some sort of defeat from the jaws of victory even on the rare occasions he wins .
Did you see the MAD magazine parody SpyFail, where the previous five Bonds watch what was then the new Bond movie and are scandalised by the new guy's incompetence?
Its not just Bond. Q of course doesnt know how to examine a villains harddrive without corrupting the MI6 network drives. And DenchM eff'd up repeatedly in her three films with Craig, I'd call her before a Parliamentary inquiry too. And in this latest film...
...FiennesM makes an error of judgement far more irresponsible than anything his predecessor ever did, and he's like "oh well I better call up the PM and jolly well explain what I've been doing in secret".
second spoiler: in this new film, Q thinks twice before examining a villain's USB thingie and decides to use a different laptop he calls "sandbox". Glad they acknowledged that and made an in-joke out of it, but he certainly should have lost his job if he'd been working for any other employer.
I'm curious to know what BB would answer if some people mentioned "disturbing" points like this one. I never saw her being shaken (and stirred) during an interview, and it would be refreshing for once to see her facing people who truly love Bond but who completely disagree with her vision.
Sorry I missed this somehow, @caractacus potts. Some time around Spectre, Craig said something about Bond being a misogynist loser. That combined with his sometimes tiresome public Gen-X performative wokeness makes me think somewhere along the lines they decided to not only deconstruct Bond, but ultimately show him to be a cautionary example rather than a traditional hero. That would explain why Bond so consistently fails and MI:6 is seemingly quite incompetent — it really does play like a super serious version of Get Smart. I’m sure this seems both clever — they get to have their cake and eat it, too — and lets Bond seem more relevant than just entertainment. Meanwhile, they cash in. I don’t think this was figured out yet in Casino Royale, but while Quantum of Solace was being rubberbanded together, they may have. By Skyfall, he’s getting shot by Moneypenny, getting M killed, getting Severigne killed, getting his house and car blown up, etc.
Skyfall was the odd one - it seemed the writer was telling a different story to the director. The writer, a shaming of British imperialism, seen in the cavalier way Bond treats the Indian natives as he walks across the roof of the train as they hang off the sides, contrasted with his English politeness as he walks along the London Tube corridors (this got reworked after the Indian authorities refused permission to film so it got reworked to Turkey, thus losing the whole 'rebirth' or reincarnation idea of the pre-credits.)
Also, shows M reading out a poem that's all very John Bull - while a terrorist is charging down Whitehall to get her! Classic Colonel Blimp stuff, ignorant of the real threat. The story is all 'chickens coming home to roost' stuff.
It all hints at a subversive approach to the British hero, while presenting as patriotic.
The same blog has scans of all the MAD magazine James Bond parodies from over the years. Best parody title is For Her Thighs Only, but SpyFail pretty much sums up the "complete loser" approach of Craig's films much as @Gassy Man sees it.
Yes, @Napoleon Plural, I find Skyfall very much overrated. When I first saw it, I thought it amounted to The Dark Knight reworked but with an incompetent rather than flawed hero. Because it was so steeped in sentimentality -- and people frequently turn their brains off when they're emotionally moved -- I thought that's why few noticed Bond is frequently treated as something of an arrogant buffoon.
Having seen No Time to Die, though, I think it fits in neatly with the notion that Bond is on a downward spiral.
If we think of the wit of the Craig films as treating Bond as a kind of suave Wile E. Coyote, they're actually quite funny. I mean, Vesper dies, he loses the money, he loses Mr. White, he gets Fields killed, he gets Mathis killed, he descends into alcoholism and pill addiction, he doesn't get Camille, Green kills himself, Bolivia is left without a leader, he gets shot by Moneypenny, he descends further into alcoholism and pill addiction, he get Severigne killed, he gets M killed, he wins only by stabbing Silva in the back, he finds out all the tragedies are linked to sibling rivalry with Blofeld (making Bond the cause and motivation), he's nearly blown up at Vesper's mausoleum, he dumps his girlfriend right before she's going to tell him she's pregnant, Ash kills Felix after Bond fails to consider he's a double agent, he doesn't know he has a daughter, he doesn't know his ex-girlfriend is somehow Blofeld's therapist, the closest he comes to bonding (pun intended) with his blank-faced daughter is an uncomfortable few minutes at breakfast, and he ultimately is shot, hopeless, and suicidal and gets blown up by bombs from his own country.
