Emo Bond

Principal photography is wrapping up on Quantum of Solace, the sequel to the James Bond 007 reboot Casino Royale. Which I thought was great. So CNN dares ask the hard-hitting, yet formerly-hip*, question, "Are people ready for an emo Bond?"

Well, I am. And I don't think he'll be an "emo." (Best definition: "punk music on estrogen," but also applies to the long-haired, Hot-Topic-frequenting, affectively-depressed boys who create that music.) Bond isn't a sensitive nineties kind of guy. Bond is a misogynistic sociopath. The reboot movies show how he gets that way. He already has little respect for rules when they are inconvenient to him (he break into M's flat in Casino Royale when he has difficulty getting satisfactory answers from her after a mission goes bad) and then finally finds a woman to love, who betrays him and then the world -- a world he stepped into and in cinematic terms, helped create -- utterly crushes his spirit as payback for him having rendered himself vulnerable.

This is good stuff for movies. And it doesn't make Bond an emo. It means he is going to turn himself into a stone killer by the end of Quantum. That is the Bond that you read about in Ian Fleming's books, not the smarmy and overgroomed gadgeteer of the Roger Moore era. It looks like in Quantum, the action starts about an hour after Casino Royale ends. We get to see Bond mourning his loss, and that will probably take the form of him pursuing his antagonists, the shadowy criminal organization SPECTRE, seeking revenge. This movie promises to have all the sensitive, touchy-feely emo appeal of the final reel of Mad Max. Count me in.

* Once CNN uses a cool, hip slang phrase in its headlines, the cool and hip young people who created and used the phrase will immediately abandon it because the phrase is no longer cool and hip, having been used by CNN.