9 ms·

James Bond Unmasked (1968)

68 points by uniqueid 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
Anyone interested in Bond's author, Ian Fleming might find interesting Fleming's activities in Washington DC during WWII. An account this NPR feature: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=242536053 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=242536... follows below. As England was fighting for its life against the Nazis, the British government sent its most charming spies — including Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, Noel Coward and David Ogilvy — to America to blackmail, bully and cajol the U.S. into the war effort.
- jmkni 5y ago
  Fascinating, I just wish the NPR audio was much longer (like hours longer)! It felt like the intro to a podcast series (except without the podcast series).
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Protip: author interviews on broadcast media are almost always part of a publicity tour for a book. Here, the guest, Jennet Conant and her book The Irregulars. A YouTube search for longer-duration videos should provide a few talks based on the book. Or you could read the book itself ;-) https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=JENNET+CONANT+irregulars&sp=EgIYAg%253D%253D https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=JENNET+CONANT+i... Here's a 50-minute talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w-iPz6brO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w-iPz6brO0 You can also try podcast search (in your podcast app or online). A starting point: https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=JENNET%20CONANT%20irregulars&sort_by_date=0 https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=JENNET%20CONANT%20irre... And another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWtDq5rWmmc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWtDq5rWmmc (I've listened to only a minute or so, it's highly likely the talks are near-identical.) The book: https://www.worldcat.org/title/irregulars-roald-dahl-and-the-british-spy-ring-in-wartime-washington/oclc/748703920 https://www.worldcat.org/title/irregulars-roald-dahl-and-the...
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I've found that about 30 minute interviews work about right for me. When I'm recording them, I may go as short as about 15 and as long as about 45. But 20-30 always feels like the sweet spot.
      - dredmorbius 5y ago
        Meandering down this diversion a bit... First, yes, I generally agree with you. What I've noticed listening to a lot of lectures over the past few years are typically breaks at roughly: 90s, 5m, 10m, that 20--30m spot, 45--60m, 90m, and very occasionally a longer session, though I'd argue that 2h is about the maximum which can be sustained in a single session. The shortest are just teasers, often commercial broadcast. They're not informative but more advisory, and really only advertisements for some additional content, which is the medium's strength.[1] A 4--10m segment is a brief introduction to a topic, beginning with about the span of a noncommercial broadcast, and including the typical length of a quick YouTube video. You can actually cover quite a bit of the basics of a topic, or mesh together a number of topics into once related thread. At 20m you're hitting one of the natural spans of human focus and the point at which attention starts to wander without some form of internal break or diversion. Longer presentations are often a fusion of 2--3 15--20 minute segments. I note that many well-structured podcasts aim for about this mark ("History of Philosophy" by Peter Adamson comes to mind.) If you're aiming to fill a 30 minute timeslot, 20--25m allows a bit of additional padding on either side for other filler as well. Lecture presentations tend to run variously about 20, 30, 45, 50, or a full 60 minutes. Typically there's a Q&A session, and in an academic context, an introduction which I've timed many times at very nearly precisely 6 minutes. The meat of the lecture tends to run about 40-50 minutes, and again, that's a reasonably good intermediate introduction to many topics.[2] And of course, this falls squarely into standard one-hour scheduling blocks utilised by broadcasters and in scheduled event venues. Most longer lectures I encounter tend to still limit the actual principle presentation to ~50-60m, with a longer Q&A. London School of Economics lecture series comes to mind. Longer single-session lectures are almost always poorly-tailored and should have been split, edited, or both. I've found a few exceptions. Thorstein Chlupp can in fact talk quite informatively about net-zero residential design and construction in Alaska for upwards of two hours,[3] and Joseph Tainter's "Collapse" talk runs ... about 70 minutes, not terribly long, but over the 1h mark, without feeling thin.