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Of all the women involved in the James Bond film franchise over the years, for the last three decades producer Barbara Broccoli has had the greatest power and influence on its development. Since taking over as co-producer (alongside half-brother Michael G. Wilson) of the Bond films in the mid-1990s, Broccoli is constantly mentioned in relationship to James Bond, yet there has been no academic attention paid to her role as Bond producer. This article will address this oversight in Bond studies and contribute to the growing area of scholarship on the producer in the British film industry by analysing the popular image of 'the Bond producer' using promotional materials and press coverage. The approach adopted in this article is framed in terms of a negative stereotype of (male) film producers that is widely generalised, and pressbook evidence showing that the original Bond producers Albert R. 'Cubby' Broccoli and Harry Saltzman were positively caricatured in the Bond film publicity. It will consider the enduring legacy of the 'Men Behind James Bond' producer image to examine the role played by Broccoli in the discourses of marketing and promotion during the Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig eras. The article will demonstrate that although a high degree of public visibility might be expected to come with the role of Bond producer, the woman behind the image and the day-to-day business of film production largely remains hidden in favour of the authorised narratives shaped by the earlier promotional materials, references made to Bondian character types or popular discourses of gender which the mainstream press reproduce. In so doing the article will reflect on debates about gender and diversity in the Bond franchise to connect to wider discourses around inclusivity in British popular culture that have come to the fore in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the temporal themes of loss and pathos in Daniel Craig's portrayal of James Bond, focusing on the finality of his character's journey in "No Time To Die" (2021). Topics include the evolution of Bond's mortality within the franchise, the narrative significance of Bond's death and its impact on the series' continuity, and the thematic exploration of closure and retrospection in cinematic endings.

The intensification of London as a viable filmmaking location within the recent Daniel Craig-era James Bond films has marked a turning point for how the series has negotiated 007's homeland. Conventionally marginalized by Bond's post-colonial travelogue aesthetic, the emergence of London between Casino Royale and Spectre has, this article contends, mined the imagery of terror(ism) to conduct mourning work for the 7/7 London terror attacks. In examining the Craig era's fluctuating portrayal of the capital's geography, this article argues that Craig's iteration of the secret agent has become the ideal character through which to articulate London's tumultuous post-7/7 condition, one connected to a presentation of the capital that has been progressively haunted by the spectre of terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the significance of the new Q in Skyfall (Dir. Sam Mendes, 2012) and Spectre (Dir. Sam Mendes, 2015). It explores some of the ways that the new take on Q in the Craig era has not only adapted the dynamic between Bond and the MI6 gadget-master by turning him into a young tech geek, but also speaks volumes about masculinity and the Bond franchise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The casting and spectacular body of Daniel Craig has had a major impact on the reinvention of Bond as a more brutal (and brutalized) character and on the films' representations of masculinity and power. This article examines Craig's acting, and in doing so, repositions Craig as an active creative agent in the construction of Bond, as well as an embodiment of Bond. Craig's Bond may reject sophistication and ornamentation but Craig does not give an unsophisticated performance. In Craig's economical performance, continuities can be observed between his technique and the architectural movement, the New Brutalism. In this sense, the article redefines Craig as “object” and “architect,” exploring what is shown in Craig's Bond and how the actor achieves this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the representation of London in four James Bond films that star Daniel Craig. It focuses in particular upon the headquarters of MI6, which are variously located in a postmodern office building, underground bunkers, and Whitehall. These diverse locations are shown to represent shifting ideas around British national identity that are here also linked to developments in architectural practice and London's economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the Bond Girl concept is deconstructed across the orphan-origin trilogy—Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, and Skyfall—to accommodate the rise of a new heroic model that focuses on strength and resilience. The qualities associated with the Bond Girl are distributed across at least two characters per film. This opens up space for outlier women—Vesper Lynd, Camille Montes, M—and adjustments to the gender politics of the franchise. The archetype is reintroduced in Spectre as Dr. Madeleine Swann can be read as a composite of previous Bond Girls. The film also reworks the narratives associated with the outlier women in the Craig era, bringing their qualities into the Bond Girl fold while reinstituting a phallocentric order in the franchise through the (re)positioning of Bond as a romantic hero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction highlights the four areas of inquiry addressed by contributors featured in this special issue of Journal of Popular Film and Television, “James Bond in the Daniel Craig Era”: agencies, moods, places, and structures. It also acknowledges the place of the Daniel Craig era in relation to other serial film franchises like the Jason Bourne and Batman series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notable commercial and critical success of the four James Bond films made with actor Daniel Craig playing the lead role –Casino Royale(Martin Campbell, GB/Cze/USA/Ger/Bah, 2006),Quantum of Solace(Marc Forster, GB/USA, 2008),Skyfall(Sam Mendes, GB/USA, 2012) andSpectre(Sam Mendes, GB/USA, 2015) – has, over the past decade, provoked a sustained increase in the amount of academic commentary and debate around the Bond character, his fictional universe and multimedia incarnations. Working from the premise thatSpectreknowingly advertises itself as a possible conclusion to the Craig era, this article attempts to identify and discuss a range of key thematic trends in Bond filmmaking (and Bond criticism) in the years sinceCasino Royale. Such themes include: enhanced attention to the fictional spy’s body as a producer of textual and popular cultural meaning; Bond’s complex relationship with evolving ideas of British national identity and state structures; and the questionable extent to which the Craig Bond films constitute a meaningful revision of the 007 film franchise’s traditional aesthetic and thematic defining characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a criticism of the film "Skyfall," directed by Sam Mendes, starring Daniel Craig. Topics discussed include the role of the film in depicting neo-conservative politics in comparison to other James Bond films starred by Craig including "Casino Royale" and "Quantum of Solace," criticisms by Marouf Hasian and Juan Carlos Monedero of the film being themed on imperial violence and military power, and references of "Skyfall" to the policies of then U.S. President George W. Bush.

