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New type of “Bond movies”: prequel or reboot

In order to understand the motives of such decision as to change the traditional image of James Bond, we should see the whole picture of the cinematography in 2003-2005. It was the years, when the Batman series returned with a completely new view to the characters and the rival’s project of the story of Jason Bourne showed very good results on the screens and among the critics. That is why MGM and Eon decided to bring the story of Bond back to its roots, to eliminate all unrealistic gadgets, villains and to make Bond more of a real person, not a superhero spy as he was on the screen in the previous years. Therefore, the 21st movie of James Bond, “Casino Royale”, became the first adaptation of a Fleming book since 1969 (“On Her Majesty's Secret Service”) and founded a new timeline and narrative framework never used before in the “Bondiana” [31]. On 14 October 2005 the producers made a press conference in London and they confirmed the last gossips that Daniel Craig would become the next actor to portray James Bond [13]. “He's still charming and he's still deadly, but this new James Bond played by Daniel Craig is also human” – is a very pointed remark because it just described the whole picture of the new type of James Bond [6]. The producers changed the traditional approach to the series and as it turned out a little bit later they were completely right and this innovation justified itself, because eventually “Casino Royale” crushed the box office and showed a very good results while distributing.

Most of the changes were about the structure of the plot and key personalities of the series. Beginning with “Casino Royale”, the alternative way of filming Bond we can notice in the second Craig’s movie: “Quantum of Solace”. We can demonstrate a few of the revisions on the examples:

- Every movie of the series has a scene in which Bond has a conversation with Miss Moneypenny, the secretary to “M”, Bond's boss. In the first two movies with Daniel Craig this part is absent;

- “Casino Royale” and “Quantum of Solace” has no mention of another traditional character – Mr. Q who used to give the necessary equipment and gadgets to the agents. Nonetheless Bond still gets his mission tools but there’s no technical briefing shown [28, p. 453];

- Bond. James Bond.” line is absent in “Quantum of Solace” while appearing one way or another in all movies of series [1];

- In all Bond movies, except “Quantum of Solace”, Bond is kissing his new girlfriend and companion at the end of the story [28, p. 282].

But despite all these differences from the “original approach” to the “Bondiana”, the reviews for “Casino Royale”, for example, were rather positive and the movie became the most profitable Bond since the times of the “Moonraker” movie. Roger Ebert remarked, “Daniel Craig makes a superb Bond: leaner, more taciturn, less sex-obsessed, and able to be hurt in body and soul, not giving a damn if his martini is shaken or stirred” [15].



After the success of the first Craig’s movie, the producers decided to prolong his contract and go to the next chapter of the Bond stories. With the title “Quantum of Solace” came the 22nd part of “Bondiana”. Basically it was a kind of follow-up to the previous movie and it was closely connected with the events of “Casino Royale”. Despite its satisfying results at the box office, the film received lots of negative reviews. On “Rotten Tomatoes” new Bond was described as “Not as good as franchise reboot Casino Royale” [34].

The next movie was suspended several times due to the financial troubles of the MGM Company but in the very beginning of 2011 the production of the later-called “Skyfall” started. For the correction of the mistakes of the previous part of the “Bondiana”, the producers invited such huge Hollywood stars as Ralph Fiennes and Havier Bardem and Sam Mendes became the director of the 23d movie of the series [16].

While saving the style of the new type of “Bondiana” (more reserved and “real” character) “Skyfall” was received by critics very well and it became highest-grossing James Bond film. According to the Box Office Mojo (18 November) the worldwide sum stands in the neighbourhood of $670 000 000. This result marks the general success of the remaking James Bond after 2006 and despite the fact that for the accomplishing of this task the producers had to repudiate from some Bond features, we can consider the experiment as a total success (according to the results in box offices at least).

Concerning the theme of three last movies devoted to James Bond we can’t help avoiding the point of the position of the series. Was Casino Royale an ordinary prequel to the story of the “007 agent” or the classical example of rebooting the media franchise?

In general, to make a reboot means to cast previous sequence in a series aside and start from the very beginning. The concept derives from the computer term using for the restarting a computer [48].

