JAK®;23295145 said:
But regardless, the way Bond is written in the Fleming novels is from the perspective of an agent. Ian Fleming was an Intelligence Officer, after all.
It's not so much a problem with making it personal as much as it constantly trying to subvert Bond and doing it too heavy-handedly. I actually liked Licence To Kill which was a revenge story, and Goldeneye was decent even though the bad guy was part of Bond's past.
But I miss the mentality of the Connery-era Bond where it was clear that he had a duty and was doing it for his country. Roger Moore nailed it as well. I loved The Spy Who Loved Me because Bond wears his Naval Officer uniform and commands other soldiers at the end.
It's just that every Bond film since 1989 has tried to be all "This time... it's personal" and it's getting old.
You hold a gross misunderstanding of Fleming's novels, and if you cite Casino Royale as good because it was "Bond doing his job again" than that speaks to you not really getting it.
Casino Royale, next to On Her Majesty's Secret Service, is perhaps the MOST personal Bond story Fleming wrote. Bond literally falls in love, and the "spy plot" resolves itself 3/4 of a way through the novel, letting the rest meditate on the destruction of a relationship due to the toxic nature of espionage.
I'm a purist. No actor portraying Bond - including the great vaunted Connery -- is greater or more important than Fleming. Craig, whether fans like it or not, represents the closest representation to Bond since OHMMSS. Fleming's Bond was largely humorous, and when he was it was in a cutting way. He was largely bitter most of the time, and took an almost personal insult in every single case he took. He delighted in taking on the Bond villain for the pure principle of "my malehood versus his malehood."
Bond has a sense of duty, but it's actuated by an intense habit to make EVERYTHING personal. Look at his feud with Hugo Drax in Moonraker, if you've read the novel. He goes down their first, yes, to take on Drax but it their battle of wits becomes insanely personal. Hell, even as they play cards at Blades Bond is already personally invested in teaching this man a lesson. In Diamonds are Forever, he at first takes on the job and then largely becomes more and more invested in punishing -- not killing -- Jack Spang and the others for the mere sake of how they disgust him. In Live and Let Die, his emotions and anger from Vesper's betrayal carries over into him taking on SMERSH. When Felix is mauled, it becomes insanely personal. In fact, M picks him SPECIFICALLY because Bond has a personal history with SMERSH. In Dr. No, Strangeways and Quarrel's deaths both motivate Bond to take the job more seriously and more personal. Thunderball, we have much the same disgust at criminality that motivates Bond. Goldfinger is perhaps Fleming's least personal Bond story, but Bond's male rivalry with Goldfinger himself is very clearly personal and goes beyond Queen and Country.
In From Russia With Love, Bond does not care about the Lector. But it's not out of duty, it's because the Lektor is a clear ploy and set up by the Russians. Why would he care? In the novel, Bond goes out of a sort of boredom, excited by the prospect of a job after having months of boredom. He then finds himself feeling sorry for Tatiana and things become personal when he falls for her and Karim is murdered. In the film, it sets it up much the same sans the boredom Bond was feeling prior to the job. He heads to Istanbul out of a perverse intellectual curiosity.
If you look at most of Fleming's novels, the constant theme is that the duty of Bond doing his job never stays that way, and that each mission has a much more, unforeseen personal toll on Bond each and everytime. But whatever the personal toll, Bond must always reign in his personal feelings by the climax in order to get the job done, which inevitably costs him more and more personal angst than had he been able to exercise his personal feelings. This is reinforced twice in QoS when Bond lets Green live so he can get the information for M (which is the boon of the story) as well as when he spares the life of the man who conned Vesper (also allowing them more info). This takes place in the novels too, where Bond is either denied his revenge or personal emotive satisfaction, or puts it aside to get the job done. Just look at the first few Bond novels, where Bond himself never actually gets to directly kill the Bond villain. SMERSH kils Le Chifree, Mr. Big dies faraway in an explosion that while caused by Bond is very impersonal, Hugo Drax dies by his own hand with Bond just focusing on surviving, Jack Spang dies in a train crash that is a errant consequence of his and Bond's fight. In all these cases, Bond is denied personal satisfaction yet gets the job done. By the time Bond arrives at On Her Majesty's Secret Service, he's tired and eager for real love -- thus why he finds Tracey. And in You Only Live Twice, we get a sense of what's left over after Bond's last attempt to escape the poison of the spy business fails -- he is a suicidal wreck of a man hellbent on revenge.
I'm not saying Bond movies are prefect. I think some people treat the films with more reverie then the source material, which created one of the greatest film icons of all-time. ANd I don't knock the Brocollis too much, because they have helmed a character who has existed for so long and so permeates our culture. I do find the Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig movies more engaging because they begin to challenge Bond's emotional responses to his job, much the same way Fleming did with Bond.
But to sit here and say that because Roger Moore wore a suit and ordered around soldiers for Queen and Country, somehow made him a better Bond and more Bond -- that's just entirely false. Even Fleming, in his novels, has a constant theme of insubordination on the part of Bond. It was never for Queen and Country so much as it was for M -- and the principal Bond always returns to, and is always loyal to, is getting the job done.
Craig perhaps embodies that perfectly in that he is a bulldozer spy that does not stop until he's crushed you and finished you. He is an agent that M wields specifically because he is a blunt instrument that gets the job done, and finds a personal investment in each and every case.
