10 Directors For "Bond 24" and Beyond

With the enormous success of last year’s Skyfall, the James Bond film series has been reinvigorated.  Directed by Sam Mendes, the movie marked a return to the bold, ambitious filmmaking of the franchise’s glory days of the 1960s, and is by far the most successful installment in the post-Connery era.  

EON Productions, the company behind the Bond films, has stated that it wants to return to the two-year production cycle that was fairly standard throughout most of the franchise’s fifty-year history.  Pulling together a new film by 2014 that can match the critical and commercial heights of Skyfall is certainly a tall order, especially considering Mendes has said that he won't return.

A director for Bond 24 – which is rumored to be the first chapter in a two-film story arc – hasn’t yet been announced, but it’s fun to think about who might take over.  Here are ten filmmakers (in alphabetical order) I’d like to see bring us a new Bond film:

Ben Affleck (U.S.)

Resume: Argo (2012), The Town (2010)

Riding high on the huge success of Argo, now would be the perfect time to bring Affleck into the fold at Pinewood.  With his first three films, he’s proved that he can bring entertaining, intelligent thrillers to the masses.  At the helm of Bond, he could strike a good balance between realism and spectacle, keeping the ball rolling after the triumph of Skyfall.

Tomas Alfredson (Sweden)

Resume: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011)

His first – and, to date, only – English-language film was one of the most densely-plotted in recent memory.  It’s no small task to adapt the work of novelist John Le Carre, and Alfredson pulled it off stunningly well.  With the right script, he could bring a welcome complexity to the franchise.

Kathryn Bigelow (U.S.)

Resume: Zero Dark Thirty (2012), The Hurt Locker (2008)

Having a woman take the reins in a franchise known for its misogyny would make a huge statement.  More importantly, we’d be getting an exceptional film from a director whose attention to detail has paid massive creative dividends.  Bigelow knows    how to keep the hearts (and minds) of her audience racing.  As the first female director in the history of Bond, she would have the potential to give the series its best entry.

Brad Bird (U.S.)

Resume: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), The Incredibles (2004)

As far as I’m concerned, Ghost Protocol is now the yardstick by which all subsequent action films are measured against.  And having been a driving force at Pixar, Bird knows how to use visual space.  He could easily continue the grand style that came roaring back in Skyfall, becoming a legend in two blockbuster espionage franchises.    

Martin Campbell (New Zealand)

Resume: Casino Royale (2006), Goldeneye (1995)

Having saved the franchise twice, he has a proven track record with Bond.  Bringing him back for a third installment is a no-brainer.  However, Campbell does his best work as a savior and, with the huge critical and commercial success of Skyfall, it’s not likely that the series will need rescuing anytime soon.  Look for him to be a serious candidate if and when there’s trouble brewing with Bond 26 and beyond.    

David Fincher (U.S.)

Resume: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), The Social Network (2010)

He would undoubtedly take the series to a darker place than ever before, giving Craig complete freedom to mine the depths of Bond’s soul.  As much as I’d love to see this collaboration, it would be a huge risk for EON to take, as it would probably turn off certain audiences.  Fincher’s very distinct style (which trends toward high levels of violence) makes him the ultimate long-shot, and sadly I just don’t see this one happening.

Ridley Scott (U.K.)

Resume: Body of Lies (2008), Blade Runner (1982)

Though known for his work in science fiction, the veteran Scott’s canon includes an incredible variety of genres.  He could certainly deliver a film on the epic scale that EON seems to be returning to, and his penchant for strong female characters could give us a Bond girl for the ages.  Commitments to other projects make it unlikely that we’ll see him direct Craig, but wouldn’t it be cool if he were to helm a film in 2018 starring Michael Fassbender as Bond?

Matthew Vaughn (U.K.)

Resume: X-Men: First Class (2011), Layer Cake (2004)

Craig’s performance in Layer Cake was reportedly a very big factor in him being offered the role of 007; here was even talk of Vaughn directing Casino Royale.  He brought the X-Men franchise back to respectability, and the first half of that movie was jam-packed with Bondian elements.  Vaughn can keep Bond on the right course, and he’s the mostly likely choice for the next installment.      

