December 2, 2008

Quantum of Solace

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QUANTUM OF SOLACE….Moriarty tells us that he likes the new Daniel Craig version of James Bond:

I don’t miss the fetishistic museum piece touches of the series at all. I don’t miss Q branch. I don’t miss the Moneypenny banter. I don’t miss the breezy “let’s have a chat” style M briefings. Honestly… there are 20-something Bond films in that style, and like most Bond films, I’ve seen every film more than once. Some of them, I’ve seen many times. That adds up. I think it’s safe to say if you count individual viewings, I’ve seen something like 180 James Bond films in my lifetime. All with that same rhythm and style and the same cast sadly growing older while James Bond mysteriously hovers around the same age in one of the weirdest continuity choices in franchise history. Like I said, I don’t miss the formula of it all. And frankly, if the Daniel Craig era never quite gets back to that, I’m perfectly happy. I wouldn’t mind at all. They made those movies. Lots and lots and lots of those movies.

I get this. I really do. And yet….I have to ask: what is it that makes James Bond James Bond? At a minimum, two things. The first is the background: he works for MI6, his boss is named M, he gets cool gadgets from Q, etc. The second is his personality: he’s dashing, debonair, fatally attractive to women, and never has a hair out of place. The problem with the Daniel Craig version of James Bond is that these things are mostly gone. And with those things gone, he’s just a guy who works for MI6. His name might be James Bond, but he’s not James Bond.

Now, I also happen to think Quantum of Solace wasn’t a very good movie. The pace was so frenetic — chase, fight, chase, fight, chase, fight — that there was hardly any story that seemed worth following, and what story there was just wasn’t very interesting. (Cornering the water supply of Bolivia? Seriously? And you thought the later Roger Moore movies were ridiculous?) Put that together with the new characterization — brooding, ruthless, intense, hair artistically out of place through half the movie — and I don’t think anyone would so much as guess that this was a Bond film if the writers had changed the names around a bit. It would have been seen as just another Bourne Identity wannabe, and not a very good one.

Just my take, of course. But speaking of The Bourne Identity, here’s another question: what’s the deal with super-agents initialed JB? In a faceoff between James Bond, Jack Bauer, and Jason Bourne, who would win?

Via Ross Douthat.

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