Thoughts on the James Bond Franchise

Women want him, men want to be him. That's the old refrain about James Bond, codename 007, the fictional debonair British spy and subject of 14 books and 24 films, famously portrayed by the likes of Sean Connery, Pierce Brosnan, and most recently, Daniel Craig. "Bond, James Bond" requires no introduction; even his favorite drink—"vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred"—is culturally ubiquitous nearly 60 years after his big screen debut in 1962's Dr. No. James Bond movie tropes are so well-known—the gadgets, the cars, the "Bond girls"—that they've even survived attempts in recent years to rebrand the character for 21st century sensibilities. But in this year's upcoming No Time To Die, this paragon of masculinity (and, inarguably, toxic masculinity) is set to be drastically re-imagined—as a woman.

Bond has been re-cast before, of course. He's been portrayed by six actors in all. Lashana Lynch has been confirmed as the new 007. On this occasion, nearly six decades in the making, I thought I would reflect on the Bond movie series. I loved the films as a kid, and re-watched them endlessly, especially 1995's GoldenEye and 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies. But for the purposes of this reflection, instead than a broad treatment of all 24 films, I intend to focus on just one. This isn't necessarily the best Bond film (at distinction would probably go to 1964's From Russia With Love.) Rather, I want to focus on the film that best exemplifies the entire series. I put considerable thought into this, and finally decided on 1974's The Man With the Golden Gun, starring Roger Moore as Bond.

007 meets his match in the titular assassin Francisco Scaramanga, portrayed by a swarthy Christopher Lee. "No one can catch him / no hit man can match him," according to the film's theme song, generally regarded as one of composer John Barry's more mediocre efforts. (For what it's worth, I've always found it catchy.) Lee's Scaramanga is the first of many "dark side of Bond" villains in the series, and one of the franchise's best villains. Bond and his assistant, the blonde-haired Mary Goodnight, chase the elusive Scaramanga across a typically exotic range of locales for a Bond film, from Macau to Hong Kong, to retrieve the "Solex Agitator"—a MacGuffin that has something to do with solar energy, but honestly isn't worth even a minimal effort to understand. For comic relief, the movie also inexplicably features a jolly, racist Louisiana sheriff, J.W. Pepper—a recurring character from 1973's Live and Let Die who is inexplicably vacationing in Bangkok replete with a sweat-soaked floral shirt.

The post-Connery Bond franchise—and Anglophone culture more broadly—had something of an identity crisis in the 1970s, an era of "malaise," as President Carter phrased it. Whereas Live and Let Die drew heavily upon the blaxploitation genre, The Man With the Golden Gun borrows from the contemporaneous popularity of martial arts films, featuring an unnecessary, plot-halting sequence in which Bond is imprisoned in a Muay Thai dojo and must use his trademark Judo techniques to escape (with the help of a duo of Thai schoolgirls, who improbably defeat the entire dojo themselves.)

"Lashana Lynch's casting as the new 007 feels like something of a mea culpa for the series' past treatment of women..."

By now, the absurdity of the Roger Moore era should be apparent. One of the reasons I chose this particular film is because the Bond franchise has frequently lapsed into self-parody, reaching a climax of absurdity in Moonraker in 1979. The Man With the Golden Gun retains some of the serious tone of earlier installments while also hinting at the farce the series would soon become. After the disastrous misfire of 2002's Die Another Day, the Daniel Craig films were part of a post-9/11 return to the franchise's self-serious roots. Based more closely on Ian Fleming's novels, the Craig films eschew parody altogether—to a mixed reception. They are a direct repudiation of the Roger Moore era.

The Man With the Golden Gun builds to the conclusion we all want to see; a pistol duel between Bond and Scaramanga for the fate of the Solex and, naturally, the world. This is probably the best part of the movie, set in Scaramanga's demented funhouse of mirrors and mannequins. Bond, of course, prevails.

The film has all the other sundries you might expect from a Bond film; a boat chase; a flying car; a dwarf manservant; a gun assembled out of a fountain pen, cigarette lighter, cigarette case, and cufflink; the aforementioned martial arts interlude. It also features a genuinely impressive car stunt which was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records, in which Bond's AMC Hornet jumps over a river, corkscrewing 360 degrees in mid-air (tragically diminished with a slide whistle sound effect.)

No treatment of the James Bond franchise would be complete without a discussion of the series' famous "Bond girls"—voluptuous and usually superfluous sex objects for Bond's gratification. They are also frequently damsels in distress that Bond must rescue from the villain's clutches. These women are always disposable, forgotten by the next film. In this way, every Bond film is fundamentally a parable of patriarchal imperialism and conquest. Even the recent, well-regarded Craig film Skyfall treats its female characters disposably. But The Man With the Golden Gun is particularly egregious in this regard, as Britt Ekland's character Goodnight—described in a contemporaneous Sunday Mirror review as "an astoundingly stupid blonde British agent"—fumbles her way from one scene to the next. At one point, clad in the skimpiest bikini that still possibly qualifies as an article of clothing, Goodnight bends over and inadvertently activates a laser by pressing a button with her butt. Of course, Bond has his way with her at the conclusion of the film; his duel with Scaramanga is for the fate of the world, but to the victor go the spoils.

Lashana Lynch's casting as the new 007 feels like something of a mea culpa for the series' past treatment of women, part of the 21st century evolution of Bond. But it also feels like a cynical gesture and a desperate ploy for relevance after the last Bond film, Spectre, underwhelmed audiences in 2015. In GoldenEye, Bond is described as "a misogynist dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War"—clearly, the series has been aware of its flaws for some time. One can't help but feel that perhaps Bond should have remained in the past century. He was conceived in a certain time and circumstance, and it would have been smarter for the filmmakers to play to the character's strengths and reboot the series in the 1960s, where Bond belongs. Even the most beloved characters in their own time, such as Robinson Crusoe, will inevitably lose relevance as audience sensibilities change. There's a reason the Robinsonade genre is dead today—there's only so much a property can be adapted for modern times, with one foot in the past and the other in the present, before it simply cannot be stretched any further.

James Bond is not a character who transcends his Cold War origins. It's dubious whether modern audiences even see an agent of Western imperialism as a "hero," as they once did. Whether 007 is a man or a woman is a distraction from this more structural problem with the franchise. At this point, the series has an obligatory feel to it, as if James Bond movies are simply expected. It may be that Lashana Lynch's 007 will breathe some new life into the franchise, but I expect it to be short-lived. The days of The Man With the Golden Gun, when James Bond movies were a cultural institution, are likely gone forever.