Using the reboot method, the producers and companies tried to attract new admirers, to revive the interest toward the series and to increase revenue [48]. It is an ideal option for the companies that want to make an old and stagnant franchise popular and profitable again. Besides, it is a very comfortable thing for the persons concerned because usually such series have the fan base already and it is not as risky from the point of money as to create the new one.

According to the Oxford dictionary, prequelis a story or movie containing events that precede those of an existing work”. Prequel is concentrated on the events that had happened before the original story. Basically the word “prequel” emerged in 1958 in Anthony Boucher’s article. It was used for the describing James Blish's novel “They Shall Have Stars”. Into general usage, the term came only in 1970-80s [32] with the appearing of such series as Star Wars with its prequel structure when the last episodes were filmed long times earlier the first ones. In recent years the term “prequel” often can be applied to the reboots such as works as Planet of the Apes, Batman, and James Bond [44, p. 42].

The creators of the new Batman, for instance, consider their movies as a renewing of the original stories [24, p. 139-152]. As for the “Bondiana”, in one of the interviews the producers of the series confirm that they regard it as a reboot. At the same time according to the definition above, we can surely name the particular movie from the series of James Bond (“Casino Royale”) as a true prequel to the original because it completely corresponds with term. All the events in Casino Royale tell us the first steps of the “007 agent” in the world of spies and contain a little pre-history of his personality. That is why we can make a conclusion that we can apply James Bond both to the prequels and reboots.

 

According to the results of the research, made in the second chapter, we can state the following.

1. The “James Bond” series, emerged in the beginning of 1960s, seized the audience from the very first movie and despite the problems with actors and the necessity of replacing them after a certain period of time, the producers managed to set up a very profitable business with the “Bondiana”. The persistent production of the “Bond movies” marked the success of the franchise and turned a story about agent into the whole industry.

2. The necessary changes made by the producers of the series in 2006 with changing the cast and the general approach to the movie series proved its efficiency with the results in box office and the huge increase in popularity after the process of stagnation of the beginning of the century. Examining the series and some other examples we came to the conclusion that the current evidence doesn’t give us an opportunity to define clearly the two concept “reboot” and “prequel”, concerning the changes in the “Bondiana”, connected with the appearance of Daniel Craig as a lead actor. Moreover, available evidence let us call the franchise with both definitions rather than differentiating them.

 

 

CHAPTER III. “JAMES BOND” TECHNOLOGY

3.1. Military Intelligence in “James Bond” novels and movies

 

Examination of the personality of James Bond, his rivals and the acquaintances (especially the women) should be started with the place of his work and the organisation, which appears in every single movie, devoted to James Bond without any exceptions.

The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), most famous as MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6) is the organisation which provides the government with foreign intelligence information [23, p. 15]. The service was founded in the beginning of the 20th century and played a very important role for the British during the international conflict, Cold war and other occurrences.

In books and movies of the “James Bond” series we see the Intelligence only in passing. Generally, it’s the whole set of key characters (M, Q, Moneypenny). James Bond gets his assignment, equipment and briefing from them in the most of the movies and the role of the Service or its characters hadn’t been expanded until the last movie of “Skyfall”.

This doesn’t imply that in “Skyfall” the audience could see the nature of the Intelligence but we saw Judi Dench (actress performed the role of the head of the Intelligence) much more time than ever. According to Fleming, he used his life experience and the character of “М” is based on a number of people (commanders, chief etc.) he interacted while he was on duty. The relationship between James Bond and his superior in cinema was much more expanded in comparison with book variant. Most changes are concerned of the last embodiment of the chief by actress Judi Dench. With her performance, the character of “M” gained an element of maternity, especially towards James Bond, but at the same time their relationship were strictly based on the business and she was always ready to sacrifice his life for the sake of the state and Intelligence [9].

The new movie (“Skyfall”) was marked with the presence of another traditional character – Ms.Moneypenny. She was absent in the two previous movies (“Casino Royale” and “Quantum of Solace” respectively) but earlier she was in each single episode of “Bondiana”. Moneypenny adore James Bond both in Fleming’s novels and cinema. “Often dreamed hopelessly about Bond” writes Fleming in the Thunderball novel. However, James Bond heard nothing of her feelings; she always kept them in secret. Apart from flirting with “007”, she holds the position of the personal secretary of “M”.