[4] A well-prepared author seems generally to have a 1, 4, 10, 20, and ~50 minute versions of their talk. As I've often stalked speakers over various presentations, I've noticed cut points, transitions, and additional material usage practices. ________________________________ Notes: 1. To a first approximation, broadcast media offer infinitely expandable audience but strictly limited depth, whilst print is precisely the opposite. This means that the comparative strengths of each are in providing widespread awareness vs. providing in-depth exploration. Digital somewhat straddles this distinction. 2. A poorly-prepared speaker or interviewer is almost always starting to pad and tap-dance heavily by this point. 3. https://youtube.com/watch?v=AtHkvpRI6fc https://youtube.com/watch?v=AtHkvpRI6fc (2h) and https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xen_VWyDezY https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xen_VWyDezY (2h36m!) 4. https://youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI https://youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
darthrupert 5y ago
I can recommend the podcast Kill James Bond! (featuring at least Philosophy Tube's Abigail Thorne) if you're at all perplexed why this monster and the mostly very mediocre movies are so glorified.
- blowski 5y ago
  Is there any great mystery to their popularity? Surely it’s the same reason other franchises are popular - good promotion from the studio, a loyal fanbase that loves the familiar characters, and a wider audience that loves a brainless action-flick with attractive actors.
- akomtu 5y ago
  I'd make a guess that it's the non trivial plot, outstanding performance and top notch actors that make Bond such a successful franchise.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Wut? The plots are fairly trivial and predictable. Bond movies are schematic movies with completely average performances.
    - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
      I like Craig's version but agree with you in general. I like the old movies for nostalgia reasons but they are not exactly high quality cinema. That's ok. They can just be fun, but I think it's a little silly to hold them up as more than they are just because they had some cultural cache half a century ago. Brosnon is a fine actor, but I never liked his version. It was like watching a prep school dweeb act like he's a macho badass. Just never came across as particularly believable or compelling. I hope moving forward the franchise continues the trend of getting into some more serious/substantial character development and conflicts. The Craig versions were mostly better on this point, but they could go so much further.
  - darthrupert 5y ago
leephillips 5y ago
This is a rather odd and fatally incomplete essay. Its final suggestions, verging on explicit charges, of antisemitism against Fleming seem like guilt-by-association. The criticism of the writing in the novels is not totally unfair. Although the worst of it is barely readable, at his best Fleming could spin a scene or passage with resounding skill. But his most interesting work is in his short stories, which Richler doesn’t mention. If you think you have the measure of Fleming, read the story “The Hildebrand Rarity”, which rises to the level of literature, and takes Bond to psychological places that may surprise you. Also, in stories like “007 in New York”, Fleming shows real wit and something like self-deprecation toward his own output, or at least the ability to have fun with it. Finally, although Richler runs on quite a bit into anecdotes about Fleming’s promotion of the Bond books and their commercial fortunes, he doesn’t mention what caused the sharp turning point in their popularity, which was a comment by JFK.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  It's a revealing bit of contemporary criticism, but it comes across as a bit naive, as if the author somehow expected something different from an author of popular spy fiction and was disappointed. He's not wrong, he just misses the point. Of course Bond is a head case whose psychological foibles are a reflection of his creator, or at least of his era. A woke Bond would be about as interesting (and about as profitable) as a woke Batman. And as for Fleming's predilection for writing about card games and golf games: if you can make those interesting -- and he could, and did -- you're certainly entitled to be listed among the ranks of Real Writers. That's when I realized it was time to take Stephen King seriously -- not when he wrote interesting stories about vampires or demons or aliens, but when he wrote interesting stories about baseball. Edit: on finishing the essay, I'm being too generous to the author here. His rambling about an anti-Semitic subtext in Fleming's books has no justification, and he knows it, which is why he starts rambling about anti-Semitic subtexts in other authors' works.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    > It's a revealing bit of contemporary criticism, but it comes across as a bit naive, as if the author somehow expected something different from an author of popular spy fiction and was disappointed. Well, John le Carré had already published at least 4 popular spy novels by the time (1968) this critique of Fleming was published. I, for one, think it's fair to expect something different when other contemporaneous authors were doing something different.