I mean, it's pretty funny if you consider he's supposed to be the hero. But it makes complete sense if he was never the hero to begin with -- he was a subversive foil.
Oh, I forgot that it's actually M and Q who stop Nine Eyes, not Bond, and that the nanobots that ultimately doom Bond were part of a program created by his boss -- so, in essence, the British kill Bond twice, once with the nanobots and then again with bombs.
It's CONTROL from Get Smart. One could argue the British Secret Service is routinely portrayed as buffoonish, too, right from Casino Royale. If they'd been aware of Quantum/SPECTRE in the first place and that Vesper had been compromised, she would never have been coerced and ultimately killed. That carries over to Quantum of Solace. In Skyfall, MI:6 is all kinds of inept. Though one of the weaker entries, Spectre is really the only of Craig's Bonds that starts to suggest the British Secret Service is not the Keystone Cops of espionage, but even there, they're infiltrated by C and subject to Blofeld's surveillance and manipulation. By No Time to Die, they're building and losing horrifying weapons.
The personal arc "completed" by NTTD seems like a rather ramshackle one. To give the series credit, the personal issues raised by Casino Royale were efficiently dealt with by its direct sequel Quantum of Solace, which cured the recently designated 007 of his thirst for vengeance and made him able to concentrate on his job. But when Skyfall came around Bond had suddenly become a hardened veteran who felt over the hill, though we never had a glimpse of what had happened between films to make him feel that way. In Spectre Bond is confronted by an arch-villain with a deep family connection--and he barely seems to notice, as if Bond subconsciously realized he was dealing with a bad script best left ignored. And he also finds a woman to fall in love with--though it's difficult to see why he'd hang everything up for such a bland character. Bond ends Spectre with his personal issues resolved, driving off into the sunset.
But when Craig decided to return for another film the personal arc machine had to be restarted. Since he'd already found happiness with Swann Bond needed to be separated from her, but I didn't find Bond's newfound distrust of Madeline very convincing. Bond might be hampered by memories of past betrayals, but he's not stupid enough to forget Spectre is a large organization that "has people everywhere," (including the secret service, as shown in QoS) and it would surely be able to (1) contact Blofeld in prison and (2) track Bond's movements. Some have said that part of NTTD's personal arc involves Bond learning to trust again, but this problem was cooked up under dubious pretenses and Bond doesn't really learn to do this--he sees Spectre was working apart from Madeline and then trusts her again. The other aspect of personal growth that has been mentioned is Bond becoming a family man with a "wife" and child.
I'm a bit perplexed to see Bond fans suddenly extolling family values and saying Bond's previous existence was "shallow" and in need of redemption by family life. If there has been a constant throughout the Bond novels and films, it has been the avoidance of domesticity, a part of the humdrum world Bond is in perpetual escape from. Bond is interesting because he's only fully alive when on his very dangerous job, which he knows will eventually take his life and prevent him from settling down with anyone. Yet he's still willing to give his life for his country, something fewer and fewer people are willing to do nowadays. But far more people are willing to sacrifice themselves for their family, which is what Bond does in NTTD. I think this makes him a less special and less interesting character. It almost seems like punishment for having avoided family life for so long. Being brought down to the level of everyday life shrinks Bond--he becomes less complex and more sentimental. So I think anyway. What seems like "personal growth" is actually shrinkage.
Bond’s arc is more like Alec Leamas or either of Edward Woodward’s Callan or Robert McCall. These characterizations were very much the antithesis of Bond. Across five films, Bond has ping-ponged in and out of the service like it’s a temp job, and Skyfall was particularly annoying in trying to merely declare him burnt out, another reason I’m underwhelmed by it. But all this is part and parcel to No Time to Die failing to earn its ending — unless we accept that Bond’s journey was to end up a loser the whole time. Then it all makes sense, from his fickle tenure, to his constant failures personal and professional, to his having happiness dangled in front of him only to be cruelly taken away. If the point was to deconstruct him as a kind of buffoon and anachronism serving a dying empire, it all works in concert — especially since that empire kills him at the end. It’s been a grand joke on fans of the old Bond series to, who keep looking for signs of the traditional hero rather than a satire of him. But that’s why I say this has all turned out to be an Uber serious version of Get Smart. It really isn’t the James Bond we knew.
