Why I USED to love James Bond

Being a guy who loves fantasies, action and adventure, I love the world of movies a lot. My favorite filmi characters range from a wide variety of roles donned by some real good actors/actresses. I sing along with them, play along with them, cry along with them and laugh along with them.

Being an adventure lover, I always had this soft corner for super-heroes and action heroes. My all time fav super-heroes are Spiderman and Superman(it’s another bitter truth that I love to see them in cartoons that movies). My list of fav action heroes are James Bond and Ethan Hunt(Mission Impossible series).

Coming to James Bond, I always had this fascination about that character and many times, I dreamt of being a real life Bond(blushing). I loved his style, his girls, his ways of flirting with girls(obviously he can flirt only with girls, I don’t like my fav to be a gay), his nerves of steel, his coolness, his dress sense, his gadgets – in fact, I adore the character of James Bond. As far as I can remember, the first Bond movie I’ve seen in theater was Tomorrow Never Dies. I’ve seen almost all the others (older ones) on TV/DVD later. Post “Tomorrow Never Dies”, all the new Bond movies are strictly first-day-first-show-in-theater.

But off late, the character of Bond, in his movies, is losing its originality. We noticed this change from his penultimate movie, Casino Royale, which is more like a love story than a spy thriller. In that film, Bond cries, pledges and do all that we don’t want him to do. And this change is apparent in the latest movie, Quantum of Solace. too. Believe me; I was terribly disappointed with this movie. Somehow, I felt that the previous movie was better than this one. Here are a few reasons why I don’t like this movie (as a Bond movie):

1. I don’t like the idea of Bond carrying out his revenge instead of his duty.
2. This movie doesn’t have any of his cheesy one liners like the famous introduction dialog “Bond, James Bond” and his “vodka martini, shaken but not stirred”.
3. No Aston Martin fitted with loads of weapons n state-of-the-art gadgets.
4. The climax doesn’t fit at all.
5. Many stunt sequences look as if they are lifted from earlier Bond movies.
6. Bond looked tired(even though his character required that look in this movie).
7. The latest Bond actor, Daniel Craig, is a strictly OK guy who can don the roles of the super-spy convincingly but definitely not with ease. He doesn’t have that manly look of Pierce Brosnan or Sean Connery.

These are only some of the flaws found by me(others may like them, but I don’t). Bond is made human in this movie and its predecessor. But do we really want to see a Bond who cries? After all, we want to be a Bond but we definitely don’t want Bond to be one among us!!!