The most recent Bond film develops this interest by reviving and re-imagining SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), the crime syndicate central to most of the 1960s Bond films. Instead, Silva is defeated in a more traditional battle sequence in which Bond figuratively “pulls the trigger”. The villain Raoul Silva is a cyberterrorist with similarly impressive hacking skills, yet any notion that Q might actually be a more suitable protagonist against such a threat is ultimately rejected. This scene encapsulates the broader technological narrative across the film. In his first meeting with Bond, the new Q comments: “I’ll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pyjamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field.” Suddenly there was a new anxiety that a gadget may not work to extend Bond’s agency but instead supplant it (although Q concedes Bond’s continuing usefulness lies in how “every now and then a trigger has to be pulled”). It was perhaps inevitable that when Q was reintroduced in Skyfall (2012) it was as a geeky 30-something with a laptop and hyper-competent hacking skills. This is particularly evident in the absence of Q in the first two films. It is certainly not absent (see for example M’s elaborate holographic touchscreen in Quantum of Solace (2008)) but not as unabashedly celebrated either.
Gadgetry occupies an ambivalent position in this phase of the series. The subsequent Craig films reacted strongly against this by dialling back to an portrayal of Bond as a blunt instrument. But the infamous invisible car of Die Another Day (2002) proved a step too far into the fantastical for many tastes. Over subsequent decades, the gadget went from strength to strength, and by the 1990s it was able to merge seamlessly into new cultural excitement surrounding digital technology. Yet with the service quartermaster (or “Q”) depicted in the terms of the eccentric, avuncular British boffin, such technology always seemed somehow more personal than institutional. Here the appeal of the gadget, whether a laser watch, an attaché case concealing knives and tear gas, or an Aston Martin with ejector seat, was to extend the human agency of the protagonist, projecting the potential for action and escapism into ever more extravagant realms. In the days of Sean Connery, the fantastical gadgets deployed by Bond were a key part of the films’ engagement with 1960s modernity, what Harold Wilson described as the “white heat” of the technological revolution. Spectre is an intriguing new step in how the Bond films have worked to negotiate the changing cultural perceptions of each in the 21st century.
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But a look through the 53-year history of the Bond films reveals this to be the culmination two contrasting obsessions of the series – the liberating potential of gadgetry, and the oppressive potential of bureaucracy. The film’s focus on cybersecurity, and more specifically the potential for the abuse of state surveillance technology, is a timely theme: Spectre has even been described as “ sexily pro-Snowden”.Īs an ideological stance for Bond, that most establishment of action heroes, you might argue that this merits a raised eyebrow in the best Roger Moore tradition. The fourth Craig Bond, Spectre, takes us further down this road: unambiguously into a world that we all recognise. Daniel Craig’s entry into the Bond world was more than a change of face: he also brought in an abrupt about turn in style, from the fantastical to the gritty.
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