Pierce Brosnan films

Daniel Craig’s final outing saw the first and only death of Bond, after 25 films, seven actors and a fifty-eight year, emphatically British, love-affair with the character. From the early outings of Sean Connery’s patriotic icon in the height of the Cold War, through a rather bland blip in George Lazenby’s Australian-tinged incarnation; the suave, polite, if rather cheesy and camp Roger Moore interpretation, to the prototype of a grittier Bond in Timothy Dalton, and a return to the camp, with the almost parodic Pierce Brosnan films, and Daniel Craig’s truly modern, emotional, gritty and human iteration, Bond has faced stereotypical Soviet threats, grandiose crime lords and eccentric businessmen; home-grown internal threats, nuclear weapons, biological warfare, space-travel, terrorism and dictatorships.

What all these antagonists have in common, is that they’re just as much a product of their time as the character of Bond himself. As time marches on, ideologies and world powers shift, rise and fall, as political situations evolve and different threats take their turns as the most prominent, so too did Bond and his enemies. Whatever was a perceived threat to Britain’s security at the time, invariably ended up reflected in the latest instalment of the Bond franchise. This was common from the very beginning.