The Man with the Golden Gun is not a great Bond film.
Indeed, it isn’t even a particularly good film. It’s by no means the worst Bond film ever made (I can think of three or four that I loathe much more off the top of my head), but it’s either the best of the bad Bond films, or the worst of the mediocre entries.
Yet, I think it’s the Bond film we need right now. It might not be the best Bond film ever made, but I think that The Man with the Golden Gun is the best Bond film that could be made (or at least, the best Bond film that could be made right now), and I’m here today to break down why.
So, there’s a bit of buzz around at the moment concerning the possibility of Christopher Nolan directing the next James Bond film, and (for the first time in the series’ history) setting it as a period piece, in Bond’s original literary timeframe of the 1950s/60s, rather than updating 007 yet again for the 2020s.
I’m not here to talk about Nolan or a Cold War Bond, though. I mean, I like Bond films well enough (when they’re good) and I’m a big fan of Nolan (when he’s not bad, which he almost never is (god I hate Interstellar and I swear I’ll write more about why some day)), so I’d be delighted if it gets off the ground. And though I’ve heard quite a few people say that they’d be excited by a period setting, it’s honestly much of a muchness for me either way. Rather, today’s post is a pitch to remake (or, better, reimagine) one of the many largely forgettable Bond films of days past.
I want the next James Bond film to be The Man with the Golden Gun…or at least, I want the next film to be a reimagining of that story. After all, there is very good and very recent precedent for the Bond films – the thoroughly enjoyable No Time to Die is a spin on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, without being a ‘true’ remake of it. Or rather, No Time to Die is a spiritual (or a calculated) remake, reworking the stuff in the older film that works – Bond in a committed relationship, secret societies and biological warfare, a tragic ending – and stripping away the nonsense that is best forgotten.
Gone is the baffling aristocracy subplot (seriously, of all Bond’s missions, being asked to marry a wayward Contessa by her criminal father is one of the weirdest), and the protracted and very strange scheme to hypnotise beautiful women into destroying the world. No Time to Die riffs on the elements that make On Her Majesty’s Secret Service worthwhile, and is smart enough to cut the less successful elements – and given the broad success of this approach, I honestly think that The Man with the Golden Gun is due a similar reimagining, and that such an approach would serve Bond films well in the near future.
First things first, there’s no point dancing around what the unambiguous highlight of The Man with the Golden Gun is – it’s that man, with the golden gun. Francisco Scaramanga might be saddled with a poor film, but Christopher Lee never let that stop him in his career, and he rises magnificently to the occasion as Bond’s dark mirror.
It is a curious fact of Bond films that 007 is rarely faced with an outright physical equal to himself – his villains are usually large-scale, conceptual menaces, served by a henchman to grapple with Bond throughout the film. In Craig’s run, only Skyfall’s Silva ever arguably posed a tangible, real danger, and even then, Silva’s primary weapons are his mind and his ideology, rather than his brawn. Likewise, Brosnan’s only ‘equal’ was the unhinged and vengeful Trevelyan in Goldeneye and, as with Silva, Trevelyan is primarily a danger because he wants to destroy the world or something, not for his skills as a former British agent.
Scaramanga is different. Scaramanga doesn’t want to rule the world, or destroy it (well, until he does at the end of the film which, as with OHMSS’ Alpine hypnosis resort for attractive young ladies, is likely best forgotten about). Scaramanga just wants to shoot people, to get paid for shooting people, and to be feared for how good he is at shooting people – if it weren’t for the ridiculous solar power superweapon thing that was apparently obligatory in a ’70s Bond film, there is actually no reason for Scaramanga to ‘have’ to be stopped at all, beyond his amoral nature and murderous capabilities.
And that’s a rare thing in a Bond film. When the villain’s plan is to destroy or rule the world, it forces the story into a certain inevitability – obviously, a Bond film cannot end with Blofeld, Emperor of the World, the status quo has to be maintained. So, if a Bond villain’s plan involves either destroying the world or ruling it, the narrative guarantees that they cannot get away with it, which actually undercuts the dramatic tension, rather than heightening it. Bond, counterintuitively, thrives when the stakes are lower, not higher – when there is a very real chance of failure.
That’s apparent in Craig’s more compelling films – Craig’s Bond arguably loses in both Casino Royale and in Skyfall, and while the villain of No Time to Die has a typically apocalyptic plot that is thwarted, that film still manages to keep the stakes high by keeping a savvy audience reminded of its source material, by threatening that anyone could die…and ultimately following through on that threat.
Poor old Brosnan, on the other hand, is faced with a menagerie of megalomaniacs, and inevitably manages to beat them and be home in time for tea – though I do think that the threat of Sean Bean’s Trevelyan, Bond’s intellectual and physical equal, in Goldeneye at least elevates that film. And to go back yet another Bond, Dalton is (to me, at least) served brilliantly in his all-too-short career as 007 by having (by Bond standards) relatively low-stakes plots. The Living Daylights is a delightfully understated mix of intrigue, diplomacy, politics, black marketeering, assassinations and even a bit of secret agent work (a marked rarity for James Bond), while Licence to Kill, my all-time favourite Bond film, is basically just about a drug cartel, and Bond systematically dismantling and destroying it.
Licence to Kill, in particular, epitomises that ‘low-stakes’ plot that I’m arguing for here – if Bond fails to kill Sanchez, then nothing actually changes. Sanchez and his ring can continue peddling their wares, and doing awful things, but there’s no nuclear bomb, no global pandemic, no superweapon at play. That, I think, is why LtK is really successful, because it knows exactly where Sanchez and his cronies are on a global scale, and because Dalton’s Bond matches them beautifully – little backup, few gadgets, in hostile territory. Just an English assassin using his wits, his brawn, and his mad skillz to kill a bunch of awful people. It’s great.
