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I watched Casino Royale recently. It’s one of those films you can’t just leave on as background noise; by the third act I have to drop my notepad and just watch the acting. Smart writing, good performers playing off each other, some spectacular and innovative action sequences, it’s great.

But it’s the first act, really the first half of the movie, that makes its mark. Casino Royale isn’t just a reboot of the James Bond series… it’s a goodbye to the old one (and a considerably better send-off than Die Another Day, at that). The entire ellipsis plot is basically the Bond formula in a microcosm (consider it as a riff on Thunderball, if that helps). Bond gets the girl, foils the villainous mastermind, and stops the evil scheme. He’s as cocksure and experienced as ever, if a little stingy with the one-liners. It’s not until Solange dies that the cracks start to show in the armor, the armor that’s been up since Sean Connery played the character. The real deconstruction starts, not the cheap and easy kind of deconstruction that has been destroying American comics of late, but the kind that asks necessary questions and reinvents characters before (or well after, in Bond's case) they get stale.

The entire scene with M at Dimitrios' house... that isn’t how it’s supposed to work. Bond’s supposed to have a love scene with Solange in PG-13 kinda way, make a cheeky double entrende at Q or M, then fade out… James Bond will return in…

Instead, death is dwelled upon. Whether it’s the “made you feel it, did he?” of the first kill, the brief flash of the second kill’s family photo, or the smirk Bond displays when the bomber reaps what he sowed, none of the henchmen are disposed of as cavalierly as in the past movies… not until the climax, when Bond is well on his way to blending the old playboy super-spy with the new, anguished, Jack Bauer protagonist of the 21st century. That climaxes in the biggest death of all, and the one that’s dwelled on the most… Vesper’s.

There's a note of subversion in the way Bond's theme isn't played at his most triumphant moment... it's debatable whether the end of Casino Royale can be considered a triumph at all, especially as regards Bond himself... but after a grieving, traumatized Bond has just maimed a man he intends to torture or at least interrogate. It's an ironic commentary picking up where Martin Campbell's last Bond film, Goldeneye, left off. That started taking risks with the material, started picking at the fantasy of the James Bond image. There, Bond was condemned to some degree as a relic of sixties playboyism and even chauvinism. Here, he’s reinvented as both crueler and more sensitive, more vulnerable and yet still fantastical. The Brosnan films were largely content to leave Bond as a vehicle for escapism, with even the daring TWINE shoving in the much-maligned Christmas Jones as “consolation prize” for the loss of Elektra. Under the franchise’s new helm, it looks as if Bond is finally going to be fleshed out as a character, finally fulfill the promise to the audience made by films like License To Kill and Die Another Day (which always tried to explore Bond’s life outside of the tuxedo-armored Don Juan, but always hit the reset button at the end. No growth, no change).

Casino Royale isn’t about how an agent becomes the Bond of Connery, Dalton, and Brosnan. It’s about forging a new kind of Bond out of the ashes of the old. And that, to me, is a lot more interesting.

Date: 2008-01-13 09:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crossoverman.livejournal.com
The key to how well the reboot has really worked with come with Bond 22. "Casino Royale" is a great chapter one in this new series of Bond films, but his reintroduction was handed to the filmmaker's on a platter - with forty years of films and Ian Fleming's first book at their disposal. What I loved about CR is the fact it acknowledges that we know his name - and yet subvert audience expectations of the character and the formula.

But character growth will be the key difference between these new films and the old. There is no reset button. Bond 22 reportedly picks up where CR ends.

CR is a brilliant film - which is something I can't say about most of the original movies. I love the franchise, but the best Bond films are usually just great Bond films. Casino Royale was one of the best movies of 2006, without question.

Bond 22 has a lot to live up to.

Date: 2008-01-14 01:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] rann.livejournal.com
Yeah, the big reset button was always kind of an itch with the Bond movies. Bond meets these magnificent women, these extraordinary one-of-a-kind women that he goes through all this with, and... he moves on from them as if they were any other language coach or secretary he'd seduced, apparently never giving them another thought. (Save in Tomorrow Never Dies, where he plays at acting like it's a great love of his life that he's lost... and then immediately jumps back in the saddle, as it were.) It was the Captain Kirk style of go-through-Hell-for-'em-and-leave-'em adventuring, yet harder to swallow when we'd spent more time with the woman.

I mean, when The Mummy Returns not only had our dashing hero not only still with the love of his life, but having settled down at least long enough to start a family before taking up his adventuring again, I was floored. Floored, and thrilled. Finally, a girlfriend that didn't just disappear conveniently between movies! (Though if Rachel from Batman Begins wanted to do that, it'd be just fine with me. Unfortunately, it seems it's not to be.)

What would floor me, and please me, in Bond 22 is if Bond actually doesn't romance the girl. That she wants him to, he feels sparks, but he's honestly still too hurting and in mourning to just go "Oh, I'm better now, let's make with the sex." If Bond could actually go an entire movie without slipping into the sack with whoever, I'd find it a shocking and great bit of storytelling.

Date: 2008-01-14 05:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] seriousfic.livejournal.com
Yeah, I'm a lot worried about a movie that starts "two minutes" after Casino Royale (which ended, what, a few hours after Vesper's death?) is going to have Bond get over Vesper's death/betrayal in a matter of days. Unless it's him not getting over it, and just being all Nightwing in using a woman as a warm body/emotional balm. Now that would be a subversion.

Date: 2008-01-14 09:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crossoverman.livejournal.com
Oh, I imagine that's exactly how the woman/women will be used in this film - because it's rare for Bond to actually romance a woman anyway, it's mostly just about the sex. And this time, that's really all it will be about. As long as they subvert the old Bond movie cliche of the film ending with Bond and a woman in bed together - because that doesn't really sit well with the "just getting over Vesper" story.

That said, I don't really want Bond to fall into the old trap of being a misogynist just because Vesper betrayed him. I'd rather he just be all bitter towards women in this film and maybe, just maybe, sleep with nobody!

Date: 2008-01-14 09:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] seriousfic.livejournal.com
What would be interesting is to have Bond start to fall for whoever the new Bond girl is, then break it off or just postpone it until he's dealt with his feelings. Of course, it'd be weird to have a recurring girlfriend/friend with benefits in the Bond movies...

Maybe end the movie with Bond and the new girl ending their short-term relationship (after your standard recuperation/vacation time), with Bond accepting another mission and the woman saying goodbye to him.

One thing's for sure, there's a lot of interesting ways for a post-Vesper Bond to go.

Date: 2008-01-14 11:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crossoverman.livejournal.com
Of course, it'd be weird to have a recurring girlfriend/friend with benefits in the Bond movies...

It sort of happened in the novels - occasionally the girl from the end of one book would appear at the beginning of the next.

And the memory of Vesper recurs, so that will fit perfectly into Bond 22. Hopefully they play it with a light touch, though.

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