 Daniel Craig stars as James Bond in “Skyfall.” (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures/Columbia Pictures/EON Productions) This week, the New York Times published an interesting piece on what’s going to happen to the James Bond franchise now that Sony’s deal to distribute the films has run out. Five studios are in the mix, and the piece explores what striking a partnership could mean for them, mostly in financial terms. Money matters, of course: This is Hollywood, after all. But I hope that Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the children of franchise originator Albert Broccoli, also take into account different studios’ ideas for how to keep Bond limber and interesting. All Bonds have certain things in common: They drink martinis, they wear great suits, they carry Walther pistols and they are sexually irresistible. This makes the franchise an interesting catalog of changing styles and ideas about masculinity. Pierce Brosnan’s Bond hair probably wouldn’t fly today, just as Daniel Craig’s Bond suggestion that he’d slept with a man in “Skyfall” almost certainly couldn’t have made it into a previous iteration. Giving us a Moneypenny (Naomie Harris) who could flirt back at Bond for her own amusement, and who had plenty of other skills besides, made Bond a more modern figure who didn’t need to assert his dominance through constant seduction. He’s anthropologically interesting enough to avoid being drummed out of cinemas as hopelessly retrograde, and the long tradition of recasting (and effectively rebooting) Bond means the franchise has unusual intellectual and chronological flexibility. Broccoli and Wilson are, of course, entitled to go with whichever studio docks at their front door with the biggest yachtload of cash. But I hope that the family, which famously exercises a freakish level of detail over the Bond movies, picks whoever has the best understanding of what makes Bond so compelling, and has the best pitch for how to keep him interesting. |
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