BOND 25 IN PREVIEW

IN PREVIEW

The James Bond trailer is out for the upcoming franchise film, No Time To Die (2020). All eyes will be on Daniel Craig for his fifth and final casting as 007. Director Cary Joji Fukunaga has cast franchise recurring characters in the 25th film, as well as Rami Malek as the film’s villain, Safin.

Craig will be joined by Lea Seydoux as Madeleine Swan, Ralph Fiennes as M, Naomie Harris as Eve Moneypenney, Jeffry Wright as Felix Leiter, Rory Kinnear as Tanner, and Ben Whishaw as Q.

No Time To Die is in post production with a scheduled cinematic release to the public on April 2, 2020.

SPY GENRE NEVER THE SAME AGAIN AFTER THE BRITISH SECRET SERVICE

Originally Published on March 1, 2019

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The powers had divided up the world once again following the conclusion of the second great world war but the victors had little appetite for a third great clash of civilizations, particularly with the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons.

This new state of global politics became known as the Cold War, waged covertly by spy agencies and secret agents.

Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli produced the most successful movie franchise in the history of cinema when Ian Fleming’s James Bond fiction novels became a mix of realism and fantasy etched on movie cellulite.

Bond, James Bond appeared for the first time on screen over fifty years ago in Dr. No (1962). The British spy film set the blue print for another 23 films.

Director Terence Young along with Salzman and Broccoli imagined Fleming’s concept for the silver screen.

The franchise linked the movies together in a series by casting one actor as the British secret agent for successive Bond films, as well as a number of reoccurring supporting characters.

Audiences began to expect a certain portrayal of the Bond personality as well as recurring narrative devices from film to film, such as secret agent investigative tricks, the latest technology gadgets, even in 1962, the Aston Martin DB5 (later replaced by another fast luxury sports car), the Walther PPK standard issue gun, Bond girls, a villain, unapologetic product placements, and of course, a Martini.

The international crime syndicate, SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) was the anti-government spy agency in several Bond films.

The score by Monty Norman was just as important as the casting. The Bond theme is composed differently for each film, and many scenes are compelled forward by bits and pieces of the theme, making average driving scenes more suspenseful.

Audiences became captivated between films anticipating whom of the famous performers around the world would be chosen to sing the next Bond theme song.

Oscar nominee Paul McCartney, Madonna, Sheryl Crow, Alicia Keys, KD Lang, Oscar (2013) winner Adele and Oscar (2016) winner Sam Smith have all performed monster billboard hits for the film franchise.

Director Terence Young directed the first three Bond films to set the film franchise off on a long successful run at the box office. John Glen directed eight Bond films. Guy Hamilton directed four of the films in the franchise. Directors have more often than not been chosen on a film by film basis since then.

Broccoli’s last Bond film was Golden Eye (1995) when he gifted the franchise to his daughter, Barbara Broccoli. Barbara Broccoli had been working as an apprentice as associate producer under her father. Barbara Broccoli has produced eight Bond films so far with her step-brother Michael Wilson. Wilson also has five writer credits and 16 minor acting spots for Bond films.

The James Bond films were exotic and luxurious and not just in regards to the choice of location shoots in various places in the world such as the Bahamas. When the sun vacation spots fell more out of vogue, outer space and the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea became the film locals.

British Secret Agent 007 had an uncanny knowledge about almost everything luxurious to the point of being annoying even to cast members performing various roles in the British Secret Service in support of Bond.

George Lazenby knew the exact location from where the caviar was harvested. Lazenby played Bond only once in Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) co-starring Diana Rigg. Rigg had played a spy role in the television series, The Avengers (1965-1968) before being cast as a Bond girl.

Even the audience the films attracted was different. Female actresses were cast as the love interest to Bond, but the villain was also accompanied by an equally loyal female character in a supporting role, who were killed off just as quickly or just as slowly depending on which form of death suited Bond the most.

Bond frequently had sexual relations with the female villains while also having multiple romantic partners on either side of the secret assignment during the film. The James Bond character has often been critiqued as sexist and misogynistic, even within the script, with characters doting over him as much as being repulsed by him, while yet other female characters are rather standishoffish.

The films were not about sex though, even with many scenes capturing movie sex on film, as much as about relationships and the secret Freudian sex impulse. This psychic sexual energy motivates many an action with people doing things and acting in a certain  way as part of a wish to act out on their sexual desires.

Everyone is a spy of sorts whether they know it or not.

The Bond franchise does take a somewhat dramatic shift under the technical gaze of producer Barbara Broccoli. The filmmaking is more artful with the famous opening action scenes of each film often being picture perfect.

In Golden Eye (1995) the audience is caught in the secret agent glare by a bungee jump off of a hydro electric dam somewhere inside Russia. In Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) Bond burst through the flames of a military arms explosion in a Russian MIG fighter jet armed with nuclear warheads. In Casino Royale (2006) a chase scene continues atop of two construction cranes.