As for the third traditional character from the Service’s staff, “Q” (=Quartermaster) appeared in all Bond movies except of “Live and Let Die” and again the two Craig’s: “Quantum of Solace” and “Casino Royale”. He is responsible for the equipment and different gadgets for the agents and despite the obvious annoyance James Bond causes Q every time, there is always a feeling that they certainly have great respect for each other and probably are good friend deep down.

 

3.2. James Bond as Ian Fleming’s creature

 

The fast car, the correct recipe for a vodka martini, a dinner and a bridge gam at Blade’s, the brand names of superior toilet articles, the seductively ill-parted hair of a pretty girl” [27, p. 42]. The writer Anthony Burgess can characterize James Bond only with such expressions and on the whole he is right. He didn’t reinvent the wheel with his words, but Burgess skilfully identify some of the major components of the Bond formula of success originally described and developed by Ian Fleming in his stories and later reflected in the movie series. With the lapse of time James Bond as a creature of Fleming became a real floating cultural signifier who continues to develop and adapt to the social changes. It is worth mentioning also that the “007 series” marked a shift in the cultural understanding of the concept “crime” which in modern world acquires the meaning of crimes against humanity. That was the straight merit of Ian Fleming, who step aside the traditions of detective writing and broadly used the context of Cold War ideology and modern geopolitics.

The whole character of Bond was described by journalist and author Ian Fleming. The first appearance of James Bond was in the novel Casino Royale (1953). The whole set of stories had been written by Fleming from 1953 till 1964. After the publication of “Casino Royale”, the author moved to Jamaica and continued his work; in total, fourteen Bond novels (including two compilations of stories) were published. The last two books: “The Man with the Golden Gun” and “Octopussy” and the Living Daylights”—published two years after Fleming’s death in 1966.

An idea to create a spy character crossed his mind during the WWII but he managed to write this idea down only in 1952 when he started working on a new book, later titled Casino Royale. He didn’t need to make up all the stories because he served in the Intelligence earlier and generally he used not only his imagination but his life experience. The novels centred on a personality and work of James Bond – “007 agent” from the Intelligence Service.

Fleming took the name to his character from the American ornithologist [8, p. 21]. Later he explained the choice of the name in that way: “When I wrote the first one in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument ... when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, (James Bond) is the dullest name I ever heard” [21, p. 32].

As for the character of Bond (and not only him) Fleming, using his personal experience, based a lot of them on individuals that he met at service. James Bond is not a real person but at the same time a number of his qualities could be copied from the real commanders or agents in the Intelligence of that time.

Hoagy Carmichael is considered to resemble James Bond facially [26, p. 35]. For example, Vesper Lynd in the novel Casino Royale says: “Bond reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless.” Black hair, cold eyes, cruel in a mouth: all these features can be indeed associated with both of them.

The background of James Bond weren’t mentioned untilYou Live Only Twice” where agent got his family history. The connection with Scotland was made deliberately because Fleming wanted to recreate the link between the main actor of that time Sean Connery and the book person.

As for the personal characteristics which were given to James Bond by his creator, “007 agent” is not a cold-blooded killer, working like a robot. In novels we can find the philosophical discourses by Bond devoted to his way of life or his murders and he doesn’t look like a beast without emotions at all [17, p. 3]. But as we can see later in movies he is incorrigible womanizer and he is fond of alcohol and gambling and has other vices. Besides, in novels we can find something that we can’t find in movies. It is about the Bond meals. According to the books, when he is at home he dines as simple as Ian Fleming did himself: roast beef, fish etc. When on a mission, Bond prefers exotic meals though. We can state that despite the fact that this point and other tiny details, concerning Bond’s nature and his character help the reader and our research to know him better but the fact of omitting all this day-to-day routine of Bond in movie is not surprising.

The unique merit of Fleming as the author was in the fact that all vices and negative sides of James Bond would have before been associated with the villains are now turned into positive characteristics. Moreover, they were converted by the public into something desirable. Everything that Bond makes marked with the seal of aristocracy and taste: from the murders till his preferences in food. And the depiction of this in movies wasn’t a big problem for the producers.