Comments
This guy takes it even further, and I think he makes a good case that in Craig's Bond universe, the villain ultimately wins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9iBTF-L7Hk
There's an element of 'start as you mean to go on' almost, except they didn't quite mean to. They got boxed in to doing a film about Bond's inner life. Do that and you're in trouble in some respects because a happy ending must always be denied because once that's done, where else do you have to go? In the 'classic' Bonds a happy ending - well, okay, Bond tended to get that! - so the next film = new villainy, new locations etc. Oddly, Craig didn't seem to travel far and wide in his tenure - little of mainland USA, no New York, New Orleans, Frisco and so on; nor Putin's Russia - even the diverse locations tended to have that same sunny look of Africa, the Adriatic or panoramic London - to create a visual uniformity.
Each film had to carry on from the first and one suspects that a) The makers didn't have much ideas of their own and b) Were in hoc to Fleming's opener.
Same with Jason Bourne though, if you make it all about him then each film has him sort of the loser because his troubles must continue, even in the last one he doesn't get the cottage with the white picket fence.
Once they started like this with Bond, any happy ending with the gal - essentially always a comedy scene in the earlier films - would look out of place and insufferably smug; I liked the end of Spectre though, just right imo. He's almost more in love with his Aston there though! In fact, that seems to be his enduring love since CR!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The turning point was Quantum of Solace. Casino Royale, despite the tragic death of Vesper Lynd, ended on what is essentially the note to start the series up again proper -- Craig debuting in his version of a Connery suit and uttering the famous introductory line.
Where it goes awry is Quantum of Solace. Everyone involved decided to take it darker and to remove any of the fun. Mathis is not only shot in the back but dumped in a trash bin. Leiter may or may not be working against Bond. Fields get 10 minutes before being drowned in oil. Bond bleeds out an enemy and looks bored while doing it. His drinking is not merely recreational -- remember, we get no real hints he has a problem in Casino Royale -- but alcoholic, and Mathis offers him pills. Medrano attempts to rape a woman. And so on. These are not quite the characters in Casino Royale but the darker versions.
It got more problematic because they basically followed Nolan's Batman films, just revising the concepts slightly. Casino Royale is Batman Begins. Skyfall is The Dark Knight. No Time to Die is The Dark Knight Rises. No, they're not perfectly parallel, but the big ideas are much the same, as is the basic arc of the main character. In Skyfall, they even have Bond -- a lonely orphan -- return to the mansion of his birth where he meets up with his old servant and caretaker while fighting against a brilliant but unhinged genius who has plans within plans, keeps plunging everything into chaos, and has funny colored hair and a facial deformity.
Nothing ever stops a writer from coming up with better stories, though, except the limits of their imagination and, perhaps in this case, the pressures of too many cooks in the kitchen imposing their ideas. It would have been easy to end Bond's arc on a less conclusive and more satisfying note -- they basically tried to do that with Spectre where Bond just drives away with the girl. If No Time to Die is the end of Craig's arc, it basically says Blofeld one, and in this sense, Bond is the ultimate loser in his own series.
By the way, if they want to do another Bond film with Craig, it could pick up with Bond alive but under a new identity. The bit about Swann telling their daughter his name was Bond, James Bond, becomes literally true because he's now living as someone else. (It's strange to me Swann not only looks somewhat happy at the end, but they play Louis Armstrong's upbeat love song while she's driving what appears to be the same road as at the beginning of the movie . . . where Bond eventually goes to a gravesite.)
Perhaps this is explained as a condition Bond and Swann had -- that for him to return to the service for that one last mission against Saffin, he had to have an exit where his enemies would think him dead, and he and Swann could live the rest of their lives with their daughter in peace because Blofeld was always going to come after him otherwise.
Things didn't quite turn out the way they expected, even though they'd planned to fake Bond's death regardless, but they ran with what they had. (Remember that Bond's death was faked in You Only Live Twice by being shot multiple times; perhaps they'd planned something similar here, but Bond really gets shot and we know the rest.) If they really wanted to irritate audiences, they could just ignore explaining precisely how Bond survived -- it's classified, but he's now free of the nanobots and after months of physical rehabilitation, is ready to live his life again. Then some crisis arrives and Bond is pressed back into service one more time . . .
