The unspoken gist of the 007 canon is that each entry is a terminal overreaction to prior entries, a severe course correction by the producers to take everything that was good and bad from before and tweak them in various increments for continued fan appeasement.
After Pierce Brosnan’s cheesy, CGI-laden final outing as Bond in Die Another Day, the pendulum swung heavily to the other end of the spectrum. The result was the introduction of a new Bond in Casino Royale -- a gruff, macho, apathetic loner; and in many ways, a direct rebuttal to the remnants of the 90’s Brosnan camp. With the new calibration of Bond established, every subsequent outing of Daniel Craig’s Bond has more or less softened in intensity and self-seriousness, ostensibly working its way to the established James Bond character -- witty, wily, and womanizing -- of the prior films. Not unlike comic books, drastic changes to characters in an established universe can’t afford to stay changed for long.
But labeling the 007 franchise as a series of calibrations for zeitgeist overreaction is not only convenient, but also not entirely accurate. The Bond films have always first and foremost, echoed the social, political, and economical worries of its times. Whether it was Russian megalomaniacs or shadowy media conglomerates, James Bond always defeated that which troubled the people at the time. But with Spectre, it now becomes evident that Bond is also reacting to our current blockbuster trends, such as the need to interrelate films in a shared universe. Like every superhero franchise, it wants to prove itself as an ongoing saga. It wants to establish continuity across multiple films. It wants to uncover the master plot behind everything and bring meaning to the “bigger picture.” This serialization works when the ongoing story is originally constructed as a singular event with a beginning and an end -- Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings movies can act as discrete chapters in a shared world -- but this coexistence fails when writers and producers try to retcon prior entries to fit into a story developed on the fly.
Spectre is the newest entry in the 007 franchise. Daniel Craig returns as James Bond -- bold, brooding, and still circumventing all measures of proper protocols. Following a vague posthumous message from M, Bond’s mother figure killed at the end of Skyfall, Bond goes rogue and embarks on a personal mission to uncover a secret organization whose grasp is seemingly unlimited.
At the risk of ruining the movie, there will be spoilers for the rest of this post.
Not unlike the cumbersome and overcooked final act of Skyfall, the ending of Spectre is oddly confusing at best, and outright nonsensical at worst. This is largely because it feels thoroughly overworked by multiple writers, all hired to retcon the events from Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall as moves orchestrated by one evil mastermind -- Franz Oberhauser aka Blofeld. Or, as Oberhauser admits to Bond, “It’s always been me James… the author of all your pain.”
This is all very silly for multiple reasons.
First, much was made of Oberhauser’s identify before the movie opened. Was he or wasn’t he Blofeld, arguably the most villain-y villain in the Bond universe? And if he were Blofeld, what would it mean? The sad truth to these speculations was that none of it mattered. Not unlike the “secret identity” of Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness, the name doesn’t matter so much as the character. This is a distinction that should seem very straightforward but is actually much more complicated because of the fans. In essence, Blofeld and Khan are only named Blofeld and Khan to invoke nostalgia and appease fans, nothing more. The movies invoke those names to instantly conjure up recognition and memories of great adventures from the prior films without having to do so now. It’s a narrative crutch, a cheap storytelling shortcut meant to cash in on the strengths of the franchise’s forebears.
Second, the backstory given to Oberhauser illustrates a severe misunderstanding of the appeal of James Bond himself. Essentially, Oberhauser and Bond are fabricated as brothers fighting for a father’s attention. Oberhauser’s father took in a young orphan James Bond and raised him as a son. Jealous, Oberhauser killed his father, faked his own death (?), and has held a grudge against Bond ever since. As I discussed in my discussion of Skyfall, it seems strange and unnecessary to give Bond an elaborate, tragic-orphan backstory. James Bond is not Batman; he does not need an origin story. Ian Fleming himself described Bond as “an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department.” Bond was always meant to be a mystery, a cypher, an empty vessel. Applying causal psychology to Bond undermines the character itself and limits his future narrative possibilities.
Craig has already made his distaste for continuing as Bond well known. And after suffering through the retcon job of Spectre I don’t really blame him. If this truly was Craig’s last outing as Bond, we can begin discussing the legacy of Craig’s Bond in earnest. Through his four movies, Craig’s Bond was at times refreshingly new yet frustratingly antiquated, both cinematically relevant and creatively out of touch. Wherever the next Bond adventures takes us, my only hope is that it tells a story it wants to tell, not one it feels it must tell.
