This brings us to Bond jokes. Starting with Sean Connery’s Bond in 1962, the suave secret agent often accompanied his punches with a punny punchline. In Goldfinger (1964), after electrocuting a would-be assassin in a bathtub, Bond says, “Shocking. Positively shocking.” And now, according to some rumors, the next round of James Bond films will bring back these puns in a big way. But, honestly, have they ever really left?
According to a lengthy report in The Times, and reported by other outlets like MovieWeb, insiders suggest that the next installment in the franchise will “return to a Bond of quips and camp, a shift away from the Shakespearean heft of Craig. More traditional yet easier to sell via memes to Amazon’s younger demographic.”
MovieWeb notes that this news “is sure to send a shiver down the spines of many a Bond fan.” While Screenrant declares that this move would “would be a mistake.” While there is some truth that the Daniel Craig era, beginning in 2006 with Casino Royale, was a fresh start, it’s not that James Bond should be taken too seriously in general. Even the Ian Fleming novels have a certain flair for self-parody. In 1961, Bond can be found making jokes in pages of Thunderball, saying: “I’m the world’s authority on giving up smoking. I do it constantly.” Even the somber Daniel Craig swansong, No Time To Die, had Bond making a joke about an exploding electronic eyeball, telling Q that his watch, which caused the explosion, “really blew their mind.”
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Plus, there’s nothing wrong with Bond rebooting with a slightly more lighthearted feeling. Most agree that in 1995, Pierce Brosnan’s first outing as 007 basically saved the franchise with GoldeneEye. But, this film was decidedly funnier than its 1989 predecessor, Timothy Dalton’s brooding second mission in Licence to Kill. In GoldenEye, Bond is joking around constantly, noting that Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen) “always did enjoy a good squeeze.” This is funny because she kills people with her thighs. Get it?
If GoldenEye or Goldfinger or Live and Let Die are somehow lesser Bond movies because they’re not as serious as some of the Craig films, then it seems like we’d have to get rid of more than half the Bond canon. If EON and Amazon are really conspiring to make future James Bond movies funnier, then all they’re really doing is returning to a formula that already works. Like a silver DB5 or a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred, there’s nothing more classically James Bond than a bunch of silly jokes.
One of my favourites was from Never Say Never Again:
Doctor: Can you fill this, Mr Bond?
Connery: From over here?
Also used in Porridge (first episode or film?).
Have they hired Lee Mack as the new James Bond then? I liked the more serious tones of the Daniel Craig era, going back might feel like a new Austin Powers film.
Lee Mack as the new James Bond except they don’t write him any dialogue, he has to adlib all his lines