karaterobot 5y ago
Fifty years on, the article reads to me like one writer was angry at another writer's outsized success, and went really hard at them in the cattiest possible way.
akomtu 5y ago
I've been thinking just days ago that ending the Bond franchise will be the number 1 target of the woke crowd (or whoever steers them). The reason is obvious: Bond is the pinnacle of "whiteness" - the character is all about excellence and superiority, all attributed to a white dude (this brazen heresy is making me feel a bit uneasy). And since the censors can't make their own PC movie that would outcompete Bond, they'll have to cancel it.
- setpatchaddress 5y ago
  You really need to stop watching Fox News. It is poisoning your brain. No one other than Twitter grifters thinks the way you seem to think they do. - A Bond of color is probably an inevitability. - Bond is usually incredibly incompetent and succeeds in spite of himself through sheer luck.
  - asguy 5y ago
    > You really need to stop watching Fox News. It is poisoning your brain. What’s the point of typing this out? When you write things like this do you think you’re going to convince anyone to change positions? Is it just to gain internet points? Imagine this as a response to your comment: > You really need to stop watching MSNBC. It is poisoning your brain. It’s like playing tennis. I’m replying because this type of stuff is so tiresome. It’s hard enough to avoid on the rest of the Internet; please don’t bring it to HN.
  - curtainsforus 5y ago
    You agree with fox news on half of your points?
  - rejectedandsad 5y ago
    The idea that he’s incredibly incompetent is revisionist. These movies aren’t deconstruction, and shouldn’t be. The fun is when he’s able to get out of tough situations in the spur of the moment (my favorites, like Goldfinger and For Your Eyes Only show him in credible danger several times). Interestingly, this is something the Mission Impossible series did perfectly in their last movie, better than almost all Bond movies. With that said, I really don’t think anybody is actually threatened by Bond being a white man. Like, people have lives to live.
FearlessNebula 5y ago
This franchise has too much childhood nostalgia for me to ever “cancel” it. It’s gonna be the blue pill for me. That being said, it’s interesting and humble to see my internal biases. My gut instinct to all of these critical comments of the Bond movies was “these idiots are wrong”. I had to consciously tell myself “they probably have a lot of valid points but in favor of protecting childhood memories I’m not going to look into this”.
jdonaldson 5y ago
I highly recommend this "Let's Read" thread on James Bond from SomethingAwful : https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3861448 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=38... My takeaway on Bond is that he's way more interesting as a flawed protagonist, much in the same way Fleming himself was. Through the movies, he became symbolic and idolized in a way that I don't think Fleming intended. The Casino Royale movie reboot was pretty great IMHO. The direction Bond is going now is pretty hit and miss. I'm guessing every few decades we'll need to tear down the mythology and start over with something better grounded in reality, and give a reminder of how imperfect Bond can be.
- dudul 5y ago
  When was James bond perfect? He gets caught, betrayed, tortured, outsmarted in many movies before Casino Royale. He is deeply flawed as well. I actually think James Bond doesn't work in a realistic setting. It just becomes a random action movie like what we've seen during the Craig's Era. I just finished a full rewtch of the 25 movies and it's crazy how enjoyable the "old" ones were compared to the reboot. I remember my wife telling me during Quantum of Solace "I guess now it's more Jason Bourne than James Bond".
  - vcxy 5y ago
    How did you feel about Skyfall? I'm not a big Bond (or even action movie) fan and I didn't like Quantum of Solace, but Skyfall is one of my favorite films just on cinematography alone. I certainly don't find it to be just a random action movie (or if it is, I need to find which action movies are that visually stunning!)
    - jdonaldson 5y ago
      Skyfall was great in that it grounded the relationships that Bond had with M. I believe he/she is just as interesting a character as Bond is... but never fully developed. I always thought if John Le Carré was writing Bond the focus would be on M, and might even make for a better book. Skyfall been the only recent movie that has added something meaningful to the Bond persona IMHO.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
> The success of Bond is all the more intriguing because Ian Fleming was such an appalling writer. He had no sense of place that scratched deeper than Sunday-supplement travel articles Bond offered escapism to the post WWII world. When casino Royale was released there was still food rationing in the UK and bomb sites littered the cities. Bond offered international travel and excitement in the same way that the Fast and Furious or Mission Impossible movies do today.

