Amazon's James Bond

Since Amazon bought the rights to James Bond, there has been much speculation on where the franchise would go.  Will Bond become a social justice warrior?  Maybe Bond will be a black man - Idris Elba was once suggested - or even a woman.  Heck, Lashana Lynch could just resume her position as Agent 007 from No Time to Die (2021).  An online creator suggested that Pierce Brosnan resume the role as Old Man Bond, something along the lines of Logan (2017).  Then there is the idea of having Young Bond.  This could be like Batman Begins (2005), exploring Bond's final days in the Royal Navy and joining MI-6.  A series of 9 novels have been written about Young Bond.  Another suggestion, and one which appeals to me, is to do the literary Bond.

Ian Fleming set the books in his present, which was the 1950s and early 1960s.  Amazon could do for James Bond what Granada Television did for Sherlock Holmes.  Jeremy Brett played the most faithful adaptation of Sherlock Holmes.  It was an outstanding series.  Eventually, the literary Bond will be made.  Will it take almost a century as it did with Holmes or will Amazon take the leap?

Everything or Nothing (2003)

James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) is in Tajikistan to recover a Soviet suitcase bomb before it can be sold.  He tricks the buyer and seller into believing a double-cross is in progress and then uses the confusion to snatch the suitcase and retreat to his extraction point.  Cue the opening credits and theme song!

Returning to England, Bond reports to M (Judi Dench).  She immediately dispatches him to rescue Dr. Katya Nadanova (Heidi Klum), a scientist who specializes in nanotechnology.  With new gadgets and vehicles provided by Q (John Cleese), he sets out for Egypt.  Bond infiltrates and destroys a nanotechnology lab, pursues an armored train, battles his old adversary Jaws (Richard Kiel), and escapes with Dr. Nadanova.  Bond has hardly returned to England than M sends him to find Agent 003, who has gone missing in Peru.  Here, Bond tangles with the main villain, Diavolo (Willem Dafoe), a former KGB agent.  He also meets the main Bond Girl, Serena St. Germaine (Shannon Elizabeth), a geologist.  New Orleans and Moscow are other settings for the action.

A walkthrough of the entire game is available to watch on YouTube.  Though the game makes use of the actors for all the dialogue, that mostly proves to be just a line here or there.  This is not a talky game and the demands on the actors are minimal.  Oddly, both M and Q get a lot of dialogue as they direct Bond during each mission, as he has a constant uplink with them.  There is a lot of action.  The gunfights are extensive as Bond clears levels.  The car chases are long and plentiful.  The body count is astronomical.  Bond has the opportunity to drive/operate a variety of vehicles.  There's a motorcycle, an SUV, a racecar, a sports car (same one from Die Another Day), a helicopter, and a couple of tanks.

One really creepy thing was that the villain's plan for New Orleans was to destroy the levies and flood the city.  Why is that creepy?  Because 2 years after this game was released, the levies broke and the city was flooded.

The walkthrough is 3 hours and the player has not clipped out the bits where he saved the game.  Also, he's not particularly good at the game.  Sure, he got to the end, but he seldom uses his gadgets - in fact, some he never used - and mostly played as a standard 3rd person shooter.  Also, he missed most of the 'Bond Moments' where the game would show a cutscene of awesome action.  Nonetheless, it was a fun story that serves as Brosnan's 5th and final outing as Bond.  Only worth watching if you are also a fan of 3rd person shooter games.

No Time to Die (2021)

The latest James Bond film is a reworking of the novel version of You Only Live Twice (YOLT) with some aspects of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (OHMSS).  Let's take a look at those two books, which the movies are not always faithful in adapting.

In OHMSS, Bond is searching for Blofeld in the wake of Thunderball but has come up empty.  However, he has saved Tracy from committing suicide.  It turns out that Tracy's father is a mobster who offers Bond a fortune to marry his daughter.  She had been suicidal since the death of her daughter, but she wrote highly of Bond in her suicide letter.  Despite his attraction to Tracy, he declines.  He does ask for one favor: does he know where to find Blofeld?  Indeed, he does.  Bond infiltrates Blofeld's Swiss fortress and discovers that Blofled has infected a number of British women with specific viruses that will spread when they return to England.  One has a virus that will ruin the wheat harvest and another to wipe out poultry.  If all of them return, England is going to suffer a famine.  His cover blown, Bond flees and encounters Tracy!  Fleeing together, Bond realizes just how attracted to her he is.  He decides he will marry her and asks her father for a wedding gift: an assault force for Blofeld's stronghold.  Though the plagues are averted, Blofeld escaped.  Bond and Tracy are married but she is killed by Blofeld later that very day.  The movie is surprisingly faithful.

