The only way to redignify James Bond

 

It’s October 5, 2022. Happy 60^th anniversary, James Bond!

That’s what I would say if I was enthusiastic to celebrate this anniversary. Unfortunately, I’m not. One year ago, the worst spectacle ever to be associated with this great and glorious character was about to be screened in US theatres. Misleadingly titled No Time To Die, the film not only pushed Daniel Craig’s Bond to commit suicide in the bombastic climax but also made him lose every battle in every war: he takes every action after being outsmarted by the two villains; rarely acts like a spy, deciding just to break up and leave to an unplanned Jamaican vacation, ignoring the red flag that the man he put in prison could have a connection to his girl, and even bows down with a pathetic “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I apologize, I apologize, I’ll do whatever you want” to the main villain, the needle-thin Lyutsifer Safin played by Rami Malek. Let’s not forget Safin pathetically ambushes and shoots him four times in the back, turning the legendary 007 into a rookie first-person shooter player who had just tried Call of Duty for the first time in his life. Before that, he rejects Ana De Armas’ advances and barely touches a girl in the whole film, which is another death – the death of a well-known characteristic of his personality which is his frequent womanizing.

Using the #60yearsofBond hashtag, today we are celebrating a funeral and the fact that it all ended in a film that would make General G and the whole of SMERSH proud. And we are ordered to get past behind it, pretend nothing happened, and trust in that April Fools’ Day joke at the end of the movie reading “James Bond Will Return”. Apparently, people are way too reassured by that end credits line that was once a promise and it now feels like a mockery to those who have grown to admire and respect the character.

You would say that I’m just complaining and not offering a solution. Is there a solution? Can James Bond return after his death? Can we still depend on this man in this new world of new threats and new enemies?

A well-known Bond fan, someone I respect a lot and I have been following his work since my childhood, proposed that the character should return to the 1960s, his glory period, and from Bond 26 on every film should be a period-piece because in that way today’s society wouldn’t complain of 007’s “uncomfortable” attitudes. His intentions are noble, but I beg to differ. I think James Bond is a man for all seasons that always imposed his place in every era: the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and so on. GoldenEye, my favorite film of all time, is the perfect example of this: we have a new world, a world that clearly has no place for Bond in terms of ethics and ambitions. In a world where technology replaces the man in the field, women have more prominence, and the utility of a Cold Warrior began to wane… but Bond still saved the world and despite his “questionable” attitudes, the world depends on him and he doesn’t have to change a thing. Okay, maybe leave the cigarettes for a change, but not much more. The formula, with small tweaks, can work every time and in every era and will still achieve a huge number of followers. As much as Bond offends them, will they stop watching the films? Certainly not.

Leaving that aside, where’s the guarantee that setting future Bond films in the 60s will avoid the woke radar and have these people enjoy it and ignore whatever they find unsuitable? Don’t forget, the social justice warriors don’t judge the films only after 2013, they question “offensive” scenes of Dr No, Goldfinger and Thunderball knowing very well that those films were made when the world had different values. And they come over and over again with the same arguments. So, I bet that “Bond 26 will be set in the 60s” might be a way to attract the Sean Connery nostalgics, but in the end, we will get Bond films in a retelling of the 60s adapted to today’s moral viewpoints: things like making Bond black, Moneypenny a field agent, Tanner a queer secretary, a “multicultural” England. In the end, we had a film of the 2020s with a 1960s makeover. Check out this year’s version of The Ipcress File to have this pseudo-60s feeling that could be applied to 007 and you’ll get my points.

Then again, which is the only way to give a dignified return to James Bond?

If the series was rebooted, I’d say the first step is to deboot it. Return to where it was left in 2002, heal the damage caused by No Time To Die with a film that will remind us what Bond is and why we enjoy his films. I don’t think we should simply ignore what happened. The Cary Joji Fukunaga film is a cavity in a molar that can’t just be covered, it has to be healed for benefit of the franchise. Considering that a brand of the Heracles nanobot-based virus is still killing everyone with the Blofeld DNA around the world and Bond’s suicide, contrary to the official version, didn’t solve anything… this brand of Heracles could be something the villain is threatening the world with.