68 points by uniqueid 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Anyone interested in Bond's author, Ian Fleming might find interesting Fleming's activities in Washington DC during WWII. An account this NPR feature: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=242536053 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=242536... follows below. As England was fighting for its life against the Nazis, the British government sent its most charming spies — including Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, Noel Coward and David Ogilvy — to America to blackmail, bully and cajol the U.S. into the war effort.

jmkni 5y ago
Fascinating, I just wish the NPR audio was much longer (like hours longer)! It felt like the intro to a podcast series (except without the podcast series).
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Protip: author interviews on broadcast media are almost always part of a publicity tour for a book. Here, the guest, Jennet Conant and her book The Irregulars. A YouTube search for longer-duration videos should provide a few talks based on the book. Or you could read the book itself ;-) https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=JENNET+CONANT+irregulars&sp=EgIYAg%253D%253D https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=JENNET+CONANT+i... Here's a 50-minute talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w-iPz6brO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w-iPz6brO0 You can also try podcast search (in your podcast app or online). A starting point: https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=JENNET%20CONANT%20irregulars&sort_by_date=0 https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=JENNET%20CONANT%20irre... And another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWtDq5rWmmc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWtDq5rWmmc (I've listened to only a minute or so, it's highly likely the talks are near-identical.) The book: https://www.worldcat.org/title/irregulars-roald-dahl-and-the-british-spy-ring-in-wartime-washington/oclc/748703920 https://www.worldcat.org/title/irregulars-roald-dahl-and-the...
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I've found that about 30 minute interviews work about right for me. When I'm recording them, I may go as short as about 15 and as long as about 45. But 20-30 always feels like the sweet spot.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      Meandering down this diversion a bit... First, yes, I generally agree with you. What I've noticed listening to a lot of lectures over the past few years are typically breaks at roughly: 90s, 5m, 10m, that 20--30m spot, 45--60m, 90m, and very occasionally a longer session, though I'd argue that 2h is about the maximum which can be sustained in a single session. The shortest are just teasers, often commercial broadcast. They're not informative but more advisory, and really only advertisements for some additional content, which is the medium's strength.[1] A 4--10m segment is a brief introduction to a topic, beginning with about the span of a noncommercial broadcast, and including the typical length of a quick YouTube video. You can actually cover quite a bit of the basics of a topic, or mesh together a number of topics into once related thread. At 20m you're hitting one of the natural spans of human focus and the point at which attention starts to wander without some form of internal break or diversion. Longer presentations are often a fusion of 2--3 15--20 minute segments. I note that many well-structured podcasts aim for about this mark ("History of Philosophy" by Peter Adamson comes to mind.) If you're aiming to fill a 30 minute timeslot, 20--25m allows a bit of additional padding on either side for other filler as well. Lecture presentations tend to run variously about 20, 30, 45, 50, or a full 60 minutes. Typically there's a Q&A session, and in an academic context, an introduction which I've timed many times at very nearly precisely 6 minutes. The meat of the lecture tends to run about 40-50 minutes, and again, that's a reasonably good intermediate introduction to many topics.[2] And of course, this falls squarely into standard one-hour scheduling blocks utilised by broadcasters and in scheduled event venues. Most longer lectures I encounter tend to still limit the actual principle presentation to ~50-60m, with a longer Q&A. London School of Economics lecture series comes to mind. Longer single-session lectures are almost always poorly-tailored and should have been split, edited, or both. I've found a few exceptions. Thorstein Chlupp can in fact talk quite informatively about net-zero residential design and construction in Alaska for upwards of two hours,[3] and Joseph Tainter's "Collapse" talk runs ... about 70 minutes, not terribly long, but over the 1h mark, without feeling thin.[4] A well-prepared author seems generally to have a 1, 4, 10, 20, and ~50 minute versions of their talk. As I've often stalked speakers over various presentations, I've noticed cut points, transitions, and additional material usage practices. ________________________________ Notes: 1. To a first approximation, broadcast media offer infinitely expandable audience but strictly limited depth, whilst print is precisely the opposite. This means that the comparative strengths of each are in providing widespread awareness vs. providing in-depth exploration. Digital somewhat straddles this distinction. 2. A poorly-prepared speaker or interviewer is almost always starting to pad and tap-dance heavily by this point. 3. https://youtube.com/watch?v=AtHkvpRI6fc https://youtube.com/watch?v=AtHkvpRI6fc (2h) and https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xen_VWyDezY https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xen_VWyDezY (2h36m!) 4. https://youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI https://youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