 

3.3. “Movie Bond” versus “Book Bond”

 

First of all, there is no doubt that the cinema version of the novels had to be popular and they had to bring profit to the producers. Nobody wants to watch the cooking Bond, to listen to his thoughts or to follow all his drinks. The audience is interested in action and thriller and the producers understood it. That is why their general goal was to close the personality of the spy to the ordinary people. They omitted all unnecessary facts from his life and show the little minimum of his personal features. Moreover they tried to do it through his relationships with girlfriends, his chief or through his dialogues with the enemies for instance. You can’t watch Bond talking to himself or hear his own philosophy and emotions connected with his daily work like on the pages of the novels. In the “Goldfinger” book the author opens his character’s heart a little and gives us an opportunity to learn something more about his soul and his attitude to the main obligation in his life – to kill the evil men:

It was part of his profession to kill people. He had never liked doing it and when he had to kill he did it as well as he knew how and forgot about it. As a secret agent who held the rare double-O prefix—the licence to kill in the Secret Service—it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. If it happened, it happened. Regret was unprofessional—worse; it was a death-watch beetle in the soul” [1] [17].

The exact reflection of book Bond was not the objective number one for the producers of the films. As we have already said their point was in the creation of profitable movie and they coped with this problem.

For example, the differences between novel’s character and Connery’s Bond started from the very beginning. According to their task, the director and scriptwriter chose a very charismatic actor and let him bring a grain of his national Scottish colour in the Bond personality. Hence we have the specific humour and a kind of straightforward Bond in the early series. He talks a little and always cracks jokes and you can’t find that feature of the famous spy in the novels because the book character is colder and more serious, more English if we remember the famous stereotype about the locals.

With Rodger Moore or Timothy Dalton the situation didn’t change much if we talk about Bond character. The same methods of dealing with problems were used along with the same jokes and even the same relations with girls.

Pierce Brosnan added a lot of glamour and gloss to his Bond but the personality of the spy was completely replaced by the actions and skirmishes during his era. And with that background Daniel Craig’s embodiment was a real ground-breaking thing for the franchise.

For starters we should mention that the individual characteristics of Bond were changed. According to the new types of movies came with Craig (especially “Casino Royale”) Bond became more sensual and emotional and in the movie we can observe his real feelings through his relationships with Vesper Lynd. Indeed that an opportunity to show the audience the true Bond and his true emotions appeared mostly because of the literary source but we should admit the general merit of the creation of such serious movie belongs to the producers and their idea of revival of the series and to the scriptwriters and their talented interpretation of the novel.

In witness of such turnabout inside the Bond films suffice it to follow the dialogues between the 007 and Vesper:

Vesper Lynd: You love me?

James Bond: Enough to travel the world with you until one of us has to take an honest job... which I think is going to have to be you, because I have no idea what an honest job is.

Vesper Lynd: You're not going to let me in there, are you? You've got your armour back on. That's that.

James Bond: I have no armour left. You've stripped it from me. Whatever is left of me - whatever is left of me - whatever I am - I'm yours [35].

It’s a very complicated task for the audience to imagine these dialogues coming from Brosnan or Moore and from their embodiments of the spy. Their spy was more unrealistic, sometimes he looked like a superman or robot with no emotions and remorse. With Craig Bond became cleverer and acuter. But when “Casino Royale” only appeared on the screens, a lot of critics didn’t recognise Daniel Craig as a true Bond. Most of their reasons were connected with the appearance of him because according to the novels Bond can’t be a blond man and also they considered his look as a non-aristocratic. But later they changed their minds because of the brilliant performance of Daniel and these tiny discrepancies faded away by themselves. The style and behaviour of Craig’s Bond became more “original”, it has more features of Bond from books than other embodiments of “007 agent” on the screen and probable that variant and these changes would have been approved by Fleming if he had been alive.

 

3.4. James Bond and women: from true love to senseless co-operation

 

In the previous paragraph we concerned the theme of the most tragic and defining person in the life of James Bond - Vesper Lynd. She really captured his heart and he was ready to abandon everything in his life for the sake of her, but eventually it turned out that she was a double-agent and worked for the enemies of Bond. Probably after this case a feeling of distrust towards women settled in his heart and that basically defined his selfish attitude to them for the rest of his life. Despite this fact Bond girlfriends often turned to be as villainesses such as Xenia Onatopp in “GoldenEye”. Usually, Bond meets three types of women: evil (as we have already mentioned: villainesses), intelligent (their reserved character often prevented them from the seduction) and innocent (who are always falling in love with James).

