Will 007 Still Matter in the Amazon Era?
The news that Amazon had acquired the rights to the James Bond series was largely met with outrage by fans. Against all odds, the 60-year, 25-film, multibillion dollar franchise has to this point been a family business. Producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli adapted Ian Fleming’s book Dr. No in 1962, and he continued to produce the series through 1989’s License to Kill before turning the reins over to his daughter Barbara, who was still the guiding force behind the franchise up until last week.
The Broccolis produced good and bad Bond movies through the years, but even the worst shared a distinct sensibility and sense of continuity. Actors, directors, and screenwriters came and went, but Bond was still Bond. The family ensured that while the films changed with the times, their signature mix of colorful villains, elaborate spy gadgets, and jaw dropping stunt work endured through the ages.
Will a streaming-service/ e-commerce-empire/ internet-infrastructure-giant/ personal-data-clearinghouse keep that same sensibility? Almost certainly not. It seems clear that Amazon’s only interest is to squeeze every dime out of the property before the character hits the public domain in 2035. Instead of a Bond movie every few years that feels like an event, we’ll surely get multiple spinoff movies and TV shows and the same oversaturation that’s hurt Star Wars and Marvel.
The big question is: does it matter? Should it matter? Does every franchise have to go on and on forever, or is it time to let this one go?
It’s hardly a new observation that Bond is firmly rooted in the Cold War (and Cold War-era sexual politics), and since the Cold War ended, (around the same time that the franchise ran out of Ian Fleming books to adapt), the Bond series has struggled to find its central reason to exist. But Bond is rooted in something else, maybe even more important to the character’s appeal: lifestyle porn.
Not porn in the sense of beautiful people having sex, although you do get a fair amount of that in a Bond movie. The essential fantasy of James Bond is that he gets to do things other men only fantasize about, and in the 60s and 70s, that meant glamorous international travel, high-tech gadgets, and shameless womanizing. Not to mention killing bad guys with impunity.
Obviously the shameless womanizing wasn’t a great look then and is a worse one now (more on which anon). But back in the Connery era, international travel was legitimately glamorous, and something the average person didn’t experience (not even all that often in the movie theater, in an era when most movies were still filmed on sets or a Hollywood backlot). Staying in ski resorts and gambling in casinos was reserved for the elite — and members of Her Majesty’s Secret Service — but now they’re fairly common middle-class pursuits, and even people who don’t have the wherewithal to travel overseas can watch a high-resolution travelogue on streaming. A globe-trotting spy is less exciting now that the globe has gotten smaller.
Likewise, Q’s gadgets were sophisticated and clever and usually within the realm of science fiction. But that’s no longer true in an era when the phone in your pocket is better than the one Mr. Spock carried around. (Something Skyfall lampshaded by reducing Bond’s gadgets to a gun and a radio.)
But the biggest part of 007’s original appeal — and the biggest problem with moving the series forward — is women. The “Bond Girl” is the most universal trope of the series, and let’s face it, the opening credits sequences aren’t silhouettes of cars or Bond winning at baccarat. The real adolescent fantasy at the center of James Bond is that every woman he meets wants to sleep with him, and usually does.
The Pierce Brosnan era addressed this openly. Goldeneye introduces Judi Dench as Bond’s steely new boss, who dismisses 007 as, “a sexist, misogynist dinosaur,” before sending him out to stomp around and do his dinosaur thing. The Daniel Craig films let Bond form emotional attachments to women, and even let him maintain a relationship over more than one film. But both of those things were reactions to the original Bond formula. After a certain point, if a central part of your series’ appeal is gone, you have to replace it with something, not just point out that you’ve taken it away.
Which is the question that Amazon must — and will almost certainly fail to — answer. Stripped of the essential things that made him cool, what’s left of 007? If you’re Amazon, a universally recognizable brand name, and probably not much more. If you’re a longtime fan of the series, a legacy that seems sure to be tarnished.
Maybe that’s just one part in a larger tragedy, as every beloved story inevitably gets chewed up by capitalism’s unending hunger for “content.” But maybe it’s simply the close of an era whose end was inevitable. Maybe 007 was a great character for the Cold War who’s no longer relevant and that’s okay. Not every story has to go on forever, and after 63 years James Bond has had a pretty good run. Maybe we can ignore whatever spinoffs and prequels Amazon serves up the same way we’ve been ignoring their Lord of the Rings-adjacent content.
And maybe, the same way Ian Fleming wrapped up a generation’s aspirations and anxieties and lust into one smartly-dressed package, someone will come up with a new irresistible formula to carry us through the next 60 years. The world may have changed since Bond sipped his first vodka martini, but it certainly still needs saving.
