James Bond: The Secret History

by Sean Egan

  Deaver’s decision to make his Bond one with PC sensibilities might have felt the right and modern thing to do, but the fact that 007 narratives are nothing if they are not narratives about an alpha male is proven by this book, and especially a passage where some skilful driving cooed over by the book’s villains turns out not to be by Bond, as we and they had assumed, but Ophelia Maidenstone, a female colleague acting as a decoy. The point of Bond is that he can do stuff other people can’t. Making him a bog-standard operative whose place in the story could be occupied by any agent raises the awkward question of how this character is in any way interesting.

  Despite all this meticulous political correctness, incidentally, the book accepts unquestioningly the concept of extraordinary rendition and the torture methods that go with it.

  Although the book has clearly been carefully gone through by a British editor, Deaver’s American nationality is ultimately betrayed by his lack of understanding of the English class system. Bond identifies by their driving licences some hoodies who are harassing the son of a friend. In fact, English teenage delinquents would be unlikely to have the wherewithal for wheels. Meanwhile, although villain Hydt has managed to work himself up from binman to wealthy businessman, nobody remarks on his incongruous working-class tones (or, alternatively, muses that he must have changed his accent).

  On 27 July 2012, Queen Elizabeth II opened the London Olympics. Her appearance in Britain’s capital city’s Olympic Stadium was preceded by a short film in which a tuxedo-clad Daniel Craig in the role of James Bond went to collect Her Majesty from Buckingham Palace and accompanied her into a helicopter. Through the deployment of clever camera angles, the impression was given that the two figures who jumped from the chopper and sailed into the stadium via the use of Union Jack parachutes were Craig and the monarch.

  The four-hour opening ceremony designed by film director Danny Boyle highlighted what was proposed as the very best of the host culture: James Bond had effectively been put up on a pedestal with the Industrial Revolution, the National Health Service and Shakespeare. It wasn’t a bad advertisement for the next James Bond picture, which premiered in the UK on 23 October 2012.

  It had taken four years for Skyfall to make it to the screens. The reason for the lag inevitably revolved around the financial problems of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The famous movie studio whose production logo of an unconvincingly furious lion had been a part of the cinema experience of several generations of moviegoers had become another famous casualty of the 2007 credit crunch and had gone in and out of bankruptcy. Bond got back to the screen only via the fact of Eon/Sony entering into a questionable financial deal. In Skyfall, Bond is not seen drinking Dom Perignon ’54 or a ‘Vesper’ but rather Heineken lager. He was also shown consuming the latter in a tie-in TV commercial. Craig candidly said to Tom Brook of the BBC News Channel, ‘I whore myself out a little bit for that and we get the movie made.’ That said, the interregnum resulted in a leisurely development period, which benefited the script.

  It was Craig who persuaded Eon to recruit Sam Mendes. Unusually for a mainstream film director, Mendes has extensive experience in theatre. However, that did not mean he was a slouch film-wise. His cinematic CV up to that point was breathtaking in its quality, success and variety: American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road and Away We Go. His debut film had won him a Best Director Oscar.

  His class is often prominent in Skyfall, particularly in a remarkable scene in which villain Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) approaches a bound Bond down a long room all the while orating an instructional speech about rats. Not once does Bardem stumble over his soliloquy, but not once over the course of this minute-and-a-half does Mendes cut away from his angle behind Craig’s chair, revealing it to be a single take. It’s not clear whether it’s this that is more impressive, or the fact of this extraordinary oasis of calm in the midst of the action. Elsewhere, there is a poignant long shot of Judi Dench standing at the end of a line of Union Jack-draped coffins containing slain MI6 operatives. There are also some beautiful pieces of cinematography when the action moves to a rural setting.

  Because the Secret Service/SIS/MI6 does not operate domestically, Bond films have always been set outside the borders of the UK. Skyfall is for the first time a very British Bond movie, much of its action taking place in London streets, the capital’s underground system and (albeit with Surrey substituting) the wilds of Scotland.