In the YOLT novel, Bond had fallen in depression after the death of his wife and was on the brink of being tossed from the service.  Instead, M gave him an assignment in Japan.  His code number was changed to 7777 and his mission was to acquire intelligence from Taiga Tanaka, head of Japanese Intelligence.  Taiga is willing but he wants something in return.  With the approval of the Japanese government, a foreigner named Shatterhand purchased a castle and its grounds.  He has planted all sorts of deadly plant species around the property.  As such, the castle has become an oasis for the suicide-prone Japanese.  If Bond eliminates Shatterhand, Taiga will share intel.  Though Shatterhand normally appears in full Samuri regalia - including a mask, there is a picture when he is without the mask: it is Ernst Blofeld!  Bond accepted the offer and, as far as the Secret Service was aware, died during his successful effort to destroy Blofeld's lair.  Unbeknownst to them, Bond survived but had amnesia.  A local fishing girl, Kissy Suzuki, had fallen for him and took advantage of his amnesia.  She was also pregnant though Bond is unaware of that when he leaves.  The movie uses the characters and setting but an entirely different plot.

No Time to Die uses many of the parts but reorders them and assigns them to different characters.  The movie picks up immediately after Spectre with Bond (Daniel Craig) and Madeleine (Lea Seydoux) driving in Italy.  In the wake of an assassination attempt on him, Bond leaves Madeleine, believing she had betrayed him.  She is pregnant but he does not know that.  Years pass.  Introduced wearing a Japanese mask, Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek) has developed some toxins that only harm specific DNAs; it is safe for most people but lethal to the chosen target.  Bond is no longer in the Secret Service and his code number has been given to another agent, Nomi (Lashana Lynch).  Safin has a grudge against Spectre and uses his designer toxins to kill every member, including the incarcerated Blofeld (Christoph Waltz).  Bond discovers that Safin's base is an island between Japan and Russia.  He and Nomi infiltrate the base, rescue the captured Madeleine and Mathilde (Bond's daughter), and make sure the blast doors are open for an incoming missile strike.  As Bond has been infected with a toxin that is lethal to Madeleine and Mathilde, he stays behind to protect them.  James Bond is dead.

The movie sweeps the field.  Felix Leiter?  Dead.  Ernst Stavro Blofeld?  Dead.  James Bond?  Dead.  How do you move on from here?  Though Nomi was the new 007 in Bond's absence, he regained the number on his final mission.  Well, it's available again and she can have it back.  Even so, I don't see her carrying on the series.  It was always a given that the role would be recast soon, but how does that work?  Is EON embracing the idea that James Bond is just an alias for MI-6's top operative?  Maybe they are going with the Bond multiverse.  In the Daniel Craig-verse, Bond dies.  Sherlock Holmes has been played by many actors but, so far as I know, he's never been killed and there has never been an issue with the Basil Rathbone Holmes vs. the Robert Downey Holmes.  Both are different interpretations of the same character.  The same should be true of Bond.

Not a bad movie, but a real problem for an ongoing series.

The Saint (season 1)

Having time to spare, I have watched the entirety of the first season of The Saint.  The funniest thing about the show is the James Bond connections.  In the first episode, Shirley Eaton appears.  She is most famous for playing Jill Masterson in Goldfinger, a role in which she was painted gold.  In the 7th episode, Honor Blackman appears as a secretary and mistress to a wealthy Bahamian.  Like Eaton, she is more famous for a role in Goldfinger: she played Pussy Galore.

Simon is a Robin Hood-like character who takes from the criminal and gives to the victim.  Simon knows everyone and every policeman knows Simon.  He is famous wherever he goes.  The plots vary.  He may solve a murder mystery in Nassau, tame a shrew in Spain, save a woman from her bluebeard husband in England, avenge a murdered reporter in New York City, or wheedle a donation to an orphanage from a greedy countess in Rome.  Simon is wealthy but it is not clear why he is wealthy.  He travels constantly.  He is most likely to be found in New York City, London, or Rome but also finds himself in Mexico, Florida, the Bahamas, Spain, Switzerland, and Paris. It is clear that Roger Moore's James Bond was almost a cut and paste job of his role as Simon Templar.

The Saint premiered on October 4, 1962. Less than a week later, on October 10th, 1962, Sean Connery hit the big screen as James Bond in Dr. No. Strange coincidence.

A fun light-hearted show that serves as a travelogue and adventure series. Thumbs up.

