With each successive installment of the James Bond franchise, the spy is reborn. There is definitely connective tissue between all the different 007s — Sean Connery, David Niven, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Bronson, Daniel Craig — that have appeared in more than 24 films, including the latest, “Spectre,” in theaters November 4. But it makes more sense to look at Bond as a nesting doll, with each new portrayal, each new globetrotting mission, building on what came before and ending up as something totally new.Building does not necessarily mean improving. Connery, the first actor to portray Bond on film, is the one who set the template for the character — suave but rigid, seemingly reckless but in control — and has remained the reference point. His immediate successors — Lazenby for one film (“On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” 1969) and Moore for the next seven — took what Connery created and focused on one aspect of the Bond persona. Lazenby, for his brief stint, was serious and romantic, while Moore was more lighthearted. Both actors are better than they’re remembered by the popular imagination, and are clearly representative of the period in which they incarnated Bond — the polished Moore, for instance, was much better suited to the 1970s than the sharp Connery or the laconic Lazenby. But when the 1980s rolled into view, Moore suddenly seemed out-of-place (he would make three Bond films in the ’80s, each more ridiculous than the next), and in a decade that was high on baby-boomer nostalgia, it made sense that the franchise would bring Connery back one more time (“Never Say Never Again,” 1983). A few years later, the films would attempt a more serious, hard-edged turn by casting Timothy Dalton in the main role and trying to square up against the big-budget Hollywood blockbusters they were then competing with for popularity.At the time, many thought they were witnessing the demise of Bond on screen. But with the casting of Pierce Bronson in the 1990s, it was a return to the past. There is always a push-and-pull in the portrayal of Bond — it seems the actors struggle with a need to look back before moving forward. “GoldenEye” (1995) was almost a throwback Bond, combining the one-liners, the fitted suits, and the increasing violence of all the other films. But by the end of Bronson’s run with “Die Another Day” (2002), we were in another decade, and there was a need for a new Bond, something more contemporary. When Daniel Craig was hired the franchise literally started again, rebooting the entire story with “Casino Royale,” which provided an origin for some of the recurring personality traits of the character.But starting over didn’t mean actually starting over. The last four Bond films are very much of our present moment. Stylistically, they resemble more than any other what the Dalton films were hinting at — referencing the past without feeling like they exist in the past. With “Spectre” this is taken to extremes, with giant explosions and rapid-speed car chases that could have easily been ripped out of the “Fast and Furious” films and inserted here, while still following the Bond formula — there is a “Bond Girl,” and a cool car, and internal strife within the spying community. The problem is that this formula, especially in “Spectre,” seems imposed upon the narrative. There is a good action movie here, with terrific performances — Léa Seydoux is excellently withholding as the wonderfully named Dr. Madeleine Swann, while Christoph Waltz is appropriately hammy as the villain. But the film continually reminds the audience that it is a Bond movie, with blatant, self-conscious references to the fact that we’re watching a legacy film (the titles of, and various references to, previous Bond films are dropped into the dialogue, seemingly just to get a chuckle out of the audience). Blatant product placement is also an issue — there is an uncomfortable close up of an Omega Watch and a few too many references to the specially designed Aston Martin.The only way for a James Bond film to work today is to drop James Bond, and everything that is attached to him, from the equation. Instead of a reboot, or a redo, how about we start again with something that is completely new?
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