  The main story of screenwriters Purvis & Wade and John Logan revolves around the fact that Silva – an ex-MI6 agent with a grudge against M – has stolen a hard drive containing the names of undercover NATO agents embedded in terrorist organisations, a matter so serious that M is given notice to retire. As well as compromising agents’ safety by releasing their names on YouTube, Silva remotely causes an explosion at MI6 headquarters – the second time since its mid-nineties completion that the modernistic and vaguely sinister-looking building on London’s South Bank has been the subject in this franchise of a disfiguring attack.

  It is this attack that causes Bond to come back from unofficial gardening leave: he had disappeared after hearing in his earpiece M instruct a female colleague to disregard danger to him and take a shot at an enemy, this not long after M had forced Bond to leave for dead a wounded fellow agent. Later in the film, Bond takes it upon himself to whisk the imperilled M to a place of safety known not even to her colleagues or superiors, albeit with M’s complicity. Not only is this going-rogue thing getting overdone, it does not fit in with the idea of a top-drawer agent.

  It’s notable that, with Bluetooth connections and distress-signal transmitters, Bond is rarely truly alone in the field now. This may reflect real-life espionage but it could mean – what with advice and even backup never too far away – having to create a new paradigm for a Bond movie. This particular film gets around that undermining of the lone-wolf template by being to a large extent a siege picture. Much of the last half-hour is set in the place of safety to which Bond takes M. This turns out to be Skyfall, Bond’s gothic ancestral home in Scotland, now falling into ruin. Bond’s fondly remembered mentor, gamekeeper Kincade, is played by Albert Finney. (The writers had Sean Connery in mind for the role before it was nixed by Mendes as something that was in danger of breaching the fourth wall.) The house occasions discussion about Bond’s orphan status, although the facts are kept vague. (We see the gravestone of Bond’s parents, which dutifully feature the names Fleming gave them.)

  The music is provided by long-term Mendes film scorer Thomas Newman, although the title song is the work of Paul Epworth and Adele. The latter chanteuse sings in her usual mangled-but-sultry style over opening titles designed by Daniel Kleinman (returning after the MK12 studio handled the Quantum of Solace titles) that are a dream sequence following Bond’s pre-titles tumble into a river. As well as being a transatlantic top ten, Adele’s song acquired an Academy Award for Best Original Song. The other Oscar garnered by the film was for Best Sound Editing (Per Hallberg and Karen Baker Landers).

  The new Quartermaster is Ben Whishaw, a veritable child, apparently created to chime with the fact that technological savvy is no longer associated with sophistication and age but young geekdom. Q issues Bond a Walther PPK/S, which has a micro-sensor in the grip coded to his palm print so that only he can fire it, something in line with the recent trend in Bond films to provide Bond gadgetry only slightly ahead of what the mass of the public already have access to. Q says, ‘Were you expecting an exploding pen? We don’t really go in for that any more.’ However, later on there is a return to classic Bond gadgetry when Bond gets out of storage the Aston Martin DB5. He jokingly threatens to propel the carping M through the ejector seat. It’s a nice in-joke, of course, but doesn’t fit in with the way he was depicted acquiring the car in Casino Royale.

  Such is the air of realism granted by spurning of gadgetry and the overall grim tone that it disguises the fact that Skyfall is in some ways as illogical and over-the-top as a Roger Moore Bond film. Why,
for example, would Silva try to kill M at the inquiry to which she is summoned rather than somewhere to which gaining access doesn’t necessitate his having to derail tube trains and slaughter multiple people?

  That Silva is homosexual is, unlike with Mr Wint and Mr Kidd in Diamonds Are Forever, not played for laughs or ridicule. However, the non-judgemental attitude tips too far the other way when Silva starts caressing the bound Bond, who comments, ‘What makes you think this is my first time?’ It seems a capitulation to we’re-all-a-little-bit-gay PC rhetoric. Unless we are to read something into the way, after jumping for his life onto a train carriage, Bond fussily adjusts his cuffs – Craig’s trademark, à la Brosnan’s tie adjustment.