Joe Wright (U.K.)

Resume: Hanna (2011), Atonement (2007)

He seems to fall in line with the visually-expansive, rich style that EON wants.  Wright could make a seamless transition between Skyfall and Bond 24, keeping the juggernaut rolling consistently.  It is disconcerting that the impressive but small-scale Hanna is his only action picture to date, but he could easily scale up to take on something as big as Bond.

Rupert Wyatt (U.K.)

Resume: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), The Escapist (2008)

He’s got the least experience in the chair of anyone on this list, but in his young career Wyatt has made two exceptional features.  EON seems to have a strong preference for veteran directors, which makes him a long shot.  The franchise isn’t really in need of a fresh take, but perhaps down the road when he has a few more films under his belt, Wyatt may indeed be called upon. 

How Cinema Can Make Us Less "Historically Illiterate"

In an Oscars race where five of the nine nominees for Best Picture were, in some way or another, historical films, the debate about how faithful cinema must be to the past has been reignited.  Numerous critics have railed against filmmakers for taking too many liberties with their portrayals of history, accusing them of misinforming the public.  Yet when people are historically ignorant to begin with, and our children haven’t the slightest understanding of history, there is far less outrage.  This is an incongruity that is unacceptable.  

Take Argo, which won the top prize at the Academy Awards, for example.  Focused on a sidebar of the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979-81, the Ben Affleck thriller took flak for inventing incidents that never really happened, in particular a tarmac chase at its climax.  However, what was more alarming to me was what happened when a friend and I went to see the movie at our local theater.  We were seated near two people, likely in their late twenties or early thirties, and we overheard one ask the other, “Wait, what country is this?”

Or how about Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln?   It caused minor outrage for accidentally misrepresenting the votes of two Connecticut congressmen on the House floor.  But where is the indignation over the fact that, according to the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress 2010 U.S. History assessment,  merely one percent of children in the fourth grade can even recognize a photograph of Honest Abe and give two reasons why he was an important figure?  Or why, at the eighth grade level, only one percent of students can identify and explain civil rights issues?  Shouldn’t it be seen as a monumental disgrace when over half of our high school seniors fail to attain even a basic level of achievement in U.S. History?

The problem isn’t confined to K-12 education.  In an interview with 60 Minutes that aired last November, historian and author David McCullough, a two-time Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Winner, remarked that during lecture tours he was “stunned” at the numbers of intelligent university students who had little or no understanding of our nation’s history.  He said that one young woman told him that until she attended one of his talks, she had “never understood that the original thirteen colonies were all on the east coast.”

Ben Affleck creating a suspenseful chase scene for Argo (something that is well within his right to artistic license) is not the reason why our young people are, in the words of McCullough, “historically illiterate.”  Hollywood is, above all, an entertainment industry, not an educational endeavor.  It is not the job of historical cinema to fill in the cracks caused by the deficiencies of our academic system.  The fundamental problem is that our teachers are failing to give our children the tools to comprehend and think critically about history.

Of course, I understand as well as anyone the enormous influence that movies have on public perception of history.  But if students have a more comprehensive understanding of the subject in the first place, they will be better equipped to interpret movies about the past, and not simply take everything they see on the silver screen as fact.

Part of how we can improve the teaching of our students is by giving historical cinema a greater role in the classroom.  While textbooks are certainly more accurate when it comes to hard facts, movies can immerse our students into history like no other medium.  They present past events in a compelling, dynamic way that encourage children to gain a deeper understanding of the material at hand, showing them what it was like to live in a different time and place.  In this way, history becomes a living, breathing entity instead of a series of dates and figures that are detached from everyday experience.  Cinema imbues history with an emotional, human component that students can relate to.

This is not to say that movies should become the primary methodology for teaching history.  Textbooks are filled with prerequisite information, and thus should still be used to provide foundational knowledge to younger children.  But at higher grade levels, history education should involve a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates historical cinema.  In high school, textbooks should be used in conjunction with narrative history; books like McCullough’s 1776 that tell the stories – and speculate on the thoughts and feelings – of the people who lived the important events of our nation’s past.

