The latest James Bond theme song has been released, and I've had to put myself on suicide watch. Is it too much to ask from a Bond film to offer us some sex, snobbery, and sadism as the world's favorite secret agent romps across Europe, vetting dangerous women, wearing great suits and killing enemies with cold-hearted satisfaction? Apparently, it is, as we won't be getting any of that in the latest installment of the franchise, No Time to Die.
00:05:42.260Goldfinger's not my favorite one, even though I like watching it, and it has those iconic elements.
00:05:48.660And I like, I, in the book, Pussy Galore is a lesbian.
00:05:54.040And that's hinted, explicitly, that's hinted at in the movie, that she hangs out with women in this high-flying acrobatics act and so on.
00:06:03.660And then Bond takes her for a role in the hay, quite literally, and, you know, kind of, you know, I think right in the 21st century, it's viewed as a little bit rapey.
00:06:14.760But, you know, he asserts his will over her and kind of wins her over and makes her good.
00:06:22.700In the book, at the end of it, she is a lesbian, and in the final lines, it's kind of like, you know, how can I be a lesbian when I'm in bed with James Bond?
00:06:32.720So, you know, Fleming, much like Ed Dutton, had a weird fascination with homosexuality.
00:06:38.780He was kind of, it was in his head a lot.
00:06:41.720But he's always writing about lesbians and, you know, weird deviancy and things like that.
00:06:47.300But, yeah, I think the movie kind of has a little few too many kind of plot holes and it's a little bit clanky.
00:06:55.280So my favorite Bond movie is, I have a few that I really like.
00:07:21.740So it's kind of a, whether you think of that as a tragedy or as the ultimate fantasy where, you know, Bond never really wanted to be bourgeois.
00:07:30.920He always wanted to work for Her Majesty's Secret Service.
00:07:49.420Lazenby was a male model and in this kind of swashbuckling Australian guy.
00:07:56.180And these stories you hear about him, he was just totally out of control.
00:08:00.040You know, drinking, sex, you know, all that kind of stuff.
00:08:06.000But he was actually a pretty good actor.
00:08:08.940And he did humanize Bond and you do feel for him.
00:08:11.840And that is the kind of tragic brokenness of the Bond character is that he can't ultimately be middle class.
00:08:19.040He, you know, the Bond films and books are like a fantasy of the middle class where it's like I have this boring job.
00:08:25.380But, you know, I wish I were out driving fast cars and wearing cool clothes and killing bad guys and bedding all these hot, exotic, dangerous women.
00:08:34.680But then Bond's fantasy is to be middle class.
00:08:37.980So his fantasy is, you know, oh, I think I'm actually just going to give it up and leave the Secret Service and settle down and have some kids and some, you know, you know, and kind of be boring in a way.
00:08:49.460And so but that was taken away from him.
00:11:39.120And then in View to a Kill, in 1985, he's searching for like a lost locket with a microchip or some, you know, some MacGuffin of some kind.
00:11:48.040And then he he invents the sport of snowboarding.
00:11:53.420And then he ends up in like a little submarine and there's some Swedish gal that he, you know, beds, you know, who's probably yeah, she's working for the Secret Service.
00:14:36.200Skyfall Skyfall got almost like cheesy in places to the point where it didn't I don't know, it didn't seem to fit Bond or trying to make it too like impactful.
00:14:45.700Yes, to it was it was pretentious due to the fact that Sam Mendes directed it and it it became this sad Bond who's weeping over his mother, M, Judi Dench and so on.
00:15:02.020And so at the end of it, it's almost like Bond is holding a Bond, you know, every as we know in the formula at the end of a Bond movie, he's with some chick and a boat or, you know, underneath the parachute or underwater or whatever, whatever the hell he's he's up to.
00:15:17.160In this one, he's holding Judi Dench in a church who's dead.
00:15:26.640That was, you know, that was, you know, the closing scene of the film.
00:15:29.800Effectually, there's a little bit of an epilogue there.
00:15:32.440But, you know, I think to get back at it, I think that I think that Daniel Craig has never made a Bond movie in the sense that he's always been rebooting the Bond franchise.
00:15:45.960And then once Sam Mendes got involved, he directed Skyfall and Spectre.
00:15:51.500There's been all this anxiety about being Bond.
00:15:54.920And so, you know, when you go back to Casino Royale, you know, comparing that theme song to this theme song that we just got.
00:16:05.600I mean, the theme song was sung by Chris Cornell and Casino Royale, who's this, you know, 90s sound garden front man, like 90s alt rock, you know, you know, kind of saying like the coldest blood runs through my veins.
00:17:26.820He doesn't have sex with the main lead protagonist.
00:17:30.240They're all just this these broken characters.
00:17:33.440And then you get to Skyfall and he's already a has-been.
00:17:36.720So he hasn't ever made a Bond movie yet.
00:17:40.060And yet he's been treated as a has-been.
00:17:42.300And all the new diversity hires in MI6 are kind of saying like, oh, can we teach this old dog new tricks, you know, and so on.
00:17:50.020And then in Spectre, they just amp that up.
00:17:52.400And it's like, we need to get rid of the whole double O section.
00:17:55.660We can't have James Bond, any form of James Bond, because we now have, you know, humane surveillance done by, you know, a Soros-like group or something like that.
00:18:05.860So there's this weird aspect with Craig where he, and with Eon, that they can't make a Bond film.
00:18:13.980And now we've reached a point where they still can't make one.
00:18:17.500So many people have been asking, you know, whenever I'll like, you know, occasionally listen to a Bond podcast or something.
00:18:25.400They'll ask for like, we just want a formulaic Bond film.
00:18:53.000And I think it's expressive of this on two levels.
00:18:56.220First off, this deep anxiety about Bond existing in this world is this kind of 20th century avatar.
00:19:02.040But then also, I think the subversion engaged in by Sam Mendes as a subtly subversive director.
00:19:11.780There's kind of an irony there as well.
00:19:15.260Like, at the same time where there's so few original ideas coming out of Hollywood and everything is a reboot or a remake of something from 70s or 80s,
00:19:25.140the Bond franchise, which was the one franchise that, like, all the audience wants really is a carbon copy of the Bond formula.
00:19:31.740It's the one franchise where they won't give that, and they're trying to come up with this sort of character arc.
00:19:37.160They'll bring it in a different direction.
00:19:38.620But then, ultimately, the only thing that they can actually do is they bring him on the character arc he has to go on,
00:19:44.620and then they just reverse it because there's no other direction to go.
00:19:47.520It's like, why else do you do it, Bond?
00:19:49.200And at the same time, yeah, they're, you know, they're filling the diversity around the character of James Bond.
00:19:53.760I don't know if they ever go to, you know, a black or female James Bond.
00:19:57.700I think that might be a step too fair, at least for the next one, anyway.
00:20:02.160But Billie Eilish is kind of a good representation as well.
00:20:07.180Like, Billie Eilish is kind of a, she's like a pure simulacra.
00:20:11.760Like, Billie Eilish is like, you know, she talks about coming from nothing and growing up poor,
00:20:16.800even though, like, she was homeschooled, and her parents are musicians,
00:20:19.960and all her siblings were homeschooled, and they're musicians.
00:20:23.680And it seems like kind of an upper-middle-class background.
00:20:26.100And she has this, like, sort of East Coast accent.