Gareth Mallory is arrested for ordering the development of a mass destruction weapon. The Defense Minister appoints Sir Miles Messervy (who else but Anthony Hopkins to play him) as head of the 00 Section again. He is informed that between 2006 and 2021 there was a political takeover of the British Secret Service that led to the demotion of all active personnel and recruits were assigned with cover identities. One of them was given the new “James Bond 007”, who committed suicide after being infected with a variant of Heracles. Messervy brings back to active duty none other than the real James Bond, now exiled in Nassau…

Yes, Pierce Brosnan. And no, I don’t oppose a 70-year-old Bond if it means debooting the franchise and restoring it to where it belongs. Liam Neeson still does action movies at this age, so we can argue that the 70s are the new 50s. Both Roger Moore and Sean Connery played Bond well into their 50s. And if Never Say Never Again made some fun of 007’s “advanced” age, why not make the opposite with Brosnan’s return? Make him scuba dive, being incredibly fit and strong for his age: still desired by women in their 40s, impeccably looking in his tux. This is the same Bond from GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day. Removed from the job by political influences in 2005 mimicking real-life facts about Brosnan’s exclusion from the role, and now brought again when the world is in danger.

The new Bond –correction, the genuine Bond – will be as womanizing, courageous and debonair as we last saw him. Sleeps with the heroine and the villainess, enjoys a bottle of Bollinger like a connoisseur instead of a drunken guy in the nearest dark alley, is respectful and obedient to M, gets assigned a mission instead of going rogue, defeats the mastermind and brings hope back to the world. He survives, naturally. And the franchise survives as well, leaving the “James Bond” from No Time To Die in the only place he belongs: next to Sir James Bond, Evelyn Tremble, Dr Noah and the whole lot from the 1967 satirical version of Casino Royale.

I can’t personally see another way to restore the myth of James Bond back to his early days of glory with this single deboot film so we can move on with another British, straight, white male actor in the role in original stories set in the current times. There is no way to avoid the complaints of a sensitive society so there’ll be a huge deal of protest for Bond antics in today’s world, but honestly, why should we care? The Bond films or books weren’t made for them, so they have every right to dislike them and surely Netflix can offer plenty of alternatives to satisfy their interest. Speaking of sensitivity, it surprises me nobody is offended by the fact that Craig-Bond preferred to die instead of assuming his parental duties and taking care of his daughter. Or the fact that right after two years where people died of a virus transmitted by touch, “James Bond” commits suicide after contracting a similar type of virus – a hopeless message that the world didn’t need in 2021, let alone coming from a name associated to saving the world from a madman who wanted to exterminate the human race with poisonous gas or another madman who plotted to drop an atomic bomb in the United States or Great Britain.

Since we are all so adamant about returning to Ian Fleming, and the producers themselves always insist that they turn back to Fleming whenever they get lost, why not understand him better when he said “I don’t write for a suffering humanity”? I think that makes it very clear that he would have shrugged at the sole thought of No Time To Die as the film is overloaded with people who suffer – and Bond’s demise is even caused by someone else’s suffering, as the villain has nothing personal against him. His apparent vendetta is against Mr White’s family, and Bond becomes a target only for being attached to the woman he is obsessed with!

Speaking of Fleming, an ending of No Time To Die that would have garnered all my applause would have been to have Bond living in Jamaica after recovering from his wounds or Heracles and an envoy of the Minister of Defense handing him a Colt weapon with the words FOR SPECIAL SERVICES engraved, which would serve as a homage to John Gardner as well. Since I doubt this idea never entered the minds of the ones who wasted five years in delivering that lacklustre and insulting production, I would propose this moment to conclude a deboot film with Brosnan.

That said, on this 60^th anniversary, I thank EON for 40 years of James Bond films.

‘Confidential Mission’: An Arcade Game For Those Who Speak Spy

 

The popularity of secret agents reached a new height in the late 1990s thanks to the success of Pierce Brosnan’s first three James Bond films –GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, released in 1995, 1997 and 1999, respectively– and the 1996 film version of Mission: Impossible starring Tom Cruise. Not only the aforementioned films were a critical and financial success and revamped a phenomenon that began in the 1960s, but that effect was increased by its video game versions.