  The film contains the series’ first f-word. However, M’s ‘I fucked this up, didn’t I?’ is not in any way ostentatious, being almost muttered. Somewhat more shocking is that M succumbs to a gunshot wound, dying in Bond’s arms.

  There is an additional surprise in the closing stages. Bond has been working, and possibly sleeping, with a young black female agent (played by Naomie Harris, who, like all MI6 operatives ever depicted in Bond films, has received pronunciation). She has now opted to come out of the field for secretarial duties in the organisation. Although it’s a little implausible that Bond has not yet been formally introduced to her, it enables the bombshell line, ‘My name’s Eve. Eve Moneypenny.’

  The battle-hardened, anti-bureaucracy Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes) becomes the new M. ‘So, 007,’ says Mallory when Bond walks into his office through an upholstered door (another reintroduction of a lately absent Bond motif). ‘Lots to be done. Are you ready to get back to work?’ ‘With pleasure, M,’ says Bond. ‘With pleasure.’

  Once again, the gun-barrel sequence is at the end of the proceedings. It’s a new one, much more stylish than the quick-stepping, hunchbacked version of the previous film. It morphs into the words ‘50 years’.

  Although the half-centenary is treated here with less fanfare than had been the fortieth anniversary within Die Another Day, the film’s success could be said to constitute the celebration. Even at 143 minutes and without even the bait of M’s death – most reviewers were considerately circumspect about that plot twist – the picture proceeded to do unprecedented business.

  The James Bond series had over the decades regularly broken box-office records, but, while such figures looked good in publicity-generating headlines, they were semi-meaningless, the result of cinema prices, like everything else, costing more than they did in years previous. The Holy Grail for Eon had always been taking grosses greater than those of Thunderball after adjustment for inflation. That Thunderball’s record had stood for almost as long as the franchise’s fifty-year existence was something that may even have been a point of irritation with Eon, considering that that project was as much Kevin McClory’s as Broccoli–Saltzman’s. Thunderball’s position had long seemed inviolable. However, when, in December 2012, Skyfall’s $950 million-plus box-office takings saw it overhaul Goldfinger as the second all-time most successful 007 movie even after inflation had been taken into account, something was clearly afoot. With the film still to open in the highly populous country of China, record-busting was almost guaranteed.

  The release of Skyfall was delayed in that country by two months so that censors could remove material felt to be derogatory to the nation. Four days after Skyfall’s Chinese opening on 25 January came the news that the magic barrier had been breached: Skyfall’s overall grosses of $1,077.8 million meant it had overhauled Thunderball’s inflation-adjusted $1,037.3 million. It was a jaw-dropping achievement in an age of reduced cinema attendances, and was made all the more so by the prospect of the income from revenue streams such as cable showings and DVD sales from which Thunderball did not immediately benefit.

  Since failing to entice back Sebastian Faulks, the impression given by Ian Fleming Publications is that they are themselves happy to recruit a new name author for every Bond book. This is understandable. An annual by-numbers Bond book from a second-tier author is hardly an event. An author both fresh and prestigious applying himself to a famous brand is newsworthy each time out.

  IFP’s next choice to be a Bond novelist was the most surprising so far. William Boyd may have been winning awards for his novels right from his 1981 debut A Good Man in Africa, but his work tended to describe interior landscapes and to veer towards gentle comedy, his 2006 historical spy novel Restless notwithstanding. Moreover, writing British-flavoured books was a relatively new thing for Boyd, a man far more familiar with African and French society.

  Boyd returns 007 to Fleming’s timeframe, setting Solo – published in September 2013 – in 1969. Perhaps predictably, the Ghana-born Boyd locates his tale in Africa, specifically the fictional newly independent state of Zanzarim. This is a tale from the days of colonialism: Bond is instructed by M to make the country’s military leader Solomon Adeka ‘a less efficient soldier’ on the grounds that he is jeopardising Britain’s oil interests in the region.

