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Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

Bond does feel sterile, dated and out of place. I've long argued that its cultural relevance died off after the end of the cold war. Goldeneye took advantage of that setting but subsequent movies did not.

Watching a Bond film feels like the cinematic equivalent of reading a SkyMall catalog. They should shelve the franchise for a decade or two and bring it back recontextualized around whatever geopolitical realities are fresh at that time.

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They basically ran out of material after moonraker. After which Ian Flemings influence was totally gone. One of them basically was a glorified BMW commercial. Another one the 'gadgets' where whatever was cool tech for sony at the time. Which is why your skymall analogy works decent enough. The only new one that came close to what 'bond' was is Casino Royal which was loosely based on Ian FLemings book. Even Ian Fleming saw the problem with the genre he had basically made up was that you could not always fight the same baddy all the time. So he created SMIRSH to do have a way to plug in new bad guys.

I don't particularly like Bond films, but I did really like Skyfall—it felt like it leaned into the things you mention. Like, the movie was about how dated and out-of-place Bond felt (and made the villain in that film explicitly a mirror of Bond, angry at that fact).

Skyfall has a decent premise.

The whole siege of the house is one of the only bits of the daniel craig era, excepting maybe casino royale ( I only saw it once but I remember enjoying it ), of bond I can stand. It's not 'bondian' though, bond movies have kind of always been this way. If anything bond has become somewhat less campy in the recent era.

I think you’ve actually understated the rather precipitous drop off of 007’s campiness. It wasn’t a mistake, the intention was to reboot the series in the same vein as Batman Begins, where he becomes an unbearably gloomy figure who exists as a morally ambiguous antihero brooding among the gritty backdrop of a fully corrupted world.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of both franchises, and enjoy the gritty Bond on its own terms, without tying it to the frequently almost farcical source material. I can easily understand why the “gritty realism” action genre trend didn’t last long, and why some folks do not enjoy it, it quickly becomes somewhat oppressive to endure. I think that’s why Taika Waititi’s Thor movies were so well received, they offered a lot of the fun-for-its-own-sake set pieces that were more common in the late ‘80s-early ‘90s action films.

Patrick H Willems did a really good YouTube video where he talks about “vibe films” [1], where things like plot details and character development are prioritized behind an overall mood and sense of style. Examples cited include Miami Vice, Bond films, and more recently Tenet.

[1] https://youtu.be/ZStkUxC4iL4?si=GSecJKBdbzMcQDVF

I've never really been a bond fan, but of course the craig era eschews much of the almost 100% of the camp of previous generations. Except (and you'll need to pardon me, i've seen each of these movies at most once and they don't really stick in my brain at all) maybe the villan who's face had been eaten by acid or something, it's not jawz or oddjob levels of camp but it's getting there.

Earlier bonds i've seen a few here and there but missed many. Like I've seen moonraker, but never thunderball, view to a kill but not goldeneye, octopussy but not never say never again. I couldn't tell you what any of the plots were (other than i'm pretty sure they go to a moon base in moonraker) or which villan goes with which film. Bond, to me, has always been kind of a mystery to me, how do these terrible films keep getting made?

I will also say that 'yes' to thor rangnarok, no to 'love and thunder' which i thought got mired in too many plots and had too many inappropriately timed jokes. Like do the Jane arc or do the Gor arc, but if you do either right they don't both fit in the film. So instead they opted to do a half assed version of each.

> Watching a Bond film feels like the cinematic equivalent of reading a SkyMall catalog

Nicely put!

I'm not saying it has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, mind you. It's just generic and empty. There may be exceptions in specific movies of the saga, of course.

AmEx's Departures magazine would be another great example.

Time for a "spywave" genre.

It's actually just that Barbara Broccoli hates the main character and ever since she took over as Executive Producer they've been on a mission to destroy the character

But they have no new ideas, and they only make something that feels vaguely like what it was

Bond as a concept is fine, the execution has been trash for over a decade now

I don't entirely disagree with you, but I would argue strongly that the concept is out of place politically right now.

Maybe not for much longer but since the late 90s, surely. There's also just too much info in the public about how real spies operate. It makes the Bond concept pretty nonsensical. The character has to change to overcome the audience's disbelief.

I think it's ok to have different movie franchises that have different strengths

From my perspective it's the realism, seriousness, and lack of everything the franchise did for like 40 years that has successfully killed the fun

I also love Bourne movies, and I don't need them to be the same

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