Beginnings of Bond

Having seen Casino Royale this weekend I am thinly optimistic. The movie itself was very well done, not only in technical terms, but in scripting, acting and casting terms as well. The cast was superb and the script did justice to the Bond myth. But what really intrigues me is the action of going back and exploring the roots of characters we know and love. It would be easy to say, I think, between CR and Batman Begins that there is a theme in serial movies to explore the obscured origins of our heroes, a trend that hit comic books in the '90s with titles like Alan Moore's The Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, but I'm hesitant to believe it.

The cynical side of me says merely that the movie industry is afraid of new material. While moving backward isn't as blatant a plea for dollars-without-risk as movies like The Dukes of Hazzard and Miami Vice are, there's still something suspicious about it. If it were a movie plot, I'd pitch it like this: humanity, having mucked up the present so badly they can't live there anymore, is forced to go back in time to survive. As hokey an analogy as that is, I don't believe it's inaccurate. Both the Bond and the Batman franchises had, at best, wandered into obscurity. Batman & Robin was nearly indistinguishable from the Batman television show that Tim Burton's dark Batman seemed so far away from, and Austin Powers was more popular and culturally influential than the Bond movies that had inspired the genre it parodied.

I think Austin Power's success was the biggest clue that Bond's character no longer resonated with audiences the way that it did when Bond (and Sean Connery) was young. I really think that Pierce Brosnan did a fine job as Bond; though he's got many detractors, I think that he carried the role as well as anyone could be expected to. I think the ennui that Brosnan's Bond suffered from had everything to do with the character, and nothing to do with his acting. The camp had become farcical, undermined by Austin Powers, and the age of the gadget-bedecked spy had passed. I think that's obvious in both Casino Royale and Batman Begins; Christopher Nolin's Batman has little use for a utility belt, and Bond's ubiquitous Q is nowhere to be found. While Craig's Bond is equally as charismatic as the old one, he has less charm and more muscle. If there's a change it's that Craig's Bond is more mercenary and less covert operative, no less arrogant, just less suave.

I think it would be easy to chalk that up to early position of the movie in the chronology of the series. It would be easy to say, this is Bond's coming of age film, because it's in this film that he establishes his double-O status, but I think that would be a mistake. The movie isn't set in the '60s they way it would be if the movie-makers had wanted to show Bond at his true beginnings. The Broccolis didn't use Casino Royale to reset James Bond they way that Batman Begins refigures the foundations of the Batman movie mythos, literally retelling stories that have already been told and starting a whole new franchise. Instead they used CR to reinvent Bond for new audiences in a new age of action movies without a break in continuity. Craig's Bond has more in common with Triple X (and Triple H, honestly. Craig got yoked for this film) than he does with the Bond of the '60s and '70s, but movie doesn't seek to cut ties with the franchise and start anew the way that Batman Begins, but rather seeks to pump life into an aging archetype by going back to the beginning and (re)making it resonant with what audiences want without abandoning the canon. And I think Casino Royale accomplishes just that.

But what of the future? Now that the Bond franchise has wandered into their own past to reinvent Bond, will they merely lapse back into clichéd spy film genre, believing it was Craig who succeeded despite the new character, rather than the new character succeeding along with Craig? Or will they continue to paint a grittier, imperfect Bond whose flaws, rather than his lack thereof, mark him as the first among equals? Given the success of Batman Begins and the popularity and buzz around the new old Bond, I think it's unlikely, but it's difficult for even a reinvigorated franchise to maintain its steam. Look what happened to X-Men on the verge of real greatness: Singer left them for Superman, Ratner wrecked everything and then Superman was a mixed bag. So even if the idea sticks, it's hard to say if they'll have the luck to support their previous successes.