- This video is brought to you by Keeps
(Upbeat Bass Riff)
What's up guys, Michael here and today,
we're talking about the only secret agent who can say his
name faster than Sterling Archer. That's right.
- Names' Bond, James Bond.
- He's one of just a few iconic characters to have
been portrayed on the big screen by a host of different
actors. And he's almost the only one who wasn't
either a superhero,
super villain, or a member of the British Royal family.
Nowadays,
it's not weird to talk about: who's going to play the new
Bond? But the idea of recasting the character was once
so unthinkable, that they considered
writing in a plastic surgery subplot
to explain why Sean Connery,
now looked Australian.
So what makes Bond so malleable?
What does the character continue to inspire after so many
different portrayals?
And what can each portrayal tell us about the era it was
made for?
Let's find out in this Wisecrack edition,
on Why James Bond Won't Die
spoilers ahead for most of the Bond movies.
But before we dive in,
I want to give a quick shout out to this week's
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Now back to the show,
we're going to focus on the four
most influential Bonds
because you have other **** to do,
and we have a deadline,
but before we get to that,
it's important to understand who
Ian Fleming's original Bond
was in the first place.
When he first scribbled him onto the page. In 1953,
Fleming was looking for a character
who could restore a sense of adventuring,
all inspiring Britishness
to a country that had just limped
out of the second World War.
The sun was finally beginning
to set on its cherished empire.
Basically, the Brits needed a bedtime story
to soothe the pain of no longer being allowed
to own entire countries.
Drawing on his military
and intelligence experience, Fleming wrote
James Bond as exactly this sort
of globetrotting gentlemen.
The secret agent moves through
the world with they colonizers confidence,
stiff upper lip stoicism
and endless supply of dinner jackets.
However, when it came time
for Fleming to bring his creation to the
big screen, there were some concerns
about whether American audiences
would connect with such an overwhelmingly British
protagonist.
They even tried to Americanize them for an early TV series
leading to the only official version of
Bond ever to be called:
Jimmy.
- Can't Since Jimmy bond, they call you.
I knew you right away.
Fortunately, a certain Scotsman
then strolled into frame to put things right.
Sean Connery's version of the character was in some ways
already a serious pivot from the great British cheerleader
Fleming had envisioned.
His thick accent and self-deprecating charm
marked him as a slightly
more rugged working-class vigor.
- Vavra thanks you for saving his life.
You are now his son.
- Well, thank you.
More reminiscent of the straight talking gunslingers
that American audiences were used to.
He had a steady stream of quippy, one liners,
many of which Connery improvised.
- Ah, I will wear this one
in Piccadilly
- You won't. They've just passed some new laws there.
- [Michael] The actor's athletic presence,
which the producers called his animal magnetism,
as well as his cocksure confidence,
guaranteed that he would remain in enduring sex symbol.
According to Bob McCabe and his biography of the legendary
actor, Connery's bond was a sensualist,
A man who pleased himself first and foremost,
and damn the consequence, a classless hero,
a man who made his own rules
and walked in a world of his own creating.
Connery imbued the character with a certain
ironic detachment from the whole business of Britishness
with all its delineated pecking orders.
While Fleming's bond was designed
as the very personification of his nation.
Connery's strength comes from his lack
of definitive ties to the queen. Sure.
He was out there protecting crown and country,
but he always seemed
at least as interested in drinking his martinis
and doing sex,
as he was in protecting the motherland.
- Who are you?
- My name is Pussy Galore.
- I must be Dreaming.
- [Michael] And this was fitting for the swinging sixties,
the pre women's liberation era of alcohol soaked
Playboys, like JFK and Frank Sinatra.
And Connery's re-invention of Bond was absolutely vital to
the character success.
He made him a hero fit for the time
and for an international audience,
instead of just an ode to one nation sense of faded glory.
The formula for bringing Bond onto the big screen
was effectively written.
Certain details had to remain in place
like his charm.
- Oh, the gun.
The gun, of course.
- [Michael] talent for violence
and fine fashion sense,
but the details can be changed to suit the time and place.
Of course,
Connor famously loathed portraying the Renegade secret agent
and eventually dropped out of the series.
The next iconic Bond, would be Roger Moore.
Who took up the mantle in 1973,
in doing so, he restored a sense of social elegance
and sophistication to the character.
While also, pushing the series in a notably more
light-hearted direction.
Moore's Bond didn't have Connery's smoldering sexuality
or bad boy appeal.
And while his films leaned into the characters womanizing
even more heavily than before
his politeness and proprieties smoothed off
the rougher edges of Bond's machismo.
