believe it or not, casino royale is arguably the least problematic of them, since the newer bond films are, well... newer.
The misogyny in the newer films pales in comparison to the older ones. Plus, of course, racism, toxic masculinity, imperialism....
That's not to say they don't have anything going for them. The tech ideas were cool, the villains were usually well done, the actors were good (Andre the Giant is always great in everything)... but it's just too hard for me to enjoy the good stuff when it's set again the backdrop of, say, Bond assaulting women.
I feel like a lot of Bond films have always had this strange tension where Bond as a character is really reactionary, but a lot of the plots and especially the villainous schemes are actually quite good reads of capitalism, geo-politics etc.
This is particularly true of the newer ones (Brosnan, Craig). This was also around the same time that the writing started trying to actually deal with the idea of Bond as something of a flawed or anti-hero to mixed degrees and results.
OK, this is probably more effort than I should put in and perhaps it's a bit simplistic, but look at the plots of the following (spoilers obviously) :
GoldenEye: After the collapse of the Soviet Union a general betrays his country for profit by looting a WMD with the help of an MI6 turncoat who is looking to settle old scores as his family were Cossacks who betrayed the USSR only to then be betrayed themselves by the West.
Tomorrow Never Dies: Rupert Murdoch Elliot Carver runs an international criminal operation disguised as a sensationalist right-wing media empire and tries to start WW3 for profit and ratings, in part by using an experiential mining technology.
The World Is Not Enough: Oil billionaires leverage everything from the British state to their own daughters as kidnap and torture bait to try and gain control of important pipelines over several decades. It culminates in a plan to use a nuclear weapon to destroy a rival pipeline as well as make billions more from the resulting skyrocketing oil prices.
Die Another Day: errr... we don't really talk about this one because it's total nonsense... DNA restructuring so anyone can look like anyone and be younger, Madonna fencing on a plane, a big mirror???
Casino Royale: An arrogant and gambling obsessed banker for intelligence agencies, warlords, and terrorist organisations plans to use a terrorist attack to make him and his clients richer by shorting stock in the company being attacked. When it fails he creates an incredibly high stakes poker game to recoup the lost €100,000,000 investment while terror groups, criminal syndicates, and intelligence agencies all kill each other (and plenty of their own people and innocents) over the money, with those in charge largely seeing it as a game.
Quantum of Solace: Dominic Greene, a green-washing capitalist is helping an exiled fascist Bolivian general to coup the current leader and install himself in power as a dictator in exchange for a deal that would hand over the underground aquafir to Greene, who is using his environmental advocacy charade to buy up global water rights for profit and geopolitical power in the coming water wars due to global warming. Also, the CIA are actively supporting Greene and the Bolivian fash coup to the degree of trying to kill Bond if he interferes.
Skyfall: Fuelled by vengeance for being used and betrayed (as Bond is and will likely one day be) by the intelligence services Raoul Silva takes revenge by turning MI6s own surveillance and cyberwarfare tech against them as well as the fact that they compile and kept a list of global agents of other countries and then lost it. Home alone style hijinks ensue.
Spectre: This one's a little messier, but basically there's government pressure to join the Nine Eyes surveillance program, a co-operative international espionage and surveillance pact with private backing for global reach. It's later revealed that Spectre, am explicitly capitalist illuminati type organisation is behind Nine Eyes and has been staging terror attacks all over the world to get various nations to sign onto it, this giving them total control and finally being rid of the pesky annoyances created by the occasional self interest of nation states and their democratic shifts.
No Time To Die: Nano machines, son! This one's a bit of a mess too due to several rewrites as Covid kind of fucked the central plot but it's clearly supposed to be a virus, so I'm going with that. Basically, MI6 secretly created a bio-weapon that can target specific DNA supposedly as a targeted poison against impossible to reach targets but that also just happens to be able to be used as an efficient method of genocide, à la British involvement in South Africa's Project Coast. This is stolen by Spectre, the capitalist illuminati, then turned against them and stolen again by a mysterious bio-tech billionaire with a personal vendetta who creates a factory to mass produce it and is about to sell it as the ultimate bio-weapon to a selection of buyers from the world's elite.
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believe it or not, casino royale is arguably the least problematic of them, since the newer bond films are, well... newer.