Putting cinema to use as an educational tool teaches our students that the past is something that is open to interpretation.  Just like the historical record itself, cinema doesn’t spring up out of thin air, but rather arises from a series of choices made by those who create it.  

A discourse about these decisions will give younger generations a better idea of how – as individuals and as a society – our understanding of history is something that is constantly evolving.  Why did Spielberg choose to make the last months of the sixteenth president’s life the focus of Lincoln rather than taking a more broad approach?  What was the basis for Quentin Tarantino’s portrayals of the brutal slavery of the antebellum South in Django Unchained?

Opening up questions such as these for discussion in our high school classrooms actively engages students, encouraging them think critically about the past rather than simply memorize a series of facts, dates, and battles.  History is not a subject that can be learned by rote.  We need to move far away from the “teaching to the test” that is leading to a “just give us the answer” culture among students.  When history, or any subject for that matter, becomes bubbles to be filled in on a Scantron form, it’s time for a change.

No single approach will be one hundred percent effective in reversing the course of this educational decline.  Watching Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998) isn’t going to make our students World War II experts overnight.  But by incorporating cinema as part of a multidisciplinary curriculum that includes nontraditional and innovative teaching methods, we can start to make improvements.  Filmmakers who deal in the past are not, and should not be, history teachers.  At the end of the day, they are working to create an artistic vision.  But their work can play a valuable part in getting generations of young Americans excited about history.

Moving Past the Punditry Surrounding "Zero Dark Thirty"

When the first trailer for Zero Dark Thirty hit theaters, I heard a lot of complaints that the film had been turned around too quickly.  But I thought the timing was perfect.  Though Americans won’t ever forget the death of Osama bin Laden, there’s only a limited window of opportunity wherein the event will remain fresh in the collective consciousness of the nation.  Had the filmmakers waited, the moment for making an impact would be lost.

And boy, does this movie leave a hell of a mark.  Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, it is an ambitious, pulse-pounding epic that centers on the painstaking, dangerous work by intelligence and military personnel around the globe which culminated in the May 2011 operation that put bin Laden on a slab.

Not surprisingly, Zero Dark Thirty has been the target of political finger-pointing from both sides of the aisle.  Conservatives have labeled it as a piece of pro-Obama propaganda, while liberals deride it as an endorsement of torture in interrogations.   

Neither of these claims are on target.  President Obama is not the movie’s hero.  In fact, the only mention of him occurs during two scenes wherein characters voice criticisms of his policies.  When it comes to torture, the tactic is portrayed as one of many used in the manhunt, and isn’t glorified or given a position of prominence.  To leave it out would be a glaring and irresponsible omission; a failure to take into account the complexities involved in the formidable task at hand.  In any case, the idea that the movie leans heavily toward either the left or right is unfounded.  

Because of the fervor that surrounded the movie long before its release, it’s likely that many of those who scream and rage of political bias came into the film holding preconceived opinions fed to them by pundits.  They are cherry-picking aspects to bemoan without considering them within the context of the film as a whole.  In any case, these are stubborn people who  believe what they want to believe and refuse to be swayed.

This kind of narrow-minded criticism is a disservice to this film.  Zero Dark Thirty deftly tells what is perhaps the defining story of our time, anchored by a brilliant performance from Jessica Chastain.  She stars as the young CIA operative Maya, part of a team working throughout the Greater Middle East in pursuit of leads and informants that will bring them closer to the founder and leader of al-Qaeda.

As she has been doing for the past two years, Chastain commands our gaze like no other actress can.  Hers is a performance of incredible nuance, as she skillfully moves from driven professional to frustrated bystander, hitting every shade in between.  Whether speaking or not, she is continually fascinating to watch.   

What’s important to keep in mind is that Maya – along with many other characters – is a composite: a fictional distillation of real-life individuals.  In actuality, there were far more men and women involved than could be portrayed on celluloid.  Maya may be an invention of the filmmakers, but her character is far from historical heresy.  She is an embodiment of the passion and dedication of those who worked in the trenches.

