Bourne vs. Bond
On Thursday the 4th of December at 11AM I was sitting in front of a library computer watching the live stream announcement of the 24th James Bond outing on www.007.com. To my zest, the title of the movie – Spectre – was announced with the classic Bond tune playing in the background. The most anticipated news however were the new inclusions to the returning cast from Skyfall, consisting of: Dave Bautista (hopefully he will not ‘Batista Bomb’ 007!), Lea Seydoux (the new addition to a long line of French Bond Girls), Monica Belluci (after being linked with Bond movies for years) and most importantly, the almighty mega-villain Christoph Waltz, who by conveying only a portion of his sinister attitude from Inglorious Basterds, can become an all time classic arch-nemesis.
All this topped by the sexy Aston Martin DB10 built especially for the movie and the exotic filming locations of Morocco, Mexico, Italy and the Alps has many die-hard Bond fans (including myself) thinking that Spectre will go down as one of the best ever James Bond movies.
Another factor adding to the excitement is the title itself. SPECTRE (an acronym for Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), was the fictional, menacing, global organisation featured in the early Bond movies during the 1960’s. It was headed by Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the iconic and ominous bald villain who appeared sparingly stroking his cat, which spawned comical interpretations like that of Dr. Evil in Austin Powers movies and Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget.
SPECTRE was the movie replacement of SMERSH (meaning Smert Spionem – death to spies in Russian) which was the focus of many of the original James Bond novels by Ian Fleming. However, due to legal battles regarding intellectual property ownership of the organisation and its characters, SPECTRE wasn’t used for decades, until now that is, as the court case was settled in November 2013. There are rumours that Christoph Waltz will be a modern incarnation of Blofeld, bringing back to the franchise some of what made it so iconic in the first place.
The upcoming Bourne movie will undoubtedly lead to further comparisons being made with Bond
Nevertheless, the return of SPECTRE is not the only spy-movie announcement of the past year. This takes us to the other JB. Matt Damon recently confirmed that he will reprise his role as Jason Bourne in a new 2016 movie. This is due to Paul Greengrass (who directed the Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum) also returning to the franchise. Matt Damon had previously given an ultimatum (pun intended) that he would not return to the film series unless the director did likewise. Their absence resulted in the tangent spinoff, The Bourne Legacy, starring Jeremy Renner and directed by Tony Gilroy, taking place in the same world as Jason Bourne.
The upcoming Bourne movie will undoubtedly lead to further comparisons being made with Bond. When Quantum of Solace was released in 2008, it was highly criticised for replacing the Bondesque appeal of suave and witty with rogue brute force. The shaky camera action sequences for added realism made it even more reminiscent of the Bourne movie which was released only a year prior.
The idea that EON Productions (the production company behind the James Bond film series) was playing catch-up with the 21st century agent genre was being tossed around. However calls for James Bond finally stepping down were silenced with the release of Skyfall and its subsequent success, albeit only after re-establishing key characters such as Q, Moneypenny and even recruiting a new M.
Now that Bond has a familiar cast and crew, further tapping into some early source material by bringing back SPECTRE and with the chance of creating an overarching storyline throughout the Daniel Craig movies, the competition will be a whole lot different. With the release of the new Bond film coming a year earlier than that of Bourne will give Spectre the upper hand, with the ability to set the bar high for the Bourne movie. Whatever the outcome of this head-to-head battle is, by 2016 we will have a clearer opinion on which JB is more relevant to the modern audience – hopefully the answer to that will not be Justin Bieber…
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