That, I think, is what the new Bond should be…at least at first. Sure, maybe in three or four films, it’ll feel appropriate to ramp back up to some supervillain – but why not start small scale? Why not start with a villain who’s perfectly happy just doing dreadful deeds, and set Bond against him? Why not, in short, start with a Scaramanga-style antagonist?
Such a plot would give us an instant hook, too, an instant quandary beyond the physical – what is it, the film could ask, that actually makes Bond different from Scaramanga? TMwtGG plays with this question, but all too briefly, and without much interest in engaging with it. Because there obviously is much similarity between the two men. Both are ruthless, masterful killers (to the credit of TMwtGG, Moore is also allowed to display a much more callous and nasty edge than he was ever permitted to show again, and it really works to his advantage, I think), willing to do whatever it takes to finish the job. Both are also cunning, manipulative, effortlessly charming until it behoves them to intimidate and threaten. And, of course, both of them enjoy the finer things, are familiar with art and language and wine and culture and fashion. Bond’s gone up against other secret agents from all over the world in his various films – but Lee’s Scaramanga, of all of them, truly feels like Bond’s equal and opposite number.
By remaking TMwtGG, you can give Bond an equal, and encourage him (and audiences) to grapple with the question of whether he’s any different or better than Scaramanga. You can give him a villain that, unlike the original, can conceivably ‘win’ (or at least not be wholly unsuccessful), and/or survive the film (and more on that in a moment). And you can give Bond a lower-stakes plot that would better serve the character, and likely the story too.
This, apart from anything else, would also set a modern Bond apart from his cinematic competition. Where franchises like Mission Impossible and The Fast and the Furious get ever bigger and ever sillier, Bond has a chance to tell a smaller-scale story, to actually try and spin some web of subterfugous plot and highlight character alongside action set-pieces. By all means, also throw in those big setpieces, because they are undeniably fun when done well! But the actual story could go small.
Craig’s era really struggled with that, I think. Q all but tells Bond in Skyfall that the agent is useless, a dinosaur trying to stop an asteroid – but that’s because those Bond plots, especially the later ones, have all the subtlety of asteroids. Give Craig’s Bond a fellow dinosaur to contend with, a thug that, for all his computers and gadgets Q would be useless in the face of, and that thesis becomes irrelevant. Sure, Bond can’t stop an apocalypse by himself, but he doesn’t have to to be useful…or, more pertinently, to tell a compelling story.
As technology becomes more and more powerful, and more and more sinisterly capable, Craig-style Bond movies become less and less plausible. By lowering, rather than raising, the stakes, Bond can really shine as a character and a character concept – after all, Q can track down a modern-day Scaramanga all he wants, but you’ve still got to kill or capture the guy. And, of course, as a dark Bond mirror, who’s to say that Scaramanga doesn’t have his own Q, his own abilities to obfuscate and distract?
Oh, and last but not least, such a Bond film would also present another welcome, and rare, possibility – namely, that the villain can, win or lose, escape at the end of the story and present a danger for another day. Craig’s couple of recurring villains were disappointing at best, and neither of them were physical dangers. Brosnan, for memory, never let a foe live at all. You’ve got to go back to Moore-era Bond, to Blofeld (who was incredibly inconsistently employed) and Jaws (who might have been silly, but did at least present a tangibly physical danger) for recurring Bond villains.
A Scaramanga reboot, though, could see him and Bond develop a relationship over the course of multiple films – whether that be cold respect, grudging admiration, or white-hot hatred, or some mix of all of them. By giving the next Bond a villain who is both grounded and who can form a repeating threat, there’s a lot of opportunities for distinct and new and interesting Bond stories.
So, money where my mouth is, here’s my pitch for the next few Bond films. In the first film, cast a younger James – this is an agent just starting out, and being given one of his first real assignments, neutralising a lethal assassin named Scaramanga. Flamboyant, taunting and absolutely lethal, Scaramanga has eluded justice for years, selling his services to the highest bidder. So, a cat and mouse chase ensues between the two across the globe, where the line between cat and mouse is often blurry and indistinct. Eventually, though, Bond thwarts Scaramanga’s hit and though the assassin escapes, he is forced to go underground in order to escape the wrath of whatever shadowy organisation employed him.
In the next film, flip the script. Bond’s a few years older, a few years wiser, and has made a name for himself within MI6. The film can, at first, be a relatively straightforward extraction or guard duty errand, as 007 is sent to escort someone of importance back through danger. However, a complication arises – Scaramanga. Now the roles are reversed – Bond is the legend, with a vengeful and obsessive Scaramanga after him for doing the impossible, for stopping the Man with the Golden Gun. And Scaramanga wins. Bond, perhaps, manages some pyrrhic triumph, securing or destroying some vital piece of information, but he fails in his overall mission…all thanks to Scaramanga.
From there, you’ve got plenty of options. Who was Scaramanga employed by in the first film? (SPECTRE, obviously, but whatever, gotta play to the audience.) Do the two eventually have a dramatic showdown? Is there some way in a subsequent film to force them to work together? And so on and so forth. The point is, subsequent films can use a Scaramanga character as an option and as a foil, rather than keeping him as the primary antagonist, and it’s a role he’s incredibly well-suited to fill.
But in order to achieve that, you’ve first got to make him the primary antagonist, I think, to establish him as being an equal and a threat to James Bond. Which is why the next Bond film, whenever it comes out, whoever it’s starring, and whenever it is set, should be The Man with the Golden Gun…or, at least, a remix and a riff upon that film. Because TMwtGG might not be a good Bond film, but it has the potential to be the best Bond film, and to be the film that defines a new, hopefully excellent, era of 007.
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