Rare’s GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64 is still considered among the best first-person shooters ever made, and while the game adaptations of Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough by Electronic Arts (the former for Playstation only, the latter with multiple console versions that included both Playstation and Nintendo 64) didn’t reach the quality of its predecessor, they still delivered hours of fun that helped to solidify the success of Brosnan’s Bond on the big screen. Something similar happened with the video game adaptation of Mission: Impossible for Nintendo 64 in 1998, later ported to Sony’s console.

By 1999, both Nintendo and Sony were able to exploit James Bond and Mission: Impossible. It was time for SEGA to make a move ahead of the release of their Dreamcast console.

When Bernie Stolar joined SEGA of America as President and COO and began work on the Dreamcast console, he was given some unfortunate news. Electronic Arts would not be supporting the system. To combat this, Bernie acquired Visual Concepts to create the 2K Sports franchise to replace games like Madden NFL Football. The titles were so spectacular that many actually preferred them to Madden. This became such a problem for Electronic Arts, that in 2006, they acquired NFL license exclusivity. Mr. Stolar, according to ZOOM Platform CEO, Jordan Freeman, was a massive James Bond fan. Mr. Freeman says he spoke about Confidential Mission with Bernie and learned some interesting details. For one, being the James Bond he was, he would always request at conferences to walk out to the original 1962 version of the James Bond Theme. A sample of one such occasion can be seen in the video below:

Mr. Stolar also expressed to Jordan his mutual love of Pierce Brosnan’s work, particularly the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, which Brosnan starred and co-produced, and it’s multiple doppelgangers with hats ending scene.

In 1999, the Bond license was in Electronic Arts’ hands. Bernie still wanted an espionage-based Bond-esque game, though. He ended up convincing SEGA of Japan to create a SEGA Naomi arcade game that paid tribute to all the best spy thrillers including James Bond, Mission: Impossible, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., etc. He requested that the arcade game be eventually ported to Dreamcast as well. The Dreamcast was to be known for near perfect or even sometimes superior arcade ports.

The answer came with Confidential Mission, a title that in many ways married both franchises along with the usual checklist of spy films of the 90s: a female Russian scientist, a luxury train going through the snow, a submarine and a satellite weapon – plus the obligatory tuxedo-clad action hero, in this case, Howard Gibson: someone who should be aptly described as a Brosnan Bond look-alike with the voice of Sterling Archer (actually, voiced by Barry Gjerde), working the CMF – Confidential Mission Force, a not-so-subtle nod to the Impossible Mission Force integrated by Jim Phelps or Ethan Hunt. Following a tradition more attached to Bond than Cruise’s IMF agent, Gibson is joined in all of his missions by Jean Clifford, a sexy blonde who is as competent and skilled as he is, and controlled by the one who has to take the Player 2 joystick or a lightgun.

The game, first released as an arcade title and then ported to Dreamcast, is an on-rails shooter mimicking most of the assets of The House of the Dead and Virtua Cop, two of SEGA’s most popular titles. Throughout the game, the players will have to go from stage to stage doing the usual “shoot everyone” antics of the on-rails adventures, avoiding innocent bystanders and completing some quick-time events that involve escaping from death-traps or rescuing an asset from the hands of enemy agents.

A narration takes us into the plot, briefing the players that a group of international terrorists seized control of the World Coalition’s latest hi-tech spy satellite. The first place to visit is an Archaeological Museum where the last information concerning this satellite has been found. There, Gibson and Clifford find out that an organization known as Agares has been behind it all. As they are about to retrieve a disc with valuable information, they are attacked by an unnamed associate of Agares apparently running the museum. As Gibson and Clifford move through the stage, they’ll face off this level boss who (shades of Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights) activates weapons hidden on the ancient Egyptian statues with remote control as he tries to shoot down our hero.

The second mission takes place on a train travelling through snowy mountains, where programmer Irina Mikhailova has been kidnapped and forced to reprogram the satellite guidance recovered by the agents in the museum. This level, so reminiscent of the Train stage in GoldenEye 007 for the ambience filled with narrow corridors, will prove to be a huge challenge for the untrained player as the chance of provoking casualties are all around us with the many passengers not involved in Agares’ activities. The stage will end over the roof of the carriages, with Howard and Jean shooting down enemy snowmobiles as well as an armoured vehicle commandeered by the Agares leader. In a way, this stage anticipated some of the schematics seen in Activision’s mainstream version of Quantum of Solace (2008) and seemed to be slightly inspired by the final levels of N64’s Mission: Impossible video game, based on the climax of the film.