Sound silly? No more than Bond's constantly quitting and re-upping in his five movies. He's also been dead before, literally and at least one time thought to be. There's no shortage of soap operatic push and pull in this regard in his movies already. And they've become more fantastic with each one Craig makes.
So, then the question is what loose ends are there in No Time to Die besides Swann and Bond's daughter? Blofeld is dead, as apparently is SPECTRE and Quantum. So where could they go? Well, conceivably anywhere. If they don't go back to the novels and former movies, they could make up whatever they want. What if, for instance, Blofeld has a child, perhaps a daughter (a la Raz al Ghul in Nolan's Batmans)? What if she's even worse than her father? What if she finds out Bond's still alive? What if she comes up with a far worse plan for the world that -- wait for it -- demands Bond as the ransom. And so on.
I don't think Cubby would have bought into his daughters vision, and now you have highlighted the women power since she took over the reigns, I understand what you mean. It started subtly with a new female M, and led to Bond dying and the girl surviving, with a daughter in tow.
I definitely think its Babs who has been calling the shots, and MGW has been happy to take a back seat since Cubby died.
Gassy, the Blofeld's daughter seeking revenge plot has been done- "For Special Services", by John Gardner. I think Eon would have to pay some money to his estate to use it.
Oh, that's easy to fix -- just make her his surrogate daughter, perhaps an orphaned waif he takes in who then begins to hate Bond because of her father's fixation on him and dedicates her life to making sure both of them suffer for years and years by founding an organization called SPECTRE2 (or, perhaps, SPECTREX or SPECTREE, the "x" or "e" standing for "extra") that has been operating in the shadows to control SPECTRE and the world but really is just meant for her to get her revenge on Bond and her father.
Well, maybe that's just too cheesy and unbelievable.
Of course, they could name her Britney Blofeld, which might add a certain cachet.
😂😂😂 Your name isn't Neal or Robert, by any chance....?
If it was, I'd like to think I'd have the common decency to not admit it.
I honestly couldn't face another Craig Bond and while this is all just fun talk, I can't see that audiences would buy it, after all the climax of that film was its coup de grace in many people's view, you can't just undo it and make it a con. Presumably Q wouldn't be in on all this deception or be a great actor? No need for the drinks roundup with the inner sanctum toasting Bond's memory.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I don't think the general audience would be bothered so long as the movie is good -- full of action, outrageous stunts, great locations, etc. The ones who would gripe the most would be us fans (except those of us cheering so long as the film earned it). We don't really represent the general moviegoing public because they neither take it as seriously nor are as discerning. They just want a good meal, a good movie, a drink or two, and the hope they get lucky later in the evening. The rest are kids.
I don't think Q would have to be in on it, but remember, too, that Q has been further retconned. In Skyfall, he was clearly dismissive of exploding pens and the like, but by Spectre, he's making tricked out cars and by No Time to Die, even more inventive gadgets, like a glidersub (which the Russians more or less already experimented with 70 years ago). We also see him giving it to being deceptive in Skyfall and more so by Spectre.
But if they did try to continue with the Craig series -- and I highly doubt they would -- my guess is this writing team would come up with either a non-explanation or some unnecessarily baroque one, as they seem to confuse simple plots and complex details with, to me, the more preferred complex plots and simple details.
Gassy Man said:
So, Is the Craig Bond Character Arc that He's ... a loser?
...
Anyway, since this was all serialized, and that assumes some kind of point and character arc, what was it? ... 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?
I think youre generally right that CraigBond is consistently shown failing at his missions, or snatching some sort of defeat from the jaws of victory even on the rare occasions he wins .
Did you see the MAD magazine parody SpyFail, where the previous five Bonds watch what was then the new Bond movie and are scandalised by the new guy's incompetence?
Its not just Bond. Q of course doesnt know how to examine a villains harddrive without corrupting the MI6 network drives. And DenchM eff'd up repeatedly in her three films with Craig, I'd call her before a Parliamentary inquiry too. And in this latest film...
...FiennesM makes an error of judgement far more irresponsible than anything his predecessor ever did, and he's like "oh well I better call up the PM and jolly well explain what I've been doing in secret".
second spoiler: in this new film, Q thinks twice before examining a villain's USB thingie and decides to use a different laptop he calls "sandbox". Glad they acknowledged that and made an in-joke out of it, but he certainly should have lost his job if he'd been working for any other employer.