  Like Faulks before him, Boyd has Bond observing youth fashions, in this case crushed velvet and Afghan coats. Unlike Fleming, he has him au fait with television (007 whimsically toys with the idea of getting his hair cut like David Frost, although his perception of the latter’s hairstyle seems frozen in the first half of the sixties). Another example of the fun Boyd is having with the character is a footnote for Bond’s salad-dressing recipe.

  Boyd goes other places Fleming never did. He has the presumption to depict Bond – for the very first time in print – dropping the f-bomb without decorous dashes. Meanwhile, the anti-big-business tenor is something that it would never have occurred to Fleming to inject, even if he was a small-c conservative.

  When Bond is in ‘civilisation’, Boyd’s writing is gauche and off-key. Perhaps significantly, the book picks up in Africa: a scene where a lost Bond wanders the jungle for a couple of days drips with authenticity. In Africa, Bond meets a reasonably intriguing villain: mercenary Jakobus Breed, who has a caved-in face and a physical dysfunction that sees his eyes continually weep. The book sags again, though, when Bond goes ‘solo’. Having single-handedly brought down the state of Zanzarim, he sets off to America on an unofficial mission, seeking answers from Breed to questions that still plague him about what he saw in the ‘Dark Continent’. Unfortunately, Boyd has him largely do this via dialogue: the end section contains page after page of boring exposition.

  Following Charlie Higson’s departure, IFP decided to continue the Young Bond series.

  The man who ultimately transpired to be prepared to wade into the murky area of the timeframe of the nascent agent’s sexual awakening was Steve Cole, an author known for his Astrosaurs children’s books but with some experience of continuing franchises through penning Doctor Who novels.

  Shoot to Kill, published in November 2014, saw Bond both grappling with a new progressive school following his expulsion from Eton and uncovering some distasteful goings-on in thirties Hollywood. There were probably few children who were contrasting and comparing Higson and Cole: the series’ demographic had grown up in the six years since By Royal Command. However, the adult Bond fans were pleasantly surprised at how Cole had kept up the quality and Fleming-faithfulness established by his predecessor even as he incrementally deepened the implausibility of James having such an eventful teenage.

  Heads You Die – book two of a projected quartet – was scheduled for 2016.

  Meanwhile, September 2015 saw publication of a new adult James Bond novel, Trigger Mortis.

  Although immensely successful in young fiction and television, its author Anthony Horowitz was not quite as prestigious a name as the three previous non-children’s Bond novelists. However – shades of John Gardner – one of his adult novels was The House of Silk, a Sherlock Holmes novel. And then there was his sequence of books about teenage MI6 operative Alex Rider, the vast success of which it seems inconceivable IFP were unaware of when they instigated the Young Bond series.

  Horowi
tz was allowed by IFP to flesh out ‘Murder on Wheels’, one of the plot outlines of the aborted fifties James Bond television series. Fleming’s gimmicky and cartoonish treatment involved Bond entering a Grand Prix event to thwart a Russian plot to cause then-current racing driver Stirling Moss to crash his car. Yet Horowitz does well with his flimsy base, making the racetrack scheming part of a continuum culminating in the sabotaging of a US rocket launch and planting of a bomb in New York. The race itself is convincing and exciting. In fact, Horowitz’s action sequences are better than those of any previous Bond continuation novelist. Particularly thrillingly drawn are a section where Bond makes an escape after being buried alive and a denouement wherein, to defuse the bomb, he has to climb along the roof of a speeding New York subway train.

  It’s in other areas that Horowitz fails. His exposition and insertion of research is clumsy. His non-action prose is often utilitarian. He also fails to distinguish between sprinkling in classic ingredients and shovelling in cliché. The reader wants to groan when the villain says to 007, ‘I am going to tell you the story of my life, Mr Bond … in a short while you will be dead.’

  The villain is a SMERSH-affiliated Korean with a superbly Bondian name: Sin Jai-Seong has been Westernised against his will to Jason Sin. Chief love interest Jeopardy Lane also has a wonderfully Fleming-esque handle. However, the title of the book – an American rocket-base staff nickname for a self-destruct mechanism – is more appropriate to the juvenile territory of Alex Rider.