For the third and final mission, the agents are ordered to infiltrate the Agares headquarters as the satellite control system is about to be transported on a submarine. Fighting their way in, they face off with the organization’s leader once more, who programs the satellite to strike at the CMF headquarters. In order to defeat him, the player will have to avoid tiny explosives thrown by the leader, outfitted with a suit that gives him the illusion of invisibility (similar to the NanoSuit we’ll see four years later in 007 Everything or Nothing) as he fires a golden weapon. Gunned down by the agents, the leader will use his last breath to destroy the base and escape aboard the submarine. In a typical Bondian fashion, Gibson reprograms the satellite and directs it to the submarine, defeating Agares and his leader for once and for all. Escaping on a boat, Clifford asks Gibson if he has any plans for the holidays, to which he simply replies that is “a confidential mission”.

While it can be argued that Confidential Mission is a mere attempt at ticking off all the boxes to make a Bond-like game avoiding by little the watchful eye of EON’s lawyers, and taking huge inspiration from the action/spy films of the 1990s with a simple story and they didn’t seem to hide it, that is perhaps what makes the game so enjoyable for fans of the genre. Even the soundtrack, by Seiichiro Matsumura, aims to the relaxed and cool side of espionage with a dynamic and catchy melody stage after stage. Enhancing the humorous side of the game, the end credits feature a couple of “outtakes” of the cutscenes in the style of the Jackie Chan films.

Let’s just say SEGA attempted to take advantage of the cultural impact of Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond as its bigger competitors, Sony and Nintendo, had already placed their hands into it, and despite the naturally limited means of an on-rails shooter, never forget that GoldenEye 007 originally was meant to be an on-rails shooter that eventually evolved into a first-person game as we know it. Not counting the GoldenEye pinball machine from 1996 (curiously manufactured by SEGA), Confidential Mission was for Bond fans the closest we had to an arcade Bond game. And, interestingly, also for the spy genre fans since most light gun arcade machines at the time dealt with police officers, monsters or dinosaurs.

Teaser Trailer for 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One' is out

 

After having leaked online for a couple of minutes, the official trailer for the seventh outing in the Mission: Impossible film series initiated in 1996 is finally out. Dead Reckoning is the first chapter of a two-part stories and will be released in July 2023, with its second part set for a June 2024 release.

The trailer promises great action scenes and a huge challenge for Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt as his old IMF superior Eugene Kittridge, returning from Mission: Impossible and once again played by Henry Czerny, forces him to "pick a side". James Bond fans will see Christopher McQuarrie homaging Tomorrow Never Dies and For Your Eyes Only as Hunt and Grace, played by Hayley Atwell, escape handcuffed on a very small car in Italy. Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) and the White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) are also returning along with regular IMF members Benji Dunn (Simon Pegg) and Luther Stickell (Ving Rhames).

Stay tuned for more news about this film!

The 007 Women, Pierce Brosnan Style - How Beauty, Brains and Erotism Can Get Along Very Well

The physical beauty of the James Bond girls always comes up whenever we discuss the 60-year-old franchise. Apart from the gun barrel sequence, the 007 gun logo, the tuxedo and the silenced Walther PPK, probably two of the most iconic images associated with the saga are related to women: Ursula Andress coming out of the water in a white bikini and a belt holding a hunting knife, or Shirley Eaton’s dead body painted in gold, originated in Dr No (1962) and Goldfinger (1964), are continually bought back in magazines or TV sketches and cartoons parodying the saga. 

Bond’s womanizing was fully exploited in the days of Sean Connery and Roger Moore, with many ladies turning their eyes to the secret agent as he walked through the lobby of a five-star hotel. There was always a “harem” of ten or twelve girls that barely interacted with him, but they had the purpose of spicing up the interest of the male audience: geishas in You Only Live Twice (1967), astronaut trainees in Moonraker (1979) and circus acrobats in Octopussy (1983), to name some examples. George Lazenby mingled with a couple of patients on the villain’s “clinic”, but he was best remembered as the Bond who married and tragically lost his wife in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), while Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence To Kill (1989) gave us the least sexualized Bond films until the recent No Time To Die (2021), which concluded Daniel Craig’s reboot era initiated with 2006’s Casino Royale.