With its substantial 157-minute running time, Zero Dark Thirty is not a film to see on a full bladder.  Keeping us interested for that long is no easy task; recent movies of similar length (think Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises) quite often come off as bloated or dragged out, sending their audience’s minds wandering.  But this film does not fall prey to the hazards of the modern epic.  Mark Boal’s screenplay is refreshingly devoid of filler, making complete engagement with the story possible at all times.

On the night I saw this film, something odd happened in the theater.  At most other movies I go to, people start talking and milling about – with many in a seemingly mad rush for the exits – as soon as the end credits begin rolling.  

This time was different.  My fellow moviegoers weren’t as eager to leave their seats as they usually are.  There were some who egressed right away, but most just sat there in silence.  That is what this movie does to you.  It is an emotionally draining experience that is very hard to simply walk away from without contemplation.

Zero Dark Thirty offers us a chance to start a conversation about the cost of the war on terror, measured by how far we are willing to test the limits of our morality.  But this dialogue will not succeed in providing clarity if its loudest voices are those of dogmatic pundits who use the film as a tool in the political fracturing of America.  We need to move past polarization if we are ever going to come to grips with the choices our country has made.

Time Travel Gets Thrown for a Loop

 

Looper is a film unlike any other I have seen in quite some time.  Written and directed by Rian Johnson, it’s a highly original science-fiction thriller that makes a human connection to its audience.  

The year is 2044 and Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) makes his living as a “looper.”  Enemies of the crime syndicate to which he is under contract are sent via time travel from the future and arrive before him.  His task is to assassinate them, collect his payment in the form of silver bars strapped to the body, and dispose of the remains, thus eliminating all evidence of their existence.  Joe normally kills without question, but things get muddled when his future self (Bruce Willis) appears as his next victim, and he finds himself unable to pull the trigger.

Sci-fi films often have a certain inaccessibility because they are too far-removed from reality.  Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) features bioengineered humans, flying cars, and off-Earth colonies, even though it takes place only thirty-seven years into the future.  As splendid and visually-stunning as such films are, we can’t help but feel somewhat detached from the characters, who inhabit worlds that have vast differences with our own daily experiences.

Looper overcomes this problem by making its future rather similar to the present-day.  Whereas movies like Blade Runner assume an explosion of scientific advancement over a relatively short timespan, Johnson’s film treats the process as a more natural evolution.  There are clear progressions, but there’s nothing that seems like too far a leap from what we have today.  Instead of becoming preoccupied with dazzling technological wizardry, we are more wired-in to the human stories that are the movie’s focus.   

Of course there is the development of the time machine (invented in 2074), but while it may give rise to the events that unfold, beyond that it doesn’t play a very central role in the film.  There is no pontification about how the process works, leaving more room for the story itself.  “I don’t want to talk about time travel,” Joe is told by his older counterpart, “because if we start talking about it then we’re going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.”

The inner-workings and limitations of time machines themselves are usually an important part of the plot of time travel films.  The  DeLorean DMC-12 of the Back to the Future trilogy (Robert Zemeckis, 1985, 1989, 1990) needs to reach a speed of 88 mph before it will work.  Looper breaks with such conventions by stripping down the element of time travel to the bare minimum: It’s been invented, criminals use it, don’t worry about how it works.  The technology is used as a catalyst to explore moral and ethical quandaries.

And there are plenty of those to go around.  Early on, Young Joe sells out a friend and fellow looper who has gone rogue in order to keep his stash of silver.  His mentality of self-preservation at all costs is turned upside-down when his older version becomes the target.  He knows he has to kill Old Joe, or else he will be hunted down by his boss’ henchmen.  

But Old Joe has a much harder dual responsibility.  The first is protecting his own life.  The second, infinitely more difficult burden, is to make sure that Young Joe doesn’t die, which would lead to Old Joe vanishing from existence.  Both find themselves caught in impossible situations.

Making it believable that two actors were the same man thirty years apart was key.  Looper could have very easily used the time-tested method of split-screen photography, having a single performer play both roles.  But it would have come off as a distracting contrivance.  Instead of falling back on this, the film relies on impeccable casting and makeup.  Willis is just shy of twenty-six years older than his co-star, a gap that is roughly the same as that of their characters.  The two have similar facial features, which are enhanced by prosthetics worn by Gordon-Levitt.

