You're looking at the first page of an extremely long essay, so long that it has to be broken into many pages. This essay has a built-in problem, and no, it's not just the length. It's the length combined with the fact that this is an essay about ... James Bond movies.

Seventy-five percent of the people wandering through these pages would skim this essay or skip it even if it were only a page long. The other twenty-five percent would probably read it even if it were the size of a Tolstoy novel, because they typically read everything about Bond they can get their hands on.

This is nothing new. Bond has caused that sort of polarization almost from day one. Now that Ian Fleming's novels are no longer best-sellers or even much read anymore, and the explosions and violence in a Bond film are often rather tame compared to other entertainment product on the market, present-day viewers might not understand what the fuss was about, but trust me on this ... in the 1960s, Bond was not just a major event, but a divisive one - considered by some to be a sign of the impending decline and fall of good taste and polite society; considered by others to be a welcome breath of fresh air.

Same old same old, in other words. Every year some new outrage comes along, and five years later that outrage is the mainstream, and those people who are capable of looking backward at all are wondering what all the fuss was about.

Mileage is going to vary. Even the people who agree on which Bond films they like and which they don't - assuming they deign to watch Bond films at all - will never agree on the reasons why they like/dislike the ones they do. And why should they? Why bother to compare (other than to have an entertaining discussion, a motive which is somewhat short-circuited by this one-sided format)? Why discuss the matter at all?

Well, mainly because it's a lot of fun. But also, I've noticed that with Bond films there is a rather large, and easily definable, divide - it's not just that everyone has an individual opinion, but that there appear to be two definite camps, two fairly irreconcilable schools of thought about James Bond, and what he is, and what films about this character should be.

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This page was last changed on 2 February 2007

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Titles of Bond films cited here are all under copyright by the studios, production companies, or other companies which retain those rights, and no lack of copyright is implied. These pages and their author have absolutely no affiliation whatsoever with Ian Fleming (Glidrose) Publications, EON Productions, Danjaq LLC, MGM/UA or any other creators of the James Bond novels or films.