50th Anniversary Bond Rewatch "Goldeneye" (1995)
As a fan of the popcorn, guilty pleasure, mindless entertainment aspect of the Bond series of films, I thought it would be interesting to revisit the films with the company of my brain. Maybe there is more to be found than escapism. Maybe some of the culture and thinking of the past 50 years has left its imprint…
Welcome to the nineties. A new decade (Bond’s fourth), a new Bond, and a new world political reality along with the longest wait between films the series had ever or would ever experience all led to huge anticipation for Pierce Brosnan’s first film. Many fans had actually been waiting for his take on the character since the early eighties. The result did not disappoint with a solid screenplay and arguably the best director of the series at the helm.
The story reflects the culture of the time in more ways than one. The Cold War was over but concerns were still high in the uncertainty of the new paradigm. What was going to happen with the huge stockpile of world destroying weapons now that there weren’t two powers balanced against each other? A chaos of interests and rogue elements with diverse goals and agendas seemed like a much scarier reality.
How was Bond going to cope in this new world? The other cultural change seemed even more daunting where he was concerned. Political correctness in the nineties had reached its pinnacle. How could we continue to make a hero of the man who did everything political correctness had done away with? Well, the answer seemed to be that he could continue to be exactly as he had been (even more so than the past couple of films) as long as he did it with a lot of angst and introspection. Other men in “Goldeneye” are absolute pigs when it came to women, but Bond behaved like he did as a coping mechanism. Poor spy.
That being said, this is one of the better films in the series from purely a spy-plot perspective.
Welcome to the nineties. A new decade (Bond’s fourth), a new Bond, and a new world political reality along with the longest wait between films the series had ever or would ever experience all led to huge anticipation for Pierce Brosnan’s first film. Many fans had actually been waiting for his take on the character since the early eighties. The result did not disappoint with a solid screenplay and arguably the best director of the series at the helm.
The story reflects the culture of the time in more ways than one. The Cold War was over but concerns were still high in the uncertainty of the new paradigm. What was going to happen with the huge stockpile of world destroying weapons now that there weren’t two powers balanced against each other? A chaos of interests and rogue elements with diverse goals and agendas seemed like a much scarier reality.
How was Bond going to cope in this new world? The other cultural change seemed even more daunting where he was concerned. Political correctness in the nineties had reached its pinnacle. How could we continue to make a hero of the man who did everything political correctness had done away with? Well, the answer seemed to be that he could continue to be exactly as he had been (even more so than the past couple of films) as long as he did it with a lot of angst and introspection. Other men in “Goldeneye” are absolute pigs when it came to women, but Bond behaved like he did as a coping mechanism. Poor spy.
That being said, this is one of the better films in the series from purely a spy-plot perspective.
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