So, how can we describe Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond cycle, extending from GoldenEye in 1995 to Die Another Day in 2002 –not forgetting the original video games 007 Nightfire (2002) and 007 Everything or Nothing (2004)– in terms of womanizing? As a very good, pleasant mix between erotism and romance.

"The Next Girl". Xenia Onatopp chalenges
Bond to race her in the treacherous mountain
roads of Monaco, to Caroline's disgust.

The fifth Bond actor has a particular predilection for well-educated women. In his three first films he seduces some kind of schooled girl: MI6 therapist Caroline (Serena Gordon) in GoldenEye, to convince her to write a good report to the new M after he recklessly tried to race a red Ferrari driven by a beautiful girl; Oxford professor Inga Bergstrom (Cecile Thomsen), who has a particular way of teaching Danish which involves a bed and intimate contact with 007; and Dr Molly Warmflash (Serena Scott Thomas) whom Bond "bribes" with sex to have a clean bill of health. One could think of these women as people who have burned their eyelids for years in a library to get their precious doctorates. The type who focused way too much on their career until Bond appeared, showing them a world outside academia. It is important to note that 007 was hardly emotionally involved with professional women, unless we count army careers, until the late 1970s and early 1980s: Holly Goodhead was an astronaut, Melina Havelock an archaeologist, Stacey Sutton a geologist. The 1990s films followed this trend of making us notice the modern Bond girls had a life other than dealing with crime (Pussy Galore and Tiffany Case), esoterism (Solitaire) or simply living out of villain as their kept women (Domino Derval, Andrea Anders, Jill Masterson).

As he seduces Caroline and Dr Warmflash, Bond uses his sex to achieve a goal: being declared apt for active service. While it could be argued that this is not a gentlemanly thing to do, the moment feels romantic and Brosnan’s delicate moves and soft voice are visibly different to a somewhat similar situation in Thunderball (1965), where Bond seduces Pat Fearing (Molly Peters) after an “accident” (actually the work of SPECTRE agent Count Lippe) could have killed him due to her negligence. While both moments are comparable –a compromising situation, unethical actions, insinuation of sex– you never feel that Brosnan’s Bond is taking advantage of the girl, unlike what happened with Sean Connery in the Terence Young film.

Bond and Natalya escape from an explosion.
At this point of the film, she got used to this
long before he appeared in her life.

The leading ladies of these films are built over contrasts. GoldenEye has Izabella Scorupco and Famke Janssen joining the new Bond: Scorupco plays Natalya Simonova, a computer programmer whose life is threatened after witnessing the thief of the dangerous satellite weapon the film is titled after. Janssen plays Xenia Onatopp, a former KGB agent and Soviet fighter pilot who enjoys murdering her targets during lovemaking.

We first meet the bad girl, Xenia, driving a red Ferrari 355 challenging Bond to a race over a winding mountain road in Monaco. He later encounters her playing baccarat at the Casino de Monte Carlo. She is completely luxurious, flaunting her fortune, suggestively smoking a cigar and with palpable sexual energy. People who watched the recent Netflix production, Inventing Anna, could find a slight rescemblance between her and the Russian scammer, in the sense of two women suffering shortage in their countries during their childhood and living the luxury and goods of the West in full as soon as they had the opportunity, something already represented by Daniel Kleinman's main title sequence for the film.

It is thanks to Xenia that we have the very first sex scene in a James Bond movie, not with him but with one of her victims – one she kills in a tide of passion, crushing him with her strong tighs. Her dresses, mostly black, always show her cleavage. There’s something in her that says “tempting”, “evil”, “dangerous”. On the other hand, Natalya, the good girl who leads the story, is completely benevolent: one of the least glamorous girls in the series, most of the time she wears the same outfit: alight blue cardigan, a cream shirt and a black skirt. As a frightened victim, she isn’t initially too open to Bond until she confirms he is on her side and her only hope. While we can imagine in Xenia being the “Queen Bee”, Natalya is the shy nerdy girl: the only time we see her looking dashing, she is on a Caribbean beach with 007 wearing a La Perla white bikini and, when she makes love to Bond, everything looks tender and romantic: we get to see a post-coital moment, barely lit by the fire of the hearth, which is incredibly calm considering the film’s fast pacing. To make things more romantic, she even worries that Bond may mean nothing to her. This is the polar opposite of Bond’s steamy moments with Xenia in a sauna room, where she tries to crush him with her legs and it all becomes a sadomasochistic dance where the secret agent’s biggest fight isn’t with the woman, but with her strong sexual magnetism and his feelings as a man.

In Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), both of the main girls are on the side of good, but they are far from being equal. Paris Carver, played by Teri Hatcher, is the wife of the media mogul villain portrayed by Jonathan Pryce. She is the archetype of the American socialite, enjoying the good life and wealth provided by marrying one of the most powerful men in the world. Wai Lin, the Chinese Intelligence agent played by Michelle Yeoh, wears a silver dress at one point, but seems to be much more comfortable in leather combat gear and carrying an MP5 sub-machinegun in her hand rather than a cup of champagne. Interestingly, we never see her in a bikini or semi-naked at one point, which makes her the less sexualized Bond girl of this era.

A provocative Japanese teaser poster for
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), featuring
Bond kissing Wai Lin and a sexy pose
of Paris Carver.

Paris had a past with James Bond before she met Elliot Carver. Of course, she didn’t forgive Bond for leaving her one day without previous notice and has resented ever since, giving him the slap she has owed him for quite a long time when he reappears in her life, but things aren’t better with Carver. She feels empty, inside a bubble of false security provided by this man, barely noticed and treated as a mere decorative element –exactly the way people have many times perceived the Bond girls to be. Her dissatisfaction reaches its height when Carver sends her to extract information of Bond after the secret agent leaves him off the air during his inaugural speech, not believing the fact that she “barely” knew him. When she visits Bond's hotel room in Hamburg, we see what is probably the most suggestive moment in the series: the secret agent slowly undresses her, letting her black Ocimar Versolato dress falling to the floor. The way he does it an important connotation: Bond is freeing her, stripping her off that armour of false security given by her marriage with Carver. She doesn’t live too long, but she can feel like a woman again before the media tycoon exacts revenge.

Wai Lin isn’t initially too open to collaborating with James Bond: in separate ways, both infiltrate Carver’s offices in Hamburg. While he is avoiding gunfire from the security guards and fighting anyone coming at him, she just rappels down with one of her little gadgets, mockingly waving her hand as he spots her. Both are captured moments later, when they coincide exploring the wreckage of the HMS Devonshire warship, sunk under the villain’s orders. They have a perfect coordination as they escape Carver's hitmen through the streets of Saigon, on a motorbike while being handcuffed to each other. Nevertheless, she prefers to work alone and abandons Bond. When he saves her from several mercenaries she finally agrees that they should join forces to go after Carver together. She provides equipment for 007, an array of gadgets and even a new Walther, the P99 model. This girl fulfils a function generally attributed to the people of London, which gives her particular importance we haven’t seen before as Bond was always armed by the people at Q Branch or through an ally, like Tiger Tanaka in You Only Live Twice. It isn’t until the very last moment of the film, where both are floating on the wreckage of the villain’s Stealth Boat, that they decide to “stay undercover” from the rescue boats and kiss.

"Don't go. Stay with me". Elektra King gets 
romantic with Bond, but he knows he has
a lot to investigate first.