As Young Joe, Gordon-Levitt is the hotshot blazing through life in the fast lane.  A loner who puts himself in front of all others, he never cares about the consequences of his actions.  Willis plays Old Joe as a man that has become tired of these fly-by-night habits and whose only desire is to live out the remainder of his life in peace.  Ideologically the two are worlds apart, and yet they are one and the same.  Their differences show that a man can and will truly change over the course of his lifetime.

Looper does a whole lot more with its $30 million budget than most other films have accomplished with quadruple the funding.  It’s a brilliantly refreshing departure from the predictable action and sci-fi vehicles that have seemed to become the norm as of late. 

"Taken 2" Does What it Does Best

If someone were to tell me five years ago that Liam Neeson would be an action hero, I never would have believed it.  I’d always held him in high regard as an exceptional actor who brought a unique presence to his roles.  From his Oscar-nominated turn as the title character in Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1994), to the Jedi Knight Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (George Lucas, 1999), he had also proved himself to be incredibly versatile.  Even so, it was hard to imagine him as an action star.

But in 2008, I was gladly proven wrong.  That’s when he starred in Taken (Pierre Morel) as Brian Mills, an ex-CIA operative who must single-handedly rescue his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) when she is kidnapped by Albanian sex-traffickers in Paris.  The gritty, hyperkinetic thriller was a breakout hit, adding a new facet to Neeson’s already impressive resume.  Over the next few years he would have starring roles in The A-Team (Joe Carnahan, 2010), Unknown (Jaume Collett-Serra, 2011), and The Grey (Carnahan, 2011), cementing himself as one of the most bankable action superstars in cinema.

In Taken 2 (Oliver Megaton), Neeson returns to the role that redefined his career.  While vacationing in Istanbul, Brian and his family are thrown back into the waking nightmare when  Murad Krasniqi (Rade Serbedzija) – the father of a kidnapper whom Brian killed in the process of tracking Kim down – aims to get retribution by abducting the family, including Brian’s ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen).

The focus of the first film was about a man’s solitary quest to recover his daughter.  It was an allegory for the lengths that a parent will go to in order to protect their child.  The only drawback to this was that Kim was one-dimensional.  Her kidnapping was the catalyst for the action, but beyond this her character didn’t serve very much purpose.  We never really got to see how she reacted to the situation.  It’s all about how the abduction affected Brian, who became a singularly-driven killing machine to save her life.

Taken 2 could have very easily rehashed the plot of its predecessor, with Brian again springing into action as a one-man-show to recover his loved ones.  Thankfully the sequel takes a different approach, focusing on how a family deals with such a terrifying ordeal.

This is mainly accomplished by upgrading Kim to a full-blown supporting character, as opposed to her previous role as a prize that must be reclaimed.  When her parents are taken captive she makes the decision to take action, in the process evading the men sent to kidnap her.  With help from her father, she does things she never thought herself capable of.  Her increased volition is a welcome addition to the story.

There’s a bit less room for the hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners tactics that drove the first film.  A gritty visual style is retained, but what we get here is more large-scale action, including an exceptional car chase that is a vast improvement over that of its forerunner.  The brutal fight and torture scenes are still there, albeit in a diminished capacity.

The film’s rapid-fire editing may prove a bit too frenetic for some.  However, unlike lesser pictures whose quick cuts make certain scenes incomprehensible, the action here never suffers this problem.  It’s enough to give the movie a jolting punch, but not so much that it becomes an exercise in sensory bombardment.  

Like the first movie, Taken 2 understands what kind of film it is, never overreaching.  Its simplicity is its strong suit.  The plot isn’t muddled up by having Brian try to bring down the criminal organization behind the kidnappings.  He seeks to save his family, nothing more and nothing less.  This keeps the story tight and focused, which draws us into the sordid underworld that Brian and his family are forced into.  

