mgpcpastor's blog

Watching SPECTRE, the latest James Bond film yesterday was a diverting way to fill up most of the afternoon.
A lushly filmed series of set pieces, the film seeks to advance the narrative begun in Casino Royale.
And yet it is not really the movie that has provoked most of my thought in reflection about it.
Remaining in the theatre until all the credits had rolled up the screen, the final words were the familiar ‘James Bond Will Return’. And therein lies the problem.
Early in the series Sean Connery’s diffident spy coming back to foil schemes of world domination was a welcome return.
Though amoral, he was effective.
It was in George Lazenby’s sole outing as 007 that the notion of a real price in personal terms being sacrificed by the spy for his service on behalf of others was explored.
Connery’s return and Roger Moore’s term in the role didn’t really explore that dimension, a few nods to the canon of personal tragic loss being lost in among a plethora of gimmicks, comic effect henchmen, and an increasing tendency toward self parody.
Timothy Dalton’s turn at the role was a return to some of Connery’s initial hardness, though the character seemed lost as the cold war came to an end.
It was Pierce Brosnan’s assumption of the 007 where the character’s back story seemed to come to the fore. Sean Bean’s darker mirror of Bond taunts 007 about a personal life of loss that stands at odds with his professional accomplishments. Or perhaps the professional accomplishments would not exist without the personal carnage?
Brosnan’s other performances skirt this reality and reference the place of a character who is a cold war archetype functioning in the early 21st century.
It is interesting that Bond films have not remained 50’s or 60’s period pieces, but have stayed contemporary to the years in which they were released. Think about how novel the idea of taking Sherlock Holmes from Victorian England and bringing him to the present day has been. Not so with Bond.
Anyway, Daniel Craig’s iteration of Bond has been all about the personality of the character. Themes of loss, family, home, and personal peace have loomed large over the four film arc that comprises Craig’s interpretation of the character. Despite himself, over the series within a series, he builds a family of sorts. But it’s not enough.
The four movies themselves have been uneven in quality and coherence, but SPECTRE seeks to reframe the question in an interesting manner. Instead of Bond’s loss being a combination of the random and circumstantial, what if it that loss was the intended malicious outcome of an individual? If Bond’s reactions to life’s cruel outcomes was one of world-weary, alcoholic, promiscuous, diffidence; how might his choices and reactions change if he believed that there were a possibility of happiness, even lasting love, of family? Before he seemed resigned to his lot, what now?
But this is the problem in episodic fiction. It can’t end. Unless the character can pass on their costume to their son (comic’s The Phantom) or another takes their name (like the title character of another spy movie franchise).
If the main point of the movie is not longer the villain’s scheme being foiled (early Bond), but the hero finding inner peace and love (later Bond) then there will never be a lasting sense of resolution.
Because if there is then James Bond won’t be coming back.
The early movies played with this because it wasn’t central. The latter ones don’t really know where to go because it is.
Ultimately a character who is self-knowingly miserable and bogged in their lack of personal growth becomes boring.
A character who chooses to stay in disfunction is worse.
Character can be king in finite stories, but plot action has to rule episodic works.
I can understand why Craig wouldn’t come back. His expression of the role is complete.
It would be interesting if the next actor in the role of 007 was no longer James Bond but someone else, or if James Bond itself was a code name passed onto a different person (like the other spy franchise, I know).
It’ll be interesting to see how James Bond returns. And what his frame of mind will be when he does.