darthrupert 5y ago

I can recommend the podcast Kill James Bond! (featuring at least Philosophy Tube's Abigail Thorne) if you're at all perplexed why this monster and the mostly very mediocre movies are so glorified.

blowski 5y ago
Is there any great mystery to their popularity? Surely it’s the same reason other franchises are popular - good promotion from the studio, a loyal fanbase that loves the familiar characters, and a wider audience that loves a brainless action-flick with attractive actors.
akomtu 5y ago
I'd make a guess that it's the non trivial plot, outstanding performance and top notch actors that make Bond such a successful franchise.
- watwut 5y ago
  Wut? The plots are fairly trivial and predictable. Bond movies are schematic movies with completely average performances.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
    I like Craig's version but agree with you in general. I like the old movies for nostalgia reasons but they are not exactly high quality cinema. That's ok. They can just be fun, but I think it's a little silly to hold them up as more than they are just because they had some cultural cache half a century ago. Brosnon is a fine actor, but I never liked his version. It was like watching a prep school dweeb act like he's a macho badass. Just never came across as particularly believable or compelling. I hope moving forward the franchise continues the trend of getting into some more serious/substantial character development and conflicts. The Craig versions were mostly better on this point, but they could go so much further.
- darthrupert 5y ago

leephillips 5y ago

This is a rather odd and fatally incomplete essay. Its final suggestions, verging on explicit charges, of antisemitism against Fleming seem like guilt-by-association. The criticism of the writing in the novels is not totally unfair. Although the worst of it is barely readable, at his best Fleming could spin a scene or passage with resounding skill. But his most interesting work is in his short stories, which Richler doesn’t mention. If you think you have the measure of Fleming, read the story “The Hildebrand Rarity”, which rises to the level of literature, and takes Bond to psychological places that may surprise you. Also, in stories like “007 in New York”, Fleming shows real wit and something like self-deprecation toward his own output, or at least the ability to have fun with it. Finally, although Richler runs on quite a bit into anecdotes about Fleming’s promotion of the Bond books and their commercial fortunes, he doesn’t mention what caused the sharp turning point in their popularity, which was a comment by JFK.

CamperBob2 5y ago
It's a revealing bit of contemporary criticism, but it comes across as a bit naive, as if the author somehow expected something different from an author of popular spy fiction and was disappointed. He's not wrong, he just misses the point. Of course Bond is a head case whose psychological foibles are a reflection of his creator, or at least of his era. A woke Bond would be about as interesting (and about as profitable) as a woke Batman. And as for Fleming's predilection for writing about card games and golf games: if you can make those interesting -- and he could, and did -- you're certainly entitled to be listed among the ranks of Real Writers. That's when I realized it was time to take Stephen King seriously -- not when he wrote interesting stories about vampires or demons or aliens, but when he wrote interesting stories about baseball. Edit: on finishing the essay, I'm being too generous to the author here. His rambling about an anti-Semitic subtext in Fleming's books has no justification, and he knows it, which is why he starts rambling about anti-Semitic subtexts in other authors' works.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  > It's a revealing bit of contemporary criticism, but it comes across as a bit naive, as if the author somehow expected something different from an author of popular spy fiction and was disappointed. Well, John le Carré had already published at least 4 popular spy novels by the time (1968) this critique of Fleming was published. I, for one, think it's fair to expect something different when other contemporaneous authors were doing something different.

karaterobot 5y ago

Fifty years on, the article reads to me like one writer was angry at another writer's outsized success, and went really hard at them in the cattiest possible way.

