James Bond… Maybe we just shouldn’t…?

It isn’t always easy being a feminist killjoy.  Seriously though, it can be exhausting to always be thinking and analyzing and critiquing… Sometimes you just want to enjoy a bit of pop culture and NOT have to get angry about it.

So two years ago when I heard that the last Daniel Craig “James Bond” film, No Time to Die was coming out and that

1.     007 is a Black woman,

2.     Phoebe Waller-Bridge (of Fleabag genius) was a script-writer, and

3.     There’s a gay moment!...

I was thrilled!  I might get to see a James Bond movie and actually just enjoy it!

I remember a few years back joining my partner and a few friends in a 007 movie marathon.  I had to leave the room.  From the eroticization of people or color, to the misogyny, to the blatant racism and sexism and homophobia… I just couldn’t.

The Daniel Craig Bond films have been less bad, but still very icky on the whole.

But this one! this one had Phoebe Waller-Bridge and a Black Woman 007!  And a GAY MOMENT!  Sign.  Me.  Up.

The release was delayed due to Covid (rightly so as it was about biological weapons) and I actually went to see it in the theatre.  It was the first movie my significant other and I saw in a theatre since pre-pandemic.

I walked in excited.  I walked out annoyed.

Truth be told, I had had a couple of movie-theatre cocktails and a Colorado gummy and wasn’t exactly taking notes… so last week I decided to watch it again, Notes App open, and my head on straight.  And yeah… still annoyed.

The film opens with a little girl and her mother being terrorized by a masked mass-murderer.  The former escapes and the latter is riddled with bullets.  While there wasn’t a dead naked woman in the first fifteen minutes (see my post from 3/2/21), there was still a dead mother and a very scared little girl.  *cue eyeroll* 

Why do women and children need to be terrorized to set a plot in motion?  Are there really no other ideas out there?!

Then we learn about the biological weapon, which uses nano-technology to target specific DNA coding and instantly kill anyone whose DNA profile is targeted (I know… a bit confusing).  And I was like… maybe, we just shouldn’t have biological weapons???

Soon after we meet Lashana Lynch’s Nomi, the new 007!  She offers Bond a ride, suggests sex, and then reveals herself to be a secret agent as well.  All that was fine, I guess, but it became very clear that she would not be a particularly central character and that she’s really just there to navigate the relationship between two old white men, Bond (Craig) and M (Ralph Fiennes).

Bond will have to go on an “off-the-books” mission to help his friend, Felix Leiter (played by one of my very favorite actors, Jeffrey Wright) in Cuba where he meets a new agent, Paloma (Ana de Armas). 

Let’s be honest here… Ana de Armas might be one of the most beautiful people on earth.  But in some ways that’s all she’s there to do.  She grabs Bond, starts to strip him and then when he gets all “bedroom eyes” about it, is bashful and hands him a tuxedo to change into and turns around to give him privacy.  An ongoing theme of the film so far seems to be “Hey look.  Here are hot women.  You think Bond’s going to sleep with them… but he doesn’t!”  It’s almost as if the writers/ producers want credit for sexualizing women without them having to take their clothes off and fall helplessly onto a bed.  We see this device time and time again in this film: when Paloma seductively opens her lipstick… and there’s an ear piece inside, when she tickles Bond’s neck… and then places it in his ear, when she looks like walking sex… but doesn’t have sex.  How… progressive?

Paloma and Bond execute their mission and she notes that she’s only had “three weeks training.” Isn’t she just adorable!?

Paloma is good at her job.  And it’s excellent to see that.  So is our new 007. 

Women.  Who are good at their jobs and (literally) kick ass. 

But do they still have to do it in stilettos and a dress cut so low it reminded me of J Lo at the Grammy’s circa 2000?!

There was a nice moment (I should give credit where credit is due after all!) when the fight is over and Bond and Paloma shake hands.  Like equals.  It was lovely and right and respectful.  But it got me thinking… damn! I am really reaching for scraps here!

So far, the film is an improvement on its predecessors, but still… it’s a low bar to clear.

At this point I’ve met the Black female 007, I can see women not falling into Bond’s bed, but where’s the “gay moment.”

Well, if you blinked you might have missed it.

Bond and Moneypenny have to take things “off” the off-the-books and go to visit the tech guru Q (Ben Whishaw).  When they surprise him at his apartment he’s preparing a lovely dinner, listening to opera, and getting out a fine bottle of wine *wink* *wink* *wink* and then they ask him “Are you expecting someone?” to which he replies, “Yes.  And he’ll be here in 20 minutes.”

