I.JUST.DO.NOT.GET all the current Bond hysteria. I mean, isn't the whole franchise just marketed towards inadequate males desparate to live out their action hero wank fantasies vicariously through a celluloid cipher? And, with its intensive product placement and branded entertainment deals, doesn't it merely represent Hollywood at its shallow, bloated, mercenary worst?The received wisdom, destined to snowball and become nigh-on irresistable by the time anyone gets round to actually seeing the film, is that Casino Royale represents a barnstorming return to form, with Daniel Craig breathing fresh life into a role which had become lumpen and listless in recent outings. The exact same platitudes wheeled out when Pierce Brosnan first took on the role in other words.
I don't know, maybe I'm just being humourless about this, but I sort of thought any credibility Bond had went out the window with Austin Powers?
Read Will's blog for things to say about Daniel Craig.
1 comment:
The thing is that Austin Powers is that was located in the age of the irony. The age of irony on Bond was like water on the Wicked Witch Of The West! Burnt away with nothing redeemable remaining. The fact there was nothing redeemable there in the first place for anyone with half a braincell to look closely enough is almost beyond the point.........
Still, with the death of Irony, a certain kind of lumbering Bond caché has come bumbling and moaning like some D-movie Romero rip off zombie resurrected from its all too shallow grave dragging all kinds of ludicrous (non British) product placement behind it.
Ian Flemmings novels are a different matter though. Bond is never portrated as anything higher than a psychologically damaged thug, albeit an interesting one.
Bond operates in a kind of hyperreality where his exercising of British power in the world goes to conceal the fact it doesn't actually exist. Hyperbritannia, yeah thats the one...........as British as burning trade centers and apple pie.
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