akomtu 5y ago

I've been thinking just days ago that ending the Bond franchise will be the number 1 target of the woke crowd (or whoever steers them). The reason is obvious: Bond is the pinnacle of "whiteness" - the character is all about excellence and superiority, all attributed to a white dude (this brazen heresy is making me feel a bit uneasy). And since the censors can't make their own PC movie that would outcompete Bond, they'll have to cancel it.

setpatchaddress 5y ago
You really need to stop watching Fox News. It is poisoning your brain. No one other than Twitter grifters thinks the way you seem to think they do. - A Bond of color is probably an inevitability. - Bond is usually incredibly incompetent and succeeds in spite of himself through sheer luck.
- asguy 5y ago
  > You really need to stop watching Fox News. It is poisoning your brain. What’s the point of typing this out? When you write things like this do you think you’re going to convince anyone to change positions? Is it just to gain internet points? Imagine this as a response to your comment: > You really need to stop watching MSNBC. It is poisoning your brain. It’s like playing tennis. I’m replying because this type of stuff is so tiresome. It’s hard enough to avoid on the rest of the Internet; please don’t bring it to HN.
- curtainsforus 5y ago
  You agree with fox news on half of your points?
- rejectedandsad 5y ago
  The idea that he’s incredibly incompetent is revisionist. These movies aren’t deconstruction, and shouldn’t be. The fun is when he’s able to get out of tough situations in the spur of the moment (my favorites, like Goldfinger and For Your Eyes Only show him in credible danger several times). Interestingly, this is something the Mission Impossible series did perfectly in their last movie, better than almost all Bond movies. With that said, I really don’t think anybody is actually threatened by Bond being a white man. Like, people have lives to live.

FearlessNebula 5y ago

This franchise has too much childhood nostalgia for me to ever “cancel” it. It’s gonna be the blue pill for me. That being said, it’s interesting and humble to see my internal biases. My gut instinct to all of these critical comments of the Bond movies was “these idiots are wrong”. I had to consciously tell myself “they probably have a lot of valid points but in favor of protecting childhood memories I’m not going to look into this”.

jdonaldson 5y ago

I highly recommend this "Let's Read" thread on James Bond from SomethingAwful : https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3861448 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=38... My takeaway on Bond is that he's way more interesting as a flawed protagonist, much in the same way Fleming himself was. Through the movies, he became symbolic and idolized in a way that I don't think Fleming intended. The Casino Royale movie reboot was pretty great IMHO. The direction Bond is going now is pretty hit and miss. I'm guessing every few decades we'll need to tear down the mythology and start over with something better grounded in reality, and give a reminder of how imperfect Bond can be.

dudul 5y ago
When was James bond perfect? He gets caught, betrayed, tortured, outsmarted in many movies before Casino Royale. He is deeply flawed as well. I actually think James Bond doesn't work in a realistic setting. It just becomes a random action movie like what we've seen during the Craig's Era. I just finished a full rewtch of the 25 movies and it's crazy how enjoyable the "old" ones were compared to the reboot. I remember my wife telling me during Quantum of Solace "I guess now it's more Jason Bourne than James Bond".
- vcxy 5y ago
  How did you feel about Skyfall? I'm not a big Bond (or even action movie) fan and I didn't like Quantum of Solace, but Skyfall is one of my favorite films just on cinematography alone. I certainly don't find it to be just a random action movie (or if it is, I need to find which action movies are that visually stunning!)
  - jdonaldson 5y ago
    Skyfall was great in that it grounded the relationships that Bond had with M. I believe he/she is just as interesting a character as Bond is... but never fully developed. I always thought if John Le Carré was writing Bond the focus would be on M, and might even make for a better book. Skyfall been the only recent movie that has added something meaningful to the Bond persona IMHO.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

> The success of Bond is all the more intriguing because Ian Fleming was such an appalling writer. He had no sense of place that scratched deeper than Sunday-supplement travel articles Bond offered escapism to the post WWII world. When casino Royale was released there was still food rationing in the UK and bomb sites littered the cities. Bond offered international travel and excitement in the same way that the Fast and Furious or Mission Impossible movies do today.