Die Another Day Is the Darkest James Bond Film of All

Die Another Day was possibly one of the worst James Bond films ever made¹. In attempting to tip a hat and slyly nod to previous James Bond films, it turned into a camp over-the-top monstrosity, bloated with smug performances and a plot that wouldn’t look out of place in a video game. In case you need a reminder as to how bad it was, I wrote a full scathing recap of the film a few years ago.

However, after alighting on the “multiple universe” theory of James Bond and some discussion with my other half it might be the case that everyone got the wrong end of the stick with DAD². It might just be one of the darkest Bond films yet, depending on a slightly alternative take on the events of the film.

Before we take a trip down the Twilight Zone version of DAD, let us consider the events at the beginning of Skyfall (a film made several years later). The opening sequence involves Bond taking a bullet to the chest and a fatal dive off of a bridge into a river. It’s a notable sequence because while Bond’s body slowly drifts deeper into the water the credits take place around him, a sinister and bizarre series of dream-like visuals that highlight on themes later explored in the film, mostly around Bond’s personal back-story. As noted in my recent blog post about the James Bond “multiple universe” theory, the video game 007 Legends suggests that Bond’s life flashes before his eyes at this point and he recounts flashes of previous missions.

Gotta watch out for those giant underwater hands when you go diving!

Interestingly the only other time Bond’s current situation has even been intertwined with the opening credits has been in DAD³. DAD opens with Bond being captured by a North Korean general and, during the credits sequence, we are shown a montage of the various tortures Bond is put through. He grows a beard over the course of his time in imprisonment, and is eventually (and reluctantly) traded back to MI6 in exchange for one of their Korean prisoners. In a hospital bed aboard a British naval ship, Bond is unceremoniously informed by M that his 00 status has been suspended and that MI6 suspects him of betrayal. At this point, after M leaves, Bond flatlines.

I now posit that Die Another Day is one of the darkest Bond films in the series and that the mission to Korea in the pre-credits sequence was the last mission for Pierce Brosnan’s Bond.

What happens next is that two doctors rush in to resuscitate the flatlining Bond and he miraculously leaps from his bed and escapes to go do James Bond-like things, the implication being that he intentionally slowed his heartbeat in order to get the doctors to unlock his recuperation cell. I suggest that Bond actually succumbed to deep internal injuries sustained from the torture and died right there on the bed, with his miraculous sudden recovery all a figment of his imagination as he slowly drifts into death.

He deeeaaaaaad.

I’m basically suggesting that DAD is the James Bond equivalent of (spoiler) Jacob’s Ladder or, if you’d prefer an obscure British comedy reference, The Comic Strip Presents…Les Dogs.

If we take another look at the events of Die Another Day as a wish-fulfilment fantasy concocted by Bond’s dying mind, a lot of it suddenly makes much more sense. I will now proceed to list all the areas that support this theory!

The Outlandish Is Now Only Fantastical

There are lots of absurd moments in DAD, and through the filter of a dream state these moments of absurdity suddenly fit the premise of being a fantasy in a dying man’s mind. Q develops an invisible car, something impossible and probably something that Bond would have joked about with the man before with a quip like “what’s next Q, an invisible car?”. Bond takes a plunge into water with a temperature below freezing and emerges unscathed, with not even an offhand comment about it “being a little chilly”. The villain’s plan is to use a satellite to destroy a minefield from the comfort of his super-sized jet, and the control panel is built into his body armour. The villain is undergoing a radical treatment to change him at the genetic level (more on that in a bit) and has to wear an absurd “dream mask” (that looks like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie) in order to get to sleep as a side-effect of the treatment is insomnia.

The mask is…nightmarish. Eh, eh?

Several elements feel like they have been ripped straight out of a video game. Bond is clearly a gamer too because if he is dreaming everything then he at one point fantasizes about an accurate VR simulation that Q cooks up that Bond then aces in an unusual fashion. At one point a slab of stone the exact size of a window falls and blocks Bond’s path, a classic video game convention. Bond has to distract guards in a sequence that feels like it is straight out of a point-and-click adventure game, by shoving an unconscious man in a wheelchair into a wall and strolling around the makeshift distraction via some side windows. There’s a car sequence that achieves nothing but was put in because “everyone expects a bit with a car in these games”. Jynx literally turns into a CGI cartoon character at one point and makes an impossible death dive backwards off of a cliff while guards don’t shoot at her, in much the vein of a video game cutscene.

The most telling sequence is the bit where the villain, Gustav Graves, trains his death satellite at Bond. At this point it is literally James Bond versus the power of the Sun⁴, a feat he wins by first strapping himself into a jet car and then para-surfing away on a massive tidal wave in one of the stupidest sequences in the film (and Bond history). However, through our lens of Bond’s demise in bed this suddenly becomes a visual metaphor – the man is literally running away from the bright light that’s come to claim him; you know, the one people usually see at the end of the tunnel when they die? His brain is fighting to the last, just wanting a bit more life to get him to the end of this story he’s dreaming up.

DON’T GO INTO THE LIGHT!

He Keeps Remembering Old Missions

I understand that there are a lot of references to previous Bond films in DAD because it came out around the 40th anniversary of James Bond and the film-makers wanted to celebrate the fact. However, a lot of the crass references suddenly don’t seem so bad when it’s all just Bond borrowing from his previous experiences to cobble together his death fantasy.