We never do feel the same thrill as we did in the original.  It isn't a strictly formulaic exercise in futility, though it's far from the thinking man's action film.  In the end, we can be grateful that Taken 2 is a movie that delivers exactly what it promises.

You Look Smashing for Fifty, Mr. Bond: A Half-Century of 007

On October 5, 1962, Dr. No had its world premiere at the London Pavilion Theatre, marking the first big-screen appearance of James Bond.  The secret agent, codenamed 007, had been featured in a series of novels by Ian Fleming, an ex-British Naval Intelligence Officer who took the name of his protagonist from the author of a book on Caribbean birds.  The low-budget film was the first of twenty-three movies that would become the most popular cinematic franchise of all-time.

In celebration of the series' longevity, today has been dubbed "Global James Bond Day," with a series of events around the world commemorating the films' fiftieth anniversary.  The new single by Adele that will accompany the opening credits of Skyfall – the latest installment that will have its world premiere in London on October 23 – was released earlier today.  Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007 (Stevan Riley, 2012), a new documentary chronicling the franchise's history hit UK cinemas.  And tomorrow night James Bond himself, Daniel Craig will host Saturday Night Live in Manhattan. 

With a movie being released about every two to three years, 007 has been one of the most consistent presences in cinema, and also one of its most durable and relevant characters.  This success has come amidst a wide range of quality and difference in style across the franchise, which has run the gamut from superb, tightly-plotted thrillers to pandering, utterly embarrassing farces.  The official EON Productions movies can be separated into seven eras, each with their own distinguishable characteristics.

Of these, none have come close to the original three films, beginning with Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962), that make up the early Sean Connery era, which is unquestionably the golden age of Bond.  Their hand-to-hand action, dry humor, and comparatively small-scale plot-lines have allowed them to hold up incredibly well over the decades.  From Russia with Love (Young, 1963) transitions perfectly from one scene into the next, and features the series’ most intriguing espionage.  And then there is Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964), which has everything that one could ask for in a Bond film, and is the franchise’s best entry.  Connery is at the top of his game in this era; he is wholly convincing as a man who kills for a living and his Bond seems to get a sadistic pleasure out of doing so.

For the three films that followed in the late Connery era, Bond’s witty euphemisms and brutality remain to a certain degree.  However, these movies’ main preoccupation is spectacle.  Thunderball (Young, 1965) and You Only Live Twice (Lewis Gilbert, 1967) introduced more large-scale action, with plots centered around world domination.  The massive, technologically-advanced Ken Adam-designed volcanic lair of the latter film – which pushed Bond’s exploits into the realm of science-fiction – stands as the most impressive set piece of the franchise.  

But this era’s best film is On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Peter R. Hunt, 1969), even though the subpar George Lazenby (who seems to function as a stand-in for Connery) takes over the role of 007.  A fantastic supporting cast, along with impressive alpine action sequences, makes up for Lazenby’s flaws and what results is one of the most compelling entries in the series.  Unfortunately, it would be the last Bond film that could truly stand on its own for quite some time.

A trio of Guy Hamilton-directed films would comprise the early Roger Moore era, which neglected the biting humor that had epitomized the series to that point in favor of a more campy, comedic feel.  The clearly-aged Sean Connery returns for one more go-around in the unexciting, blatant cash-grab that is Diamonds Are Forever (1971).  With his first appearance in the blaxploitation-themed Live and Let Die (1973), Moore brings a less brutal, more romantic feel to the character of Bond.  This initial outing would be his best, but regrettably it was directly followed by The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), whose trite humor ranks it among the worst films of the entire series.

The late Moore era would be rife with lowest-common-denominator humor, and rely far too heavily on the formula of global peril.  The first two entries, The Spy Who Loved Me (Gilbert, 1977) and Moonraker (Gilbert, 1979) are virtually the same movie.  In the former, a megalomaniac attempts to wipe out humanity in order to start a master race in an undersea colony; the latter features a similarly-inclined villain who desires to repopulate the planet from a space station.    

