Critic’s Take: Bond adapts to modern times

By Isaac Siegemund-Broka
Staff Writer

He walks across the screen, turns and shoots—23 times to date. James Bond has been one of the world’s favorite film heroes for 50 years, shooting up bad guys since 1962’s “Dr. No.” Despite being a staple of the action genre, Bond, as well as the franchise he leads, is not bound to what he started as.

James Bond was created as the stereotypical image of machismo in the 1960s, a martini-guzzling and perpetually smoking ladies man—he’s “Mad Men” plus guns and a British accent. But it would be unacceptable to perpetuate this image of Bond into the 2000s. Consequently, James Bond needed to evolve.

Though modern Bond maintains his suave gravitas, Daniel Craig has defined him less by a traditional blend of hedonism and stoicism and more by the emotional depth that has become more acceptable—desired, even—for the modern man. In “Casino Royale,” he falls in love, comforts his crying damsel in distress, and nearly loses it when she dies.

The evolution of the Bond franchise, however, has not stopped with its protagonist. Bond films of the ‘60s and ‘70s allowed a decent degree of suspension of disbelief. There were shark-filled swimming pools (“Thunderball”), a giant with metal teeth (“The Spy Who Loved Me” and “Moonraker”), and one scene where Bond attaches wings to his car so that it can fly (“Man With the Golden Gun”). But with Craig at the helm of the franchise, the series has taken a stronger hold on reality.

Filmgoers have become much less accepting of slight suspension of disbelief. If the fantastical nature of a movie is made clear from the start, such as in “Avatar,” viewers do not judge the film based on believability. Conversely, other popular action movies like the “Bourne” trilogy take very little liberty in distorting reality. It’s rare that a modern film falls into the middle ground, as early Bond films did.

Case in point: “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” Though garnered with decent critical reviews, the fourth Indy film was criticized by many fans for a scene in which Jones survives a nuclear bomb by hiding in a fridge and for its final showdown, which involves aliens.

So as Bond films adapt, especially in the most recent addition, “Skyfall,” one shouldn’t take it as an unfortunate distortion of the “true” Bond mentality—the franchise, as well as its iconic hero, has shifted to portray what we, as the audience, want it to.