In Spectre (2015) a Mexican death march ends with a fight scene shot inside a helicopter whirling above a plaza filled with thousands of revelers.

Broccoli also takes the filmmaking through a shift into realism in film while subtly and delicately using the green screen and computer generated imaging (CGI) technology. Fight scenes are more vigorous whereas before Bond had been one of the best single punch knock out fighters in the world.

The feminization of the Bond franchise continued with a female head master for the secret agents at MI6 named M, played by Judy Dench in a number of films until being nocked out of the post by Ralph Fiennes in Skyfall (2012).

The female characters also become more complicated, but not necessarily nicer. Bond must deal with his emotional attachment to Bond girls that are ultimately revealed to be either double agents or one person wrecking crews all on their own.

Broccoli cast black actress Halle Barry as the American agent in Die Another Day (2002) while also casting Rosamund Pike as the beautiful double agent. Eva Green plays a compromised British agent in Casino Royale (2006).

Black actress Naomie Harris is cast as the recurring Bond character Moneypenny, a thoughtful amorous executive assistant working in the head office for M.

The feminization of Bond continues with a more aggressive 007, but also a more vulnerable one played by Daniel Craig. The script reveals a complicated background that compromises the agent’s invincibility in the eyes of the audience.

Bond was portrayed as less invincible over the years than the original Bond, but Broccoli seemed to find a perfect balance with the casting of Craig.

The more vulnerable Bond is struggling with himself as much as the villainess members of international organized crime syndicates. Bond’s internal struggles are personified in the extended fight sequences such as in Spectre (2015) in which the villain, Hinx, played by Dave Bautista, is built like a brick yard and simply will not die until the near bitter end when he gets hog tied off of a speeding train.

Craig’s Bond films are also interconnected with various themes as a continuing story to stand alone as a series. Bond is portrayed as an orphan child plucked from the street by the Secret Service. In any other world Bond would be a loner and a loser in search of a long lost love interest.

Bond has heart felt love for Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, but she dies as a result of her own demise. Bond then struggles through a second movie in a series bent on revenge for the death of his love before finding a second chance in Madeleine, played by Lea Seydoux, the compromised daughter of villain, Mr. White, played by Jesper Christensen.

Previous Bonds had simply used female characters as objectified sexual conquests dispensable throughout the film.

Fifty years later, the Spectre plot creates a cliff hanger simply around the relationship between James and Madeleine. 

Roger Moore was slightly feminine as well. Moore performed in a record eight Bond films. Sean Connery was the original 007 playing the character seven times.

In the original Bond, Connery towered over the other cast members at 6 foot 2 inches tall but also because he was svelte and charismatic – almost debonair. Connery personified the political and military machinations going on at the elite diplomatic level as opposed to another global conflict in the trenches fought by farmers, fathers, sons and brothers that the various superpower spy agencies were trying to avoid.

Brosnan made four Bond films. Brosnan had a successful television series in which he played private investigator Remington Steele (1982-1987) with co-star Stephanie Zimbalist playing private investigator Laura Holt.

The Bond character is a composite of the spy and the diplomat, while the Bond villains are sometimes composite sketches of real life personalities.

Dr. Blofeld in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is a composite sketch dominated by Hugh Hefner and a fashion icon with a ‘Playboy’ mansion at the top of the Swiss alps. Bond even walks around reading one of Hefner’s magazines with a partial open Playboy Centerfold.

In Die Another Day (2002), the villain Gustav Graves, played by Toby Stephens, is a composite dominated by Richard Branson with the unabashed narcisistic media stunts to promote business enterprises. Bond villain Elliot Carver, played by Jonathan Pryce, is a parody of media barons such as William Randolph Hearst, Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch.

The villains are parodies of course, but the characters change in each film with the changing geo-political real world conflicts. The end of the Cold War caused challenges for the Bond franchise to find relevance.

Script writers drifted away from the Cold War arms race and began delving instead into drug trafficking in Florida and global corporations influencing Third World governments in Latin America.

Bond has caught the attention of audiences worldwide for successive generations to such an extent that one would automatically assume the blockbuster is a Hollywood film when really the spy franchise is a uniquely British film franchise produced at Pinewood Studios, in England. 

Bond still uses location shoots in the United States and various other vacation spots such as Cuba and the Swiss Alps, but Pinewood Studios (1936) has been home to the Bond franchise since the first film in 1962 as well as producing Superman (1978), Alien (1979), Full Metal Jacket (1987), Batman (1989), Fifth Element (1997), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Bourne Ultimatum (2007) and the Star Wars reboot (2015).

The spy franchise continues to be relevant in creating public dialogue, however fantastical, about such issues as misogynism, unscrupulous corporate conduct and the constant presence of villainy.