The 60th anniversary of James Bond will be celebrated next month. And the movie franchise’s current producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, spoke to Variety about their vision for the next actor they cast in the role.
Both Wilson and Broccoli, who is a director of the U.K. chapter of women’s advocacy org Time’s Up, have left their mark on Bond, particularly in humanizing the once-womanizing spy and ensuring more fulfilling, meatier roles for the female stars of the franchise. These are qualities that will continue in the next films, says Broccoli.
The producers think that Daniel Craig “cracked Bond open emotionally” and brought audiences into the character’s “inner life.” Ian Fleming, who wrote the Bond stories, sometimes tried to lend the character some depth. For instance, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Bond falls in love with a woman, Tracy, but no sooner are they married than she is shot dead by Bond’s nemesis. And it’s just as well, really, since Bond isn’t exactly husband material. He’s basically a highly functioning sociopath whose ruthlessness proves useful to the British secret service.
The James Bond movies are entertaining not because of the protagonist’s “inner life,” but for the much more superficial reason that they are action movies. Bond kills “bad guys” (or at least, guys worse than him), seduces beautiful women, and drives fast and fancy cars. All this is entertaining — a cheap thrill that can be enjoyed as such without silly pretensions. Looking for moral depth in a James Bond movie is like trying to find a lanternfish in a rock pool.
Broccoli says that “Bond is evolving just as men are evolving. I don’t know who’s evolving at a faster pace.” What does this even mean? The only thing that’s changed is Hollywood fashions.