Ever
heard of the DVD board game “Scene It”?
The James Bond edition wound up in my hands for Christmas, 2004. On New Year’s Day, 2005 I hosted a family get
together at my house, where we ate and drank and laughed and enjoyed the day, until
I convinced everyone we should play this new “Scene It” game. We were supposed to divide up into teams, but
my family’s knowledge that I was a true James Bond aficionado meant that they
were all going to gang up on me, a team of 12 against yours truly. And I still won. By a considerable margin. After that, no one ever wanted to play me
again.
My
fondness for the James Bond franchise goes back to a very early age. I was not even ten years old when I watched
the movie “Goldfinger” for the very first time, and I became hooked. Every time a television network here in
America would show the films, I was in front of the TV. In 1977, I got to see a Bond movie in the
theater for the first time with “The Spy Who Loved Me.” And it was about that same time that I came
into possession of paperback copy of the novel of the same name by Ian
Fleming. That added a whole new
dimension to my understanding of Bond’s world: the book was nothing like the
movie, and I had to go find the other novels and see if the same thing held
true. I’ve since seen the theatrical release of every Bond movie after TSWLM,
and collected Fleming’s Bond novels in nice, special edition hard covers.
I got my
first VCR while I was still in college, and shortly after I graduated, the Bond
franchise celebrated its 30th anniversary by releasing its back catalogue of
films on video. Naturally, I collected
all of them. I then did the same thing
when all the movies were released as “Special Edition” DVDs not even ten years
later. (EON Productions has certainly
taken a fair amount of my money over the years.
This is why I’ve decided to put the “Ultimate Edition” James Bond
collection on BluRay as a Christmas gift list item, so that someone can make a
present of it for me.)
So what
does one do with all this pent up, pedantic knowledge of a film franchise? Well, if you’re a member of an online forum,
and the subject of Bond comes up, you join in the discussion. A question came up: “what was the best Bond
movie ever made?” Titles got thrown around
like pennies being thrown in a fountain, so I interjected. “That’s the wrong question to ask.” You can probably guess the response – a
nearly universal “Huh? Why?” I maintain it’s the wrong question to ask
because now that we’ve had 22 EON production films, and one rival production in
1983, and now that we’re onto the sixth actor to play the role of James Bond,
all of the films are simply too different in tone, content and performance to
be fairly judged against one another.
Forget comparing apples and oranges, the question of which Bond movie is
“the best” is like trying to pick a winner out of a basket of mixed fruit. You have to judge each film on its own
merits, and do it from the perspective of what contemporary audiences got out
of it at the time it was released.
That
online conversation took place around April, 2011, and in hindsight, it was a
bit of a case of famous last words. The
response to my position that all 23 films featuring the character James Bond
had to be judged individually was met with amusement. I was asked to prove it. So I did.
Starting with “Dr. No,” I took each movie in order of its release, and
wrote what amounted to an essay deconstructing its various parts and subjecting
them to scrutiny. And unlike a film
critic, reviewing the latest Bond film only, and wanting to seem both objective
and slightly imperious in their writing, I took on the challenge openly
acknowledging my unabashed fan status.
I
finished my review for “Quantum of Solace,” the most recent Bond film, sometime
this past June. All told, more than a
year has elapsed since I’d thrown down my gauntlet. Somewhere along the line, it occurred to me
that if compiled into a manuscript, these essays might actually be a worthy
idea for a book. As far as I knew, no
one had ever taken on a comprehensive evaluation of the Bond films. That’s where Blue Hour Publishing enters the
picture, offering to allow me to do just that.
I
submitted the manuscript, and, like any writer hoping to see his first work
published, waited anxiously for word.
The word came out on Friday, October 5, 2012, that it had been
released. It’s a very surreal feeling to
go to Amazon, type in your own name in the search bar, and get a result. But a book called “Licence: Reviewed” does come
up as a search result, and it’s a bit like being a proud father for the first
time.
Not only
did the release of “Licence: Reviewed” coincide nicely with the 50th
anniversary of the original theatrical release of Dr. No, the impact of Bond on
the silver screen is just about to happen again with the release of “Skyfall”
this autumn. I’ve been asked what
expectations I have for this film. Well,
with the reboot of Bond effectively carried off over the last two movies, I’m
expecting this one to get back to more of the traditional formula in that I
believe we’ll get to see Moneypenny and Q this time around. Having said that, I don’t think it will feel
particularly like the traditional formula we got used to prior to “Casino
Royale.” Bond got rebooted, so I expect
the dynamics of the relationship Bond has with both Moneypenny and Q will also
get a re-tooling. Beyond that, I
genuinely have no idea where EON Productions will take us, and I have to admit,
I rather like it that way.
50 Years of James Bond.
