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Abstract
The notable commercial and critical success of the four James Bond films made with actor Daniel Craig playing the lead role – Casino Royale (Martin Campbell, GB/Cze/USA/Ger/Bah, 2006), Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster, GB/USA, 2008), Skyfall (Sam Mendes, GB/USA, 2012) and Spectre (Sam Mendes, GB/USA, 2015) – has, over the past decade, provoked a sustained increase in the amount of academic commentary and debate around the Bond character, his fictional universe and multimedia incarnations. Working from the premise that Spectre knowingly advertises itself as a possible conclusion to the Craig era, this article attempts to identify and discuss a range of key thematic trends in Bond filmmaking (and Bond criticism) in the years since Casino Royale. Such themes include: enhanced attention to the fictional spy’s body as a producer of textual and popular cultural meaning; Bond’s complex relationship with evolving ideas of British national identity and state structures; and the questionable extent to which the Craig Bond films constitute a meaningful revision of the 007 film franchise’s traditional aesthetic and thematic defining characteristics.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. See Young, Derek S., ‘Bond. James Bond’, 21–7.
2. Many of the Bond-related journal articles that have appeared over the last decade are referenced throughout this essay. Considering book-length studies alone, the last decade has witnessed no fewer than nine new or revised publications on the Bond franchise: Brittany, Michele (ed.), James Bond and Popular Culture; Caplen, Robert A., Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond; Chapman, James, Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films, Second Edition; Funnell, Lisa (ed.), For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond; Lindner, Christoph (ed.), The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader; Lindner, Christoph, (ed.), The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader, Second Edition; Lindner, Christoph (ed.), Revisioning 007: James Bond and Casino Royale; Weiner, Robert G., B. Lynn Whitfield and Jack Becker (eds.), James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films are Not Enough, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010, 2nd edn 2012.
3. Chapman, Licence to Thrill, 10.
4. Lindner, ‘Introduction: Revisioning 007’, 1.
5. Arnett, ‘Casino Royale and Franchise Remix’, 2.
6. Linder, ‘Introduction: Revisioning 007’, 7.
7. For illustrative examples of broadly supportive critical readings of some or all of the Craig films, see Arnett, ‘Casino Royale and Franchise Remix’, 8–14; Cox, ‘Becoming James Bond’, 193–4; Fussfeld Cohen, ‘The Digital Action Image of James Bond’, 114–18; Funnell, ‘“I Know Where You Keep Your Gun” ’, 469. For illustrative examples of broadly sceptical critical readings of the same, see Amacker and Moore, ‘“The Bitch is Dead”’; Hasian Jr., ‘Skyfall, James Bond’s Resurrection, and 21st-Century Anglo-American Imperial Nostalgia’; Funnell, ‘Objects of White Male Desire’; Krainitzki, ‘Judi Dench’s Age-inappropriateness and the Role of M’.
8. In identifying these particular categories for discussion, this article draws upon a wide range of existing Bond scholarship. For illustrative examples of work on the theme of body, see Cox, ‘Becoming James Bond’; Funnell, ‘‘‘I Know Where You Keep Your Gun’’’. For illustrative examples of work on the theme of Britishness, see Anderson, ‘Neocon Bond’; McMillan, ‘Broken Bond’.
9. Holliday, ‘Mothering the Bond-M Relation’, 266.
10. Dodds, ‘Shaking and Stirring James Bond’, 120. See also Dodds, ‘“It’s Not For Everyone”’; Shaw, ‘The Politics of Representation’.
11. See, for example, Funnell, ‘“I Know Where You Keep Your Gun”’, 456–7; Pierce-Jones, ‘The Men Who Played James Bond’; O’Reilly and Kerrigan, ‘A view to a brand’, 782.
12. Quoted in Lee, ‘The Man Who Saved Bond’, 36. For illustrative examples of scholarly analyses that privilege the idea of directorial input and influence over Craig Bond films directed by filmmakers other than Mendes, see, for example, Hochscherf, ‘Bond for the Age of Global Crises’, 317; Scheibel, ‘The History of Casino Royale’, 30–1; Sperb, ‘Hardly the Big Picture’, 55.
13. For exceptions to that rule, see Chapman, Licence to Thrill, 243–45; Scheibel, ‘The History of Casino Royale’, 28–9; Goggin and Glas, ‘It Just Keeps Getting Bigger’.
14. Quoted in Bilmes, ‘Daniel Craig Is Esquire’s October Cover Star’.
15. Quoted in Florence, ‘Interview – Neal Purvis and Robert Wade’.
16. Quoted in Dowd, ‘Film Writers who “Rebuilt” Bond’.
17. Gehlawat, ‘Improvisation, Action and Architecture in Casino Royale’, 136.
18. Dittmer and Dodds, ‘The Geopolitical Audience’, 77. More generally, Greinacher, ‘James Bond – A True Modernist?’ argues that Bond criticism traditionally overlooks the suggestiveness of architectural elements of narrative settings in the 007 films.
19. Lindner, ‘Revisioning 007’, 6.
20. Anderson, ‘Neocon Bond’, 6.
21. Fussfeld Cohen, ‘The Digital Action Image of James Bond’, 116.
22. Tremonte and Racioppi, ‘Body Politics and Casino Royale’, 193.
23. See, for example, Hochscherf, ‘Bond for the Age of Global Crises’, 299.
24. For examples of contemporary press coverage of Craig’s casting that made explicit note of the actor’s hair colour, see Brooks, ‘First Blond Bond Goes into Action’; Mitchell, ‘Daniel Craig Crowned as “Blond” Bond’.