The World Is Not Enough (1999) delighted us with the European exoticism of Sophie Marceau and the sympathy of America’s sweetheart Denise Richards. While we are describing the actresses, these words could also describe the characters: oil tycoon and businesswoman Elektra King and IDA nuclear physicist Dr Christmas Jones, both with very different manners and styles. Elektra King is in many aspects a deconstruction of Tracy Di Vicenzo: she is the daughter of a wealthy businessman who enjoys different kinds of thrills, from winter sports to losing a fortune at a casino table. Like Tracy, Bond’s mission involves staying close to her and acting as some kind of a guardian. Unlike Tracy, she is the film’s main antagonist and we learn later that she orchestrated the death of her father and seduced her former captor, terrorist Renard (Robert Carlyle), to carry on her plan of provoking a nuclear meltdown in Istanbul, which would turn out in an increse of her pipeline's profit. She lives in a palace-looking residence in Azerbaijan, dresses in the finest silk and looks impressively beautiful on the red dress she wears at the L’Or Noir casino. She is the perfect reflection of a woman who grew up in the manly world of oil business and has a gender-related hidden agenda, secretly resenting her father for overtaking the business of her mother's family. Despite knowing James Bond goes against her plans, she can’t resist sleeping with him and later, when all is said and done, we see she feels disappointed at his apparent death. Renard senses this: “Was he a good lover?”, she bluntly replies: “What did you think? That I’d feel nothing?” referring to the terrorist's sensorial incapacity, a product of a bullet wound in the head that is slowly killing him. As it has been happening at this point in the series, sex is not shown but insinuated with post-coital moments. The World Is Not Enough offers us the chance to perceive the girl having an intimate moment with Bond and the villain. We see that everything is romantic, idylic and natural with the secret agent, but it’s all completely dull and insipid with the villain. Examples of a woman being more pleased with Bond than with the antagonist abound in the series, but this one has the distinction of having the woman being the main villain and showing her sexual satisfaction with the enemy and dissatisfaction with her co-conspirator, who was basically a tool for her intentions.

Don't judge her by her looks –
Christmas Jones has saved
Bond's life many times
in The World Is Not Enough.

After Elektra’s betrayal, Bond’s love is transferred to Dr Christmas Jones – another professional woman. Richards’ character is a smoking hot nuclear scientist who isn’t comfortable with the constant sexism of her partners, and a name that doesn’t help. Bond seems to appreciate her more than her colleagues: “Don’t make any jokes, I’ve heard them all”, she warns him during their first meeting. “I don’t know any doctor jokes”, he replies. Dr Jones dresses in tank tops, shorts, tennis shoes, white blouses, more sporty wear than the distinguished wardrobe of Elektra. With the strong influence of Sophie Marceau’s role in this movie, it seemed natural that her counterpart would lack the same importance although she is crucial in saving Bond’s life at least two times. While Christmas, just like Natalya, is a civilian, the secret agent never diminishes her or tries to keep her completely out of danger. In a film like Dr No or For Your Eyes Only (1981), Bond always tried to keep ladies out of the business. This time, he never orders her to stay away from the battlefield and treats her as someone whose special knowledge would be useful to foil the enemy plan, another of the big changes the Brosnan era gave in building stronger female characters. After avoiding a huge blast, buzz-saw choppers, drowning and a nuclear explosion in a submarine, Dr Jones celebrates Christmas with James Bond in Istanbul. They make love on a bed as red and green lights, presumably coming from a Christmas tree, are reflected on their naked bodies. “I thought Christmas only came once a year”, Bond allows himself to joke as the film leads us to the end credits.

The franchise entered the new millennium in 2002 with Die Another Day. The film, which would be the cinematic swansong of Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond, presented one of the most diverse pairings of Bond girls to date: Afro-American Oscar winner Halle Berry and British blonde Rosamund Pike, of Gone Girl fame, in her first big-screen role. In his book Licence To Thrill, author James Chapman notices a “fire and ice” contrast of elements represented by the two girls of the 40^th anniversary Bond film. There is also a reversal of loyalties when we compare the other two films that had an interracial pairing of Bond girls, Live And Let Die (1973) and A View To A Kill (1985), the films that opened and closed the Roger Moore era. In this case, the black girl is Bond's ally and the white girl is the vilainess, the exact opposite of what happened in those films.

Jinx showing her beautiful
anatomy to a Bond who has
"missed the touch of a 
good woman"