For example, one of the more egregious references is Rosa Klebb’s knife-bladed shoe being amongst the items in the James Bond reference grotto that is Q’s lab in the London Underground station. Although a cute reference, it makes no sense being there whatsoever. It implies that someone from MI6 travelled all the way to Bond’s hotel in Venice after the events of From Russia with Love, brought back the shoe and catalogued it in the MI6 archive. Using a bit of logic, a worse implication is that Bond himself deemed the shoe worthy of bringing back to his paymasters for analysis. It makes more sense that the entire thing is a fantasy and the shoe is just a fleeting curiosity in his memories.

The rest of the references are little things, Bond’s brain inserting bits and pieces from past experiences. His next sexual conquest emerges from the sea in a manner similar to Honeychile Ryder in Dr. No. A bank of rotating mirrors randomly placed in a gene therapy clinic evoke Scaramanga’s demented training fun house (The Man with the Golden Gun). Bond escapes a crashing plane in a similar manner to the way he did on a previous mission (The Living Daylights). A colleague is strapped to a device that threatens to cut them in half using a powerful laser (Goldfinger). There’s a henchman with an unlikely name⁵.

Not five minutes can go by in Die Another Day without a hint of previous missions sneaking past. Bond’s brain is simply drawing from previous experience as the blackness closes in.

The London Underground station really is just a basement of memories. It’s even got the bloody jetpack from Thunderball!

All of the Characters are James Bond (or Facets of Him)

If this is Bond’s last (fantasy) mission, then his narcissism is in full swing when he comes up with characters to populate it. Each one of the main characters is a variation on his own sardonic personality.

Gustav Graves, the villain, is revealed to be the Korean general Bond is chasing in the pre-credits sequence, having undergone extensive (and fairly fantastical) “gene therapy” surgery. In the context of the dying dream, Bond is demonising the man who caused him to be in his current situation – a man who, for all intents and purposes, is almost certainly dead following going over a waterfall. In Bond’s head he revives the man⁶ and concocts one final mission in his head to go after the general as revenge for killing him. Not only that, but the general is now a persona he “modelled” after Bond – the general has stolen Bond’s ego, personality and attitudes. Not just mere narcissism, a subtext could be that, deep down, Bond actually hates himself and wishes to conquer his own flaws.

He hates himself so much that he tries to kill himself with a sword.

Jynx, Bond’s latest bedroom partner, is the ying to Bond’s yang. She’s a woman, black, working for the CIA; a contrast to Bond’s masculine white MI6 operative. Apart from the obvious physical differences, Jynx is physically competent and is Bond’s equal in terms of performing her mission. I don’t want to cast aspersions on the depiction of women in the Bond films, but historically they have been perceived as weak; damsels to be rescued. Admittedly there are a few scenes where Jynx conforms to type, but otherwise she poses as something exciting for Bond – his equal professionally, physically and sexually. Jynx might be Bond’s perfect “dream” woman.

There’s also the whole “imagining her in death-traps he’s been in himself” thing. He wants a woman who can truly sympathise with his experiences.

Miranda Frost, on the other hand, is representative of Bond’s experiences with women. Cold, calculating, disinterested in his sexual advances and eventually revealed to be a traitor, Frost is, in many ways, Bond with breasts. I always saw a lot of Elektra King, the equally treacherous villainess of The World is Not Enough, in Miranda. It would make sense that Bond’s hurt feelings towards her were transposed on to this hate character, representing all the women who ever spurned him with the same coldness he shows their gender on a regular basis.

And, of course, she’s banging the expy Bond, so there’s another reason for Bond to hate her.

We Never See Brosnan Ever Again

DAD was canonically the last James Bond adventure featuring Brosnan as Bond. You could argue that the PS2 title Everything or Nothing counts as a valid entry, but there’s nothing to stop the proposition that the (rather outlandish) events of that game took place before DAD. In reality, the powers behind the Bond franchise just wanted to take the series in a new direction and respond to criticisms over DAD. In the universe of the fiction, however, it is just as likely that this mission was Bond’s last for that particular Bond.

If that sounds like a particularly bleak perception, it doesn’t have to just apply to Brosnan. Every Bond retired at some point, most in better circumstances than others. Ponder on what might have happened to Sean Connery’s Bond – perhaps he was still trying to ply his trade in his later years? Feel pity for George Lazenby’s Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, who fell in love on his first mission and, after losing his wife to a villain, quit the service immediately after out of grief. At least he’s alive at the end of it, unlike the unluckiest Bond of all; the one who died on a hospital bed dreaming of his own fantasy ending, lying amongst diamonds in a seaside shack with his perfect woman.

The end.

All images in this blog post were taken by “newsie_nympho”⁷ of “cap_me_crazy”. It saved me having to scour the web for images or use my PS4 to take pics off the Blu-ray copy of the film (which I can’t play on my laptop, annoyingly). You can find the images here.

Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | July 25, 2015 at 10:00 am | Films, James Bond | No comment

Tags: 007, creepypasta, Die Another Day, fan theory, James Bond, Pierce Brosnan