25. For extended critical readings of the pivotal scene from which this line of dialogue is taken, see Cunningham and Gabri, ‘“Any Thug Can Kill”’, 88–90; Tincknell, ‘Double-0 Agencies’, 108–10.
26. Sperb, ‘Hardly the Big Picture’, 58; see also McGowan, ‘The Games Bond Plays’, 385.
27. Indeed, some commentators see the escalating narrative ubiquity and centrality of surveillance technologies as a defining characteristic of the Bond films from as early as the start of the Pierce Brosnan era. See, for example, Leach, ‘“The World Has Changed”’.
28. Cox, ‘Becoming James Bond’, 190.
29. For an extended analysis of the integral place of title sequence design within the symbolic economy of the Craig Bond films, see Hunt, ‘Beyond the Spiral Barrel’; Racioppi and Tremonte, ‘Geopolitics, Gender, and Genre’; Planka, ‘Female Bodies in the James Bond Title Sequences’, 146–7.
30. For more detail, see Arnett, ‘Casino Royale and Franchise Remix’; Cox, ‘Becoming James Bond’, 187; Dodds, ‘Shaking and Stirring James Bond’, 118; Funnell, ‘“I Know Where You Keep Your Gun”’, 461.
31. Hochscherf, ‘Bond for the Age of Global Crises’, 316.
32. The characters of Tracy Di Vicenzo (Diana Rigg) in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet) in For Your Eyes Only form two notable exceptions to this general rule. For scholarly discussions of these figures, see Santos, ‘“This Never Happened to the Other Fellow”’; Pagnoni Berns, ‘Sisterhood as Resistance in For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy’.
33. Chapman, Licence to Thrill, 248.
34. Howard, ‘“Do I Look Like I Give A Damn?”’, 48.
35. Hasian Jr., ‘Skyfall, James Bond’s Resurrection, and 21st-Century Anglo-American Imperial Nostalgia’, 580.
36. Chapman, ‘Afterword’, 483. See also, for example, Bennett and Wollacott, ‘The Moments of Bond’.
37. Thomas, ‘The New James Bond’, 38.
38. Dodds, ‘Shaking and Stirring James Bond’, 118. See also Chapman, ‘A licence to thrill’, 115.
39. Bennett and Wollacott, 19.
40. Lawless, ‘Constructing the “Other”’, 87.
41. See, for example, Hochscherf, ‘Bond for the Age of Global Crises’, 306.
42. McNeely, ‘The Feminization of M’, 156–7.
43. See Tremonte and Racioppi, 195–7.
44. Hasian Jr., ‘Skyfall, James Bond’s Resurrection, and 21st-Century Anglo-American Imperial Nostalgia’; Holliday, ‘Mothering the Bond-M Relation’, 269.
45. Leach, ‘James Bond and Female Authority’, 32. See also Dodds, ‘Shaking and Stirring James Bond’, 127.
46. Wight, ‘Killing Mother’, 178.
47. Hochscherf, ‘Bond for the Age of Global Crises’, 307. For illustrative examples of critical readings that stress the increasingly maternal construction of Judi Dench’s M, see Kunze, ‘From Masculine Mastermind to Maternal Martyr’; Patton, ‘M, 007, and the Challenge of Female Authority’.
48. Indeed, this brief sequence represents one of the most critically pored-over single moments in the entire Craig cycle. See, for example, Cox, Becoming James Bond, 186; Funnell, ‘‘‘I Know Where You Keep Your Gun” ’; Mercer, ‘The Enigma of the Male Sex Symbol’.
49. For further details, see Grobler, ‘Bond Writers Neil [sic] Purvis and Robert Wade Confirm their Departure from the James Bond Franchise’.
50. See, for example, Bamigboye, ‘Bond Turmoil as New Script Fails to Thrill’.
51. Quoted in Shoard, ‘Sam Mendes Confirms Spectre Will Be his Last James Bond’.
52. Quoted in Calhoun, ‘My Advice to the Next James Bond’.
53. Quoted in Barnes, ‘Secret Agent in the Family’; see also Kilday, ‘How Sony Could Lose James Bond After Bloated Spectre’.
54. See Funnell, ‘“I Know Where You Keep Your Gun”’, 460.
55. See Wight, 188.
56. Krainitzki, ‘Judi Dench’s Age-inappropriateness and the Role of M’, 38. See also Anderson, ‘Neocon Bond’, 11–12; Patton, ‘M, 007, and the Challenge of Female Authority’, 254; Parks, ‘“M” (O)thering’, 264.
57. Jonason, et al., ‘The Antihero in Popular Culture’, 192.
58. McMillan, ‘Broken Bond’, 197, 204.
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Jonathan Murray
Jonathan Murray is Senior Lecturer in Film and Visual Culture at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. He is a current editor of Visual Culture in Britain, past editor of Animation Journal, and Contributing Writer on the permanent staff of Cineaste magazine. His publications include the books Discomfort and Joy: The Cinema of Bill Forsyth (Peter Lang, 2010) and The New Scottish Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2015).