He generally seemed more like an amateur Somalia,
than Mr. steal your girl, and on the surface,
that might seem like a return to Fleming's bond blueprint.
This was a bond who was comfortable in the high class
surroundings, which Connery had made a mockery of.
He exemplified the kind of mannered intelligence and
strategic brilliance that the British empire wanted to
retain as its personal brand.
The only problem, was that Moore's Bond
was also the campiest.
He coroused with ladies named
- Holly Goodhead.
- [Michael] and got attacked by ice hockey players.
Altogether, These were ludicrous
semi parodic films,
rather than serious spy thrillers,
but Moore was very much in on the joke.
Portraying Bond as a larger than life
lightly humorous figure
- A pleasant evening.
- [Michael] And that may not have been exactly
what Fleming had in mind.
Once again though, it was the Bond the audience wanted,
he was more of an uncomplicated good guy who the whole
family could cheer for.
Everything else about his adventures
reflected this desire for light entertainment too.
The villains became even more over the top
and the gadgets got notably goofier.
Can anyone get me like a shoe that has,
has a knife inside of it?
Does anybody have a pair of flip flops
that become handcuffs?
Can someone get me a hat that has a special gadget where
your parents tell you they love you in your ears.
This was all reflective of the general
spoof happy ambiance of 1970's Hollywood.
The parodic nature reflected a cultural shift
away from that whole idea of nationalistic heroism.
The further audiences moved away from the black and white
of World War Two into the messy gray of Vietnam.
The less appetite there was for stories which presented
fighting for your country as the epitome of good.
So, they opted for escapism instead.
(Splashing water)
And more's winking presentation of the character gave the
viewer permission not to take anything they saw too
seriously.
- He suggest the trade.
The egg?
For your life?
- Well, I had heard the price of eggs was going up,
but isn't that little high?
- And when Pierce Brosnan came on the scene to play nineties
Bond, he maintained this comedic self-awareness.
- Well, I must say I've had a lovely evening.
You?
- Once again, the pleasure was all yours.
- His version of 007 was, like Moore's,
all about zany gadgets
and facing off against absurd villains
and somewhat like Moore, Brosnan generally plays
these moments for laughs,
leaning into the absurdity of it all
so that the audience can enjoy the
sheer escapism of the whole crazy tale.
But he wasn't just a copy and paste of Moore's character.
After swinging between social classes and previous
depictions, Brosnan's bond seemed like neither,
a fussy elite nor a rough edged working man.
As journalist Dyneesha Smith explains,
the Irish born, Mr. Brosnan
has an indeterminate accent, not quite high English,
not quite Connery,
a reflection perhaps of the breakdown
of English class lines.
His sexuality was similarly caught in between
Connery's roguish darkness
and Moore's gentlemanly gentleness.
In many ways,
he embodied the whole metro-sexual trend,
which came to prominence in the nineties.
He maintained the emotional restraint and violent potential
of traditional Bond Machismo
wrapped in an outer layer of soft skinned,
delicate good looks.
Basically, he was the first bond who looked like he had a
solid skincare routine locked in.
This is a Bond for a new era.
A post cold war world
in which the old hierarchies were being challenged.
At least to some degree.
It wasn't just the way he looked or spoke,
but the whole way this new bond had to interact with the
world around him, the hetero male fantasy,
which the character represented
would no longer go totally Unscrutinised.
- Good. Because I think you're a sexist,
misogynist, dinosaur, a Relic of the cold war.
- And the movies' female characters
were no longer just there to roll around in bed with Bond.
They were kicking ass right alongside him
or growing immune to his charms.
- Out on some kind of professional assignment,
dressing the kill?
- I know You'll find this crushing 007
when I don't sit at home every night,
praying for some international incident.
So I can run down here,
all dressed up to impress James Bond.
- [Michael] The Brosnan Bond movies were an attempt
to find a place for the character
in an era of evolving gender norms that mainstream
entertainment was expected to at least pay
lip service to. They even use the question,
is there still a place in the modern world for a secret
agent like 007 in promotional materials,
explicitly playing to the idea of Bond
as an anachronism rather than hiding from it.
And while the Brosnan Bond movies were still too
lighthearted to fully persuade
us of Bond's contemporary relevance,
the man who would inherit his double O status
would be far better equipped. in a sense,
the broodier, bloodier direction,
which Daniel Craig took the Bond franchise was really the
only place for it to go by 2006.
After years of full-blown parodies like Austin Powers
and Johnny English took aim at
all the series tropes and cliches,
the goofy self-deprecating humor of Brosnan and Moore
just wouldn't really work anymore.
- What are you feeding him?
Why don't ya just kill'em?
- No, Scott, I have an even better idea.