A toned-down, revenge focused story in For Your Eyes Only (John Glen, 1981) would provide momentary respite, but the series quickly reverted to its over-the-top corniness with Octopussy (Glen, 1983).   The low point of the franchise comes during the opening sequence of A View to a Kill (Glen, 1985), wherein the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” plays as Bond evades his attackers on a snowboard fashioned from a snowmobile rudder.  Like Connery before him, Moore – who at fifty-seven could pass for the grandfather of his female co-stars – had overstayed his welcome, and the Bond films became a stale and tired shell of their former glory.

EON Productions took a radical left turn with its move into the Timothy Dalton era.  The two films brought things back down to earth, featuring more scaled-back, personally-driven storylines and action that was more realistic.  The Living Daylights (Glen, 1987) was the freshest Bond film in nearly two decades, having no patience for the hokey gimmickry of the Moore eras.  Dalton was a far less suave, more cold-blooded James Bond than his predecessors, and in Licence to Kill (Glen, 1989) he explored a darker side of the character that hadn't yet been seen in the movies.

The six-year hiatus that followed was an uncertain time for Bond.  A series of legal disputes repeatedly delayed production on a new movie, leading Dalton to walk away from the role in 1994.  Albert R. Broccoli – who had co-produced all but one of the previous sixteen films – was in failing health.  But most important was the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, which led to murmurs that James Bond would be an outmoded and irrelevant character in the new geopolitical landscape.  A revival of the Bond films seemed like a long shot.

As it turned out, the fall of communism was the best thing that could have happened to 007.  With GoldenEye (Martin Campbell, 1995) the series was transitioned beautifully into a post-Cold War world, ushering in the Pierce Brosnan era.  The film’s high-stakes action and scathing, self-deprecating humor made it the finest installment in decades.  Though Tomorrow Never Dies (Roger Spottiswoode, 1997) features one of the series’ most impressive car chase scenes, neither it nor The World is Not Enough (Michael Apted, 1999) would live up to Brosnan’s first outing.

The Brosnan era concluded with Die Another Day (Lee Tamahori, 2002), a ridiculously over-the-top, CGI-laden debacle with characters who are merely cardboard cutouts in front of needlessly bloated action.  Brosnan– who is at once ruthless and romantic, combining the best qualities of the four actors that came before him – had played an exceptional Bond but his performances were ruined by EON’s obsession with continually upping the ante, making each film “bigger and better” than the last, which only led to mediocrity.  The franchise had lost its way, and it was time for a 180-degree turnaround.

It got just that with the current Daniel Craig era, which has been defined by its gritty action and focus on Bond’s personal demons and character flaws.  Craig, who was a highly controversial casting choice, silenced the critics in Casino Royale (Campbell, 2006), which reboots the franchise and follows Bond on his first mission as 007.  The second-best film in the series, it is not only a great Bond movie, but an excellent film in its own right, something the franchise hadn’t seen in decades.  

Craig – who returned in the revenge-themed Quantum of Solace (Marc Forster, 2008) – plays Bond as a broken man who uses violence, sex and alcohol as a shell to protect the highly vulnerable psyche that lies inside, and his portrayal is the closest to the “anonymous blunt instrument” that Fleming had imagined.  His run will continue later this autumn with Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012), which should benefit from the four-year layoff that resulted from co-distributor MGM’s financial troubles.

More time has always seemed to bode well for the franchise; GoldenEye and Casino Royale came after six and four-year gaps, respectively, and both were vast improvements over the films that had come directly before them.  As is tradition, Skyfall's plot is a closely-guarded secret, and only shreds of the story can be gleaned from trailers and promotional material.  Craig is set to star in two more films, which EON has said will return to a two-year production cycle.  It could be difficult to keep the quality up within a tighter timeframe, but the Craig era has yet to disappoint so it’s not something to worry about just yet.

Though not all of them have been cinematic masterpieces, the Bond films have been successful for half a century because of their chameleonic nature.  Their plots have always adapted to reflect the zeitgeist of their respective times, and the vastly different interpretations of James Bond by the six men who have portrayed him have  kept the series fresh.  Bond may step out of the limelight every now and again, but the franchise will continue in perpetuity, with new iterations of Bond facing the dangers of the future.  Amongst all the upheavals and uncertainty that the world may go through, one thing has been and will remain inevitable:

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN

Is There an Indy for Our Generation?

