‘Not now that strength’: Embodiment and Globalisation in Post-9/11 James Bond

Abstract

Chapter Six, Vincent M. Gaine's analysis of perhaps the defining action-adventure series of the era (or of any era), the iconic figure of Ian Fleming’s James Bond in ‘"Not now that strength" Embodiment and Globalisation in Post 9/11 James Bond.’ In a dynamic investigation of Daniel Craig's four films as James Bond, from his first appearance in Casino Royale (2006) to his fourth film Spectre (2015), Gaine explores the thematic and stylistic variations undertaken in the Daniel Craig era. Craig's Bond, as Gaine astutely reveals, is as intrinsically connected to the post-9/11 decades as the first incarnation of the character played by Sean Connery was to the Cold War era in which the original books and films were written and set. In this chapter Gaine proposes that the Bond franchise, more than any other, given its longevity, is uniquely placed to observe changing cultural and socio-political trends. The Craig Bond emerges as a much more complicated figure than his predecessors, both emphatically masculine and yet at the same time distinctly fallible, but a resolutely more human figure because of it. Daniel Craig’s interpretation of the character, as Gaine observes, is a Bond who bleeds and one who is traumatised rather than a figure who glides almost effortlessly through his adventures hardly with a scratch, as he once did in the eras of Connery, Moore and Brosnan.