Bond women deserve step into modern times
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By MELISSA OLSON
Thursday, April 26, 2007 8:59 AM CDT
Special to the Herald
Warning: this column contains spoilers about the movie “Casino Royale.” If you’re planning on seeing this film, you may not want to read on.
Last weekend I re-watched “Casino Royale,” the new and improved James Bond movie starring a new and improved Bond. Daniel Craig, the British actor tapped to take up the mantle — or rather, the bowtie and martini glass — of this long-running franchise received a lot of press when this film was being made.
Fans and critics went back and forth on his hair color, his physique, his face, his acting, and his personality.
“Can this man really be James Bond?” they wondered.
And, of course, it doesn’t matter. Bond (Daniel Craig) remarks to M that most double-o agents have short life expectancies. It’s a joke, of course, a merry nod to the history of one of film’s longest-running franchises.
You see, the actor playing James Bond can always be replaced. When nobody liked Timothy Dalton, he was gone from the franchise. When studio heads thought Pierce Brosnan was getting too old to run around shooting people, they simply hired someone else.
Bond will do many things — he will evolve and devolve back and forth in dozens of movies, he will become more and less athletic, more and less suave, more and less violent — but he will never, ever die.
Unlike his female counterparts. “Bond girls,” as they are still unfortunately called, really do have short life expectancies. They often die, hapless sacrificial lambs in Bond’s wayward espionage activities. Then there are the many Bond girls who helpfully turn evil right before their deaths, cheerfully cutting any emotional ties they may have created.
A few of these gorgeous women do manage to survive the closing credits, but these are in the minority — and one often gets the sense that their survival is a gimmick (like Halle Berry in “Die Another Day,” whose survival seemed predicated on studio heads’ eagerness to create a spinoff series) or a belated apology for the deaths of so many of their predecessors (I am thinking here of Michelle Yeoh and Denise Richards, whose characters were lucky enough to have well-known faces attached to their fates).
And now, nearly 50 years after the franchise began, “Casino Royale” entered the Bond arena with many promises. For months of trailers, press releases, and news clippings, we’ve been promised a new, darker Bond, with more action, fewer ridiculous gadgets, and plenty of emotional subtext and moral debate. And, wonder of wonders, director Martin Campbell (who also helmed the first Brosnan Bond movie, “Goldeneye”) actually delivered.
Daniel Craig is stunning, perhaps the best Bond (or just the one given the most to do) ever. The shameless stunts of “Die Another Day” have vanished (no invisible cars or palaces of ice, thank goodness), and been replaced with an honest-to-goodness story about an evil private banker (the delicious Mads Mikkelsen) and Bond’s attempts to destroy his financial cushion in a glamorous high stakes poker game.
The opening action sequence, where Bond chases an informant through half an African village, is breathtaking, the sort of scenes that elicit gasps and “Ouches” from the audience. There are many problems with “Casino Royale” — the film ends about four times more than it needs to, and much of the plot is predicated on the bad guys not being able to figure out an extremely obvious password — but at least most of the missteps are new ones, not the same tired Bond movie flaws. Even the smaller-screen, DVD version of the movie is exciting and fresh, even for the second time.
Which brings me to maybe the best new element in a film full of them: Eva Green. As the luminous, razor-edged accountant Vesper Lynd, Green makes you forgot the term “Bond girl” completely.
She gives her character a graceful depth, playing Lynd with an air of tragedy and intelligence, the perfect foil to Craig’s morally empty Bond. As the most memorable female lead in maybe any Bond movie, she is the best indicator of Campbell’s Brave New Bond World.
Which is why her traditionally Bondian death is so upsetting. In Vesper Lynd, Campbell takes a huge step forward, but then takes two massive steps backward, creating a wonderful character and then trapping her into the old “turns-bad-then-dies” fate that befell so many of her predecessors.
The story had, you see, painted itself into the same old corner: Bond can’t actually fall in love with a girl, because then he presumably couldn’t continue his global “love ‘em and leave ‘em” campaign.
It’s one thing to drop Q and the gadgets and the smoking and most of the innuendo, but Bond has to continue his womanizing for the franchise to survive, right? Right?
One step forward, two steps back. Campbell’s goal of bringing Bond into modern times was only partially successful. Yes, Bond is a better character, and yes, the action and drama and all of that has improved. But to really update this franchise, Campbell needs to actually update its attitude toward the women who exist in it. And for that, it seems, we must wait at least a little bit longer.
Melissa Olson was born and raised in Chippewa Falls. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in film and television, and works for a television production company in Madison. E-mail comments and questions to Melissa at mfo.usc@gmail.com.
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