Giacinta “Jinx” Johnson, played by Berry, is an NSA agent who eventually teams up with Bond on his quest against General Moon, a radicalized North Korean officer threatening the West with a solar-beam based space weapon. She has the tradition of being the first black woman to be completely on Bond’s side, as previous coloured characters like Rosie Carver (Gloria Hendry) and May Day (Grace Jones) switched sides throughout the films they appeared in. Jinx's appearance in Caribbean waters is a clear nod to Ursula Andress, although her bikini is orange and not white. Orange is a bright, vibrant colour evoking passion, while white evokes pureness – we could see how Honey Ryder was lost in the ways of the world, unlike Jinx who has full control of her actions and acts like a well-trained operative. This subject may be something trivial if it wasn’t for Jinx’s predilection of vivid colours in her clothing, particularly during Gustav Graves’ Ice Palace party in Iceland where all the girls are outfitted in icy gammas to tune in with the surroundings. Jinx wears a bright pink/purple Donatella Versace dress, standing out in the crowd of beauties. She is passionate and open to 007’s feelings, which the film shows by having 007 actually having sex with her on camera. Halle Berry is not only the first Afro-American female lead in Bond film, but also the first to have proper sex with him instead of the usual post-coital moment. Compare her to Miranda Frost, Rosamund Pike’s character: she is an MI6 agent, completely cold towards Bond, as her surname implies. Her sex scene with Bond lacks the ardour he experienced with Jinx, even David Arnold’s music underlining the moment feels “cold” in comparison to the fully orchestrated theme we hear when Brosnan and Berry make love in Cuba. Miranda barely has an expression and has aristocrat antics which are too different to the streetwise Jinx. We can see this in their final showdown, involving cold weapons: the NSA agent wears army fatigues and defends herself with throwing knives and the occasional elbow hit here and there, the MI6 agent winds her sword, using all of her fencing knowledge, and is dressed for the occasion on a black leather sports bra and white pants. An exchange also reveals the different nature of these two women: while Frost comments that Bond was with her last night, Jinx replies: “He did you? I didn’t know he was that desperate”.

But why would these two girls fight? Because Miranda Frost is actually a villain. Much like Alias’ Sydney Bristow, this woman has three identities: (a), Gustav Graves’ publicist and personal assistant, (b) an MI6 agent sent undercover to investigate Graves, and (c) Graves’ long-time accomplice from the days before he adopted –through DNA transplant– the Western facade of Gustav Graves and was Colonel Moon, the man Bond is sent to kill at the beginning of the film. She may be comparable to GoldenEye antagonist Alec Trevelyan, but while the former 006 just staged his death and resurfaced nine years later; Miranda was right there under everyone’s nose and tipping Moon of each of MI6’s movements against him, including a British operation which involved his assassination and the intervention of James Bond.

Miranda Frost threatens Jinx. Die Another Day
saw the first time two Bond girls have a
showdown together.

Twenty years on, the merits of Die Another Day are continually diminished –if not blatantly insulted– considering that the film had to introduce 007 in a post-9/11 world and the story did represent the subjects that were on the media’s agenda back in the early 2000s: people threatening the West from the inside, North Korea being part of the “Axis of Evil”, the prominence of the NSA, just to name a few. Given the popularity of Halle Berry and the successful box office numbers of the Lee Tamahori film, EON planned a spin-off Jinx movie which was even written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade and set for a 2004 release. It didn’t get made for multiple reasons and the producers decided to focus on Casino Royale instead. But to this day, no Bond girl got that close to having her own film.

People who grew up with the Pierce Brosnan James Bond adventures on the big screen could enjoy –and control– their Bond through the digital environments of the Electronic Arts video games 007 Nightfire and 007 Everything or Nothing. The former, coinciding with the premiere of Die Another Day, took Bond from Austria to Japan and outer space and had the ace of spies joined by three female spies: French Intelligence agent Dominique Paradis, CIA’s Zoë Nightshade (returning from the 2001 title Agent Under Fire), and Australian operative Alura McCall, not forgetting the treacherous Kiko Hayashi. The latter had a high-sounding Hollywood cast lending their voice and likeness which included Shannon Elizabeth as geologist Serena St Germaine, top model Heidi Klum as the villainous Katya Nadanova and singer Mya as NSA agent Mya Sterling.

The Bond girls of the Pierce Brosnan era were attractive in many ways. They were beautiful and desirable, but also smart and relevant. These characters aren’t afterthoughts and they all carry a function in the film, in two occasions moving the story along and with her stories fully developed. Brosnan’s Bond was so gentlemanly that to date he is the only actor to have accomplished Moneypenny’s dreams, even in a rather dreamy sequence. And while Judi Dench’s M called him “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur”, she quickly ended up seeing the big picture in Bond’s way over the advice of her analysts. So in a way –a very different way, mind you– it could be said that even M fell for this Bond’s charms.

Straight Up, With A Twist: The Daring Women of Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond is out now on Kindle. Click here to order.

 

Nicolás Suszczyk