Moore, Roger Moore

Roger Moore (1927-2017) has died.  I saw my first James Bond movie in 1977, Roger Moore's best outing as the character in The Spy Who Loved Me.  I became a Bond fanatic and Moore was instantly my favorite Bond.  In fact, he was probably my favorite actor at the time, which is funny when you consider his very narrow range.  While he was Bond, he was a hot commodity and had plenty of work.  When video stores arose with VHS, I always kept an eye out for Roger Moore movies.  Shout at the Devil, Sherlock Holmes in New York, The Naked Face, The Sea Wolves, ffolkes, The Wild Geese, and more.  I watched reruns of The Saint, his British TV series that was the basis of the disappointing Val Kilmer version which featured the saddest excuse ever for a cameo for Moore.  When I became more discerning, my preferences changed but Moore remains the first Bond to me despite following Connery in the role.  After he left the Bond franchise, at least 2 films too late, he vanished.  The last movie I saw of his in the theaters was The Quest, a Jean-Claude Van Damme stinker in which Moore played a dodgy aristocrat.

 

As Bond, Moore was the most humorous of the bunch and brought a tongue in cheek quality to the series.  My favorite of his Bond films is For Your Eyes Only.  It played like a Cold War thriller rather than a fantasy spy movie.  It was a nice return to earth after Moonraker.

 

RIP

Gender Bender Insanity

I just saw a video on YouTube proposing the Top 10 Actresses Who Could Play James Bond.  The obvious answer is none, but that would make for a very short video.  Though I like all the actresses listed and think each and every one of them could make a great agent in MI-6, none of them can be James Bond.  Just like none of them can be Winston Churchill, Alfred the Great, or King Arthur.  The point is that filmmakers today lack the talent to create an original secret agent who could get the kind of audience that the name James Bond attracts.

As described by Ian Fleming, Bond looked like Hoagy Carmichael, an American composer and actor.  He also had a scar on his cheek, which has been ignored in the movies.  He was not a woman.  He was not black.  If you want to make a James Bond who is not a white male, create your own damned character!  Eidos wanted to have a female Indiana Jones and rocked it with Lara Croft.  Do that.  Make the female version of Bond, but don't have some actress deliver the line, "Bond, James Bond."  At least the Ghostbusters reboot had the decency to have different characters, not a female Venkman, Stantz, Spengler, and Zeddemore.  Make a movie about 006 or 008 but leave 007 alone.

 

If this travesty does come to pass, I want to start seeing videos of Top 10 Actors Who Could Play Lara Croft, Modesty Blaze, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Or how about Nancy Drew, Katniss Everdeen, or Pippi Longstocking?  Of course, I find all of those suggestions equally ludicrous.

Spectre

Bond is back and so is Ernst Stavro Blofeld.  After a decades long absence, Blofeld is back as the head of Spectre though his backstory has dramatically changed.  The movie opens with Bond in Mexico City for Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).  He's on a mission to kill a man.  The action that follows is ridiculous to the extreme and a return to the silliness that we saw in Quantum of Solace.  Also echoing Quantum of Solace, Blofeld's secret hideout is amazingly combustible.  Why do James Bond's villains use dynamite, hydrogen, and gasoline as construction materials?

 

Mr. Hinx (Dave Bautista) is an excellent henchmen along the lines of Odd Job and Jaws.  He is pure aggression and his dialogue is next to nil.  Where Jaws had steel teeth, Hinx has sharpened steel thumbnails, the better to gouge eyeballs.  Unlike Odd Job and Jaws, Hinx is not some grim humorless thug.  No, he spends a lot of time smiling, especially after killing someone or shooting holes in your plane.  He is also surprisingly well-dressed.  I hope to see him again in the next film.

 

Blofeld has proved a more durable villain in the movies - 8 so far - than in the novels - only appeared in 3.  In the novels, Spectre and Blofeld were introduced in Thunderball (9th novel).  Bond killed Blofeld in You Only Live Twice (12th novel).  The movies opted to replace the Soviets with Spectre right from the start so that Blofeld and his fluffy white cat appear in almost every Sean Connery Bond film.  I did like how Blofeld (Christoph Waltz) is made the architect of the previous 3 movies.  The mysterious Quantum group was just a facet of Spectre and the chief villains in each of those films was just a minion of Blofeld.  Blofeld is mostly unemotional and unmoved by whatever is happening.  He is never angry and rarely shows anything beyond mild amusement.  He plays a good host but it is just an act.  Reminded me a bit of Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler.

 

The Daniel Craig period as Bond has seen a lot of more depth to the character and very few of the post-kill witticisms.  In Casino Royale, we saw his first love - Vesper Lynd - and her death.  Quantum of Solace was basically a waste though it does fold into the storyline of Spectre.  In Skyfall, we see his childhood home and learn how he was an orphan.  Here in Spectre, we learn of Hans Obenhauser, a man who adopted him after his parents' death.  This was only ever mentioned in the short story Octopussy in the novels but is greatly expanded here.  Wow, I really didn't see that coming.