+1
I'm curious to know what BB would answer if some people mentioned "disturbing" points like this one. I never saw her being shaken (and stirred) during an interview, and it would be refreshing for once to see her facing people who truly love Bond but who completely disagree with her vision.
Sorry I missed this somehow, @caractacus potts. Some time around Spectre, Craig said something about Bond being a misogynist loser. That combined with his sometimes tiresome public Gen-X performative wokeness makes me think somewhere along the lines they decided to not only deconstruct Bond, but ultimately show him to be a cautionary example rather than a traditional hero. That would explain why Bond so consistently fails and MI:6 is seemingly quite incompetent — it really does play like a super serious version of Get Smart. I’m sure this seems both clever — they get to have their cake and eat it, too — and lets Bond seem more relevant than just entertainment. Meanwhile, they cash in. I don’t think this was figured out yet in Casino Royale, but while Quantum of Solace was being rubberbanded together, they may have. By Skyfall, he’s getting shot by Moneypenny, getting M killed, getting Severigne killed, getting his house and car blown up, etc.
Oh, and I did find the MAD parody online, thanks!
Do you have a link, @Gassy Man ?
Skyfall was the odd one - it seemed the writer was telling a different story to the director. The writer, a shaming of British imperialism, seen in the cavalier way Bond treats the Indian natives as he walks across the roof of the train as they hang off the sides, contrasted with his English politeness as he walks along the London Tube corridors (this got reworked after the Indian authorities refused permission to film so it got reworked to Turkey, thus losing the whole 'rebirth' or reincarnation idea of the pre-credits.)
Also, shows M reading out a poem that's all very John Bull - while a terrorist is charging down Whitehall to get her! Classic Colonel Blimp stuff, ignorant of the real threat. The story is all 'chickens coming home to roost' stuff.
It all hints at a subversive approach to the British hero, while presenting as patriotic.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Are you asking for a link to the MAD magazine parody SpyFail, @Napoleon Plural ?
The complete story is available here , or if my embeded hyperlink isn't working, here is the URL: https://www.the007dossier.com/2014/12/01/casebook-spyfail/
The same blog has scans of all the MAD magazine James Bond parodies from over the years. Best parody title is For Her Thighs Only, but SpyFail pretty much sums up the "complete loser" approach of Craig's films much as @Gassy Man sees it.
Thanks to @caractacus potts for providing that.
Yes, @Napoleon Plural, I find Skyfall very much overrated. When I first saw it, I thought it amounted to The Dark Knight reworked but with an incompetent rather than flawed hero. Because it was so steeped in sentimentality -- and people frequently turn their brains off when they're emotionally moved -- I thought that's why few noticed Bond is frequently treated as something of an arrogant buffoon.
Having seen No Time to Die, though, I think it fits in neatly with the notion that Bond is on a downward spiral.
If we think of the wit of the Craig films as treating Bond as a kind of suave Wile E. Coyote, they're actually quite funny. I mean, Vesper dies, he loses the money, he loses Mr. White, he gets Fields killed, he gets Mathis killed, he descends into alcoholism and pill addiction, he doesn't get Camille, Green kills himself, Bolivia is left without a leader, he gets shot by Moneypenny, he descends further into alcoholism and pill addiction, he get Severigne killed, he gets M killed, he wins only by stabbing Silva in the back, he finds out all the tragedies are linked to sibling rivalry with Blofeld (making Bond the cause and motivation), he's nearly blown up at Vesper's mausoleum, he dumps his girlfriend right before she's going to tell him she's pregnant, Ash kills Felix after Bond fails to consider he's a double agent, he doesn't know he has a daughter, he doesn't know his ex-girlfriend is somehow Blofeld's therapist, the closest he comes to bonding (pun intended) with his blank-faced daughter is an uncomfortable few minutes at breakfast, and he ultimately is shot, hopeless, and suicidal and gets blown up by bombs from his own country.
I mean, it's pretty funny if you consider he's supposed to be the hero. But it makes complete sense if he was never the hero to begin with -- he was a subversive foil.
Oh, I forgot that it's actually M and Q who stop Nine Eyes, not Bond, and that the nanobots that ultimately doom Bond were part of a program created by his boss -- so, in essence, the British kill Bond twice, once with the nanobots and then again with bombs.
