For its golden anniversary, the venerable Eon Productions tagged Sam Mendes, director of another long, drawn out outré film, The Road To Perdition, to make the 23rd episode in the long running James Bond series, Skyfall. What Eon and Mendes fail to produce, however, is a uniquely James Bond movie. At the start of the franchise, the Bond character was so powerful that a whole slew of wannabe movies popped up immediately afterwards, copying the style. There was the Our Man Flint series with James Coburn, The Saint (even though it first came out much earlier than James Bond), and many others, not to mention parodies such as Austin Powers.
Since then, there has been new spies with their own personality and style. Jason Bourne is one such character. Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt is another Bond-breaking character. Throw in the superheroes and we can see that James Bond has a lot of competition for the almighty entertainment dollar within that rather vast genre of heroes and superheroes.
But instead of returning to the classic James Bond characterization, this film (as well as the previous two with Daniel Craig) decided to veer towards joining the mainstream. It's almost impossible to tell the difference between current Bond franchise versus the Bourne Identity franchise or the Ethan Hunt Mission: Impossible franchise, without the English accent.
The plot follows the standard Bond scenes, starting with the titillating opening scene's chase sequence, then the titles. Then, there's the reveal of the plot (of sorts). There's the cursory casino scene, and the generic shoot-em-up scenes. (And frankly, Tim Curry would have been a much better Raoul Silva.)
Unfortunately, there's nothing in any of them to mark Bond as Bond. What's missing is Bond's character. Bond is suave, debonair, never ruffled. Instead, we get a gritty, no-holds-barred Bond with Daniel Craig, since the his first in Casino Royale. That's not Bond. That's not Connery's Bond, nor Roger Moore's, Tim Dalton's or Pierce Brosnan's. Even George Lazenby's Bond had more panache than Craig's performance. Craig's performance – and not to take anything away from his acting ability, this is strictly a management decision – lacks anything associated with Bond. Craig's Bond is like Heath Ledger's Joker compared to, say, either Cesar Romero's or Jack Nicholson's Joker. While Ledger's Joker made for a macabre vision of a diabolical villain, Craig's Bond made for a ruthless incendiary bore. The guy has no taste. I want a Bond who likes his martini shaken, not stirred, but instead, got a Bond willing to suck down Smirnoffs from plastic sippy cups.
Another problem seems to be the attempt to modernize the secondary characters. Dench's M dies off and Ralph Fiennes replaces her as the new M. Q makes a reappearance, after missing two episodes, thankfully allowing us to forget and forgive the unfortunate miscast of John Cleese (although this current Q still doesn't seem to have the gravitas of Desmond Llewelyn). Miss Moneypenny returns as well.
The way that these accessory characters are returned to the fold strikes me more as an attempt to reboot rather than a continuation of the franchise. I think that's a terrible mistake. Franchises are based almost always on the brand. As a business proposition, I go to McDonald's not because I want any old hamburger. I go there for the Big Mac. I go to KFC for the chicken. There is something unique about the franchise that drives me to go there versus a competing franchise.
In this case, the Bond franchise is dictated by a suave, silently confident, debonair ladies' man. Not a brute horn-dog willing to shag any woman who catches his eye. You lose that, you lose Bond.
I listen to a lot of operas (as seen in other blogs in this category). Oftentimes, the opera company makes a new production with new set design, story arc, maybe change the time setting, costume and so on. Das Rheingold has been casted as an allegory of the California gold rush, the robber baron era, the industrial age in Europe, and as the traditional Wagnerian norse god mythology. What is constant throughout is the music and the libretto. They never change. No conductor or stage director would change the music. And so it should be with James Bond. Bond is the music. Change the episodes where he does his Bondian deeds, but Bond must stay Bond.