 

Another interesting development is that this Bond is part of a team.  M (Ralph Fiennes), Moneypenny (Namoie Harris), Q (Ben Whishaw), and Bill Tanner (Roy Kinnear) have sizeable roles that span the movie, not just the opening office bit when 007 is dispatched on his mission.  Part of this has to do with how the modern world works.  As Bond can't be an awesome computer hacker - very important in modern intelligence - that facet goes to Q.  Also, the proliferation of cellphones means that the office is always available, thus contact to M or Moneypenny is as easy as pie.  This is a departure from the novels but I welcome it.

 

A rarity for Bond movies, none of the Bond girls died.  Daniel Craig has not shown himself to be the lady's man of previous Bonds.  Though he has a beauty with him at the start, he leaves her in the room before anything happens and never returns.  His only love interest here is Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), who appears not to be just another ship passing in the night.

 

All in all, a fun Bond flick with more weight to it than others in the franchise.  The series has moved into an overarching storyline, fitting it more to the mold of the Borne movies or Harry Potter.

Skyfall

The movie opens with Bond in Istanbul and coming upon a number of dead or seriously wounded agents.  A hard drive has been stolen from a laptop.  Bond and his female driver, Eve, get into an epic chase to recover the hard drive.  They fail to get it and that becomes a national security threat that defines the rest of the movie.  Unlike most Bond films, the majority of this one takes place in the UK with a middle part in Shanghai and Macau.  This is interesting since MI6 is supposed to do foreign intelligence while MI5 is domestic intelligence.  I suspect there was a lot of arguing about turf between the agencies was left on the cutting room floor.

 

To a degree, this is an origin story of Bond.  We see his childhood home and learn that he was orphaned (this was revealed in the books but I don't recall if that had been mentioned in the movies).  We get to meet the man who taught him to shoot.  Bond shows little interest in his childhood home, even stating that he hated the place.  Granted, it is on a bleak Scottish moor in the middle of winter, which makes it quite unappealing.  We also get a scene where Bond does the word association that is sometimes humorous and paints him as a grim fellow.  The results of his psych analysis are revealed later, giving a deeper look into the character.  This isn't Sean Connery's Bond.

 

Javier Bardem is a peculiar villain.  I give him credit for his willingness to look silly.  That haircut in No Country for Old Men was a real winner but blond hair is painful on him.  Here, he is equal parts arrogant genius, deranged madman, petulant child, and playful goofball.  Yeah, it is a strange and complex character.  His love-hate obsession with M echoes a former villain; Elektra King in The World is Not Enough (1999).  He gives the obligatory "How come you won't die already" attitude some new life, seeming both amused and annoyed that Bond has yet again foiled attempts to kill him.  Also of interest, though he has amazing intel about the inner workings of MI6, the villain is not part of the Quantum group that was featured prominently in the last two films.  He would have fit just fine within it so I am perplexed that they didn't just say he was to keep that going.  Maybe next time.

 

The Bond girl who gets the most screen time with our hero is... Judi Dench. Unlike most Bond girls, there is nothing between them beyond the employer/employee relationship and some mutual respect that is shown with pithy barbs.  For her part, M proves willing to sacrifice her agents for the sake of the mission.  This is an ongoing theme with Judi Dench's M, dating back to Golden Eye (1995) where she told Bond she was only too willing to send him to his death if the circumstances warranted.  She is cold-blooded by her words but often motherly by her actions.  I think I preferred the more hands-off Bernard Lee in the role.  Give Bond his mission at the beginning and then scold him at the end.  M used to be a support character but with a big name like Judi Dench, M became a major character in the films.  M promises to remain a major character in future outings.

 

The Aston Martin made famous in Goldfinger (1964) returns in this film.  It is nice to see the old car again.  Bond has kept it in a garage all these years just in case he might need another ride.  I have read that car geeks were offended since that model is gutless compared to modern sports cars.

 

One big twist is that Bond has a base that the villain attacks, a complete reversal of the usual where Bond invades the enemy camp and blows it to bits.  Also of interest, this Bond finally gets Q.  This Q is a young fellow who is good with computers rather than gadgets.  Bond also gets Miss Moneypenny.  Both are welcome additions back to the series.  Bill Tanner, who was a regular in the book series, is also present here and in the last movie.  However, he doesn't have a clever name like M, Q, or Moneypenny so vanishes into the background.

 

Something of a departure from the usual Bond film but certainly enjoyable.  Thumbs up from Dave.