From Dr. No to No Time to Die PART 2

A Non-Review of 27 films (also a cartoon series and a video game)  by Professor Popinjay

The rest of the Pierce Brosnan films came and went and I was too preoccupied with girlfriends to pay them much heed. I did collect all the musical scores on cd though. I also scooped up cd compilations of all the themes.

This was my introduction to a myriad of bands and musicians to whom I paid little to no attention previously. Some themes were not so interesting to me like the Carly Simon “Nobody Does It Better” song from The Spy Who Loved Me. Wasn’t that music from a Safeway grocery store advertisement? Why would they use that for a bond theme? (No, I wasn’t that dumb… in regards to when that song was made anyway.)

Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey were fantastic though. I started listening to their themes while I got ready for dates! Granted I didn’t want to “break any heart without regret” or “beckon you to enter my web of sin” to coin some of the lyrics from their songs. They just made me feel cool. You might say I finally wanted to be as suave and deboner as the hero. No more iron dentures and lethal headwear for me! Nevermind me singing like Shirley Bassey in the shower. Hey, I said I FELT cool not that I actually was cool.

Me in the year 2000 trying my darndest to exude cool rays.

In 1997, Goldeneye was released for the Nintendo 64 and my friends were playing like crazy. I eventually got ahold of a copy and got pretty good at it. These were the days when multiplayer games were played by players all at the same house with one machine and four multicolored controllers three of which were usually only half working but that was all part of the challenge. The camaraderie my friends and I shared while blasting each other in the face with shot guns was irreplaceable. You could turn on paintball mode so it would be less violent but let’s be honest, being shot in the face with a paintball was no less violent.

Goldeneye 64 multiplayer. You could either look like the victim of a car wreck or you could die looking like a clown. The choice was yours.

I played this game into the wee hours of the night every night and gradually turned myself into a night owl insomniac. Which is why I was alright with a graveyard shift job after high school.

The year 2002 would mark the last Pierce Brosnan 007 film. Ironically, Vin Diesel would star in XXX that same year. In the beginning of XXX there would be a tuxedoed spy guy parachuting into a rave scene as part of a “covert” infiltration. Of course he would stick out like a sore thumb and immediately get himself killed. Obviously this was parodying James Bond and the message was clear: Vin Diesel is more subtle and can blend in better. He’s the new James Bond for the modern generation. Well I don’t know about all that. They did put out a few sequels to XXX but it would be twelve years between two of them. In that same time window there would be four James Bond films starring Daniel Craig. XXX was decent in my opinion but saying Bond is old hat is obviously wishful thinking and clearly didn’t amount to a redirection of interest. Ironic that the Fast and Furious franchise would basically evolve into spy action.

Thomas Ian Griffith as Agent Jim McGrath for like 5 seconds in Vin Diesel’s XXX. As fake a Bond as there will ever be.

Amazingly, the first Bond film I would ever see in theaters would be Casino Royale in 2006. I had a hard time trying to figure out if it was a continuation, prequel, reboot or what! They seemed to be starting over a bit but Judi Dench was still playing M. She had played M through all the Pierce Brosnan films. Confusing much? Good movie though, I thought.

A cat that looks remarkably like Judi Dench.

A different cat that looks like Ed Sheeran

I was married when Quantum of Solace came out. I remember seeing a group of high school age kids dressed in tuxedos and long flowing dresses respectively and overhearing they had either planned on seeing or had just seen the film. I thought it was awesome that kids this young were still into bond. This franchise was going strong. Alas, for me, tumultuous situations at home meant that if I wanted to see Quantum of Solace (or most non-family films for that matter) I had to somehow obtain the film and watch it somewhere where my wife wasn’t. I don’t mind telling you.

Oi, that was a hard life for a film buff. That relationship would put me ten years behind, playing catch-up with movies I wanted to see. Unfortunately I had bigger fish to fry through that decade. 

This was not the fish I had to fry. Super James Pond. Was it a James Bond Parody or a Robocop parody? Yes.

But that situation would start me watching movies while nothing was going on at work. And I started watching a lot of films at twice the speed just to catch up. This led to me watching all the James Bond films in release order.

Look for PART 3 of 4