As we exited the theater where we had just seen the IMAX version of Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, a special one-week run to promote yesterday's release of the complete Indiana Jones series on Blu-Ray, my friend Rohit posed an intriguing question.  “Does our generation have a movie like that?”  In the last decade, had there been a film that could match its explosive popularity?

My first instinct was to take a look at the numbers.  During its initial run in 1981, plus re-releases in the two subsequent years, Raiders earned over $242 million at the domestic box office, making it the 75th highest-grossing film of all time.  This seems anemic when compared to a contemporary hit like Marvel’s The Avengers (Joss Whedon), which raked in $207 million in its opening weekend alone en route to a total of over $621 million.

But raw dollars provide an inferior way to compare films that were released decades apart.  Ticket prices, like any other commodity, are subject to the forces of inflation and any legitimate comparison must take this into account.  Translated into 2012 dollars Raiders’ adjusted domestic gross is over $706 million, which is nineteenth all-time.  Since its release merely six films have surpassed it and only one of these – James Cameron’s Avatar (2009) – came out in the twenty-first century.

Hollywood isn’t necessarily putting out a product that’s vastly inferior to its older films (a complaint that I hear from audiences of all ages).  Of course there is a good share of crap, but if we look back through cinematic history we find that that’s always been the case. So why is it so difficult for more recent films to rack up gaudy box office numbers?  

It has to do in part with the accessibility of home theater systems (a concept that was, until recently, reserved for the wealthy) which mimic the cinematic experience in the comfort of one’s own living room.  And of course the advances in cable, satellite, and streaming services have given us access to a massive selection of channels and on-demand content.  There’s less of an incentive to actually go see a movie at the theater when there is all this entertainment available anytime the mood strikes.

However, people don’t seem to be shutting themselves inside with their flat screens; going to the movies is still an American pastime.  Compared to 1981, twenty percent more tickets were sold in 2011.  But whereas 1981 saw 173 movies get released, in 2011 there were 601 releases.    

The sheer volume of movies coming out in theaters has made it an arduous task for contemporary films to rival the all-time greats.   Movies with broad appeal just aren’t getting made anymore.  Market segmentation is the norm, and films are mostly tailor-made to attract particular demographics.

In my generation, there are a few blockbuster films that could contend with the appeal, drawing power, and sheer quality of Raiders.  Peter Jackson’s epic Lord of the Rings trilogy earned a Best Picture Oscar for its final installment.  The Harry Potter series maintained impressively high standards across eight films.  And with his Batman trilogy, Christopher Nolan elevated the superhero film to an art form.         

Taking nothing away from their artistic and aesthetic value, these films are all based on well-established, already popular stories from comic books and literature.  Fans of the source material want to see how Hollywood will interpret the characters they have loved for years, if not decades.  And bingo, there’s the built-in audience I mentioned before.  It’s become a safer financial bet for studios to rely on recognizable characters rather than creating films that are genuinely original. 

That isn’t to say that Raiders came out of a vacuum; George Lucas and Steven Spielberg admittedly were inspired by classic cinema.  But their genius lied in their ability to resurrect the thrilling elements of the 1930s and 40s film serials and combine them with the dazzling techniques of modern moviemaking in an original way.  

Their film also spoke to multiple generations.  Older viewers who fondly recalled weekend afternoons spent in movie houses would come for the nostalgia, and their younger counterparts would line up to see Harrison Ford, who was fast becoming one of the biggest superstars of the 1980s.  And, let's face it, who doesn't want to see Nazis get the snot kicked out of them?  The combination of these elements made for an unforgettable cinematic experience.  Quite simply, one cannot ask for anything more out of a movie.  

When I consider the films that I grew up with in the 2000s decade I'm reminded of Marcus Brody, who has just informed Indy that he'll be sent to find the Ark of the Covenant.  "Nothing else has come close," he says.  And indeed, Raiders of the Lost Ark has a universal appeal that hasn't been approached by any film since, and certainly none from my generation.


(Box office data obtained from boxofficemojo.com)