Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review of 27 films (also a cartoon series and a video game)  by Professor Popinjay

When considering an entire franchise spanning 59 years there’s bound to be much said that could be said of any such franchise, few as they may be. 

Not all the films are going to age well. You can’t really put them all in one basket as each generation makes their own version. You might like some and dislike others. They are directed and portrayed by different people with different visions. The variety of takes, opinions, and regard is always going to be a mixture of delight, disdain, and all contradictions in between. And that’s okay. Such is often the product of entertainment.

So what can be said specifically for the James Bond franchise? Not much that hasn’t been said in hundreds of other articles. There are whole books and documentaries about him.

What I can uniquely offer is my autobiographical experiences with James Bond films as I witnessed them. And I invite you to share your own if you feel so inclined.

Obviously there’s a reason these films keep getting made. No matter how goofy they’ve been at times, there is something captivating about the ultra suave super spy. Possibly, he is a romanticized version of things we might want but have accepted as impossible fiction. In reality anyone who actually lived like James Bond would likely have severe PTSD, be missing a few limbs maybe, definitely two venereal diseases per film; oh yeah, and he’d be dead.

My earliest memory I can recall of these films is being fascinated at an early age by the characters Jaws and Oddjob played by Richard Kiel and Harold Sakata respectively. I wanted teeth that could bite through steel cables and a hat that would take the head off a marble statue! No steel cable or marble statue would be safe! But I was only allowed to see bits and pieces of these films, young as I was. I remember being disappointed to learn Jaws and Oddjob were not in every film. 

Somewhere along the line I recall seeing the end of Licence to Kill on TV and thinking it looked terribly boring and who was this imposter Bond named Timothy Dalton!?!

In 1991 the animated series James Bond Jr. premiered and I was hooked! Jaws and Oddjob were given an updated cartoon makeover. I had their action figures! I thought Dr. Derange’s crazy exophthalmic eye was awesome! Alas, no matter how much I strained and grunted, my eyeballs remained in their sockets. Some people have all the luck.

I guess it’s kind of obvious by now, the villains appealed to me more than James most of the time. Couldn’t be helped. They had all these cool gimmicks.

James Bond Jr. made a lot of references to the movies which I never really caught as a kid. The episode where people were getting their clothes inflated to perfectly spherical proportions was baffling to me until I saw Live and Let Die later in life where a villain was killed by being inflated. Gruesome. Kind of surprised they parodied that in a kids show.

Wait, why was he James Bond Jr. if he was James Bond’s nephew? Who was James Bond’s brother? Does James Bond Jr. then grow up to be Jimmy Bond as portrayed by Woody Allen in the 1967 Casino Royale!?! Ah, but that was a non-Eon film so it doesn’t count.

In 1995 Goldeneye came out. I was 13 years old, hanging out in a hotel room in the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, while my parents were trying a bit of their luck down at the slots. That makes them sound like terrible parents. Don’t worry this was not a regular occurrence. We were mainly there for the sites and I had had my fill so I chose to stay in the room and watch a pay-per-view movie. What movie was it? No, it wasn’t Lusty Liaisons Part 4! My dad helped me choose cuz he’s a good dad. I chose Goldeneye! This would be the first Bond film I would watch all the way through. The hench-woman’s gimmick? Xenia Onatop would squeeze men to death with her thighs! Needless to say I was less enthralled with this ability than I was with metal teeth and razor brimmed hats and yet I had to admit there was something oddly compelling about the whole affair. At 13 did I know any women who could squeeze me to death with their thighs? That sounded grand!

Aside from evoking strange and wonderful new feelings in me, Goldeneye was thoroughly exciting but not what I would call life changing. One aspect I very much appreciated then however was the music. Eric Sera had brought a modern flair to the usually very brassy Bond theme and the rest of his score was haunting and industrial. I freaking loved that!

Special mention to Joe Don Baker for making an appearance in Goldeneye. MITCHELL! But wait… didn’t Joe Don play a villain in a previous Bond film? Hmm, maybe he had a twin?

Part 2 of 4 coming soon!