The thing about Bond

I think (or would like to believe) that as a literally mature society, we realise that James Bond is particularly stylised action hero. That is to say, we know that there cannot exist a secret agent who is able to fight off an machete wielding psychopath, get poisoned, suffer a heart attack and be defibrillated, only to return in an immaculate tuxedo minutes later, ready to play poker with all the witty quips a sophisticated British gentlemen should have at all times.

Despite his evolution in recent times into a 'grittier' and 'more believable' character (culminating in the dirty tortured and generally bad-ass Daniel Craig incarnation) I can't quite seem maintain my suspension of disbelief. In the lead-up to the release of the much-anticipated Skyfall, I began re-watching Casino Royale with the intent of finishing the evening with Quantum of Solace. A strange thing happened - I couldn't finish Casino Royale. Craig, despite his more 'real' portrayal of Bond, was still too unbelievable for comfort.

First - a brief history. Ian Flemming created the character James Bond out of his experiences in Naval Intelligence during World War II. What resulted was a thoroughly romanticised image of a 'secret agent' who was all of suave, impulsive and deadly with a sharp wit to boot. The mix of all these things created a rather exciting character that made for some riveting film making. To describe the effect that he had on popular culture, one can only really fall back to an cliche - "men want to be him, and women want to be with him".

"I'm very well dressed, and you're about to die"

This romanticism of the spy industry worked back in the 50s when we weren't so obsessed with 'gritty realism'. We would happily watch the likes of Sean Connery and Roger Moore face off with any number of foreign and very nasty henchmen and come out without a single scratch, physical or mental. Being in the mood for suave seduction after having killed one (or several) men was a staple for the first half of the Bond franchise.

With the 80s through to the 00s, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan brought a more tortured air to Bond in an attempt to make him more three dimensional. Both Dalton and Brosnan had a bone to pick. Bond's otherwise incredible aloofness was portrayed as a psychological necessity of the mental scars accrued by a man who has love and lost far too many women and killed far too many men. 

These portrayals worked in their own contexts. In the 50s, 60s and 70s, we never demanded gritty realism or psychologically complex protagonists in our genre films. We went to the cinema and saw Bond because we expected gadgets, explosions and scantily clad women. In the interest of satisfying an increasingly intellectual audience, Dalton and Brosnan began to move that trend along to modern day. But remember that even they existed in an era when the cast of The Expendables were all at the height of their fame. We didn't care too much about realism in action movies at that point.

Dalton, angry Bond

Given the recent wave of films, books and video games, however, we've been demanding a lot more grit and reality out of our action heroes. Since then and now, we have had Die Hard, The Matrix, The Dark Knight, all the Call of Duty video games and extensive media coverage of both Gulf Wars. All of these things have given the public an increased insight into the nature of 'action', and therefore what is and what is not possible.

Couple this with a general increase in the quality of education in literature and we have a movie going audience where the old action movie tropes just won't cut it. Even for your average "show me some explosions" Joe. It becomes very hard not to ignore the image of Austin Powers when watching Sean Connery work his magic on screen.

In this context, I concede the creative step between Die Another Day and Casino Royale was a good one. Both the Daniel Craig films have presented a more believable Bond who is more well adapted to our modern tastes. This Bond sweats, destroys pristine white shirts with some fairly gruesome blood stains and actually has open wounds and raw knuckles that persist after each fight. To top it all off, Eva Greene as the main Bond Girl of the film doesn't take killing so lightly, ending up sobbing in the foetal position under a cold shower after witnessing Bond kill several men.

So why did I stop halfway through Casino Royale? The answer lies in when I stopped - on the train to Montenegro when Vesper Lynd and Bond are introducing themselves to each other for the first time. That conversation in content and execution had reeked of all the elements of Bond that didn't age well. 

Lynd put it well when she expressed her disbelief in the idea that Her Majesty's Secret Service chooses to wage the success of a mission on one man's poker skills. As much as the script makes efforts to convince Lynd (and therefore the audience) that this is, in fact, not the dumbest idea in the universe, the core concept stated in simple terms still stinks of the overly fantastical.

Bond himself is still an Oxbridge educated man who enjoys his fine liquor and high flying lifestyle He eats fine lamb on a first class European train trades quip for quip with the sassy leading lady.  We are supposed to believe that a man who is horrifically scarred by war and dangerously cynical can still indulge himself in these aristocratic niceties and bourgeoisie conversations.

I concede that changing either of these two elements, the plot devices or the man himself, would be removing the 007 out of a 007 story. But despite how valiant Eon Production's efforts are in modernisng the international man of mystery, I'm not sure I can enjoy him on the serious level that Eon is trying to pitch.

Or maybe I'm thinking about this too much.