Movie Moments XXXIV: July 2020 (Brosnan Bond edition)

After the Twilight movies successfully shredded all my heartstrings, James Bond is a relief. James Bond wants nothing from me. James Bond is going to do what he does with or without my attention. James Bond DGAF because his life is a series of daydreams spit out by the patriarchy.

Goldeneye, 06 July 2020, streamed via Netflix

• Ah, Sean Bean. Another role in your streak of this-dude-is-hella-doomed career. “For England, James” pales dramatically in comparison to “My brother, my captain, my king.”
• Nonsense Bond Girl Name: Xenia Onatopp. They’re working way too hard for that joke to work.
• Ah, that’s right--they attempted to counter the legacy of Bond’s misogyny by casting Dame Judi Dench as M. Her introduction: Resentment from a male underling, then a statement to make sure we all know she has children. She does not smile. Her haircut is severe. Her earrings, ornate. She drinks bourbon. She calls Bond a misogynist to his face.
• Brosnan’s excellent at projecting a shield of “slightly amused” 90% of the time. It makes the moments of anger an interesting surprise. Like, if they saw him angry in more than flashes, they would yoink that license to kill immediately.
• The problem with Bond maintaining the glib persona, however, means that it’s difficult to buy his grief/vengeance about Trevelyan, let alone pain at his betrayal.
• It’s 1995, in the middle of rural-ish Russia, and somehow there’s a computer with internet on a partially exploded train.
• You gotta...you gotta space out the explosions in order to make them land, guys. Just, all in a row? It was somewhere between the train explosion and the tiny plane explosion that I lost track of why I should care about the helicopter explosion.
• Wait, the evil plan is using nuclear missiles to wipe out the electronic records of international finance? Dude, get yourself some EMPs and some big-ass magnets.

Tomorrow Never Dies, 07 July 2020, streamed via Netflix

• I legit thought I had accidentally played the first movie when this opened, because the whole set-up was pretty much the same: Russia, snow, mountains, rusted military glam.
• Possibly Bond has topped out on world-threatening events? Like, as soon as somebody says “nuclear,” I don’t really care anymore. But if this movie was released in 1997 (and, thus, was written and filmed before that), the strict adherence to Cold War-level threats makes sense. Thankfully, adding in a slimy Heartian media mogul gives the stories a bit of quirk.
• Equally boring: Whoever the first woman Bond has sex with is. She is invariably transient and will have little impact on the overall narrative.
• Please note: Every time “South China Sea” is said, my brain replaces it with “Philippine Sea.” I also do this in real life.
• Nonsense Bond Girl Name: Paris Carvey. I’m not sure this one actually counts, but it’s what they gave me.
• Ah, Bond has incorporated “falsely repentant chagrin” to his usual public persona, “amused detachment.”
• YOU DO NOT DESERVE MICHELLE YEOH, SIR. She’s so beyond your league you’ll need a telescope to spot her.
• The Bond paradigm doesn’t really work anymore, does it? The “one megalomaniac” thing isn’t actually a thing anymore, and Bond’s special talents--being unflappable and apparently also a good fuck--don’t really have large-scale applications. Which is why the Craig Bond movies, as well as franchises like Mission Impossible now build their appeal with increasingly physics-defying stunts. Bond slinking through a casino in a bespoke suit and an exploding watch is only still there for, honestly, commercial inserts.
• Borrowing equipment from the Americans AND the Chinese? Q’s gonna be so pissed.

The World is Not Enough, 08 July 2020, streamed via Netflix

• The real hero of this movie is the unnamed woman at the Swiss bank who, upon being the object of one of Bond’s super-gross innuendos, rolls her eyes. I mean, she turns out to be an assassin who dies in the first act, but who am I to question her motives?
• Nonsense Bond Girl Names: Doctor Holly Warmflash. Sigh. And Christmas Jones, perhaps?
• How is no one reprimanding Bond for driving a speedboat through restaurants in downtown London?
• I’m not certain I could pick Pierce Brosnan out of a line-up. Like, he’s got a generic handsomeness and a set of expressions that make him a perfect Bond, looks-wise. But also, he could have been constructed specifically for Bond. Pierce Brosnan might be a robot, y’all!
• I am disappointed that Bond was right about Elektra having Stockholm Syndrome--particularly since her first denial actually seemed to fill him with self-doubt! Bond being catastrophically wrong about something should happen more often.
• I get doing business in tuxedos, but a linen suit, Bond? Absolutely inappropriate for nuclear submarines in the Caspian Sea.

Die Another Day, 09 July 2020, streamed via Amazon

• Hey, it’s Will Yun Lee! And he seems to actually be playing a Korean? Good job, casting director. Though the other major characters seem to be Chinese but playing Korean, and also...vice versa? What? I retract my compliments.
• Nonsense Bond Girl Names: Peaceful Fountains of Desire. YOU READ THAT RIGHT.
• I think I’m supposed to have some firm opinion of Halle Berry emerging from the ocean in an orange bikini, but honestly, I’m more curious about why girlfriend was swimming with a blade strapped to her hip. Is she undercover as an abalone diver or something? And then Bond asks her if she’s ever tried a mojito. Y’all are in Cuba, my guy. She 100% has had several.
• AN INVISIBLE CAR. What a gift this series can sometimes be.
• Jinx/Miranda is a thing, right? Don’t fail me, Bond fandom. We all know Bond is just an extraneous dick at this point.
• WAIT, Will Yun Lee’s character transformed himself into some entitled white guy? Have we...have we slipped into Altered Carbon by accident?
• Uh, I guess we’re supposed to find Bond and Jinx in bed with all the diamonds to be, like, distractingly sparkly? But those are diamonds! Those are not things you want to be lying down on, kids.

It’s so chill watching these movies. There’s no character development, and the players are interchangeable. If I want to critically wrestle with these movies, I have to do it on a macro level: Bond as a folk hero, and Bond movies asan inalterable genre. Does it even matter what these movies are about, if their purpose is to bolster empty space?