With Dr. No as a starting point, it’s a bit hard to believe that the James Bond franchise has lasted for fifty years. This is not meant to completely castigate the film, but its fairly linear narrative, one-note Lothario protagonist, and rather inorganic connection to the United States space program and nuclear war wouldn’t seem to bode well for a five-decade spanning franchise.
And this is the miraculous beauty behind the films inspired by – and some directly from – Ian Fleming’s novels. Until the most recent Daniel Craig-driven incarnations, there is no arc.
Bond is Bond, the super spy from MI6, the man who can get every woman he wants and breaks the hearts of those he doesn’t. And that’s it. In a number of films, the villains steal the show. Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) in Spiderman 2 and the Joker (Heath Ledger) come to mind. The protagonists in those films, while slightly interesting, are pretty basic and stagnant. The Bond franchise (Skyfall notwithstanding) doesn’t benefit from amazingly nefarious and believable villains. Instead, they are nearly as cartoonish as 007 himself, but yet we keep watching.
Perhaps it’s for the gadgets and the incredible situations from which he improbably escapes.
Perhaps it’s the blatantly sexual monikers given to the interchangeable women.
Perhaps it’s the Oscar-winning songs that introduce and provide a précis for the movie and the man’s motivation.
Perhaps it’s because Bond is a constant. He is, in a sense, what we aspire to be. As the series has progressed, the women have become more relevant and their characters have been given over to bigger-name actresses, so Bond’s actions have become slightly (slightly)less sexist and the stories slightly less misogynist when the men and woman are on a touch more of an equal footing.
But Bond is still Bond. He still snatches life from the jaws of death, wriggles his way out of far-fetched situations and ends up seducing anyone he wants. The nuclear allegories are still present, as is SPECTRE, a terrorist group that seems to last longer than most government organizations, which is quite the testament to their leadership, but I digress.
The biggest draw of Bond is the lack of consequences, something made doubly apparent at the end of Dr. No. Admittedly, throughout the film, Bond goes pretty much unscathed. His unfortunate love of coffee and women in skimpy robes gets him poisoned, but even then, the primary result is sleep. Even his exposure to radiation results in a brief scrub down and a pass through a series of showers, something to remind the audience of the severity of radiation, but also to ensure them that it can be contained. (A nice addition for a movie released at the height of the Cold War.)
But the end of Dr. No shows us just how important Bond feels he is and how little he contemplates the opposite. As he and Honey Ryder (not nearly as glamorous as Pussy Galore) are drifting about the Atlantic in a small boat without a motor or apparent paddles, the CIA arrives (with the Coast Guard?) and throws Bond a rope. But shortly after grabbing hold of apparent salvation, his libido supersedes any sense of urgency and Ryder becomes his salvific totem.
As Bond lets the rope slide through his fingers and out of his hand, he and Ryder kiss and the camera tilts up and out of view of their subsequent endeavors, while we take position with the CIA, watching Bond’s boat drift, and all we can do is wait for him.
We meet Bond from two unassuming hands at a gaming table, but we know he is there from the money he rakes from the dealer and his opponent. The same is true at the end of Dr. No. We attempt to spy on what he’s doing, but we can’t. And we can’t let him drift there forever. We’ll find him again, many times over.