I'm going to place them in an easily escapable situation
involving an overly elaborate and exotic death.
- [Michael] So you couldn't really expect
an audience to sit through that style of a bond movie again,
with a straight face.
And at the same time,
the success of the Bourne movies had ushered in an era of
more serious, grounded spy thrillers.
James Bond couldn't just be a well-groomed jokester anymore.
He had to be convincing as a trained killer and more
fundamentally as an actual human being.
We needed a Bond who could do the heavier lifting
dramatically speaking that was expected of a spy thriller in
the 21st century.
Enter Daniel Craig.
When Craig emerges from the water glistening under the sun
and showing off his bulked up body,
it's not just for the eye candy.
It's making us viscerally aware of Bond's body so that we
can watch the toll his work is going to take.
The Craig Bond films highlight the
battering that he takes throughout each mission,
showing his injuries and all their grisly detail and
emphasizing the gruesome things he has to put himself
through just to stay alive.
(Dramatic Music sting)
(Bond groans painfully)
Bond still made plenty of time for games of chance
and romantic dalliances.
But the true stakes of his behavior are always made clear.
He lives a life of constant danger, not freewheeling fun.
And it's more devil may care decisions often come with
devastating consequences.
- Look how well your charm works James.
- [Michael] The protagonist might still be handsome
and quick with the line.
- Can you kill him?
- Yes.
- Will you?
- Someone usually dies.
- But he was someone whose whole life revolves around doing
ugly, often morally questionable things.
And this fact was reflected in the haunted
hard drinking new version of the character.
- Vodka Martini.
- Shaken or stirred?
- Do I look like a give a damn?
- [Michael] As much as he tries to maintain
the character's signature steely exterior.
This is the first bond we see carrying
his emotional wounds from film to film.
- Well, he'd have to be a pretty cold bastard
if you didn't want revenge
for the death of someone he loved.
- You don't have to worry about me.
I'm not going to go chasing him. He's not important.
And Neither was she.
- [Michael] In every other iteration,
007 seemed to reset completely between missions.
The agent turning up as crisp and clean
as his new dinner suit.
By the time Craig's version gets to Skyfall.
The psychological and physical toll of being James Bond is
made painfully clear.
- Medical evaluation: fail. Physical evaluation: fail.
Psychological evaluation:
alcohol and substance addiction indicated, Ooh.
- [Michael] This moody brooding Bond
was not one designed for
nationalistic mythmaking, but for a post 9/11 world,
in which the brutality and ambiguity of global conflicts was
being broadcasted daily. It's a revisionist portrayal,
which owns the physical and psychological damage,
which our real life James Bond would undergo.
It still gave audiences, the debonair,
all action fantasy that come to expect,
but it also complicated it.
Forcing them to reckon with his coldness and his brutality.
So at the end of the day,
Bond has not only survived explosions, bullet wounds,
and a razor rim tats,
but he's withstood the passage of time more successfully
than almost any other pop culture figure.
So we're left with the same question that everyone
from Dr. No to Blofeld has agonized over.
Why is James Bond so damn hard to kill?
The answer might lie in the fact that
as an international man of mystery,
the question of who 007, exactly is,
is always been intentionally shrouded in uncertainty.
Scholar, Christopher Lindner suggests that the key to Bond's
longevity is his status as a highly unstable and often
ambiguous cultural icon.
From his inception,
Bond has always been less of a flesh and blood man than a
kind of ideal.
His height, hair color, accent,
and general character have all changed massively over the
years as he has gone from blowing up bad guys with explosive
toothpaste.
- Denternite Toothpaste: to be used sparingly.
it's the latest in plastic explosive.
- [Michael] To battling the gruesome effects of age and
alcoholism and author Craig Owens argues that, Bond is not
the collection of various characteristics. Rather,
he is the blank middle they fill in. He is an opening,
a vacant, unclaimed potentiality,
rather than an ontologically assignable identity.
And so, we get to fill Bonds' feign tuxedo
with whoever we need him to be
at that moment in history,
his adventures have adapted to our changing tastes
with the campy gadget filled iterations of the nineties,
giving way to the grittier
more grounded style of the 2000's.
- Were you expecting an exploding pen?
We don't really go in for that anymore.
- As a result,
Bond is able to retain his appeal from one decade to the
next, even as tastes and trends change completely.
With a new incarnation of the character arriving,
tailor made to meet each audiences demands.
But what do you guys think?
Will there eventually come a day where James Bond
simply has to be put into retirement?
Or, is he such a potent and plyable symbol,
that we can keep reinventing him forever?
Let us know in the comments.
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(Upbeat Funk Music)