It's CONTROL from Get Smart. One could argue the British Secret Service is routinely portrayed as buffoonish, too, right from Casino Royale. If they'd been aware of Quantum/SPECTRE in the first place and that Vesper had been compromised, she would never have been coerced and ultimately killed. That carries over to Quantum of Solace. In Skyfall, MI:6 is all kinds of inept. Though one of the weaker entries, Spectre is really the only of Craig's Bonds that starts to suggest the British Secret Service is not the Keystone Cops of espionage, but even there, they're infiltrated by C and subject to Blofeld's surveillance and manipulation. By No Time to Die, they're building and losing horrifying weapons.
How would Trump sum up the success of Craig's Bond? 'Lame, so lame!' & 'I prefer spies who don't get killed!'
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Haha, the thing is, and not to get political, I don't think Trump is swift enough to get the joke of how Bond is presented.
The personal arc "completed" by NTTD seems like a rather ramshackle one. To give the series credit, the personal issues raised by Casino Royale were efficiently dealt with by its direct sequel Quantum of Solace, which cured the recently designated 007 of his thirst for vengeance and made him able to concentrate on his job. But when Skyfall came around Bond had suddenly become a hardened veteran who felt over the hill, though we never had a glimpse of what had happened between films to make him feel that way. In Spectre Bond is confronted by an arch-villain with a deep family connection--and he barely seems to notice, as if Bond subconsciously realized he was dealing with a bad script best left ignored. And he also finds a woman to fall in love with--though it's difficult to see why he'd hang everything up for such a bland character. Bond ends Spectre with his personal issues resolved, driving off into the sunset.
But when Craig decided to return for another film the personal arc machine had to be restarted. Since he'd already found happiness with Swann Bond needed to be separated from her, but I didn't find Bond's newfound distrust of Madeline very convincing. Bond might be hampered by memories of past betrayals, but he's not stupid enough to forget Spectre is a large organization that "has people everywhere," (including the secret service, as shown in QoS) and it would surely be able to (1) contact Blofeld in prison and (2) track Bond's movements. Some have said that part of NTTD's personal arc involves Bond learning to trust again, but this problem was cooked up under dubious pretenses and Bond doesn't really learn to do this--he sees Spectre was working apart from Madeline and then trusts her again. The other aspect of personal growth that has been mentioned is Bond becoming a family man with a "wife" and child.
I'm a bit perplexed to see Bond fans suddenly extolling family values and saying Bond's previous existence was "shallow" and in need of redemption by family life. If there has been a constant throughout the Bond novels and films, it has been the avoidance of domesticity, a part of the humdrum world Bond is in perpetual escape from. Bond is interesting because he's only fully alive when on his very dangerous job, which he knows will eventually take his life and prevent him from settling down with anyone. Yet he's still willing to give his life for his country, something fewer and fewer people are willing to do nowadays. But far more people are willing to sacrifice themselves for their family, which is what Bond does in NTTD. I think this makes him a less special and less interesting character. It almost seems like punishment for having avoided family life for so long. Being brought down to the level of everyday life shrinks Bond--he becomes less complex and more sentimental. So I think anyway. What seems like "personal growth" is actually shrinkage.
Once again @Revelator you hit the nail on the head mate. Keep up the great work! 😎
Bond’s arc is more like Alec Leamas or either of Edward Woodward’s Callan or Robert McCall. These characterizations were very much the antithesis of Bond. Across five films, Bond has ping-ponged in and out of the service like it’s a temp job, and Skyfall was particularly annoying in trying to merely declare him burnt out, another reason I’m underwhelmed by it. But all this is part and parcel to No Time to Die failing to earn its ending — unless we accept that Bond’s journey was to end up a loser the whole time. Then it all makes sense, from his fickle tenure, to his constant failures personal and professional, to his having happiness dangled in front of him only to be cruelly taken away. If the point was to deconstruct him as a kind of buffoon and anachronism serving a dying empire, it all works in concert — especially since that empire kills him at the end. It’s been a grand joke on fans of the old Bond series to, who keep looking for signs of the traditional hero rather than a satire of him. But that’s why I say this has all turned out to be an Uber serious version of Get Smart. It really isn’t the James Bond we knew.