The misogyny in the newer films pales in comparison to the older ones. Plus, of course, racism, toxic masculinity, imperialism....
That's not to say they don't have anything going for them. The tech ideas were cool, the villains were usually well done, the actors were good (Andre the Giant is always great in everything)... but it's just too hard for me to enjoy the good stuff when it's set again the backdrop of, say, Bond assaulting women.
I feel like a lot of Bond films have always had this strange tension where Bond as a character is really reactionary, but a lot of the plots and especially the villainous schemes are actually quite good reads of capitalism, geo-politics etc.
This is particularly true of the newer ones (Brosnan, Craig). This was also around the same time that the writing started trying to actually deal with the idea of Bond as something of a flawed or anti-hero to mixed degrees and results.
OK, this is probably more effort than I should put in and perhaps it's a bit simplistic, but look at the plots of the following (spoilers obviously) :
GoldenEye: After the collapse of the Soviet Union a general betrays his country for profit by looting a WMD with the help of an MI6 turncoat who is looking to settle old scores as his family were Cossacks who betrayed the USSR only to then be betrayed themselves by the West.
Tomorrow Never Dies:
Rupert MurdochElliot Carver runs an international criminal operation disguised as a sensationalist right-wing media empire and tries to start WW3 for profit and ratings, in part by using an experiential mining technology.The World Is Not Enough: Oil billionaires leverage everything from the British state to their own daughters as kidnap and torture bait to try and gain control of important pipelines over several decades. It culminates in a plan to use a nuclear weapon to destroy a rival pipeline as well as make billions more from the resulting skyrocketing oil prices.
Die Another Day: errr... we don't really talk about this one because it's total nonsense... DNA restructuring so anyone can look like anyone and be younger, Madonna fencing on a plane, a big mirror???
Casino Royale: An arrogant and gambling obsessed banker for intelligence agencies, warlords, and terrorist organisations plans to use a terrorist attack to make him and his clients richer by shorting stock in the company being attacked. When it fails he creates an incredibly high stakes poker game to recoup the lost €100,000,000 investment while terror groups, criminal syndicates, and intelligence agencies all kill each other (and plenty of their own people and innocents) over the money, with those in charge largely seeing it as a game.
Quantum of Solace: Dominic Greene, a green-washing capitalist is helping an exiled fascist Bolivian general to coup the current leader and install himself in power as a dictator in exchange for a deal that would hand over the underground aquafir to Greene, who is using his environmental advocacy charade to buy up global water rights for profit and geopolitical power in the coming water wars due to global warming. Also, the CIA are actively supporting Greene and the Bolivian fash coup to the degree of trying to kill Bond if he interferes.
Skyfall: Fuelled by vengeance for being used and betrayed (as Bond is and will likely one day be) by the intelligence services Raoul Silva takes revenge by turning MI6s own surveillance and cyberwarfare tech against them as well as the fact that they compile and kept a list of global agents of other countries and then lost it. Home alone style hijinks ensue.
Spectre: This one's a little messier, but basically there's government pressure to join the Nine Eyes surveillance program, a co-operative international espionage and surveillance pact with private backing for global reach. It's later revealed that Spectre, am explicitly capitalist illuminati type organisation is behind Nine Eyes and has been staging terror attacks all over the world to get various nations to sign onto it, this giving them total control and finally being rid of the pesky annoyances created by the occasional self interest of nation states and their democratic shifts.
No Time To Die: Nano machines, son! This one's a bit of a mess too due to several rewrites as Covid kind of fucked the central plot but it's clearly supposed to be a virus, so I'm going with that. Basically, MI6 secretly created a bio-weapon that can target specific DNA supposedly as a targeted poison against impossible to reach targets but that also just happens to be able to be used as an efficient method of genocide, à la British involvement in South Africa's Project Coast. This is stolen by Spectre, the capitalist illuminati, then turned against them and stolen again by a mysterious bio-tech billionaire with a personal vendetta who creates a factory to mass produce it and is about to sell it as the ultimate bio-weapon to a selection of buyers from the world's elite.
I appreciate the effort. yeah, the bond villains have largely been interesting.
hey quimbhy
what the fuck are you doing
wait for it!
ok, what?
BUTT :garf-troll:
h
hey quimby
he-hey
hey
hehe
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