We can’t say a lot of words about their characters because even in Fleming’s stories the author keeps them just for the decoration or for the events in the plot. Most of the novel’s girls were successfully pictured on the screen. According to their descriptions and display, they always follow the standard mix of features where the special stress lays on their beauty, youth and body perfection.

In the Connery’s era they didn’t play an essential role in the operations, moreover, it was a common thing for Bond to rescue them at the end of the story.

In 1970s-1980s they gained more space for the self-expression and they really assisted James in his missions but still were the object of problems for the agent. Anya Amasova is a bright example of this female character of that time. She was a soviet agent sent to work with Bond in the investigation of dissapeared nuclear submarines. Even despite the fact that James Bond had killed her boyfriend earlier she warmed to his charm and eventually forgave him. And again, though she was very helpful for James in stopping the villain, Anya was captured by the enemies and Bond had to save her from the captivity a few times [18].

With Pierce Brosnan, the personalities of the women were expanded but only as co-operators of James. Along with the turning the series into senseless blockbuster the role of girls grew into the real beautiful picture (but with the necessary skills for the saving the world) and nothing behind it.

The role of women in Craig’s movies was almost vanished (as one of the main traditions) with the exception in “Casino Royale” where the true love of James were buried with Vesper’s betrayal and death.

Bond is not a seeker of a wife or serious relationships; generally, his goal is close to be to sleep with as many girls as he can. But even this feature of Bond was transformed from the negative into positive with the explaining that women just find James irresistible to the weaker sex.

3.5. “Villain of the piece”

Initially, Fleming built up the villains in order to emphasize the heroism of the main character, because he understood that without the powerful enemies James Bond looked like less courageous. Later villains were successfully used for the recreation of this brave image of the “007 agent” on the screen [41, p. 30]. Generally, there were only three “great enemies” for James Bond — Goldfinger, Dr. No, and Blofield and James had a lot of problems with them or the organisation they established. But among another researches is singled out the one made by Kerstin Jütting where she classified all the villains according to their characteristics and speciality [25, p. 70-81].

For example she pointed out the first appearances of first freelance villain (1974 – Scaramanga); first false ally (1981 – Kristatos); first villainess (1999 – Elektra) etc. Also she adds that all the enemies of Bond were chosen to match the current situation in the world. That’s why the appearance of the computer geniuses like Raoul Silva from the last movie “Skyfall” is not surprising.

As we have already mentioned the destination of the villains is to be killed by James Bond to show him in the most favourable light as a saviour of the world. That’s why there is not much space for their characters to be exposed. “Light side of the force” still knocks evil down and society is still successfully defended.

 

According tothe results of the research,made in the third chapter, we can state the following.

1. The Intelligence Service and its staff don’t play the essential role in the movies but at the same time it is a very important part of the plot and a traditional part of the whole series of Bond. We found out that the image of the head of the Service (“M”) was seriously expanded in “Skyfall” along with the coming back of such character as “Q” which may refer to the paying a sort of the tribute to the traditions of “old Bond” and the lead actress Judi Dench whose performance of M was the last one in her career in the franchise.

2. The book image of Bond was extremely successful and popular among the ordinary readers despite his complicated character (with lots of vices such as drinking, womanizing etc.) and murders and that fact caused eventually the huge success of the movie series.

3. We pointed out a lot of differences between book variant of Bond and its embodiment on the screen. Though it’s worth mentioning the example of creating Bond background according to the cinema personality (played by Scottish actor and with Scottish background for the real, “book Bond” in the latest novels). All vices of Bond were very efficiently showed as positive and heroic features exactly on the screen because in novels it was very complicated task to describe and display them to the best advantage.

4. Womanizing in Bond, initially being a vice became one of the appealing and even heroic features of the “007 agent”. A thing that typically destroys a character is transformed into an essential building block of the spy and without this he couldn’t have done his deed and save the world.

5. All the villains without exception serve for the sake of positive image of James Bond in the series. We found out the same situation with the characters of evil as with the women in movies. They serve for the only goal of attracting the audience and in very rare moments through them we see the true face of James Bond.






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