Good night, and good luck, Mr. Bond
Image courtesy of 007.com
My judgment may be impaired by how long it’s been since I sat in a theatre, but I’ve recently decided I really like Bond movies — as predictable and cheesy and schmaltzy as they are. I have slapped my forehead at many of 007’s one-liners. I have exhaled impatiently while M or Q explains the mechanics of some non-feasible cyber-weapon, designed specifically to speak to some trending news headline in the real world. (The naked attempts to sex up environmentalism, in recent outings, I found particularly silly.) Even though Daniel Craig has for the most part ‘done a job’, I have also found it difficult to embrace a bad ass 007. (Is that tuxedo so tight along the bum that Mr. Bond must swagger threateningly even to the little boy’s room for a quick pee-pee?)
But how befitting that my first time back at the movies will be to watch a high-speed chase down the frightening curves of a European mountain, before some nefarious so-and-so is identified by an Etonian accent working a high-tech scanner, and Mr. Bond, at first engagement, is apprised of a new world order by a slightly less debonair sigma male. All of the lovely concessions sellers and ticket stamps at Ster Kinekor could tell it was me behind my mask, and seemed genuinely happy to see I’d made it out of 2020, and wondered ever so politely how old all my nephews and nieces are now. What better experience than No Time to Die, after a year and a half away from the peace and quiet of the movies, to clarify that all of this is real?
Speaking of sigma males, it occurred to me as I decided I actually quite enjoy Bond movies that they in fact represent the struggle for world domination between two kinds of male (which is why many people are sick of them, I suppose …). There is Bond, of course, the sort of man who simply skinny-dips into a suit and takes the piss at the world as it falls at his feet; and then there is the Bond villain, a shorter, angrier, possibly artsier, but also no less refined gentleman who has to kidnap ladies in order for them to listen to his poetry. Much of my disappointment with the Craig outings is not by any means with Craig himself, but with the sheer waste of a starting line-up that could do bits even outside of Arkham Asylum: Mads Mikkelsen, Christoph Waltz, and I shan’t exempt Rami Malek for how little time he spends onscreen. My heart fluttered at the moment he was captured in perfect profile, by the window of a toppled SUV, in a fairy tale forest, and when he told Mr. Bond that some people are born to provide oblivion for others. Most of what you want in a Bond experience, like a Marvel Cinematic one, you tend to get — just not six or seven times a year, dear Lord. So honestly I’m here for it. I’m here for tradition!, and novelty guns!, and femme fatales with exotic accents!, because goodness gracious have I missed the movies or what.
Perhaps to speak to the headlines, perhaps not, our nefarious so-and-so has devised a biological weapon that can turn people, like Bond, into passive (read: asymptomatic) carriers of a lethal poison, which can then eliminate the bearers of specific DNA chains within minutes. There are callbacks galore, because even the Bond franchise is wary of its place in a content market governed by canon. So Malek’s baddie wants to knock out Waltz’s baddie, who we and Bond understand to be locked up, and whose adopted daughter (Bond’s most serious lover to date) has ties to both villains. This is the exact sort of nonsense I forbid in a singular movie experience nowadays, the threading of nodes, but I can’t keep my nose turned up for two and a half hours. There are double-dealing curmudgeons hijacking old-fashioned planes, there are turret gun barrels packed into vintage sports cars, and there’s even a new 007: a lady with Caribbean roots, no less, that speaks patois.
This last thing is a loud and brazen manner in which to signal-call towards change, or recognition of the need for it; so loud and brazen Bond couldn’t be louder and more brazen if he wore plaid to a poker game. But it’s a nifty way to test the waters, for a conversation (frankly) that ought end with simply allowing Bond to continue to be a reckless white male. Build Cate Blanchett her own cinematic universe from scratch, and let her destroy as much public property as she pleases therein. Let black and brown and Asian people tell more stories, rather than assigning them the thankless task of navigating all that racist, misogynistic, homophobic Internet rage, when they’re cast as people’s bedroom posters.
But you know what? Do whatever you want, MGM. Just make sure, right out the gates, there’s an expensive car-chase in the Alps before the trailers have even buggered off; at least one majestic shot of a fistfight decorated in the lights of Shanghai, Amsterdam, Paris; and a speech, SPEEEEECCCHHHHH!!!, about how futile capitalism and democracy and justice are, ideally delivered by a droll, monotone speaker.
I’ll be a wise ass about it, sure, but I’ll be there and all.