The James Bond film franchise has attracted much criticism for its depiction of women. The casting of Judi Dench as M, however, signalled the series' potential to interrogate its own sexism. This article argues that Casino Royale (2006) by Campbell - the fifth film starring Dench as M and the first starring Daniel Craig as Bond - effects the most significant revision of gender roles in the franchise to date. Taking us back to the beginning of his career, Casino Royale reconfigures Bond as fallible, vulnerable and psychologically unstable, a man struggling to secure his identity as 007. Playing a much more significant role than she did in the Pierce Brosnan films, M criticizes Bond's weaknesses and mistakes, but she also contributes in important ways to shaping his identity-in-process in her complex role as boss/ mentor/mother. Nevertheless, in Quantum of Solace by Forster (2008) and Skyfall by Mendes (2012), M's power over Bond is contained within a familiar ideology of motherhood, which subordinates her to the active male agent. Furthermore, this article contends that in Skyfall the series reverts to its tradition of undermining, containing and erasing powerful women by killing off the female usurper and restoring MI6 to a male-dominated space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides readers with an ideological critique of the latest James Bond installment, Skyfall. The author argues that the director of the film, Sam Mendes, has succeeded in creating a highly popular movie by tapping into societal desires for Anglo-American imperial nostalgia. Several characters in the movie, including Bond and M, suffer falls from grace that parallel the loss of British imperial power, but in the end, both Bond and the empire are resurrected when they return to the old and true ways of dealing with cyberterrorist dangers. The 2012 release of Skyfall became a part of the British pageantry that swirled around the London Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, and the nostalgic imperialism of this latest Bond film allowed Anglo-American audiences to celebrate Britain's continued relevance and the need for MI6, the British Secret Service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Bond film Skyfall (2012), director Sam Mendes offers an interpretation of gothic horror that explores 007's maternal ambivalence. Exploiting the genre's tropes of the persecutory double, psychotic son, and monstrous feminine/mother, the film provides a 'working through' of the oedipal terror that is so redolent of the gothic. Taking as a reference point the work of Freudian theorist Melanie Klein, Skyfall can be seen as presenting 'M' (Judi Dench) as the Kleinian 'bad mother', one half of the 'split' that the infant conceptualizes to explain the inadequacy of the mother in meeting his needs, phantasizing his revenge in terms of oral aggression. Bond (Daniel Craig) and villain Silva (Javier Bardem) are each victims of exploitation by the British secret services - and by extension the figural mother M. For Silva this means being given up to the Chinese government for torture and likely death. It is this previous act of maternal mistreatment that serves to 'explain' his (sexual) perversity, i.e. renunciation of the phallic, which includes his perverse attachment to M (other). Silva serves as 007's shadowy counterpart - as well as cautionary tale - in granting the phantastical wish-fulfilment of both sons: revenge upon the mother. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daniel Craig's first outing as James Bond inCasino Royale(2006) playfully repositions the extensive and polysemic cultural symbolism that Barthes identified with the character [Barthes, R., 1982.Selected writings (1966). Oxford University Press]. The closed narrative structures which were foregrounded in Umberto Eco's structuralist reading of Bond (2009) are made ambiguous, and Bond himself is represented as incomplete, vulnerable and in a process of becoming. This refashioning of Bond is achieved through modes of birth and rebirth, whereby the character is viewed in a state of transformation. In fashioning and refashioning his identity, the film demonstrates a masculinity that is fluid, and made more so by the frequent references to water. Bond's gender identity is unsettled and is repeatedly affected by his identification with traditionally feminine attributes and connotations. This research builds on the increased critical attention for this new Bond [Lindner, C., ed., 2009a.The James Bond phenomenon: a critical reader. 2nd ed. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press; Lindner, C., ed., 2009b. Revisioning 007: James Bond andCasino Royale. London and New York: Wallflower Press], and systematically considers and extends our understanding of Bond's gendered identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]