And after much consideration I have discovered what. Bondage. No, not some dirty, kirky sex scenes (although these were notably lacking as well), but the essence of Bond: the wit, the charm, the slight cheesiness that makes Bond Bond: Bondage.
Think of old Bond films, when Bond wades through the black ocean waters in a wetsuit, crawling across the beach and then stripping off to reveal and tuxedo underneath, in which he suavely slips into a cocktail party. Or when he jumps or skis off something or other and his parachute opens revealing a British flag. Now that's Bond. He's so cool he doesn't need muscles. He doesn't have to be able to beat baddies up with just a fist while they wield axes or missile launchers; he just has to use a gadget/his brains/a witty joke to get out of a sticky situation. The new Bond is just a gun-toting shadow of his former self.
So when the husband and I saw Casino Royale back when it came out, he (a Bond aficionado) was outraged at Daniel Craig's Bond's rawness and roughness. "He's not suave, he's not cultured," he complained endlessly. I reassured him that this was all part of the plan. Casino Royale, I explained, was the Batman Begins of the Bond franchise. It shows his beginnings, his genesis. How a betrayal by the woman he loved made him reject women as objects of worth and form a shell around his persona where he could detach himself from anything emotional or painful. In Casino Royale, Bond couldn't care less if his martini was shaken or stirred. But after this betrayal he changes, becomes the cool as a cucumber spy we all know and love. He becomes, in the final scene of the film, Bond, James Bond.
So we entered the cinema with baited breath, expecting to see the Bond we used to know, shameless womaniser, cultured European and witty charmer. But along comes Craig, still muscly (I guess we can't do anything about that though, can we?) but still angry, still brutish and still not witty. There are admittedly a couple of "amusing" lines in Quantum, but that's it. Literally two. The rest of the film is a mixture of Bourne-inspired fight scenes and automobile chases.
There is nothing inherently charming or British about Bond anymore. And unless the producers return Bond to his former incarnation, I can't imagination the franchise will stick around much longer.