Whoa.  I really hope the writers didn’t pull a muscle patting themselves on the back for that one.

Literally the lack of a letter “s” at this point constitutes a “gay moment.”  Even Ben Whishaw (who is gay IRL) told Out Magazine earlier this year:

“I think I thought, ‘are we doing this and then doing nothing with it?’ I remember, perhaps, feeling that was unsatisfying.
[…]

For whatever reason, I didn’t pick it apart with anybody on the film. Maybe on another kind of project I would have done? But it’s a very big machine, I thought a lot about whether I should question it. Finally, I didn’t. I accepted this was what was written. And I said the lines. And it is what it is.”

I mean… come the fuck on!  Do.  Better.

As the film progresses creepy Rami Malek’s Lyutsifer Safin (a Bond villain-miss) kidnaps Bond’s ex-girlfriend, Madeleine (Léa Seydoux), and their daughter (who Bond never knew existed); we see more torture-of-women-and-children-as-plot-device; we learn that the biological weapon was “never intended to be a weapon of mass destruction” (again…  like… maybe, we just shouldn’t have biological weapons???); and we learn that Bond has always loved and never let go of Madeleine, even though he wrongly thought she betrayed him.

There is a nice moment between the two star-crossed lovers.  Bond is honest with Madeleine and opens up to express vulnerability and I was momentarily impressed.  A cis-het man expresses real, actual feelings, from deep down inside his 00-heart, and then he puts his arm around her waist and pulls her into him.  She says, “Don’t” and he doesn’t listen and tells her, “you look incredible.” 

Her “don’t” quickly becomes a “do” and they start kissing… until they are interrupted by Mathilde (Lisa-Dorah Sonnet), their (he still doesn’t know) daughter.

When the film’s main action sequence takes place it was genuinely nice to see our new 007 (Nomi) work hand-in-gun with the old 007 (Bond), that is until she relinquishes the title, gives it back to him, and says, “it’s just a number.”  But it was her number.  She earned it.  Why does the little boy need his toys back?  Can’t he just share?!

The pair works together to destroy Safin’s (Malek) poison island and Nomi leaves to take Madeleine and Mathilde to safety while Bond stays to finish the job.

It won’t end well though… and we know that, it’s telegraphed pretty clearly.

Without getting into too much back and forth here, Bond has to open the silo doors so that the missiles already deployed can hit the interior of the plant without “bouncing off.”  In the struggle to do so he confronts Safin who shatters a vial of the bio-weapon on them both.  The vial was his “insurance policy” guaranteeing that even if he loses, Bond cannot win.  The nano-particles are in both their bodies… Bond is now a walking biological weapon, and if he ever comes in contact with Madeleine, or Mathilde by extension, he will instantly kill them. 

He explains this to Madeleine when she is safely on a nearby island with Mathildle and Nomi and their final dialogue was… dare I say it, touching?  She tells him (finally) that Mathilde has his eyes and he knows now that he is a father, and that to be a good father in this instance means choosing to die to save his family. 

We watch him learn this as he makes the ultimate sacrifice for them and we watch Madeleine’s face as the island blows up in a series of explosions while Q tracks the monitor recording Bond’s vitals until they flatline.

With a stiff drink the remaining members of MI-6 salute Bond (but not a martini… shaken or stirred).

So… was this more “progressive” than other Bond films?  Sure.  Did I actually like it more than others?  I guess… But the thing I realized watching this is that even with a Black female 007, even with Pheobe Waller-Bridge in the writer’s room, even with a “gay moment,” you can’t really bring Bond in to the 21st century (especially not when we’re still calling all the women “Bond Girls”).

Ultimately, the very foundation of the thing is rotten.  Off-the-books governmental spy organizations with no oversight, developing weapons, sending agents off to foreign nations with a “license to kill,” and never once having to answer for the chaos they bring.  They drive million dollar supped up cars on rooftops and destroy homes and historical landmarks, blow up buildings, sink homes into Venetian canals, bomb graveyards, destroy “other” people’s towns and cities, and for what??? Control over weapons they lost track of and never should have made in the first place?

The whole notion of Bond, of secret agents, and CIA and MI-6 spies is part of what’s left over from the pre-cold-war, colonialist, cis-het-white supremacist, patriarchal world order… and there’s no way to “fix” that but to take a note from Bond himself and just burn. it. all. down.

Because, like… maybe, we just shouldn’t anymore???