The New Bond

In the course of 22 movies some clichés are bound to pop up. Some might say that the whole James Bond series is a cliché. Possibly; but Bond is such a pervasive cultural wrecking-ball that clichés have infiltrated the critical discourse surrounding 007. There are a handful, but the two most oft-repeated are "Bond's enemies are always more interesting than Bond himself" and "Women want to be with him, men want to be him."

Love it or hate it, the newest installment, Quantum of Solace will at least make critics work a little bit. The sniveling Dominic Greene barely seems a worthy foil to the hero — if Bond actually is one — and there is no way in hell that anyone — least of all Pierce Brosnan — wants to be this James Bond.

It is altogether appropriate that Brosnan’s four turns as Bond put a cap on the first score of films, because he’s a perfect embodiment of what James Bond was in those films; pretty, charming, slightly effete and impossibly debonair. That’s not the Bond we find in Quantum of Solace. Daniel Craig’s Bond keeps some of the archetypal characteristics; the dry wit, the impulsiveness, the detached elegance, but adds a dash of nihilism and brutality that drastically changes the course of the series. In a previous episode of a franchise drowning in caviar, Bond nearly drowns a man in caviar. If that’s the James Bond you’re looking for, expect to be disappointed by Quantum of Solace.

But if you’re a movie buff, you’ll probably be disappointed by the breakneck pace of Quantum too. That leaves the whole series hanging in limbo, stuck between aspiring to be serious films and aspiring to be eye candy. Undoubtedly, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace are better-executed movies than their predecessors, but they’re James Bond movies. There are probably no Oscar nominations coming for Craig, even though he is fantastic—and at times, chilling—in his second turn as 007. Nevertheless, the movie is going to make enough money to get even the completely laconic Greene’s attention, and I doubt that those involved are going to be concerned with the lack of critical acclaim.

But one can’t help but wonder how this film would be received if the first 20 Bond movies could simply be blotted from the public’s memory — maybe they can, as Bond’s associate Mathis says, they have pills for everything. If the humorously prolific, gadget-enhanced, martini-swilling Bond had never existed, would the perception of Craig’s possibly-unstable, unspeakably violent and frighteningly single-minded Bond be different? He would have to be viewed, at the very least, as a more interesting Jason Bourne, and Bourne got plenty of critical acclaim. Bourne is a wet blanket, though. His motivation is to escape the violent world in which he exists. Bond is a killer and he kills without remorse or enjoyment or even an incremental rise in his pulse. That’s not the Bond that everyone wants to be, but the old Bond is dead. Daniel Craig killed him.