A secret(ly) aging man who has no time to die: The spectre of aging in the James Bond franchise

Abstract

Aging is not a phenomenon commonly associated with the James Bond franchise, which relies on the successful template of a more agile and youthful hero. While Bond's adversaries used to be older than him (at least in the classic Bond movies of the 1960s and 1970s), with their deficient ‘Otherness’ underlining the idea that they are ‘bad’ and impotent patriarchs, more recent Bond films have turned to different age constellations. Even though the films rarely comment on the hero's age or adjust the material to it, there are various ways in which Bond's age is highlighted in these films, depending, for instance, on whether he has to fight ‘bad fathers’, ‘treacherous brothers’, or ‘disobedient sons’.This article runs the parameter of Bond's age against other parameters like the age of his adversaries and the number of his sexual conquests. It looks into two non-canonical Bond films, Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again (1983), to demonstrate that the topic of aging has seen more diverse and candid treatments outside of the jurisdiction of the official Eon series. This includes aspects like the hero's virility in the face of old age (at the intersection of senex and eros) and the meta-textual qualities of these films, which resonate with their subtexts on aging. The final section turns to Daniel Craig's swansong as Bond, No Time to Die (2021), which addresses the theme of mortality more directly than any other previous Bond outing.